Alien: Covenant - Review
Directed by Ridley Scott, 'Alien: Covenant' takes place 10 years after the events of 'Prometheus' (Ridley Scott, 2012). The film follows a small crew attempting to colonise a remote planet, but a freak incident causes them to wake up from their cryosleep, leading them to discover a much closer inhabitable planet that was previously overlooked. While our protagonist, Daniels (Katherine Waterston) warns against this, the crew decides to take the risk, as nobody wants to return to the cryosleep state due to the unfortunate death of their captain.
The set design for 'Alien: Covenant' was phenomenal, creating a consistent, immersive feel for the world. I do, however, feel that the decision to focus on CGI for the aliens was a poor one; the reason 'Alien' (Ridley Scott, 1979) still looks great today is because of the practical alien costume, and I never found the aliens in 'Covenant' to appear too real. I really liked the designs for some of the new alien alterations, and every kill was bone-chilling.
I found the protagonist to be a little bland, and didn't really have much investment in her. That unfortunately goes for most of the crew, as well; I actually found the crew that stayed on the ship to be the most engaging and entertaining to watch. Michael Fassbender's main character, David, carried on from 'Prometheus', had the most interesting personality and motivations out of the whole cast in my opinion, and I felt that he carried the film.
SPOILERS AHEAD (Skip to conclusion)
While most of the crew is killed throughout the film, I found their impact to be quite minimal. The movie begins with the death of Daniel's husband, Branson (James Franco), and while the audience is shown Daniel's reaction to this, they themselves have no investment in the character. While the first act uses Branson's death as motivation for Daniels, this subplot is mostly dropped afterwards. Other crew members have their spouses die later on, and while a small amount of time shows their reactions, they are mostly forgotten about soon after.
There is a good amount of tension created within a number of scenes in 'Covenant'; one particular scene that stood out to me was the scene in which David is communicating with a Protomorph that had just killed a crew member. By this point the audience did not yet know that David created the aliens, and likely associated his lack of reaction to the crew member's death to him being AI. However, it is later revealed that David is a lot more 'human' than other AI, and his lack of reaction was probably due the to fact that he planned on killing the crew anyway. We do see David's reaction, however, to the death of his alien after being shot, which seemed a little out of place until the reveal that he had been cross-breeding the alien species himself, and considered the alien to be his child.
One inconsistency I found was the process and speed of the aliens' creation. While the time between the evolution from Facehugger to Xenomorph took at least a few days in the original, it only takes a few minutes in this film. This could be attributed to the fact that this species is the 'Protomorphs' instead of the 'Xenomorph', it doesn't make sense to me that the process would slow down as the species evolves. While this change was likely added to keep up with the film's pace, I do feel that the overall timespan 'Covenant' takes place over could have been expanded to a few weeks in order to build more tension.
SPOILERS END
Overall, 'Alien: Covenant' is a good addition to the 'Alien' franchise that explains the origins of the Xenomorph species. Michael Fassbender delivers an excellent performance, although the rest of the characters were mostly uninteresting. The set designs were great, but more practical effects when it comes to the aliens would have been appreciated. I would definitely recommend this film, as it has good tension-building and a realistic world.
7/10