In terms of a plot, Alien: Covenant basically hijacks the general premise that Alien movies seem confined to now (i.e. a group of people in space happen upon extra-terrestrial stuff that causes grisly chaos and many deaths) and also tries to combine that mimicry with a continuation of certain elements from Prometheus, most notably more contemplation on theology and creation. To get into more specifics, the ship Covenant is carrying 2,000 colonists to start a new life on a new planet. A disruption in the ship awakens the 15 crew members, which include our lead character Daniels (Katherine Waterston), each of whom, sans Daniels, are romantically entangled with another crew member.
Once they are all out of cryo-sleep, they receive a distress signal from a potentially habitable planet. Newly designated captain Oram (Billy Crudup) makes the call to check the planet out and it turns out to be a gorgeous land, one that seems like paradise itself. Of course, this being an Alien movie, we all know tranquility can't last forever. It isn't long before nastiness ensues on the seemingly idyllic planet, crew members begin to perish in a gruesome fashion and, amidst all the horror, the few surviving crew members run into the planet's only inhabitant, David (Michael Fassbender), returning from Prometheus.
The script by John Logan and Dante Harper is a weird creature, one that starts off with an overly quiet first twenty minutes or so showing the crew waking up and going about their duties that's a little too stagnant since very few of the characters actually get properly established in this more dull portion of the film. Weirdly though, their script has the opposite problem of these overly slow early sequences once the characters reach the planet, as this new paradise planet they've discovered goes from being glorious to a nightmare in too quick of a span of time. Basically, their first act alternates much too quickly from being snooze-inducing to a rush job with both of those distinctly different pacing flaws hindering the characters and atmosphere from being properly set up.
Credit where credit is due though, the first scene where crew members start acting sick and things go haywire? Watching a bunch of talented actors (like Carmen Ejogo, who gets far too little do here) portray their characters react to the gradually escalating body horror occurring to people they know and care about is really unsettling to watch, especially when in watching one particular crew member whose basically just struggling to survive at any costs. There's a primal nature to her survival instincts as she races around the ship, looking for weapons and her mind racing for solutions to the terror facing her that is both unique to previous depictions of human beings reacting to Xenomorph attacks in this series and super engaging to watch in its own right. There's also some clever gross-out moments here that show a chest is not the only part of the human body Xenomorph newborns can pop out of, real cleverness there.
Unfortunately, that's easily the apex scene of the movie. From there, we're stuck with a bunch of thinly-written characters (despite having Katherine Watterston around to play here, Daniels may be the most uninteresting and easily the most underwritten lead character in any of these movies) meeting up with David, who returns from Prometheus as someone who's been trapped on the planet for awhile. Michael Fassbender, who also plays an android Daniels crew brings with them named Walter, brings some cheeky fun to his scenes, such as the tantalizing homoerotic tension developing between David and Walter during a lesson on how to play the flute. Fassbender also manages to give clearly differentiated personalities between the two androids which is always a cool feat to see accomplished when an actor is playing this kind of twin/dual role.
Though Fassbender's characters become the central focus of the movie from here on out, they're not enough to keep Alien: Covenant from being just watchable. Despite some gloriously designed sets and a game cast (including Demian Bichir in a supporting turn), the movie feels like it's spinning its wheels more often than not. Repetitive sequences in the second half of the movie fail to add depth to the numerous disposable characters in the movie while the various scary moments that pop up feel like they're just throwing on all kinds of overly bloody and graphic deaths in an effort to compensate for a lack of an actually uneasy atmosphere. Supposedly weighty topics like creation get paid lip-service but aren't explored in an interesting way. So much gets attempted in the second and third act of Alien: Covenant, both in terms of attempting to incorporate more philosophical content and also in weaving in plenty of bloody Xenomorph-induced mayhem, but very little of it really worked for me. By the time we get to a climax seemingly ripped off from the majority of past Alien movies that involves the few survivors trying to defeat a Xenomorph once and for all by utilizing an air lock that'll suck the creature out into space, the sheer lack of inventiveness or thrills made me wish the movie could just go back to David and Walter's flute lessons.
What's really a shame is there is that really unsettling sequence where things start going to hell for the Covenant crew for the first time that shows Ridley Scott and co. certainly know how to get a nail-biter horror movie sequence off the ground. But the rest of the movie foregoes the atmospheric intimate terror of that segment of the feature in favor of scares and plot points that either feel overly cribbed from past movies or just feel more tedious than anything else thanks to the lack of interesting well-formed characters in Logan and Harper's script. Alien: Covenant is a middle of the road entry in this franchise that fails to be quite as intellectually stimulating and scary as it wants to be but at least it's better than Alien: Resurrection.
No comments:
Post a Comment