[Music: Five Card Shuffle by Kevin MacLeod]
Hello and welcome to Projector, and on this episode the xenomorph is back
as Ridley Scott returns to the Alien franchise once more in "Covenant".
Ten years after the events of "Prometheus", the odd-couple crew of the colonisation ship Covenant
suffers a tragedy that wakes them years before they reach their destination of Origae-6.
When they intercept a distorted signal they find its source is mysterious planet
that appears completely habitable for their mission, but there's no signs of life whatsoever.
However, the Covenant crew soon discover this seeming paradise hides dark secrets that will lead them in a fight for survival.
If you're familiar with my work, you'll know I'm a fan of the Alien series.
Ridley Scott's original 1979 film remains a masterpiece.
A brilliantly atmospheric, incredibly tense and suspenseful movie that has some of cinema's most iconic moments,
as well as one of its most enduring heroines and one of its most famous monsters.
In 2012, Scott returned to the franchise for "Prometheus",
and this is at point where the Alien franchise was very much on the out,
having been tarnished by sequels and the AvP spin-offs.
And Scott returning to it was very much an event, that he would return it to greatness with his prequel.
Unfortunately, as you probably already know from my hour-long review of that movie,
"Prometheus" was a major disappointment in my opinion.
A beautifully shot movie that aimed for profundity, but was stymied by a script
that often had characters doing either things that were downright illogical or just plain stupid,
and loaded with plot holes or questions that had no interest in answering.
The reception of the film definitely polarized audiences
and it's probably understandable why this sequel to "Prometheus"
tries to bring the franchise closer to what it was originally.
It doesn't help.
"Covenant", in my opinion, is worse than "Prometheus", and I know this for sure
because when I came out of "Prometheus" I was in a state of denial about what I'd just seen.
I was under no such illusions about "Covenant".
It's clear from the earliest scenes of "Covenant" they're definitely tries to bring the series back to its roots,
and homage the original 1979 film as much as possible.
So you have things like the title appearing on screen the same way as it does in that movie,
where the letters gradually fade into view, or shots being duplicated,
or characters even speaking the same lines of dialogue. And fans will definitely appreciate those nods like,
say, a wrapped body being ejected out into space in the same way that Kane was in the original,
or a big close-up on a novelty drinking bird toy that featured prominently in the original Alien movie.
However, even on a plot level, the movie is very close to the original film, when you break it down.
A crew wakes up, they intercept a signal, they go to investigate the source of it and encounter the xenomorph.
It's basically a pseudo-remake, although Scott does add a few new twists on that formula.
The first one is that many of the Alien movies begin with the characters asleep in their cryotubes,
and this becomes an element of danger in "Covenant", because we're thrust into this emergency,
we're introduced to the characters in the midst of an action sequence,
as they try and get out of this moment of jeopardy.
Unfortunately, this backfires on the movie tremendously. You don't know any of the characters because of this,
because they're all running around at this point and so we get no real sense of who they are.
It's unbelievable, how bad at characterisation in "Alien Covenant" is, especially when you consider that the original 1979 "Alien"
had characters that were so authentic in feeling, they were very much workers in space.
And they acted in ways that were intelligent, and they thought out and they planned and they executed,
and you genuinely cared about them.
In "Covenant", they're so badly even established that at certain points I didn't even know people were there
until it cut to a shot of them speaking. That's how bad they established these characters.
If you've seen the clips on YouTube, the prologues, especially "The Last Supper" one,
that does a better job of establishing the characters in "Alien Covenant" than the actual film itself does.
They're a colonisation ship, they're carrying loads of people in cryopods
they're very much are trying to bring humans to new worlds, that is their mission.
And also the crew themselves are all couples. That itself is really badly established in the movie,
especially because you don't know whose partner is who.
The film does such a shoddy job of that, it undermines the basic conceit.
The whole idea of having couples in the movie is that when one of the partners dies,
you are meant to feel an emotional response about it.
And yet we don't care about them because we don't know who they are.
We don't know their identities. We don't know what their role on the ship really is.
The characters are basically alien fodder, and that's terrible writing on that front.
You don't care when they die, you don't care what happens to their partners.
It's a real mess. Even in "Prometheus", I knew who the characters were.
I didn't believe in the characters, but there was still some that I cared about,
there was still some that I understood the motivations of.
But in this movie, nothing. Most the characters a completely background or peripheral.
There are only a few exceptions in the cast. Obviously Michael Fassbender, and we'll get to him later,
but even the likes of Katherine Waterston as Daniels, she's basically the designated Ripley role.
Unfortunately she spends much movie cast aside into the background.
In the original movie the idea that Ripley was the hero was something
that was genuinely quite groundbreaking and surprising at the time.
In this movie it feels rote. It feels like something they have to do because it's an "Alien" movie.
And then you've got the likes of Demian Bichir for example,
his character's meant to be gay, but that's so fleetingly established in the final version of the film
that you could always blink and miss it, that's how little that plays into the proceedings.
The only character that I genuinely cared about throughout the entire movie
was surprisingly Danny McBride, playing a straight role for a change,
as Tennessee, and he's not even on the planet for most of the movie.
He gets sidelined watching over the events.
So I'm watching this group of people that I really have no emotional attachment to whatsoever, just getting picked off.
And what makes things even worse is that they're no better than the characters in "Prometheus".
In some cases, they might actually be stupider.
Because you know what? At least the characters in "Prometheus" didn't forget their spacesuits.
Oh, yes, these are characters in this movie that go to an alien planet they never visited before,
don't know anything about and just walk around exposed the entire time.
Alien pathogens could be in the air, and they are.
This might sound like I'm nitpicking, I'm not.
Literally the entire movie could be negated if people wore their spacesuits.
Come on, guys! Even the characters in "Prometheus" weren't that stupid... at first.
And the characters continue to make incredibly poor decisions throughout the entire movie, that feel very false.
The first attack scene with the neomorph is so badly executed that I almost burst out laughing at certain points,
mostly because there's not one but two instances of characters falling around in blood spilled on the floor like it's a slip-and-slide.
Even the characters that you do get to know about a little bit you still don't like them,
such as the case with Captain Oram played by Billy Crudup, who's a great character actor,
but it's unfortunately saddled with this wet blanket of a part.
He plays a character who's been thrust into his position somewhat unwillingly,
in the midst of a tragedy and he's trying to take command of this crew
that's very much grieving and doesn't want to follow his orders, and he seems like he's quite disliked amongst them.
Unfortunately we don't like him either. He's a character that at one point claims
that the reason he believes the crew isn't following his orders is because he's a man of faith,
it's because he's a Christian. Apparently he's got a persecution complex.
No, mate. It's because you're a total fool.
Every decision that Oram makes throughout the entire movie is the wrong one. Consistently.
And that's bad character writing. If this guy was the second in command, he wouldn't be such a total idiot all the time.
I'm not even sure Scott cares about humans anymore, he's far more interested in robots,
such as the case with Walter, the new android in this movie, again played by Michael Fassbender.
And he's by far the film's most intriguing character because we know how David in "Prometheus" turned out.
And so there's very much this sense of unease about all his interactions with the crew of the Covenant.
He's the next model down and he's basically made to be more robotic.
They tried to curb that sort of human individualism that was apparent in David
and made him much more subservient to the crew that he's meant to be helping out.
But even still, you're never quite sure whether he's on their side, or whether he's sabotaging things.
He's a genuinely engaging presence in this movie and so he should,
because Michael Fassbender is pretty much the lead role, he's the film's major spotlight.
And he does do some solid work in this movie, and he's practically carrying it at points,
but the material this film throws at him almost defeats him.
There's a scene in this movie, a very prolonged scene that is soon to become infamous,
where he has to play the flute from "Prometheus". Oh, yes, that's back and even worse this time.
And this scene engages in some quasi- incestuous homoerotic tension, and it's really, really on-the-nose.
I know that psycho-sexual tension has been long a mainstay of the "Alien" franchise,
but this is incredibly blatant, and there's a line of dialogue in this scene
that is so on-the-nose that it's just embarrassing.
There's a line where someone says, "I'll do the fingering". That actually set my audience in hysterical laughter,
because it wasn't subtle enough already, they just had to put that line on there,
that just basically tips over into full-on parody at that point,
and it gets even more exaggerated from there later in the movie.
It really does make sense that Scott empathises with the android characters
that are aesthetically perfect, but deeply flawed underneath,
because that is essentially what "Covenant" and "Prometheus" both are.
However, considering it's a Scott film there's a surprising amount of sloppiness on display.
By far the most pressing issue is there's too much CGI on the aliens,
especially in their design and the way they move. They always move in ways that look very artificial,
and are never remotely convincing as part of the environment, let alone scary.
This is especially a problem with the neomorphs, the bright white aliens.
that are another transitional state, before we get to the main xenomorphs, and they never look good at all.
Especially the big reveal moment where it bursts out, the little baby one looks shockingly poor in that scene.
And I genuinely spent portions of "Covenant" wondering, what happened Ridley?
You used to expouse the benefits of practical effects,
and yet we have all this CGI-filled aliens on screen
that look genuinely worse than a guy in a suit did in 1979.
And I know there's one or two shots where you can clearly tell they used someone on set,
but the rest of it is blatantly CGI work that just looks overdone at best,
and at worst looks like it was from a decade ago. So you have that issue.
There's also the fact that Scott's direction in those sequences is again far too frantic.
There's a moment where the neomorphs are attacking in a wheat field,
that's cut so quickly that there's a major moment that happens in that scene,
that some audiences might not be able to register it happens
because we never give it a moment to actually register it,
until someone acknowledges it many scenes later. It's that kind of shaky cam action.
The way the attack sequences in this movie is staged,
they're so predictable, if you've seen the "Alien" movies, you know how the scenes play out.
They're practically telegraphed on-screen.
At one point, they actually signpost it, so you know exactly what's going to happen next.
That completely undermines the tension, because tension comes from not knowing what's going to happen.
But, of course, the aliens by this point are very much played out.
It feels like what Scott took away from "Prometheus" was not that he should have a better script this time out.
He seems to be under the impression the reason that people disliked "Prometheus"
was because I didn't have the xenomorphs in it. That wasn't the problem at all.
That was very low down the list of problems.
And the way that the xenomorphs are incorporated into this movie feels very much like,
"you want xenomorphs, fine, you have them."
They feel very much like they've been bolted on into the story
and they aren't really given that much respect.
The way they're taken out in this movie, they feel very much like stock villains by this point.
And they're not really given the gravitas that they were given in the original for example,
where just one alien managed to be so destructive and so scary.
There really is, though, some really genuinely confounding decisions
when it comes to the alien life cycle in this movie.
There's a chestburster in this film, that's again CGI for reasons that I can't comprehend,
and they've changed it so that it almost becomes like a little mini-fully-formed alien
where it starts spouting out arms and legs and starts actually doing a little dance.
I genuinely wondered if he was going to start doing the musical number from the "Spaceballs" parody.
Aside from the opening prologue the influence of "Prometheus" can very much be felt
from the halfway point, where it starts taking up this ideas of creation for example,
but unfortunately even if you're a fan of that movie I think you'll still be disappointed by what "Covenant" offers.
Because at the end of "Prometheus" it still had a lot of unanswered questions,
but again, it seems like Scott took the wrong lessons away from "Prometheus",
and thought he was being too ambitious. That wasn't the problem with "Prometheus".
In fact that was one of its biggest strengths, in that it was at least trying to do something different with the franchise.
But instead in an attempt to course-correct it, Scott has brutally smothered his own creation,
and many of the storytelling possibilities are just snuffed out unfortunately.
If you're expecting answers to the cliffhanger at the end of "Prometheus"
I think you'll be gravely disappointed by what happens here,
especially by a flashback that connects between the two movies.
The film doesn't treat its predecessor very well at all,
especially in regards to things like characters that survive that movie for example.
But the worst thing that "Covenant" picks up from its predecessor is a bad case of prequel-itis,
because it feels the need to explain the xenomorphs and that's not what the audience wants.
They don't want that question answered.
The whole point of why the aliens were scary in the first movie is because they were mysterious,
you didn't know where they came from, you didn't understand their life cycle,
and they emerged from the darkness. That is genuinely scary, it's fear of the unknown.
And "Covenant" plays like one of those Michael Bay slasher prequels
that feels the need to explain exactly why the boogeymen are the way they are.
We don't need to know this information,
and the explanation that is given doesn't really make sense with what's been established in the original 1979 film,
and it really takes away so much of the mystique and fear factor of the creatures.
I can understand and sympathise with the characters in many of the "Alien" films now,
when they go out to try and discover something
and wish they hadn't learnt them, I feel the same way.
I wish I didn't know what I know now about the aliens that "Covenant" reveals because...
I can't look at the original "Alien" film anymore without in some way being tainted by the revelations in "Covenant".
And it's an embodiment of what Ridley's done with these two prequels,
in that he is damaging the reputation of his earlier movie.
We don't need them being attached to this backstory.
They don't need some part of this grand mythology.
They were perfectly fine standalone monsters. That's exactly where their power comes from.
And worst of all, the film's ending,
I would be very surprised if anyone didn't see that coming from a mile away.
You could see it from the other side of the galaxy.
"Covenant" isn't the worst Alien movie
but that's more representative of the low bar the later sequels and spin-offs
set themselves than the quality of this film itself.
If you were hoping for at least an improvement on "Prometheus", it doesn't even achieve that.
In fact, it actually makes the virtues of that movie seem a little bit brighter in retrospect.
It really is one of most infuriating films I've sat through all year unfortunately,
and with this, Ridley Scott has made his own "Alien Resurrection",
and really he'd be best off leaving the legacy of his masterpiece well alone.
"Alien Covenant" is Ridley Scott continuing to undermine the purity and effectiveness of his original classic
by sapping it of it's mystery and attaching it to an unnecessary, convoluted origin story.
It manages to make "Prometheus" look better in retrospect,
because while the crew of the Covenant are just as dim-witted as their predecessors,
they're so badly characterized you can barely tell them apart,
not caring when them or their partners die, as Scott continues to be far more interested
in the robotic Michael Fassbender than the humans or aliens.
While it continues some of the themes of "Prometheus", even so much of that film's promise is cruelly snuffed
as Scott punishes his own ambition and just brings in the xenomorphs for all-too-familiar motions,
their overly CGI forms neither convincing or scary, despite how much gore is sprayed.
Worst of all, it's very heavy-handed with some risible dialogue and a thuddingly obvious ending.
As an "Alien" fan, it's an infuriating journey into things I wish I didn't know.
If you liked this review, please support my work over at Patreon,
where you can see my reviews early among other perks,
but until next time I'm Mathew Buck, signing off.
[hisses and screams, dramatic music]
