Alien: Covenant

I don’t think this movie was necessary as an addition to the Aliens franchise. It linked Prometheus to the main series explicitly, but everyone already knew they were connected. It allowed Michael Fassbender to ham it up again, this time in two different roles, which was probably fun for him but got tedious for me.

Otherwise, there’s a lot of repetition. Another couple of xenomorphs running rampage. Another mechanoid getting carried away with what it believes it must do. Another showdown in a cargo bay where the vacuum of space is only the press of a button away. Another interesting female protagonist who suffers loss and responds with strength.

But everything’s done less well than before. The first films did a superb job of economically sketching strong, identifiable characters. This one give a crew with almost no distinguishing features beyond a cowboy hat. It also shows a world where humans can become hosts to violent aliens not through a face-hugger but just breathing in the wrong place – and not only tries to present facehuggers as an evolution from this, which they clearly aren’t, but suffers from a huge reduction in tension too. Facehuggers you can potentially fend off. Breathing in spores you can’t. It becomes a much less interesting dramatic situation when death comes from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This movie and potential sequels seem to exist purely to show how the xenomorph went from white blobby killing machine to black pointy killing machine. Honestly, that’s not that interesting and could have been accepted to have happened naturally through the species encountering a few other hosts before the time of Alien. Yet we have to have a long ponderous explanation of the dangers of trying to create life and the unpleasantness of genetic experimentation.

I suppose adding a very natural gay relationship is a plus, as I can’t think of any reason this future society shouldn’t be permissive. The main characters put in strong performances, if wooden sometimes. And the series’ staple grisly deaths are of course in place. But this feels like a poor echo of the previous films, which offered thrills, striking ensemble casts and more importantly, fun. I’m not sure I’ll care enough to watch the future sequels…perhaps on a plane.