Alien: Covenant
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"Of the standalone Alien movies, this is hands down the worst of the bunch. Just stick with the first two films."
— JacobHessReviews
Alien: Covenant is a 2017 British-American science fiction horror film directed and produced by Ridley Scott and written by John Logan and Dante Harper, from a story by Michael Green and Jack Paglen. A joint American and British production, the film is a sequel to Prometheus (2012) and is the second installment in the Alien prequel series and the sixth installment in the Alien franchise, as well as the third directed by Scott. The film features returning star Michael Fassbender and Katherine Waterston, with Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, and Demián Bichir in supporting roles. It follows the crew of a colony ship that lands on an uncharted planet and makes a terrifying discovery. Alien: Covenant premiered in London on May 4, 2017. It was released on May 12 in the United Kingdom, and on May 19 in the United States.
Plot
In 2104, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, members (Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup) of the colony ship Covenant discover what they think to be an uncharted paradise. While there, they meet David (Michael Fassbender), the synthetic survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition. The mysterious world soon turns dark and dangerous when a hostile alien life-form forces the crew into a deadly fight for survival.
Bad Qualities
- The film diverges significantly from Prometheus in its narrative, almost as if it's an attempt to make amends for the previous film. As a result, the prequels suffer from a disjointed storyline with minimal connection between them.
- When David is giving the backstory on what happened after the events of Prometheus, it feels like the filmmakers had ideas for Shaw and other events from that film, but had to come up with something new after some fans weren't satisfied.
- The movie's plot closely resembles that of the original Alien, giving it the impression of being more of a remake or reboot than a prequel.
- They made the Xenomorphs mysterious yet dangerous endoparasitoid aliens with multiple life cycles and originating from the planet Proteus into the creations of a malicious android, even worse, it even gives the Xenomorphs way too much backstory, which ruins to what made them mysterious in the galaxy.
- Similar to its predecessor, the characters continue to make foolish mistakes throughout the story, rendering them difficult to support. For instance, they fail to don any protective gear upon landing on an alien planet, and one character goes as far as to place his face near a face-hugger egg.
- The movie made it so obvious that David is the evil android right from the first time we see him on screen and his plan is just straight up confusing.
- The movie has a elements of false advertising.
- The trailers portrayed the film as an epic action horror movie, yet the majority of the action and horror unfolded in the movie's final act.
- The Xenomorph scenes featured in all the trailers occur exclusively in the final third of the film.
- It creates numerous plot holes in the Alien franchise.
- The soundtrack, while it's still decently-done, and performed by Jed Kurzel, some of the soundtrack that were retread of the Jerry Goldsmith score from the first movie.
- Very bad lighting in many scenes.
- Terrible CGI effects. This is why most of the film is shot in dim light.
- The Deacon Proto-Xenomorph from Prometheus does not appear and is forgotten.
- The movie recycles way too many plot elements and tropes from both Alien and Aliens.
- The movie's tonal shifts are very jarring, just like the 2017 reboot of The Mummy.
- It starts out as a slow-paced science fiction adventure drama before becoming an action thriller and turning into a toned-down Friday the 13th slasher movie in the final act of its movie.
- It has generic and mediocre action sequences throughout the entire movie.
- There are lots of unnecessary padding that make the movie feel longer than it actually is.
- Like both Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, the movie is very boring, it's not that scary and the scare factor is even way far below that of the preceding films.
- Sometimes the movie breaks its own logic. One of the worst examples is when the Xenomorphs first appear, the movie makes it clear that they can be quite tough to kill even in their baby forms, but then there is a scene in which an adult Xenomorph gets taken down with just a few bullets.
- The characters are forgettable and boring, and they are all romantic couples for some reason.
Good Qualities
- Michael Fassbender's performance as David is the best selling point of this movie.
- There are some decent filming locations.
- Even though the soundtrack is a retread of the Jerry Goldsmith score from the first movie, the soundtrack is actually decent.
- There are a few good callbacks to the first Alien film.
- Similar to Gravity and Prometheus, the cinematography is almost as beautiful and dazzling making you feel like that you're on another planet instead of Planet Earth and manages to pull the viewer into the movie's world. It also manages to make the viewer feel as non-claustrophobic as possible.
- The designs of the Xenomorphs are decent although the CGI effects look ugly.
- Just like Prometheus, the visual effects for USCSS Covenant are very nice.
- Pretty creepy poster.
- It's not as bad as it's mockbuster which is even worse.
Reception
Despite Alien: Covenant received mixed to positive reception from critics, both audience and fan reception has been mostly negative. The film has a 65% approval from 402 reviews compiled by review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.30/10. The audiences score was 55% based on 5,0000+ ratings. The website's critical consensus reads, "Alien: Covenant delivers another satisfying round of close-quarters deep-space terror, even if it doesn't take the saga in any new directions.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 65 out of 100, based on reviews from 52 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews" and an average user score of 5.7/10 based on 1,312 ratings, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, the same score earned by its predecessor.
Angry Joe gave this movie a rating of 4/10.
DeviantArt user JacobHessReviews gave this movie an rating of 2/10 (Terrible), saying that this is hands down the worst of the bunch.[1]
Box Office
The film grossed $240.9 million worldwide against its $111 million budget making it a box office disappointment.
Upcoming sequel
At the 2019 CinemaCon, it was stated that after its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, Disney "will continue to create new stories" in the Alien series. In May 2019, Variety reported that another prequel is reportedly "in the script phase", with Ridley Scott attached to direct. In September 2020, Scott confirmed that a new Alien film was in development.
Videos
Trivia
- Neil Blomkamp had plans to make an Alien 5 that would serve as a direct sequel to Aliens and completely ignore the events of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection. However, the project was shelved due to the outcome of Alien: Covenant.
- Ridley Scott stated that the first cut of the film was going to be a 143-minute movie (Two hours and twenty-three minutes) of the first cut, but it was eventually edited down to 122 minutes (Two hours and two minutes) of the released version, in fact, it would've be a second longest Alien movie of the franchise, after Aliens (1986).
- Initially, Harry Gregson-Williams was selected as the film's composer. When the first trailer was released in late 2016, Kurzel was revealed as the replacement for Gregson-Williams.
- In each of his Alien films, director Ridley Scott has used a different composer for the score. In the original film, he worked with Jerry Goldsmith; in Prometheus, he worked with Marc Stritenfeldt; and in this film he worked with Jed Kurzel.
- On April 26, 2017, 20th Century Fox released Alien: Covenant In Utero, a virtual reality interactive demo teaser for Alien: Covenant for the Oculus Rift and the Samsung Gear VR. The experience was produced by RSA, FoxNext VR, MPC, Mach1, AMD Radeon, and Dell Alienware. The trailer is a first-person experience in which the viewer plays the role of a neomorph. The experience was executive produced by Scott, and directed by David Karlak.
- Effects houses Odd Studios and CreatureNFX provided the film's makeup and animatronic creature effects, respectively, while Australian-based effects house Animal Logic provided the film's digital visual effects. Approximately 30 people from CreatureNFX worked on the project for almost six months building animatronics. Actors wearing creature suits with animatronic heads were used to portray the aliens.
