What The Reviews Have To Say About 'Alien: Covenant'
Ridley Scott's Alien-prequel Prometheus was heavy on lore and light on Xenomorphs, but it still reviewed well enough and brought in enough money to earn a follow up. Alien: Covenant hits theaters on Friday, and this time it seems like Scott is angling to please all stripes of Alien franchise fans. Can he do it, or is it more like "game over, man" for this series? Here's what the reviews say (warning — light spoilers ahead):
'Covenant' Is Populated By Couples, Not Marines Or Cargo Jockeys
The crew, revived from hibernation by an accident involving a "neutrino burst" (long story), intercepts a message from a seemingly habitable planet much nearer than the still-seven-years-of-cryosleep-away Origae-6. Unlike many previous Alien missions, the Covenant isn't on some kind of super-secret corporate or military endeavor. These are settlers, and many of the crew are couples; they'll go anywhere that seems suitable to building a new civilization.
The awakened crewmembers are shaken, demoralized and still far from their destination, so when they hear a distress signal coming from a nearby planet that seems habitable, they decide to take a leap of faith and head there rather than go back into hypersleep and risk death again. And they all live happily ever after in a land of rainbows and unicorns. Just kidding! They end up trapped on a rainy planet filled with creatures that want to eat or impregnate them.
Without All The Prior 'Alien' Mythology You Might Be Confused
For the survivors, help comes just in the nick of time from the android David (Michael Fassbender, reprising his role from Prometheus), the prototype of the Covenant's own artificial crew member, Walter (Fassbender again). David has been stuck on this planet since crash landing 10 years ago, or he says.
Despite running under the Alien title, Covenant takes place before the events of all the Alien films, and operates as a sequel to Prometheus. It would appear Scott wants to make sure everyone understands this, and that everyone appreciates the lengths he's gone to in order to cue up the pre-determined future. The ashen-skinned race of extraterrestrials from Prometheus make a fleeting appearance and contribute precious little aside from one in a handful of nods to our past/their future, designed to appease the diehards.
[Polygon]
Even If They're Cannon Fodder, The Main Cast Is (Mostly) Good
Katherine Waterston is a good protagonist, a spokesperson for — and champion of — humankind who loses someone dear and spends the rest of the movie in a state of hyperalertness, waiting for the cosmic anvil to fall. Danny McBride brings the earthiness as a guy called Tennessee. Fassbender gives David a distracting touch of camp — you'd think he'd be, if anything, overearnest — but his Walter is subtle and likable. The supporting cast includes Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, and Amy Seimetz, actors who deserve the paychecks that come with studio "franchises."
[Vulture]
As Daniels, Katherine Waterston takes the Ripley role, and Danny McBride's Tennessee is distinguished by his late-21st-century knowledge of John Denver songs (it's nice to know the classics last), but apart from that, you could swap one eventually lifeless body for another and no one would be the wiser. [Billy] Crudup's Oram identifies himself as a man of faith, which is doubtless meant to connect with the biblical resonances of the movie's title, but apart from the scene where they're explicitly mentioned, Oram's beliefs have no apparent bearing on any of his actions; his faith is like a note scribbled in the margins of a draft script that no one remembered to follow up on.
[Slate]
It's Fun To Watch Michael Fassbender Do Double-Duty
The David-Walter relationship differentiates "Covenant" from all other "Alien" films. It gives it a beating heart as well as an endless source of humor that's often dry and occasionally self-aware, verging on campy. The highlight is a marvelous scene, done with a laterally moving camera and no cuts, where David suggestively teaches Walter how to play the flute. It's charged with hilariously amped-up homoerotic energy, but it's also a dandy joke on actor narcissism: this is a rare movie where the star gets to seduce himself.
Pulling double duty as Prometheus' android in residence and the updated version released a few decades later, Fassbender has a ball with this study in contrasts. The arch, Shelley-quoting David regards the younger, flatter, less animated Walter as something between a brother and son, making the glaring vibe that they could jump one another's synthetic bones at any second exponentially weirder.
[Polygon]
'Covenant' Is Bloody, Like An 'Alien' Movie Should Be
Still, in an effort to appease "Alien" fans, Scott has returned the series to its horror-movie roots, unleashing a sequence of gory death scenes as four aliens body-snatch and otherwise terrorize the crew. By now, though, audiences are so familiar with how this species reproduces that there's not much surprise between the point of infection (whether by microscopic spores or old-fashioned face hugging) and the moment that an alien embryo bursts out of the host's chest. If anything, an impatience sets in, much as it does with zombie movies in which characters aren't up to speed on the genre rules: In the world of "Alien," humans don't recover from these close encounters; once someone catches the virus, he or she is already a goner.
[Variety]
Perhaps it's due to increasingly sophisticated CGI technology, but the aliens' monomaniacal bloodlust feels more palpable this time around. There's bursting galore, too — no surface of the body is left un-ruptured. Buckets and buckets of syrupy viscera spill in plain view, and yet never cross the line from gruesome into nauseating.
[Polygon]
If Nothing Else, 'Covenant' Is A Big, Ambitious Movie
"Covenant" has its own personality and rhythm, a remarkable achievement on its own considering how many "Alien" films have been made over almost four decades. And it touches on so many of the recurring obsessions in Scott's long career (he turns 80 next year) that it feels like a summation of everything he's about. The macho Ridley Scott, the unexpectedly tender Scott, and the maker of Biblical epics, conspiracy thrillers, fables, and unabashed eye candy advertisements are all represented here.
Alien: Covenant seethes with self-importance yet is never boring or portentous. It can't come close to matching the greatness of the first two films in the series, but at least Scott seems to understand that these movies thrive on ambition. If in the end it doesn't quite work — if its many fascinating pieces and ideas and odds and ends don't ever cohere into a whole — lament not what might have been. Instead, be grateful that Ridley Scott has lost none of his ability to provoke, captivate and infuriate.
TL;DR
While it may sometimes exceed its own reach, Covenant extends a grasp so impressively audacious, it might as well come from a director with nothing to lose.
[Polygon]
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