Alien: Covenant (2017) RE-Review

Alien: Covenant (2017) RE-Review

I reviewed Alien: Covenant when it came out last summer, spoiler-free. I was honest, as I always am. I went back and saw the movie a second time, after I wrote that review, and I thought about it a lot more, too, and came to a different conclusion than before. In summary, I originally felt it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. Now…I think it might be worse.

My initial review (http://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/05/alien-covenant-review.html) is still relevant, and spoiler-free, so check it out for all my positive thoughts, but if you’ve already read it and/or seen the movie, proceed.

I was pretty easy-going on Covenant, because let’s face it, no Alien movie is ever going to top Alien or Aliens, even when in the hands Ridley Scott: the guy who made the first one. If it couldn’t happen with Prometheus, I don’t think it can ever happen. But the thing is, the whole point of these prequels, or so I thought, was to show the origins of the xenomorph. Way back, when there were only four alien movies, Ridley Scott had talked about making Alien 5 and showing where the creatures came from. It’s never really been a much sought-after origin from a fan perspective, as far as I’m concerned. So when Prometheus finally came out all those years later, fans expected an Alien origin story, but we didn’t get one, we got a sort-of-origin-story for the Engineers. 

I liked the Engineers. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I was so surprised and pleased with Prometheus. I wanted more Engineers, and less aliens, when it came to the sequel (though seeing how they created the aliens would be interesting, because it was heavily implied they were the creators of both humankind and xenomorph-kind). The xenomorph was played out, Scott said it himself! But then the sequel hit a speedbump: audiences didn’t like Prometheus that much. “Hmmm, we better make the next one more like Alien, in that case,” the studio obviously said. 

In one foul swoop, Covenant has the Engineer race killed at the hands of a murderous android (Michael Fassbender), who goes on to create the xenomorph as we know it, because he wants to create the perfect organism, which is what the android Ash called the creature in the original Alien. It isn’t confirmed or denied whether the creature David creates in Alien: Covenant is intended to be THE xenomorph or not. 

The more I thought about this simple idea, the angrier I got. I’m frustrated by Alien: Covenant not for what it is—it’s really nothing more than an amalgamation of all past Alien films with a decided lack of new ideas—but for what it’s trying to be. This prequel series is spinning its wheels. How many times are they going to muck around with the origins of the alien behind-the-scenes before they settle on something? It’s painfully obvious at this point that no one has a clear idea of where it should come from. It’s not as if this is a specific story that Ridley Scott or some screenwriter has been wanting to tell for years. It’s a vague idea of explaining something that no one really wants to see, anyway, through the course of as many movies as they can get away with. 

Believe it or not, I would rank Alien: Covenant below Alien vs. Predator. Neither movie features human characters I care for much at all, but at least AVP delivered what it promised: aliens fighting predators. You can’t deny that it goes all-out in terms of creature action. Alien: Covenant fails in many ways, not the least of which is cool creature scenes. It also fails to act as a satisfying sequel to Prometheus, and instead just remakes scenes from previous Alien movies. Not only that, it has many of the same problems that the lesser sequels had, such as Alien 3. Newt, a beloved character from Aliens, died off-screen. Noomi Rapace’s character Elizabeth Shaw, the last survivor from Prometheus, the one you’d think should be leading this sequel, is killed off-screen. Now, mind you, it isn’t quite as upsetting as Newt’s death, but it’s still a horribly misguided decision in terms of storytelling. 

Another thing that really didn’t sit right with me was the overall tone. Alien: Covenant takes itself as seriously as Prometheus did, and as serious as Alien takes itself. In both of those aforementioned movies, fairly outlandish ideas were made frighteningly believable. A creature bursting out of someone’s body (Alien) or a creature being removed from someone’s womb (Prometheus) could come off as silly if executed improperly, but both those examples are terrifying. Alien: Covenant is just laughable at points ("I'll do the fingering") and goes so over-the-top, you can’t take it seriously anymore, but the movie itself is taking the material seriously, so it just becomes un-fun to watch. 

This is the first Alien movie I’ve had zero desire to revisit. Even Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, though poor sequels, had some interesting new things to bring to the franchise. Perhaps I’m just minorly nostalgic for those films. All Covenant has that's new is the idea that an android maybe made the xenomorphs, but it’s not concrete, so that makes it even less meaningful. If in the next movie it’s confirmed that yes, David did make the xenomorphs, then wow, that’s disappointing. If they switch directions again and go “oh no, that wasn’t the real xenomorph, this is how they were actually made!” then what the hell was the point of Alien: Covenant? It was an absolute waste. 

I know it sounds like I’m being really harsh on this movie, and maybe I am, unfairly you could say, but I just wish the Alien franchise could properly return to its excellent origins. If Prometheus had stuck to its original script, which was set to include aliens as we know them and show how the derelict ship crashed on LV 426, it probably would have been about as disappointing as Alien: Covenant, but at least it would have just been one movie and we could have moved on.

Prometheus was something a little different, and I liked that. Alien: Covenant just reeks of the studio trying to make money. It doesn’t matter anymore what the actual movie is about, as long as people go see it and say they liked it, then they can keep making more movies. But they screwed up, because Covenant didn’t make much money and no one really liked it! So now they probably won’t make another one, because it won’t make enough money to warrant being made. This is what I mean about no one really knowing or caring about what story they’re trying to tell. If these films had any kind of clear through line, maybe people would care more. 

I apologize if this came off as more of a rant than a reappraising review. I didn’t purely hate Alien: Covenant. I don’t purely hate any of the Alien movies, or Predator movies. Alien: Covenant is still a good-looking film (when it’s not plagued by bad cgi monsters) with a few redeeming qualities, but nothing of significant value that makes it stand out in the franchise. Maybe I’ll revisit it one day in the future and find I was wrong and its way better than I remembered, but for now, I simply do not wish to watch it again anytime soon.