In Space, No One Can Hear You Shrug, by Bob Connally

In 2012, Ridley Scott returned to the world of Alien 33 years after directing the original film. Prometheus was a fairly entertaining but decidedly incoherent movie most notable for an outstanding supporting performance by Michael Fassbender as an android named David. Wisely, Scott and the rest of the creative team behind Alien: Covenant decided to bring Fassbender back but in terms of storytelling, we’re given a largely derivative mess. What’s maddening is not that the audience won’t be able to figure out what’s happening in the film. It’s that this is a movie that presents things in a needlessly complicated way in an attempt to make it appear deeper and more complex than it really is. After taking a slight step back and piecing it together, it’s very simple. There is nothing wrong with simplicity. But don’t try to trick us into thinking there’s more to it when there isn’t.

Scott opens the film in promising enough fashion with a scene set decades prior to Prometheus in which David is “born” and meets his maker, Weyland (Guy Pearce without the overabundance of old age makeup). It shows just how quickly David’s intelligence developed and it’s an engrossing scene that allows Fassbender and Pearce to shine. It’s the best and most intelligent scene in the entire movie.

Decades later in 2104, an android named Walter (also Fassbender) keeps things humming aboard a colony ship named Covenant as its crew (along with 2000 colonists and a thousand embryos) passes the years in cryosleep. When a neutrino burst hammers the ship, killing a number of colonists and the captain, the rest of the crew is awoken, trying to move forward as best they can. Oram (Billy Crudup) becomes the acting captain for the remainder of the mission and when they intercept a strange transmission he deems it essential that they take the ship to the planet of origin. Daniels Branson (Katherine Waterston, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), as Covenant’s terraforming expert, strongly objects to Oram’s decision. Unable to fight the decision while still reeling from the death of her husband (the captain), Daniels must follow orders as they approach the mysterious planet. Upon arrival, they find a planet that seems too good to be true. Being that this is an Alien movie, that is obviously the case.

With a screenplay by John Logan and Dante Harper, Alien: Covenant dutifully follows the beats we have come to expect from this series. Quietly, the first crewman becomes infected and soon confusion gives way to chaos and grotesque death scenes for characters we know virtually nothing about and who in some cases, are practically indistinguishable from each other. With a cast that includes Waterston, Crudup, and Demian Bichir one would think that they could be given some personality. This was never going to be a character or performance driven movie, but it could have at least given us some engaging archetypes and a reason to care about them. Only Danny McBride stands out as unique here. It’s not that it’s a great performance. It’s not great, it’s not bad, but it’s the only performance in the film that doesn’t feel like it could have come from any other actor. The rest of the human characters could have been played by anyone and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

The action set pieces are likewise not terribly involving as Scott puts plenty of detail into the violent deaths but it’s just gore for its own sake. What should have been the most involving action scene in the movie is cut short to set up something that the audience will see coming from miles away but that Scott and company seem to think is a mind-blowing twist. The obvious twist is made all the more aggravating by its existing purely for the audience. In terms of a particular character’s motivation and actions, it’s complete nonsense.

Maybe there were some interesting elements in earlier drafts of the screenplay. Oram, for instance is set up as a man of strong faith which he sites as the reason that neither the crew nor the company that hired them trust him to be their captain. Granted, I fully expected him to become if not an outright villain, at least a backwards thinking antagonist, but the film really doesn’t explore it much at all after that. There’s one line later that references the issue again but really, that’s it. It begs the question, why even bring it up to begin with?

As I watched Alien: Covenant, I was mildly entertained and Fassbender is of course terrific in his dual android roles, but over the course of chewing on it and writing this review, I have found very little outside of Fassbender to praise it for. So much to my disappointment and surprise, Alien: Covenant is a movie with even more problems than Prometheus. At least that was a slightly more entertaining mess and had a great character for Idris Elba to play. What is apparent is that as popular as this franchise is, there have only really been two solidly good movies made in it and the last one was released in 1986. Maybe it’s time to put this series into stasis. And leave it there.