There is no need for reviewers to be coy about the film’s basic plot, since that is also part of the implied contract. So, when the good starship Covenant, carrying a minimal crew and large population of hibernating colonists, gets an enigmatic message from a planet that seems ideal for human habitation, everyone in the theatre knows that they will land on its surface and promptly encounter the first of many homicidal grotesqueries that will proceed to kill off crew members one by one while the survivors strive to both slaughter the pesky aliens and ensure that they don’t get on board the ship and infest the entire galaxy. To be sure, Scott and his writers (Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan, and Dante Harper), perhaps after finding Ezra Pound’s injunction to “Make it new” in one of the books of quotations they kept consulting while polishing the script (as discussed below), do endeavor to add a veneer of novelty to the tried-and-true pattern they were obliged to follow, but the results of their ruminations are less than inspiring. Hey, let’s make some of the xenomorphs look a little different – explaining that they are “hybrids” of the original species and the creatures they penetrated, cannibalized, and emerged from – but don’t make them look too different, because we don’t want to disappoint the fans. Of course, emulating the famous scene in the original Alien (1979), we have to show a baby alien erupting out of a man’s chest, but we can also have one come out of a man’s back and a man’s mouth. Remember how neat it was when the alien attacked Ellen Ripley in her underwear? Why not have an alien attack a naked woman and man taking a shower? And the first film employed the hoary horror-film device of making the characters believe that the monster has been destroyed, then bringing it back on the scene for a final shocker; so, this time, why don’t we do it not once, but twice? One already starts to dread what Scott and writer/director Neil Blomkamp might dream up for the next Alien film now being planned – an alien bursting out of a man’s buttocks?
Love how he spells it “Theatre”. If that wasn’t pretentious enough:
Consider my favorite part of the film – the opening, alien-free sequence when a huge starship, solely controlled by the robot Walter (Michael Fassbender), is suddenly beset by a “neutrino surge” that damages its systems and requires Walter to reawaken the ship’s fifteen-person crew, who must then decide whether to continue on to their original destination or “take a look” at the new world they have just discovered. Here is a story that Hollywood hasn’t told a thousand times before, and I think it would have been far more interesting to have the starship proceed on its planned journey, as in the sedate but nonetheless involving Czechoslovak film Ikarie XB-1, aka Voyage to the End of the Universe (1963).
Aside from the addlebrained behavior of the characters plaguing Prometheus and Covenant, the more we know about the Alien, the less alien they become. The conceit of these recent movies undermines the effectiveness of the horror. Alien had a basic, effective premise. Strange, horrifying alien life will kill us! We don’t need to explore it any more!
Also, sheesh, most predictable ‘twists’ ever.
Well, I enjoyed the cast quite a bit, despite wishing they had a better script.
Mono makes a good point. I think that I might prefer people being destroyed while being sensible, rather than demonstrating the IQ of my dog and being decapitated for it.
EVERYONE WAS JUST MURDERED! Oh look, a dark, secluded spot…
This is what makes Aliens such an amazing movie. Even when people are being dumb you can understand it because of the situation, but most of the time they’re doing things you would expect them to do.
The dude is flat out going senile…the opening of Covenent shows there’s only mild interest in Aliens stuff. Everybody wants to create a fucking “cinematic” universe now. I sense allot of money blown trying to chase Star Wars and Marvel over then next several years.
Folks are going to argue that there can’t be a cinematic universe surrounding Alien, even though there is already a cinematic universe surrounding Alien?
Seriously though Alien movies would probably be better if they stopped trying to dig deep for some overarching meaningful origin story. I would have loved to see the echo system these things came from. I mean i assumed there was one until it turned out to be a bio-engineered weapon to destroy the human race… wait does that mean it can’t destroy other races? I know there are more races out there because one of them is inter-sexed or something which means it doesn’t matter which one you get when it comes to sex (loved the marine banter in that movie).
It’s a ratio. There’s always someone dumb but it’s usually, you know, not all of them. And also, scientists in today’s world know better than to dance with a strange alien snake… not sure why they would get dumber in the future.
They should just abandon the idea of origin stories/prequels and do more movies in the time period of Aliens, be it pure horror like Alien/Alien3 or more action/horror like Aliens/Alien Resurrection.
Knowing the secrets of where things started is something that only appeals to the most hardcore fans and they are going to be the unhappiest when you butcher the IP with mediocre prequels.
I agree now that I see where they went with it but when they say the Aliens are not indigenous to the planet they found them on, that doesn’t automatically mean it has to turn into some giant research out genetics and the origins of humans… it could have just gone to a really cool planet with some pretty scary and lethal shit to allow something like that Alien too emerge from it.
I do think Hollywood is in some sort of prequel kick right now though. From a prison would have been cool too, but all we got from that idea was a prison full of humans, boring, and a dog.
