Alien: Covenant

by Arjun Nair

Alright, before we get started, I’m going to assume you’ve watched the film.

If you haven’t yet, this should be a lot easier on you, because there won’t be too much to go through. That said, there’s gonna be a lot of spoilers ahead (don’t worry, I’ll warn you before I bring them up). Trust me, this is one of those films which you need to spoil to point out its many flaws. And lordy lord, are there a lot of them!

The film works as a sequel to the 2012 Ridley Scott film ‘Prometheus’ and a prequel to the very first film of the franchise, Alien (1986). Knowing this, one would think that Mr. Scott would’ve made efforts to improve and take out all the gunk from his first film, making a more refined, fine-tuned sequel worth being a blockbuster in its own right.

NOPE. Instead, we see Scotty returning to the big screens with his five year old guns, making, technically, the same movie again. What makes it worse is the fact that it’s a horror film. Formula seems to be staple nowadays in Hollywood, and audiences are aware of this. But applying formula to a big-budget horror film?

One of the most important factors in making horror work is building up a fear of the unknown, giving it substance, and making its presence felt, yet leaving the audience in the dark (sometimes literally) as to what it’s truly capable of. When it’s finally revealed, there’s a moment of gratification, followed by the shock of witnessing said horror on screen. Effective cinema goes beyond what the audience expects from it.

Covenant, however, is both a prequel and a sequel. We know what happened before it, and what happens after it. The monster is a well known pop icon, making references in popular shows like Simpsons and Family Guy. So, it’s really no surprise if you find yourself watching a film that you’ve already seen three times, expecting new scares and something more creative than tiny little creatures ripping themselves out of a few space-marines, and getting disappointed every time.

Let’s come back to the making of a good horror movie. If psychological horror or fear won’t work, there’s another angle you could try – visual horror, namely gore and body horror. For this franchise, it seems to be a fail-safe. From the grotesque malformed CGI beings that are Xenomorphs to people being torn apart and dying violently, Scott uses his expertise to make your disgust audible and your puke smellable.   

PLOT SUMMARY: 

Alien: Covenant is essentially the haunted house movie that you’d seen innumerable times as a kid – but with a $97 million budget.

A few dumb teenagers  (a few dumb space-marines) wander into a haunted house (an entire planet) and get completely owned (get totally wrecked) by the resident ghost (Xenomorph) and maybe two guys survive (unknown number).

But wait. Covenant is not merely a dark, gritty horror flick. It’s also an intense, heart-pumping action thriller as well. (If you could not tell, that was sarcasm. But man, do I wish that were true.)

I mean, brush off your franchise history, Ridley. Why do you think James Cameron made his sequel significantly more action-packed than Alien? If you want to keep your audience at the edge of their seats, you don’t recycle the same horror. No. Pump a few machine guns and empty a few barrels into that abomination’s kisser! If you’re talented enough, you just might create one of the most badass moments in western cinematic history.

I really wish that Scott had taken inspiration from Cameron’s work (and not just the last part). As far as action in the film is concerned, I felt it was lacking, and most of the time only serving to complement the movie’s darker horror undertones. And that’s a shame.

I’ll explore more of these elements in the plot and character analyses. It’s not all going to be negative from here on out, though, I promise.

For convenience’s sake, the entire plot can be divided into four parts:

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

PART 1: Existential crisistential consequential introduction

I love when horror directors decide to put a cheerful, all happy introductory scene to a movie you know is going to get darker. It makes for a stark contrast to the later portions of the film. Ridley does a good job at it too. The opening scene explains the purpose of their mission, and establishes a few characters – Walter and Daniels, mainly. The dialogue and characters are fun and witty.

Right from the start of the movie, and throughout the introduction, Peter Weyland’s voice is having an existential crisis in the background. Why was that bit necessary, you ask? It all makes sense later in the film. For now, it’s a foreshadowing of the events to come.

Then, all of a sudden, a power surge occurs, everything goes to hell and the captain burns to a crisp. Turns out the hibernation chamber was secretly an incineration chamber. Why was that ever a thing? Meh, a convenient plot device. James Franco seems to have been cast only to have him die a few minutes into the movie. Ridley shouldn’t have been so tight on the budget there.

Also, if Walter had done his job right, none of this would’ve happened. Just saying.

PART 2:  A Series of Unfortunate Choices

Straight off the bat, Christopher Oram (Billy Crudup) comes off as a totally annoying, insecure second-in-command-turned-captain. He’s constantly undermining the trust his crew members have in him. I don’t know why they had to do portray him like that, because in the end, he was really only looking out for his people and only wanted the best for them.

Daniels is shown as a natural leader – she sticks with the crew for the funeral, and warns the captain against turning the ship’s course. She’s a bold, motivated, likable female lead in a sci-fi ‘alien’ film. Never seen that before!

A sweeping generalisation you can make while watching is that Daniels does everything right and Oram does everything wrong. So when he’s killed later in the film, it just feels like him making another stupid mistake, except this one’s grave enough to kill him. Makes you wonder how a guy like that even became a marine in the first place. It’s almost like the film wants you to feel satisfied when Daniels finally turns captain. Weird.

What’s even more weird is the sudden popping up of a Fassbender planet that none of the aircraft signals picked up on and Oram’s immediate change of mind to get to this planet just because the signal turned out to be Cowboy Billy’s favourite song. As per the rules, Daniels seems to be the only person to feel something awry here.

Insecure Oram needs a win, and he knows somehow that the planet is it. So they drive headfirst into it. Thus ends the slowest part of the film. Time to wake up folks, ’cause everything’s gonna get so much better!

Part 3: Michael, meet Fassbender

When the marines safely get out of their ship, they don’t bother wearing basic protective gear (like a helmet maybe), ’cause, really why should they? Sure, it might be a foreign planet whose existence they literally just came to know about a few minutes ago. But, hell, it looks just like Earth. Darn, maybe even better! It definitely looks majestic through Ridley’s lens.

If they’d paid a little more attention in Basic Spacesuit class, this entire film wouldn’t have happened. But then again, who’d want that?

Moving on, the sequences of events that follow are extremely hilarious. The humour stems from you realizing how truly dumb these guys are. Hey, maybe wandering off on your own to take a leak and treading on every alien lifeform on the planet might not be the best idea. Or maybe develop a better skill at shooting targets so that when you actually need to blow something, you don’t end up blowing yourself up and destroying every hope of the crew escaping. But what do I know?

Also, wheat! (That’s never mentioned again.)

When day turns into night, the night man cometh. Enter ominous hooded figure, a complete stranger that the crew decidely feels cool enough to chill with, even though they have no reason to trust him. As he leads them through an area literally filled with dead human-like corpses, it’s obvious that this place isn’t all that it was cracked out to be. So much for Oram’s win.

Also in this part of the movie: they’re trapped during a thunderstorm and Oram cries over what a big loser he is.

The hooded figure reveals himself to be David and all of a sudden the plot gets convoluted. Had questions regarding Prometheus? Well, David’s got all the answers (almost) which can all be summed up in a single phrase: David’s a jerk.

David despises the whole human race because they’re not immortal, and wants to end it. Human bodies and the Engineers’ bodies conveniently help Xenomorphs hatch fast. David’s also been trying to build his own perfect little war machines (Xenomorphs). And hence is introduced the major theme of this film:

Creation.

Peter Weyland’s ponderings at the start of the film finally makes sense. He created David, a self aware synthetic life-form that he’s talking to. He’s talking about the creators of mankind, the Engineers. In the end, it’s the motivation to attain perfection in creation that drives David to perform all his terrible acts.

Towards the later half of the movie, as David goes through his lab, we are shown how extensive his work has been, bringing some really well shot gruesome scenes into the film, of failed Xenomorph experiments and parts of the Engineers’ bodies. This again, ties into how well developed David is as a character. He’s a very strong antagonist. What makes it even better is how much of him remains a mystery. Even though his motivations are revealed in the film, there’s still space for doubt. For instance, why’d he wipe out the Engineers? Why kill Shaw?

The icing on the cake is, of course, Fassbender’s superb performance as David (and Walter). One of my favourite Fassbender moments was of David staring at Oram as he made his final mistake in the film – taking David’s bait and touching the weird plant thing that causes his demise. He died a stupid death not befitting a captain.

The weirdest scene of all, however, is the now infamous ‘flute scene’: an extended scene of David teaching Walter to play, you guessed it, a flute. This scene exists just to show the audience that David can recognize harmonies and can create music (making him a lot more human). The scene was way longer than it was supposed to be and made me wish I had brought a notepad along to jot down a bit of the music theory. As you watch this very long scene, however, you slowly realize that David had been seducing Walter the entire time when he, very uncomfortably, kisses David.

No part of this scene really mattered since he ended up killing Walter anyway, but I digress.

Part 4: A Twist of Shyamalan   

When Sheriff Tennessee finally lands the ship, Daniels, ‘Walter’ and a Xenomorph successfully jump onto it. This leads to the most action packed sequence in the entire film. Daniels trying to headshoot an alien on a flying ship while dangling from a cable doesn’t just sound fun, but is fun to watch too! Of course, you may think it’s over-the-top cheesy, but who cares, its all well intended.

Once it appears that they’ve killed the alien, there’s a light moment where Daniels assumes the position she was born for and ‘Walter’ the position he wasn’t meant to, the monitor. And you think the film’s over.

But surprise! The alien’s back and its killing a copulating couple. Of course, the team swiftly takes care of the trouble in the most ‘Aliens’-like fashion possible. It almost doubles as a tribute to the 90s classic. Beautiful.

But surprise! ‘Walter’ is David, and is now controlling the ship! For some reason, despite being on board the entire time, he hadn’t done anything until we neared the end of the movie. This makes sense.

He swiftly takes care of the team by not killing them. He then proceeds to spit out eggs into a container in exceptional bad-assery.

Wait, is this really the end of the movie?

(spoiler end)

To conclude, in spite of all its flaws, I wouldn’t call Alien: Covenant a terrible film. I wouldn’t ask for a refund at the box-office, if that were a thing. It’s a fun film to watch with your friends. I suggest not being all snobby and trying to analyze the heck out of the film, though, ’cause its not that kind of a movie.

Again, you have to appreciate Ridley Scott for being his ambitious self and for trying for something more than your average horror film, though its effectiveness as a whole is debatable.

His impressive cinematography is all over the place; it’s a very pretty film. It’s also really well shot, and he does capture some of the most intense scenes effectively. When it comes to characters, I’d say Walter, David and Daniels were well developed. I would even go so far as to say that Tennessee was pretty developed too. But that’s as far as it goes. Killing flat characters don’t hurt at all.

If you’re a fan of the franchise and have a lot of questions to be answered, chances are this movie will answer them, and replace them with its own fair share of questions.

I’d recommend it.