My review of ALIEN : Covenant!

Warning : Inadvertent spoilers !

Alien : Covenant, the sequel to Prometheus and a Prequel to the original Alien movies premiered today (May 12th) in the UK. Being the secret sci-fi fan that I am, I of course wanted to see the first showing. VUE had a preview showing on the 11th, and I managed to snag some tickets before they sold out.

So, I'm sure many of you have seen the original Alien movies and probably walked away scarred for life (but for the better) and with Prometheus leaving so many questions un-answered, it seems the new Alien : Covenant movie might be what's needed to revive the Alien franchise.

Background

In Prometheus, we learned that there are some humanoid aliens called Engineers who planted the seeds of life on earth which led to the emergence of man. Two scientists, Shaw and Holloway through excavation all over the planet Earth, find evidence from multiple unrelated civilisations in human history of the Engineers visiting the earth and leaving clues to finding their supposed home planet, an invitation if you will. They embark on an expedition to this inhabitable moon to seek answers from their creators on the origin of man.

It turns out to be a disaster. The moon planet was revealed to be a test bed for biological weapons of mass destruction and the engineer which remained, was uninterested in communication with the visitors.

Meanwhile, the original movie quickly set focus on David; the human like android created by Peter Weyland - CEO of Weyland corp. David, played by Fassbender is an advanced android capable of learning and experiencing human like traits. Fuelled by his own curiosity of life, David manipulates his way into accomplishing his own agenda, in doing so contributing greatly to the disaster and demise of the entire Prometheus crew.

At the end of the movie, we see the one remaining human survivor, Shaw, and incapacitated David plan their visit to the real home planet of the engineers to seek answers.

Alien : Covenant Plot

Covenant is set in 2104, 10 years after the disaster of Prometheus. The Covenant ship is bound for Origae-6 with 2000 colonists, 15 crew members and around 1000 embryos. Interestingly, it is also manned by another android (Walter) which looks exactly like David except speaks a different accent of English some-what resembling Christian Bale and also has some upgrades from the earlier David.

On their way to Origae-6, the Covenant get's hit by a shock-wave, severely damaging the ship, killing the captain and many of the colonists. Whilst repairing the ship, a transmission was received from a planet nearby and with some further inspection, the planet seemed to be an equally viable planet to colonise as Origae-6.

An expedition team descends to the planet to investigate the source of the transmission and they discover an engineer ship piloted by Shaw from Prometheus.

The planet seemed lifeless and yet, has vibrant vegetation and arable land. Two of the expedition team get infected with some alien spore whilst exploring and become hosts to alien embryo's quickly growing inside their bodies. Their conditions quickly deteriorate and the rest of the team seem to be clueless as to why. Neomorphs then burst out from the two infected team members killing them, and wreak havoc on the rest of the expedition team.

David comes to their rescue and brings them to the Engineer temple where he stays.

It turns out that David committed mass genocide and unleashed the black goo on the entire population of Engineers on the planet and continued his experiments on the life that remained. Shaw was one of his regrettable but necessary sacrifices in pursuit of further scientific 'discovery'.

Walter, who finds out the horror of David's experiments confronts him only to be quickly dispatched leaving the rest of the crew fresh targets for the sinister Android.

In an attempt to capture Daniels and use her for experiments akin to his experiments on Shaw, David was once again confronted by a resurgent Walter which comes to the rescue of Daniels and the two androids proceed to fight. Daniels and the remainder of the crew attempt to evacuate the planet meeting some very horrific xenomorph resistance but are eventually able to get off the surface back to the covenant with the seemingly victorious Walter joining them onboard the Covenant.

They quickly discover a gestated protomorph onboard the covenant which had been implanted in one of the members of the crew. Together with Walter, they are able to discard the protomorph into space.

With the disaster resolved, the crew decide to follow their original plan of colonising Origae-6 and go back into hyper-sleep. Daniels, the last person to go into hyper-sleep asks Walter if he will help her build the log cabin that she and her husband dreamed of building at the new planet. Walter would have recalled an earlier conversation with Daniels about this subject but fails to comprehend the question... She realises, albeit too late that she is talking to David. As Daniels enters hypersleep, we see David regurgitate two alien embryos into the colonists chamber, presumably to continue his sinister experiments.

My Thoughts

I liked the theme of the original movie, and despite it's shortcomings, I had hoped that Alien Covenant would answer some of the dying questions left hanging in Prometheus.

The Engineers are a really interesting story arc that has been glossed over in both Prometheus and again in Alien Covenant.
I would have liked to see more story on the society of the Engineers, their motivations, their internal conflicts and grand plans. Instead, Alien Covenant begins with the entire population of Engineers wiped out by David.

David is obviously the focal point of the movie at this point and yet we have very little understanding of his motivations. Is he playing god? Is power his ultimate goal? Is he truly self aware and shows no remorse to engineers or humans because of his disappointment and thus lack of respect for his creators right to thrive?

These are all questions I walk away still pondering.

My Rating

Goriness 💀 💀 💀 💀

Story 🤖🤖🤖

Entertainment 👽 👽 👽 👽