Ridley Scott’s creation of the original “Alien” rocketed the standards for the suspense and horror genres into intergalactic territory. What made the original film and its sequel “Aliens” so alluring to audiences and beloved by critics was its determined focus. This focus, unfortunately, has been lost in “Alien: Covenant.”
A video essay by Jack’s Movie Reviews argues that within “Alien: Covenant” there is a good movie. There are, however, three themes that are explored with little focus and with an inconvenience that places this film within the lower echelon of the standards set by the original 1979 entry. Moments of horror, action, and humanity are found in varying places within ‘Covenant,’ but they never work concretely to create a cohesive story that communicates something bigger.
Jack’s Movie Reviews argues ‘Covenant’’s attempts at suspense are plentiful. However, they become rather dogged and ineffective. The tensions in certain scenes, whether involving the crew or David (Michael Fassbender) are usually resolved and subsequently work as a plot device and not necessarily a means to add to an already exciting premise. The video essay continues to argue that while ‘Covenant’ tries to mesh tension into the story, “Alien” used tension as its backbone, with no resolve coming until the very end. Similarly, there’s a lack of mystery within ‘Covenant.’
Adding to the conceptualization of how to add horror to “Alien: Covenant,” the film does what “Alien” did not do: it shows the monster, the xenomorph. “Alien” has a story-to-tension relationship that works to build suspense. Its subtlety is what made it great, with small bursts of action that coincided with the tension already palpable. “Alien: Covenant,” argues the video essay, takes the concept in a completely different direction. The action sequences are the shortest, but they are the ones that take away from the film most.
Finally, the video essay discusses the role of a great message about humanity. Similar to Scott’s “Blade Runner,” the role of creation plays a part in ‘Covenant’ that the video essay argues takes away from the grander idea of the series itself. Revealed in the film, David’s obsession and need to create ultimately leads him to create a monster. While humanity and deconstructing the power roles that coincide with it is an interesting concept that can be (and has been) explored in other films, Jack’s Movie Reviews argues that this doesn’t apply to the ‘Alien’ series as its main roots are in Love Craftian Horror. The idea that we are not alone in the universe, and what is out there must be evil, has been the tether holding the ‘Alien’ films together. “Alien: Covenant” cuts itself loose from the tether in pursuit of something grander, but falls apart along the way.
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Covenant was a victim of studio politics.
Tom Rothman left Fox shortly after Prometheus. The new leadership rejected 16 drafts of Prometheus 2 from various writers and then approved Alien 5 without any script. Since Scott had a big hit on his hands with The Martian, they offered Scott the chance to make Prometheus 2 on the condition that he turn it into an Alien prequel, which was never the plan for his Prometheus trilogy. Then Fox slashed the movie to ribbons in the editing room, removing 12 minutes of footage with Noomi Rapace that would have stared the film.
In the end, Covenant rivaled Alien3 for the franchise entry most screwed over by the studio. Prometheus 2 should have been something really special, Scott’s most ambitious sci-fi movie to date. He had big plans. Someone at Fox needs to be kicked in the nuts.
I would love it if someone would write an article about all of this. I’m sure there is more. So far only Alien fans who frequent the message boards and have shared all of the inside scoops know all of this. This needs to go mainstream.
Alien covenant was just a bad movie and certainly not only the studios fault. The whole concept of we (our AI) are the ones who ultimatly created the aliens and the whole AI with a god complex was just moronicly stupid. beside the story did not make any sense (he droped the goobomb so where are all the aliens the population and animals must have turned into , how did he create the eggs without a queen to lay them), and the surprise twist at the end (it is the bad one that survived) is so old and predictable it is just phatetic.And as far as ridley scott goes with the exeption of the marsian this guy hasn´t made a descent movie in 15+ years ,yes this includes prometheus, robin hood, gladiator and so on all of them nothing but overblown big budget productions of what should have been at best direct to dvd movies.I hope that when fox(or disney) decide to go for another alien, they drop ridley scott and this “vision” of the future for the alien franchise (according to RS the AI story is more interresting, and what people want to see – or not as the box office performance of both alien covenant and prometheus before showed, yes they were both failures) but do something new as they should have done after the disappointing prometheus.
Having David create the xenomorph turned into a ‘Darth Vader built C3PO’ universe shrinking mistake. The xeno is no longer a completely and utterly *alien* monstrosity.. it’s a science experiment made out of bugs and twigs by a misanthropic android with creator/daddy issues.
Giger’s beautiful biomechanical beastie is now a purpose built thing. It’s not alien at all.
I thought it was pretty good. I don’t understand why an article came out this late after the release. Only thing you’re doing is chiming along with the majority of opinions. If you didn’t like it why make an article a year later about it ?
Oh its not an article…you just wrote what a YouTube video said about the movie? Journalism at its finest.
“Covenant” is a perfect example of the Hollywood Blockbuster business model that greenlights major productions and leaves the screenwriting ‘til later. They just don’t learn because quality’s just not a priority to them.
“Prometheus”, as maddening an experience to first watch as it is, remains a visually gorgeous movie that had potential for greatness. Damon Lindeloff gets unjustly blamed, but consider what a difference there’d be if “coherent story” and “character development” were higher on Scott’s priorities, or he might not have excised important moments for “pacing” (especially when the biologist finds and catches a primitive aquatic/amphibious creature that appears totally benign, hence why he wants to pet the space cobra).
“Covenant” demonstrates the principle of diminishing returns, as Scott forged ahead with only 2/3 the budget of the previous film. Instead of the grand, biomechanical civilization we’re left to anticipate, we get a town square of mouthbreathing Deep Space Nine Alien prosthetics and burlap robes. The Covenant crew exists merely to set up the next alien contact catastrophe (“come check out my eggs!”). The blatantly shoehorned-in final 20 minutes has all the suspense and tension of an elevator fart, and the revealing shots of the lumbering, rubbery Big Chap actually look like cosplay (with a clear mandate to steer the design away from Giger’s).
2017 was the year I saw two franchises release films that managed to seriously detract from their respective series. And it looks like they show no signs of stopping.