Alien: Covenant

"The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant that I made with their forefathers. Therefore, this is what Jehovah says, 'Here I am bringing on them a calamity that they will not be able to escape. When they call for help, I will not listen to them."

Alien: Covenant, the sixth (or eighth if you include the Alien vs. Predator movies) in this multi-decade science fiction/horror franchise, is a step in the right direction but one that sparks a debate as to whether or not director Ridley Scott and his team should continue making these movies. Scott, whose second film was Alien, a legendary science fiction film, returns here again as director. He left the series after directing the first one in 1979, allowing James Cameron to take over with Aliens in 1986. Others followed, far less successfully than Scott and Cameron. The series was rebooted, sort of, in 2012 with Prometheus with Scott returning as director. Scott and his writers put a cast of characters in the same universe as the malicious xenomorph aliens, but those creatures basically did not appear. Instead, we got a series of enigmas and interesting theories on the genesis of humans. Alien: Covenant is part Alien, part Prometheus, and while we get the familiar structure of scientists being picked off one by one, we also get, for better or worse, a further exploration of those large themes.

If you didn't watch the short prologue, you should. It will be a basic reminder of what happened in the previous film. In case you missed it, a quick reminder: The survivors of the Prometheus in 2093 (Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace, and the android David, played by Michael Fassbender) decide to go find the "engineers", the mysterious alien species that may have created humans (and incidentally tried to kill them).

More than ten years later, a crew of colonists aboard a ship called the Covenant is on a journey towards a new home planet far away from Earth. The ship is anchored by a newer android type named Walter (also played by Fassbender). Walter has a number of improvements from David, the most obvious being that he thinks less for himself. This is beneficial for a variety of reasons explained in the film. But the crew are awakened by a deadly neutrino burst. Picking up the pieces, they discover a distress signal not far off their path. Their captain (Billy Crudup) decides to lead the crew there (for some reason). The planet they find is so Earth-like that they apparently don't need helmets (more astronaut stupidity), and they explore an eerily quiet land. Ghoulish Pompeii-like casts of some kind of being are everywhere, as is danger, and it's all downhill from there.

Many seem annoyed that Scott has chosen the Alien franchise to explore these large concepts. I don't mind. Half-way through, not long after they land and things start going badly, the film switches fairly suddenly from an Alien movie to a Prometheus sequel, and while this probably will irritate most viewers (particularly those who didn't like Prometheus), from there the two are neatly tied together. The themes are there, for sure, and some of them quite obvious. "Covenant" is a religious term regarding the Biblical ark; here, just as the animals before them, the ship carries couples two by two to a new world. Some themes are a little less obvious. For instance, Walter points out that David has made a mistake in his quoting Ozymandias, and that the real author was Percy Shelly, who many believe co-authored Frankenstein with Mary Shelly. And the subtitle of Frankenstein is (wait for it)...The Modern Prometheus. Watch the film, see what kind of power David has and uses and wants to use, consider both Frankenstein and Ozymandias and the themes involved, and have more fun with the allegories.

But if you do want chest (and back) bursting, scenes of gore galore, and fright, Alien: Covenant delivers. It does not possess that prudence and tension employed in the first one, which was a much more contained and limited movie that ended up paying off beautifully. But still, this is a better looking movie than Prometheus, and one that is far less frustrating. The characters, though, are some of the least interesting in the series. The lead, Katherine Waterston, is not given much to do, and the other female actors (namely Carmen Ejogo, Amy Seimetz, and Callie Hernandez) scream a lot and heighten the film's tension, but that's about it. Crudup does provide a somewhat intriguing character as the ship's new captain, who is not truly suited for his unexpected assignment. His leadership skills are questionable, and he's learning on the job. Damian Bichir does a mostly good job as another crew member, but the one who is really remarkable is Danny McBride, who has made a successful career as a funnyman. Here he's all serious and is perhaps the most impressive addition.

And yet the most enjoyable to watch, yet again, is Michael Fassbender, a true treasure of cinema. Whereas Sigourney Weaver was the star of the first four films, here Fassbender is the driver of this part of the franchise. He gets the dual task of playing Walter and David, and of course they come face to face, brother to brother. The flute scene, which starts with David teaching Walter how to play a wooden flute, is remarkably tense and entertaining, dripping with homoerotic hints at incest. (David has one line in particular that is truly eyebrow-raising.) David sees himself as the king of kings, and while I think this franchise (along with many that are overstaying their welcome) is growing a bit dull, I also look forward to seeing if humans deteriorate because of his nefariousness.