Ok. For anyone that wants to read, here's my full review of Alien Covenent.
Alien Covenant Review
Saw this film last night. After the last few years of hearing about the pre-production, to watching the trailers and genuinely becoming excited again for a new and fresh spin on my beloved Alien franchise, even overwhelmingly so, feeling panic as the 20th Century Fox logo drifted across the screen and hoping with all my heart that this was going to be the film that restored the Alien mythos to greatness again.
This isn't quite the case.
I saw Alien when i was 8 years old. It scarred me. Horrified me. It made me the man I am today.
The thing is, the original got it so right. The Möbius designed interior of the Nostromo, all softly padded and claustrophobic, the long dark corridors, jangling chains, the dripping water and strobe lights. The feeling as if the ship is actually breathing and alive. Everything worked. The crew a normal bunch of space truckers. The Alien itself. The sound design. The moments of quietness that almost gut-punch you with tension. The stunning, beautiful and haunting score by Jerry Goldsmith. Perfect.
It's safe to say this has and most likely always will be my all-time favourite film.
Then came the sequels.
Aliens. This completely blew me away! Infinitely quotable and full of great characterisation. James Cameron took Ridley Scott's original and ran with the concept making something feel familiar yet new, again ramping up the tension to unbearable levels whilst also expanding the Alien mythos. As far as I'm concerned, Cameron has never made a bad film and this is certainly one of his best. I will always love this movie.
Alien 3 I hated at first but over the years have found a deep appreciation for, even if it does feel like an Alien film made by the BBC.
Alien Resurrection just felt like a parody made by the guys behind League of gentlemen. An absolute turd. I hate this film with a great passion.
I will not mention the crummy AVP movies.
So, when I first heard of Prometheus being made, I was genuinely excited and to see what Ridley Scott had up his sleeve. It was to be centred around the derelict ship from the original Alien and finally answer the question of the mysterious "Space Jockey" in the huge chair? Upon hearing this, I had in my head a film full of Gigeresque horrors on a planet with all kinds of biomechanical madness. Years ago I saw a piece of concept art in Starburst magazine that was for a movie I can't remember, but H.R. Giger was involved with the design, and it looked absolutely astounding! Imagine the traditional biblical imagery of Hell but designed by Giger. From what I saw, it was very Paradise Lost but full-on horror, madness and beauty. This is where I wanted Prometheus to go to. I expected after the first trailers to have a kind of "The Hills Have Eyes" where the Prometheus crew stumble across the engineers and get captured by, tortured or experimented on by them. Instead we got confused plot points about where do we come from, what happens when we die? Etcetera Etcetera. Yawn. So far, so pretentious. And then we got idiot scientists running around and making stupid decisions, unlikeable characters and creature designs that were for the most part, generic tentacled squid-like aliens that could have been from any of the Alien knock-off movies of the 80's and 90's.
All was not lost though. The striking design of the Engineers I thought to be a complete stroke of genius, tapping into the aesthetics of Ancient Greece and biblical imagery so ingrained in human culture and art. Then to make them genuinely unsettling and creepy with their black shiny eyes and cold malevolence. I would have been ok with a film of just these guys terrifying the crew of the Prometheus like mad alien scientists and using the black accelerant on them to make even more twisted creations to further whatever mad agenda they had for the universe. It could have been a master stroke. But that wasn't to be. It was about faith and idiocy. Sorry. Wrong franchise Ridley. You already made Exodus Gods and Kings. And that was a boring snore-fest.
So after that, I was hoping Covenant would at least right a few wrongs and at least try to make a claustrophobic, bloody, and intense body-horror type thriller. With Aliens in it. That's kind of what we got actually.
I'll start with what I didn't like and I'll try not to spoil too much.
A lot of people are praising Fassbender for his role of the androids David and Walter. While they were with great characters initially, David really started to grate on me as the film went on, to the point where I was expecting him to raise his little pinky to the side of his mouth and chuckle menacingly whilst winking at the audience. And the line of dialogue when he tells Walter "I'll do the fingering" made me spit my popcorn out with laughter.
Once on the planet, the crew embark on a long walk to find the source of the transmission they intercepted in orbit. Without helmets on. Are these people complete f**king idiots?
?
Anyway, it all goes pear-shaped as you can imagine, this being an Alien film.
The pacing of the film seemed really rushed and things zip by at an alarming rate. People get infected and spawn horrifying creatures in what seems like minutes when in the original film, the gestation period was a hell of a lot longer. It's all speeded up, almost as if to satisfy the attention spans of the people leaning over the seats in front whilst staring daggers at the popcorn munchers in the next row.
The Neomorphs are an interesting addition to the canon and are pretty freaky, especially the first birth scene, which it utterly as disgusting and repulsive as you'd imagine.
Anyhow, when the main alien eventually arrives, the chest burster scene was a truly WTF moment. A fully formed alien baby stands up and raises its arms in the air mimicking David like a child mimics its father. The music was lovely and romantic. What the utter f**k???!!!!
But then, as long as it takes it to finally arrive, gets to adulthood, goes apeshit, kills a few people, it's gone. Dead. Its like a Prometheus film with a few Aliens in it. Not at all like an alien film.
My thought was that the film was really intense but lacked any suspense. Also it was sorely lacking in any kind of claustrophobia. That's kind of a staple of all the alien films. It would be like having a Star Wars film without any space battles.
Oh wait....hmm...
Also as the film progresses, the characters yet again make really stupid and idiotic decisions that result in more deaths.
The General look of the film I thought was nowhere near as striking as Prometheus but all the same, a very beautiful film to look at.
What I did like.
The effects are all top notch as you you'll expect. Bloody and disgusting, brutal and shocking. The sound design was excellent and the score was surprisingly haunting and effective, even riffing on Jerry Goldsmith's fantastic original.
When the Xenomorph eventually arrives late in the film, its bloody magnificent! The best depiction of an alien since Aliens. They absolutely nailed the design and movement.
The characters largely were very well fleshed out and likeable, the acting solid and the tone generally sombre. A much needed improvement over Prometheus.
I left the cinema not knowing what to think. I couldn't process what I'd just seen. And I'm still not sure what to think. Only repeated viewing will tell. But interestingly enough, as I've been writing this review, I'm more and more falling in love with the film. That's never happened before. It's taken me to unexpected places. Maybe that's a good thing as the last thing I wanted was another derivative alien film.
It's certainly a very far cry from that.
