Alien: Covenant is a film caught between two franchises, unable to fully commit to either the philosophical ambitions of Prometheus or the creature-feature horror of the original Alien, and the result is a film that is more satisfying than its predecessor in some respects and more disappointing in others. Ridley Scott's second prequel is leaner and more viscerally effective than Prometheus, and it contains some of the franchise's most striking individual sequences. It is also a film that resolves Prometheus's unanswered questions with a briskness that suggests Scott had lost patience with them, and that introduces new ones it has no intention of answering.
At a Glance
Director: Ridley Scott
Runtime: 122 minutes
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demian Bichir
Release: 2017
Critics Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, more visceral than Prometheus, less ambitious)
Audience Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5 stars, another divisive entry)
Review Breakdown
Plot
The colony ship Covenant, carrying two thousand colonists in hypersleep, detects a rogue transmission and diverts to investigate a nearby planet that appears habitable. They find David, the android from Prometheus, who has been living alone on the Engineers' homeworld for a decade and has been conducting experiments with the alien pathogen. The film's first act is its strongest, establishing the Covenant's crew with more efficiency and more warmth than Prometheus managed with its scientists, and the initial alien attacks are staged with a physical intensity that the prequel series had not previously achieved. The film's second act, which is essentially a two-hander between Fassbender playing both David and the Covenant's own android Walter, is the film's most interesting and most uneven passage.
Characters
Fassbender's dual performance as David and Walter is the film's central creative achievement, a demonstration of physical and psychological differentiation that gives the film its most compelling dramatic thread. The contrast between David's baroque ambition and Walter's institutional loyalty gives the franchise's treatment of artificial intelligence its most complete expression, and the scenes between the two androids are the film's most consistently rewarding passages. Katherine Waterston's Daniels is a capable but underwritten protagonist, a character who exists primarily to react to events rather than to drive them. Billy Crudup's Oram is the film's most dramatically interesting human character, a man of faith whose credulity gives David his most useful instrument.
Tone
Scott pitches the film at a register that attempts to combine Prometheus's philosophical ambitions with the original's horror mechanics, and the result is a film that is more effective as horror than as philosophy. The alien attack sequences are staged with a physical energy and a spatial clarity that the prequel series had not previously achieved, and the film's practical effects work gives the creatures a physical presence that the CGI-heavy Prometheus sequences lacked. The philosophical register, when the film attempts it, feels perfunctory rather than genuinely engaged.
Meaning / Themes
The film's central concern is the relationship between creation and destruction, between David's god-like ambition to create new life and his willingness to destroy existing life to do so. His revelation as the creator of the xenomorph, the being that has haunted the franchise since 1979, is the film's most significant dramatic development and its most controversial creative decision. The idea that the alien was designed rather than evolved gives the franchise's central creature a different and more troubling origin, one that implicates human hubris in the creation of the thing that most threatens humanity. Whether this is a satisfying answer to the question Prometheus raised is a matter of genuine debate.
Direction
Scott's direction is confident and visually assured throughout, and the film's production design gives the Engineers' homeworld a desolate grandeur that suits the material's concerns. The alien attack sequences are the franchise's most kinetically effective since Aliens, and Scott's command of practical effects gives the creatures a weight and a physical presence the CGI sequences in Prometheus lacked. Jed Kurzel's score is the film's most effective technical element, atmospheric and propulsive in equal measure, and it gives the horror sequences a sonic identity that the more orchestrally conventional Prometheus score did not achieve.
Cultural Reception
Alien: Covenant received mixed reviews on its release, with most critics finding it an improvement on Prometheus as a horror film while expressing reservations about its narrative coherence and its treatment of the franchise's mythology. Commercial performance was disappointing relative to Prometheus, and the planned third prequel film has not been produced. It is now regarded as a flawed but more viscerally satisfying entry than its predecessor, and Fassbender's dual performance is consistently cited as the film's most significant creative achievement.
Final Verdict: More viscerally effective than Prometheus and less philosophically ambitious, which is either an improvement or a retreat depending on what you came for. Fassbender's dual performance is the franchise's most technically impressive acting achievement, Scott's direction gives the horror sequences a physical energy the prequel series had not previously achieved, and the revelation of David as the xenomorph's creator is the franchise's most genuinely provocative creative decision. Alien: Covenant is a better horror film than Prometheus. It is a less interesting one.