'Covenant' returns 'Alien' franchise to pure sci-fi horror origins
In a perfect universe, Ridley Scott's “Alien: Covenant” would have been an ideal follow-up to his genre-shattering 1979 thriller “Alien,” a seminal science-fiction monster movie that killed off its traditional male captain early so a subordinate female character could ascend to the last-action-hero-standing.
A quantum leap for its time.
Of the five “Alien” offspring so far, “Covenant” comes the closest to matching the original for smart discourse, effects, craftsmanship, pace, suspense and sheer scares. (Savvy screenwriters John Logan and Dante Harper even toss in a nod to the first film's leadership change from male to female.)
James Cameron's spectacular sequel “Aliens” still ranks as the second-best of the series, but is more war movie than creature feature, exactly the form Scott returns to after veering into tedious philosophizing during 2012's visually striking “Prometheus.”
Eighteen years before we meet Sigourney Weaver's Warrant Officer Ripley, the spacecraft Covenant transports 2,000 humans in deep sleep traveling seven years toward Origae-6, an ideal planet for human colonizing.
A synthetic humanoid named Walter (Michael Fassbender) guards the craft, until a stellar explosion damages the ship and crew members must be awakened.
The disruption kills the captain (a briefly glimpsed James Franco), leaving his wife and head of terraforming operations Daniels (Katherine Waterston) in stunned shock.
The ship's highly religious second-in-command, Oram (Billy Crudup), takes over, but his indecisiveness fails to earn respect from his crew: pilots Tennessee and Faris (Danny McBride and Amy Seimetz); security head Lope (Demián Bichir) and his second-in-command/husband Hallett (Nathaniel Dean), and even Oram's biologist wife, Karine (Carmen Ejogo).
Daniels turns to synthetic Walter for support, even though he's not programmed for emotions. He's an “improved” version of Fassbender's earlier synthetic, David, from “Prometheus.”
Oram worries that the damaged Covenant might not make it to Origae-6. A mysterious radio transmission - a John Denver song - gets picked up. Its origin appears to be a moon-sized sphere - conveniently ideal for humans - a short distance away.
A crew lands on the orb's surface, a foreboding place where plants thrive, but nothing else living exists.
Then the crew finds David (Fassbender), the immortal “Prometheus” synthetic, now resembling a 1960s hippie as he paints, draws and listens to music in solitude.
“There's so much here that doesn't make sense,” Daniels astutely observes.
“Covenant” returns the franchise to its pure horror origins, but at a price. Logan and Harper inject fresh elements into a familiar plot, yet they inadvertently telegraph a major revealment.
The parasites' deadly reproductive cycle no longer elicits the morbid fascination it once did. Still, Scott executes the obligatory gory dispatches with frightful finesse.
The chameleonic Fassbender stages marvelous confrontations with himself, speaking in American and British accents as Walter and David. A scene in which David teaches Walter to play a recorder creates a nifty piece of special effects perfection.
Popular comic actor McBride proves to be the movie's most pleasant surprise, bringing energetic unpredictability to his pilot, inspired by Slim Pickens' T.J. “King” Kong in Stanley Kubrick's “Dr. Strangelove.”
But nobody comes to see “Alien: Covenant” for surprises of the pleasant sort.
The unpleasant ones come at us with such intensity that in this space, everyone really can hear you scream.
“Alien: Contagion”
★ ★ ★ ½
Starring: Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Danny McBride, Billy Crudup, Demian Bichir, Guy Pearce
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Other: A 20th Century Fox release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 120 minutes