Review of Alien: Covenant (2017) by Ivan W — 19 May 2017

For me, Alien: Covenant was a movie worth the while and had all the excitement I came in looking for. But, the casual Alien or Aliens fans might be disappointed and I can somewhat see why. It all depends on how you look at the franchise, and how it has developed. And I shall delve into the topic by breaking down the fan favorite movies' backgrounds a little bit.

Alien was a masterpiece, the crown king of science-fictionary horror with all of it's claustrophobic images and immensely beautiful directing by Ridley Scott. He brought H.R Giger's perfect organism to life in all of it's ruthlessness. The movie, as said, was a masterpiece and garnered immense success and Ridley Scott had already planned a sequel which would take us more into a more scientific area of it, the origins of the Xenomorph. Mars was discussed, that the Xenomorph might've been a successor of one of it's sub-species or that it might've been a biological weapon used in an ancient war between ancient civilizations. All in all, the mention of other civilizations and the weaponization of the Xenomorph was already planted there. But, Riddley Scott got pre-occupied by other projects such as the Blade Runner and what not.

Then, Fox hired the Terminator-genius James Cameron onboard to direct a sequel to the classic. What he created was an action movie that screamed the idea of how corporate employees are disregarded in the bigger picture and a ton of xenomorph's. But, it personally ruins the whole idea of the perfect organism for me. The hardly killable Xenomorph from the original became expendable by the unholy machine gun parade and a gigantic Xenomorph queen using an elevator. A xenomorph using an elevator? Well, so much for the thrilling science of it. It also became an unbelievably successful movie, but it voyaged far away from the idea that Ridley Scott had.

Decades later, Scott returned to the franchise with Prometheus and it did follow his vision of things. It delved into the mythology of the Space Jockey, now donned Engineers of the original Alien -movie and he ultimately returned to the idea of the Xenomorph's initial creation.

It provided a grandeur scape of philosophical questions and pseudo-intellectualism that I particularly loved, and the entire idea of creation and immortality was a delight. It didn't touch the Xenomorph as the title creature at all however, and delved more into the creation of humanity and the dark mysteries behind the creator's of humanity. It finally gave a hint at the Xenomorph's creation at the very end, giving birth to the Deacon. Deacon was a result of David infecting Dr. Holloway with the black goo, a biological weapon, who in turn impregnated Dr. Elisabeth Shaw, who then gave birth to a trilobite which then impregnated an engineer to give birth to the creature. The most fascinating part was that Shaw couldn't otherwise bear a child, a good twist to things.

However, fans weren't particularly happy with this movie because it didn't have Xenomorph's, had idiotic characters, and what not. Every Alien -movie is known for it's not-so-smart characters (otherwise they wouldn't be in trouble every time) which in my opinion is a wasted point of criticism. It also didn't answer the questions the movie asked, which for me personally was the catch in itself. It added much more mystery in that manner, and only had me waiting for the sequel.

And then it arrived, still suspending some of the questions left by Prometheus, but answering the crucial ones. It was a thrilling movie, and especially the second part of the movie was amazing for me. Michael Fassbender's performance and both the antagonistic David and a tragic hero in Walter was incredible. The interaction between the two had so much depth to it, sharing quotes from "Ozymandias" and David displaying pity towards Walter for not being able to compose was beautiful. The third part seemed very quickly paced, but the ending was as ever suspenseful as was the ending for Prometheus. If the appearance of our beloved monsters now seem unnecessary by fans, they can only blame themselves. Ridley Scott is working on his vision, and it is perfect as such.

I give this movie four out of five stars, a thrilling science-fiction action horror flick.