When Ridley Scott first returned to the long-decaying Alien franchise with Prometheus, the results were controversial, and the film itself suffered from numerous script deficiencies in spite of its ambition and intriguing thematic questions. As a prequel to Alien, Prometheus wasn't especially serviceable, containing very few references to the film it was allegedly attempting to add context to. However, despite eventually devolving into dumb thriller territory, it was a film with a clear vision, even if it failed to resolve any of its philosophical questions, and a sequel ought to have refined the film's rough edges and added more clarity to Scott's vision.
Instead, Alien: Covenant sees the director halfheartedly rehashing his 1979 original while forgetting what made that movie special, and even his attempts to continue the philosophical musings of Prometheus come across as half-formed doodles above all else. Covenant doubles down on its predecessor's script issues while refusing to answer any of its questions, and while Scott retains some of his astonishing visual sensibility, it's embellished by bad CGI and pandering visual references to the original. The result is an asinine slasher film with a shaky thematic core, and it's yet another nail in the franchise's coffin.
When the Covenant, a colony ship bound for distant habitable planets, comes across a message from a nearby uncharted world, its crew decides to investigate, much to the frustration of Daniels (Katherine Waterson). While there, they come across an alien threat beyond their understanding (guess what it is), and struggle to escape with their lives.
The crew of Prometheus, despite making several questionable decisions, at least had distinct personalities and were relatively well-developed. Many of its crew members were stereotypes, but they had variety and were established within the confines of the film itself. Covenant, meanwhile, seems to assume prior investment in the characters despite doing nothing to introduce us to them, and its very first scene involves the death of a character who we can't even identify until looking at photographs in a later scene. The entire crew consists of couples, but it's frequently difficult to tell which characters are in a relationship because of how little information the film itself offers about them. The only distinct characters are Daniels, this film's Ripley stand-in, Tennessee (Danny McBride), a crew member who stays behind on the ship and only stands out because his distance from the action. Walter (Michael Fassbender), the ship's android, is also compelling, but much of that comes down to Fassbender's excellent performance. Reportedly, all the character development is in web shorts released prior to the film, but unless you're aware of these beforehand, you're straight out of luck.
As a consequence, it's difficult to even differentiate between these characters, let alone build much investment in them, and that's made worse by their overall incompetence. The crew of the Covenant makes even more bad decisions than that of the Prometheus, chief among them being the decision to land on this uncharted world in the first place. Almost every decision made by a crew member in this film is blatantly incorrect, and while this is partially explained by the crew not being trained for confronting an alien threat of this type, it's still hard to stomach when the film puts so little effort into establishing the characters, and certain decisions, like stepping onto an unknown world without space suits, are hard to accept even by those standards.
The bigger problem, however, is that the film is consistently devoid of tension. When the xenomorph actually appears, be it in the classical form or in the film's new white-coloured "neomorphs," it's consistently depicted with unconvincing CGI, and the film rushes through these scenes without any interest in maintaining tension. Until the distinctly slasher-esque climax, the film never stops to build tension, and as a consequence it comes across as absurd and arbitrary when characters die simply because they panicked and slipped on blood. The actual aliens in this alleged Alien prequel are treated as generic horror baddies, simply there to make death happen, and the neomorphs who are most common in the film aren't even all that frightening to begin with.
Worse still, the film's action scenes are often frenzied to the point of partial incoherence, decreasing their impact even further. As with Prometheus, Covenant is frequently beautiful, and it looks best during its slowest moments, when the lush scenery and imaginative technology are on full display. It doesn't manage the same elegance as its predecessor, however, and the claustrophobia which much of Prometheus was able to generate is entirely absent in Covenant's relatively dry environments. Even if it were, however, it would be buried under shaky, over-edited camerawork which detracts from the already underwhelming xenomorph sequences. Scott's direction often saves the film to an extent, but there's only so much he can do when it's this hard to get invested.
The lack of tension is compounded by just how much the film recycles both plot points and iconography from the first Alien film. A dead crewmate is sent out to space, the alien is introduced through bringing a sick crewmate to the medical bay, and at one point we even see a character opening a facehugger pod in a near shot-for-shot remake of the scene from the 1979 film. At points, the feeling of familiarity simply feels pandering, and most of Covenant's unique identity comes from its deficiencies rather than its strengths. The film's climax trades this for outright slasher movie tropes, and while this is perilously close to a betrayal of the series' pedigree, it's also much more fun than what came before, and this final sequence even contains the film's only bit of genuine suspense. It's just a shame that an Alien movie has to be so brainless.
While Covenant is much less ambitious than its predecessor, the film does attempt to continue and clarify some of Prometheus's ideas, but it's not very successful in this regard either. The theme of both films is that creating life is a mistake, and it conveys this both through Walter and through the aliens themselves, who are being bred by a recurring character. But this theme is murky aside from the broad strokes, and while one could interpret a compelling idea about the horror of mankind's obsolecense, this notion is spouted alongside many less cogent or downright trite ones by the villain, leaving the film's stance on them murky at best.
Whatever Ridley Scott is trying to communicate with these movies keeps getting buried under everything around them. The questions introduced in Prometheus are worth answering, but Alien: Covenant barely even tries to answer them, and while there are a couple fun action sequences and maybe some interesting philosophical ideas, those are stranded in the poor framework of a mindless horror flick with few thrills and dull characters. If it's not the worst insult the Alien franchise has ever faced, it's perhaps the most damning, as it seems even the original creator can't recapture what made his original so special, let alone provide a worthwhile expansion on it. Put this franchise to rest.
4/10
+ Often beautiful, as is to be expected from Ridley Scott.
+ One or two thrilling action sequences.
+ Hints of compelling themes.
- Moronic, interchangable cast is impossible to be invested in.
- Rushes through xenomorph scenes unsatisfyingly.
- Rehashes aspects from earlier films.
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