2017’s “Alien: Covenent” directed by Ridley Scott.
Starring Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Carmen Ejogo, and Demián Bichir.
What is it about?
The 6th standalone Alien movie in the series, “AC” takes place in 2104- 15 years after the events of Prometheus. Deep in space, we meet some of the crew on the Covenant ship, carrying thousands of colonizers deep in cryogenic sleep. They are watched over by the android, Walter (Fassbender). The ship experiences technical difficulties, some of the pods malfunction, and they lose their captain. Thrust into a replacement role, Crudup is forced to take command. With the original captain and others being mourned, morale is low. A signal of some kind is found from a nearby planet, and the combination of ease combined with dismay over the prospect of having to go back to their pods for more cryosleep until getting to the original destination planet, causes them to send a party to the nearby planet for exploration. The crew touches down, and quickly finds an environment accepting of their host bodies. We also reconnect with David (Fassbender, again), the android from Prometheus, who has been mysteriously busy over the last decade and a half.
Why is it worth seeing?
“AC” initially returns to the clinical idealized perfection of 2012’s “Prometheus” as we are shown the initial birth of David, who calls himself this after viewing Michelangelo’s classic statue. But when on the integral planet, in his own turf, we see a much more gothic and uneven decorative touch from the self anointed creator. Closer in tone to “The Island of Dr. Moreau” than “Alien”, (for better or worse) Fassbender’s double duty is the star of the show. His character(s)’ questions alluding to creation, the point of life, and which gods are worth serving propel the franchise into territory not previously seen before. The Alien movies are no longer about the alien franchise as we know it, with “AC” repeating “Prometheus”’ patterns of changing the way the aliens hatch/spawn, impregnate, mature, and look, with the gestation process now resembling something akin to instant coffee. Instead, they’re about the nightmare of artificial intelligence, and how humans have been surpassed in the evolutionary food chain, a different kind of alien. With all due respect to Waterston and McBride’s capable heroes, Alien movies are no longer about humans either, with the days of having a kick ass protagonist like Weaver gone, as well as an interesting crew worth getting to know. Even if I’m wrong, the characters here suffer from the same issues as in "Prometheus", with them doing such stupid things that it’s tough not to root for the alien protomorphs regardless. Interesting in it’s idea and originality, but flawed and unemotional in concept, “AC” is the chilly explanation to why Scott chose not to make the sequel to "Blade Runner"- these Alien prequels ARE the sequel(s). There is most definitely a broken covenant here, and in it’s bloody corpse lies the cavity of a different kind of creation.
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