How is it that through chapter after chapter, The Fast & Furious, Resident Evil, Mission: Impossible, and Marvel are all able to at least deliver bang-for-the-buck, while the Alien franchise is more like the Terminator franchise — a series with so much potential, so much built-in audience goodwill we continue to lay our money down, even though the batting average of late is near zero?
The talent is there, director Sir Ridley Scott, for crying out loud. Additionally, you have the limitless wonders to be found in the late H.R. Giger’s beautifully grotesque universe, including one of the most iconic and terrifying creatures in all of movie history. Then there is the genre — horror/action/sci-fi — which offers a toy box of goodies, the ability to let the imagination frolic anywhere.
How do you screw that up?
Well, you start with over-thinking everything; you get ambitious, you decide the experience has to be something more than just a good time. It must also be important, it must say something, it must look to answer big questions. Add to that the over-complicating of the mythology, the over-explaining to the point of confusion, to where the pedantic detailing makes the alien xenomorph less scary, which undermines the delicious mystery of the entire series.
Sometimes things are more frightening if they just, you know … are.
Anyway, this sequel to Scott’s Prometheus (2012) and prequel to Scott’s Alien (1979) takes place about 10 years after the former in the year 2105. A colony ship called the Covenant is in deep space on a years-long trip to an inhabitable planet. Thousands of hopeful colonists and frozen embryos are aboard, along with Walter (Michael Fassbender), a synthetic human who performs basic duties while everyone else sleeps. An emergency wakes the handful of crew, which includes Captain Oram (Billy Crudup), Branson (Katherine Waterston) and Tennessee (Danny McBride).
After performing the necessary repairs, the ship picks up a signal from a nearby planet that can sustain human life. With their planned destination still seven years away and no one eager to return to cryosleep, the decision is made to check it out. And so it goes …
The characters are not even close to interesting, I certainly didn’t feel anything for them. Worse still, the relationships are not believable. Mustering on after a personal loss is one of the story’s many poorly-explored themes. Nevertheless, if you fail to feel the connection between those two people, that loss is reduced to a thing that happens. Not to sound callous, but near the end it happened so often it became a little absurd. Everyone is married to someone else and the characters are so indistinguishable they blend together.
This is especially disappointing because when you go back and re-watch Scott’s original Alien (1979), which gets better every year, or James Cameron’s slam-bang-you-just-got-owned-by-a-ma’am 1986 sequel (that changed action movies forever), both perform the miracle of creating dynamic characters with just a few lines of dialogue. Obviously it helps to have actors like Sigourney Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Paxton, Lance Henrikson, Jenette Goldstein, Paul Reiser, and Michael Biehn, but I blame the Covenant script as much as the bland actors. McBride is an exception. In every way imaginable, though, Katherine Waterston is so uncannily similar to her father I kept hearing the Law & Order theme in my head.
Another problem is Fassbender’s Walter. This mix of Spock and Data is the film’s star even though this type of character has been played-out since around 1993. Early on, Crudup’s character reveals a potentially interesting thematic thread. This decent man thrust into a leadership position believes his crew and employer discriminate against him over his religious faith. I immediately perked up, “Where is this going?” Sadly, nowhere. How do you drop a first-act bomb like that without paying it off?
For all of its many flaws, Prometheus at least had Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, and spectacle that managed to barely hold tight to some of its bigger ideas. As dumb as it could be: “Oh, look at the cute little space cobra!“ (Covenant also has one of these moments: “Please do peer into the slimy pod that just opened up.”) — the design, the action, the Largeness of Prometheus overcame so much.
Covenant offers no such place to hide. Within five minutes I was bored. Except for one pretty solid sequence after everyone lands on the planet, boredom remained my companion throughout (along with two fellas named Mike and Ike). About an hour in, about the time the Gothic pretensions took over, I was ready to walk out and would have if my butt had not become cripplingly numb.
Alien — A+
Aliens — A
Alien 3 — C
Alien: Resurrection — C+
Alien Vs. Predator — B
Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem — F
Prometheus — B-
Alien: Covenant — D
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