Alien: Covenant
starring Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, and Demian Bichir
screenplay by John Logan and Dante Harper
directed by Ridley Scott
Rating: ♦◊◊◊◊
This most recent instalment of the Alien franchise follows the crew of colony ship Covenant which is heading to planet Origae-6 when it encounters an interruption in its flight and then lands on an uncharted planet where the crew make a terrifying discovery. The franchise now includes not just several movies, but novels, comic books, video games and toys.
In the year 2104, the Covenant is bound for a remote planet, Origae-6, with a crew of 15, two thousand colonists in suspended animation, and 1,140 human embryos aboard. The ship is monitored by Walter (Michael Fassbender), an android. In many of these Alien movies the trouble seems to be the androids fault. For God’s sake, stop putting androids on these space ships! They aren’t reliable! A stellar burst damages the ship, killing 47 colonists. Walter orders the ship's computer to wake the crew, which includes several married couples. The ship's captain, Jake Branson, is burned alive when his stasis pod malfunctions. While repairing the ship, the crew picks up a radio transmission from a nearby, habitable planet. Against the objections of Captain Branson’s widow, Janet Daniels (Katherine Waterston), the new captain, Chris Oram (Billy Crudup), decides to investigate. Bad idea.
They go down to the planet, discover aliens, many are killed in that copyrighted Alien fashion, and then they manage to return to their ship in orbit and resume their journey to Oriagae-6. They think they are in the clear, but of course, they’ve inadvertently returned to the ship with an undetected visitor, promising the continuation of the saga in future movies.
Janet Daniels is quite similar to Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley character from earlier films. There’s something to take note of here. Most of these Alien movies feature a strong female character who kicks ass: pilot, warrior, leader, survivor. Role model for young girls?
I haven’t watched the entire Alien series: Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992) and Alien Resurrection (1997). I got half way through the fourth film and just gave up out of boredom. Stopping a movie mid-point is extremely rare for me. The Alien franchise now crosses over with the Predator films: Alien vs. Predator (2004), Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), and now a prequel series Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). We get more information about the backstory of the Alien creature. Where does it come from? Why is it so adaptive? It selectively assumes characteristics from its various hosts, victims that it infests and cocoons over time. The answer to that makes me even more angry at the androids. It’s all the androids fault!
I decided to watch Covenant because advertisements made it sound like a back-to-basics movie, a return to the original director, story line and concept. I was disappointed in that. It felt like repetition. My favorite Alien movie is still Aliens, the second in the series, co-starring Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn and Paul Reiser, directed by James Cameron. That is a common admiration, I think.
“I hate space,”
“This is why you need to do yoga.