19 May Alien: Covenant Analysis

ALIEN: COVENANT ANALYSIS

[UPDATED REVIEW – 6 April 6, 2019]

Time has been unkind to Alien: Covenant in the public’s opinion. Most hate it, with particular hatred pointed at the stupid characters (at least, their stupid decisions.) But…I STILL LOVE THIS MOVIE, WATCH IT ABOUT ONCE A MONTH, LISTEN TO THE SOUNDTRACK FREQUENTLY, AND WILL DIE ON THIS HILL TO DEFEND IT.

In my opinion, Alien: Covenant is the equal of Alien and Aliens. It forms the third leg of the holy trinity of Alien films and on some ways exceeds the other two.

I think most viewers miss the point that Scott is making with his renewed interest in the franchise 40 years after he kicked it off. I think he was of the opinion that just making a movie about the monster was boring, unchallenging, and lacked any new ideas whatsoever. So, he surreptitiously utilized the setting of the Alien films to tell a story about a very different monster: A.I., which is so much more interesting and timelier than a simple horror flick about Giger’s monster.

I still don’t have a great explanation for why Billy Crudup’s character does or says anything that he does or says in the movie—his character is so poorly mapped out, written, and performed, that deciphering anything worthwhile about Oram is impossible. Nonetheless, I have no problem chalking his character up to “every group has a weird motherf***er in it” and that’s enough for me to buy his stupidity. I have someone equally stupid in my current study group at school. It happens. To think that society managed to weed out all the idiots in the future is less believable than Orams’ stupid words and decisions. Besides, he gets what he deserves.

So yeah, I still love the movie. More with each viewing. I think Scott understands this universe better than most viewers, who remain fixated on the most over-exposed part of the mythology: Giger’s monster itself. There is so much more in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. And I, for one (maybe literally), am here for it, whatever it is.

As a side note, this month is the 40^th anniversary of Alien, and Disney has just announced that they will continue to make Alien movies, with Scott likely to round out his trilogy with another film soon. Awesome. Awesome to the max…

[ORIGINAL REVIEW – 6 April 2019]

Note: Normally, I prefer to see a movie twice before writing up a review, but my time was limited this weekend, and I wanted to get my thoughts written down. I’ll update after a second viewing next week, which could change everything–who knows?!

Also: SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

Here’s the short version:
Alien: Covenant is one of the best films in the Alien universe. It answers many questions posed by predecessor Prometheus; it avoids most of the pitfalls Prometheus was hampered by; it contains subtle nods to almost all previous Alien entries; and most importantly, it expands on the Alien mythology while taking the larger universe and philosophy of Scott’s original vision in genuinely new and interesting directions. It also has one of the best scores in the series and is yet another technically flawless film from director Ridley Scott, whose return to science-fiction and the Alien franchise with Prometheus is fully validated with Alien: Covenant.

And the more detailed version:

Starting with a quick history lesson:
In 1979, Director Ridley Scott released the ultimate anti-Star Wars/Star Trek film: Alien. It eschewed the bright colors, hopeful themes, fantasy elements, and archetypal hero/villain structure that had allowed these films to dominate the science-fiction/fantasy genre up to that point.

Instead, Alien retreated into a dark, horror-themed corner of the science-fiction genre, populated by blue-collar protagonists that are stunningly out of their league when faced with the overwhelming danger perfectly encapsulated by the screenwriters’ xenomorph alien.

After Alien, James Cameron accomplished a cinematic miracle with Aliens, the rare sequel that at least matched the original film. Aliens retained some of the horror elements (it IS the only movie to ever give me nightmares) but embraced a military action-movie perspective that has permeated many, many aspects of popular culture for over 30 years now. It also managed to expand the mythology of the xenomorph in both logical and horrifying ways with the Queen Alien.

Unfortunately, this escalation in almost every way from Alien was largely absent from the Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection. The former was famously plagued with studio interference, which in retrospect was an apocalyptically bad idea considering director David Fincher is now one of the greatest visual and technical filmmakers working today. Alien: Resurrection was simply a bad bet on a director (Jean-Pierre Jeunet) whose style was a poor fit for the Alien universe and seemed to preclude an intelligent narrative or dialogue. The third and fourth movies were also devoid of any likable or intelligent characters that hadn’t pre-existed in Scott and Cameron’s films, making them significantly more difficult to connect with on an emotional level as a viewer.

After these original four films, the Alien franchise went into a dormant/depressing state for 15 years. The only entries other films were two incredibly shitty ‘Alien vs Predator’ flicks that were so awful, nobody likes them and Scott, upon returning to the Alien franchise with Prometheus, openly declared that they were shit and most definitely not canon per his admittedly expert opinion.

Which brings us to 2012’s Prometheus, which was Scott’s first science-fiction movie since 1982’s Blade Runner, and semi-prequel to Alien. Scott was very emphatic that he didn’t want to make just another Alien movie and waited until he had something worth saying in the Alien universe. Notably, he stated that the Alien as a horror-movie monster was played out.

While I really liked Prometheus, especially as a nearly perfect technical film, it had some serious problems. In my opinion, I blame co-screenwriter Damon Lindeloff of Lost fame, who has a habit of taking interesting science-fiction ideas and muddling the hell out of them. Prometheus‘ main issue was that it was populated with some of the dumbest characters this side of Jurassic World (which had a 100% critical mass of stupid characters), who consistently made the worst, least-relate-able decisions imaginable. One example: the “geologist” responsible for mapping the interior of the ship with technology that provided instant holographic 3D maps…got completely lost. Another example was the “biologist”, who, upon encountering a proto-alien weiner-snake-thing, instantly abandons all pretenses of safety and reaches out to it. Similarly, Prometheus relied on some inexplicable plot exposition, like the captain who magically knows that the planet is a biological weapons factory, despite absolutely no evidence to support this theory. Just out of the blue, the working-class captain drops an amazingly accurate explanation of what is going on. I love Prometheus, but it had some dumb people, doing some dumb things.

What Prometheus did do right was introduce some philosophical themes about creators and their creations, which found analogues not only in the Engineer/human relationships, but was more interestingly introduced in the relationship between the android David and his creator, Mr. Weyland. It also teased the concept of exploring the creation of the xenomorph itself. The ideas introduced in Prometheus were sometimes half-baked and not always followed-through with clear answers or even basic information shared with the audience; but they were fascinating and a very different perspective and deeper take on the Alien mythology than had been seen in a long time. If nothing else, Prometheus started an interesting conversation, which Ridley Scott had the opportunity to follow-through with in Alien: Covenant.


A quick Summary of Alien: Covenant:
Alien: Covenant picks up 10 years after Prometheus, with a new crew that only later in the in film has any narrative or character cross-over with Prometheus. The Covenant is a ship on its way to a new planet to colonize. Aboard are 2000 colonists, a crew of 14 humans, and one android, with all but the last in hyper-sleep for the multi-year trip. (I actually found it humorous to imagine that it is the same ship Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are on in Passengers…)
As the colonists and crew sleep, the ship is watched over by Walter, a next generation android that looks exactly like David, the android from Prometheus.  An unfortunate encounter with a space-storm causes damage to the ship, resulting in the death of the captain and necessitating repairs. During the course of repairs, a radio beacon is heard from a planet that, at first glance, seems to be a potential substitute for their original destination. A detour is agreed to, and the unfortunate events of the film are set in motion, as we eventually discover that the planet the beacon is coming from is, in fact, the home-world of the Engineers from Prometheus.
After two members of the crew are accidentally infected by viral spores they inadvertently encounter planet-side, everything quickly spiral out of control, as the tentative hopefulness of the crew quickly devolves into horror as the infected crew members are killed spawning a new type of alien monster, drawing the attention of other monsters. After the destruction of their landing craft, and right as they are about to be over-run, the crew is rescued by none other than David, who offers them safe haven and a plausible explanation for his presence on the planet.
As the crew tries to regroup on the planet and contact the Covenant, Walter quickly discovers that David has not only lied to them about their immediate safety, but has spent the last 10 years genetically experimenting on the virus from Prometheus, culminating in his creation of the classic Alien life-form audiences are familiar with: from face-hugger to xenomorph. Once David’s experiments are revealed (and, of course, resumed in the presence of new test-subjects), the crew finds itself pitted against multiple threats, from different variants of xenomorph, to David himself, whose programming has gone rogue in a uniquely terrifying way as he defends his creations as a logical extension of his own creation at the hands of man.
Ultimately, only two crew members survive, managing to kill the xenomorphs in pursuit. The closing moments of the film, however, reveal that David killed and replaced Walter, and as he puts the last crew member back into hyper-sleep, the audience discovers that David has now taken control of the Covenant and has taken horrifying steps to continue his experiments.


And at this point, I feel like I have to make an observation about some of the external, meta-aspects of both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Prometheus was financially successful, but later plagued by a gradually escalating level of critical and viewer disdain for some of the glaring problems in the film. Even now, Prometheus is very divisive in its popularity. In my opinion, most of the reviews of both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant demonstrate two fundamental problems: first, many people seem to want an Alien 5, and refuse to believe that any other type of film was intended, or that Scott may have wanted to go in a different direction. Second, many reviewers seem unwilling or unable to apply empathy or critical thinking to the characters of Alien: Covenant because of the characters in Prometheus.

As for the first problem, I look to the continued popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as proof that audiences prefer the comfort of films that are familiar, even when they become formulaic, predictable, and overly reliant on ridiculous motifs, After four Alien movies, there was little more to say about the monster itself, and in all honesty, the monster is no longer intrinsically scary once you knew so much about it–its life-cycle, capabilities, vulnerabilities, etc. I believe this was Scott’s reason for emphatically avoiding making a fifth Alien movie, and instead pursuing another thematic and narrative vision that just happens to be in the same universe as the Alien movies. A lot of criticism that people leveled at Prometheus was that its passing references to the Alien movies were just way too little, not realizing that at its core, Prometheus was setting up a science-fiction film about the thematic and literal relationship between creators and their creations, for which the titular aliens are only one small aspect of the bigger philosophical discussion. As I’ll address in a moment, I believe some of the intelligent commentary and subtext in Prometheus was lost in a narrative populated by idiots. Nonetheless, Prometheus intentionally forged its own thematic and narrative path, and probably suffered critically as its connections to the Alien universe diverted attention away from these new ideas.

The second problem is rooted in the fact that audiences are extremely familiar with the life-cycle of the Alien monster itself. Many reviewers accuse characters of being stupid for not avoiding many of their own troubles by making better decisions. But good decisions require adequate information and time to process that information. Most of the characters in all the Alien films have absolutely no idea what they are about to encounter and are totally unprepared for any aspect of the xenomorph. It requires empathy and critical thinking to put yourself in the place of characters that are far less knowledgeable than the audience. Alien is generally considered the scariest of the Alien films because, as the first one, viewers (probably) had no idea what they were getting themselves into, and that put them on equal footing with the characters. As the films went on, viewers with much more information than subsequent characters were less willing to connect with and empathize with these characters. That said, I’ll admit that Prometheus was pretty indefensible in this regard, because many characters made terrible decisions within the realm of their explicitly stated areas of expertise (see the “geologist” and “biologist”) and not because they lacked knowledge about the monster. They ignored the basic tenets of their respective professions or demonstrated a level of incompetence that made you question why they were ever allowed in space, much less on an exploratory mission.

With Prometheus, I understand: it legitimately had stupid people doing stupid things. But some of the more negative reviews about Alien: Covenant claim the same thing, and I completely disagree. I found it much easier to empathize with and understand the actions most of the characters in Alien: Covenant because most of them had decent reasons for their decision-making matrices. Like the crew of the Nostromo, they had no idea what they were walking into and often had seconds to make decisions–this is, by definition, a recipe for disaster.

There is only one character I can think of in Alien: Covenant that makes a truly, catastrophically stupid decision, and that is Oram, the captain of Covenant. After witnessing a xenomorph feeding on a member of his crew, and then seeing David interact positively with this xenomorph, Oram is stupid enough to follow David into his alien-egg dungeon, where he (duh) “finds” a face-hugger and quickly meets his duly-deserved fate. There is absolutely no scenario where any normal human being would have allowed David to live past that moment, much less followed him into a dark stairwell.

Other than that, I was pleasantly surprised that most characters acted like normal people would have, given the increasingly extreme situations they find themselves in throughout the course of the film, and the speed with which they have to adapt to terrifying situations.

In fact, many of my film reviews linger on the many things I didn’t like about the film I’m examining. In the case of Alien: Covenant, the only real complaint I have was Oram’s decision to follow David and not kill him. The rest of the film was rock-solid as a science-fiction/horror movie that fleshed out the ideas and themes of Prometheus, while closing out some of the lingering narrative threads and pointing towards a probable sequel I want to see.

So instead of nitpicking things I didn’t like, I’ll highlight some of things I especially liked.

First and foremost, I like how Alien: Covenant solidified Scott’s new entries in the Alien universe as philosophical contemplations about creation. Prometheus introduced David as an android with an agenda set by his own creator, Mr. Weyland, who himself was obsessed with finding mankind’s creators to pry from them the secret of immortality. His obsession was portrayed primarily through the eyes of his two great creations: David the android, and his own daughter, Vickers. While David operated completely under the control of the megalomaniac Weyland, Vickers was equally limited in her freedom from Weyland’s power but was self -aware of the limitations of mortality, particularly on the extremely aged Weyland himself. Prometheus‘ narrative demonstrated that meeting your creators was a huge disappointment, rivaled only by the disappointment of living your life knowing your creator, as David and Vickers respectively portrayed. While Vickers died in Prometheus, David exited the film giving a glimmer of hope that, with Weyland dead, he was freed from his hidden agenda (that had caused literally everyone’s death) and would now assist lone survivor Dr. Elizabeth Shaw with her quest to find the Engineers’ home-world.

Alien: Covenant starts with a scene showing David’s first moments waking up after his own creation. A much younger Weyland begins teaching him, but quickly realizes that his creation has much greater potential than himself, and quickly reverts to treating David as an indentured slave who must follow him with exactitude. This was a very different opening than I expected, but it set the groundwork for the middle section of Alien: Covenant, which delved into the philosophical meat of the film and complimented the ideas introduced in Prometheus. I believe that this was intentional of Scott, to remind everyone right off the bat that his interests in this new era of the Alien franchise are to probe previously unexplored corners of the universe. In fact, I think the marketing of Alien: Covenant was deceptive for over-emphasizing the human vs. xenomorph aspect of the film, which itself is a by-product of the underlying story about androids as superior beings to their creators. In this respect, I was reminded that Scott also directed the quintessential film about androids being superior to their human creators in Blade Runner; imagine if those worlds were connected…

But I digress. Given David’s actions in Prometheus, and the generally shady history of androids in the Alien universe, structuring the story of Alien: Covenant around the idea that David is the first and last of his particular android model, which was decommissioned for its dangerous penchant for creative thought, was not only a fascinating idea, but was carried out with great care and precision by Scott within the story. Every scene between Walter and David is riveting, as we are first shown how remarkable it is that an android can create unique, original art; only to eventually realize that the drive to create, unfettered by morality, leads David to a state perfectly captured by Shelley’s poem ‘Ozymandius’, which David literally realizes. David’s drive to create results in the xenomorph, which was described in the first Alien film as a perfect organism.

This theme in Scott’s films is also brought full-circle, as we are shown that the Engineers, who created mankind, who in turn created androids, were wiped out by David the android, as he released their own biological weapon on the Engineer home-world, wiping out every non-plant-based life-form. It’s a terrifying realization for the audience–if they take the time to contemplate the ramifications. By simply imbuing him with the desire to assist in his quest for immortality, Weyland inadvertently created the only organism more dangerous than the xenomorph: David the android.

Although David’s physical victory over Walter is somewhat clumsily handled in the last act of Alien: Covenant, the final confirmation of this fact and its ramifications are left until the last moments of the film, as Daniels (Katherine Watterson) realizes that David will have complete freedom over the ship as she slips back into hyper-sleep, not knowing if she will ever wake up again.

It was unclear in Prometheus, but is crystal clear in Alien: Covenant that Scott’s new take on the Alien universe will be through the eyes of David, an android that has a very real chance of realizing his dreams of ridding the universe of imperfect life-forms and replacing them with his perfect creation: the xenomorph. This is the sub-textual horror of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. It is merely facilitated and enhanced within the context of the intrinsic body-horror of the xenomorph monster.

Moving on, I thought some really great performances came out of Alien: Covenant. Obviously, Michael Fassbender’s performance as androids David and Walter was, again, revelatory in its precision and nuance. Now that his character(s) are established as the central figure in Scott’s new trilogy, I must admit I love the idea of a non-human being the centerpiece of science-fiction films. Katherine Watterson, who gave a stunningly mediocre performance in last years’ Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, gives a great, strong performance as the human hero of the story. Despite the decidedly downer of an ending, her Daniels character is literally the only character in the Alien universe who truly gets the upper-hand on a xenomorph by out-thinking it. Danny McBride gives a remarkable performance in that it is the second wholly unique character he has ever played; every previous performance in every film/TV show he’s ever appeared in being a variation of scuzzy comic relief. In Alien: Covenant, Scott got a great performance out of McBride; enough that I forgot about his previous work, and that genuinely says a LOT.

The score for Alien: Covenant, by Jed Kerzel, is among the best in the Alien series, taking direct musical cues from Jerry Goldsmith’s original Alien score, as well as a similarly minimalist but effectively creepy thematic cue from James Horners’ Aliens score. The score during the Med Bay scene was particularly effective, and enhanced the overall, pants-shittingly effective terror of the first emergence of the neomorph alien, which, spoiler-alert, looked super-unpleasant.

As expected, Ridley Scott’s eye for visuals in remarkable. The special effects and practical effects are seamless, and the entire film has a cinematic beauty to it that Scott seems to effortlessly produce. One consistent piece of praise that almost everyone agrees on for Prometheus is the visuals; Alien: Covenant maintains this standard of excellence. In fact, I feel that Scott’s visuals are often so consistently above almost every other filmmaker, that he deserves special consideration for every movie he makes. But I digress…

Lastly, I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention that Alien: Covenant had a LOT of very subtle but effective references to the previous four Alien films. Unlike Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Rogue One, the references were not blatant Easter eggs thrown in as red meat for rabid fans. They were particular shots, angles, musical cues, and imagery that, for those that have exhaustively watched the previous films, provided some pleasant connective tissue to the original films, without diminishing Scott’s new direction nor breaking the fourth wall. I loved those brief moments when a warm fuzzy came because I saw or heard something familiar. It was appreciated and, as I mentioned, subtle; perhaps to the point of nearly being imagined. But I like to believe that Scott respects the foundation he is building on, even if he’s building a new wing on the old structure.


I will address the violence and gore in the movie: I heard a lot of pre-release buzz about this being the goriest Alien movie yet, and a return to the horror-aspect of previous films, particularly Alien, In my opinion, the gore was graphic, but not gratuitous. They showed enough to remind the audience that this science-fiction franchise originally shanghai’ed the horror genre for its first entry, but by no means did it become the kind of gore-porn that some horror films seem to think the masses enjoy (I’m looking at you, Saw…) Obviously, the violence and gore are not for everyone, but if you’ve seen the previous 5 films in the Alien franchise, there is not anything particularly new. For me, nothing will ever exceed the chest-burster scene in Aliens, which was (ironically) the first movie I saw in the franchise.


Overall, I think that I would rank this movie as a tie with Alien for second place in the franchise, below only Aliens, which is, in my opinion, a perfect film. Alien: Covenant lacks a bit in the character department versus Alien but makes up for it with its updated visuals and technical proficiency. I re-watched Alien today while doing housework and, in all honesty, parts of it are painfully dated in 2017 versus 1979. It happens to all films, but for me, personally, it makes a difference in how much I enjoy the film; Alien: Covenant is obviously the cutting edge of cinematic visual perfection.
I would encourage anyone that goes to keep in mind that Scott specifically avoids making ‘just another Alien movie’; and if you look beneath the surface, there is a whole new layer of ideas that Scott has refined in Alien: Covenant that were overly obscured in Prometheus.

Analysis by Jim Washburn