Alien: Covenant (2017)

After I saw Prometheus in 2012, ostensibly returning director Ridley Scott’s prequel to Alien, I had such a viscerally negative experience that I’ve never gone back and rewatched the film. It worked on an instinctive level, with enough scares and dread, but the meandering narrative left me unfulfilled. It was a film without an ending, a prequel without a need to participate in the same universe. 

In fact, Prometheus was such an overall negative experience for me that it took me four years to watch its sequel, Alien: Covenant, which came out in 2017. At least this time, the film is unabashed about its ties to the Alien franchise, but it is so unbearably ponderous, and it takes far too long for much of anything to happen. By the time the film hits its strongest notes, most in the audience may have long since fallen asleep.

 

Android Walter (Michael Fassbender) awakens his ship of colonists after a solar flare damages their vessel. Once the repairs are complete, Captain Oram (Billy Crudup) and his second Daniels (Katherine Waterston) discover a mysterious broadcast that leads them to a planet perfectly suited for their settling mission. The planet, however, is home to a giant storm, a few mysterious creatures, and another android (also Fassbender) who appears to be the only survivor of a doomed ship ten years ago.

 

Alien: Covenant begins with a lengthy sequence between Fassbender’s robotic David and his human inventor, played by an uncredited Guy Pearce. The dialogue is laborious and painstakingly self-serious, as though this is the first time that such a scene has been presented between creator and creation. Pearce and Fassbender limp their way through dismally tedious monologues about creating life, and just when you think the scene can’t verge any further into cliché, Fassbender begins playing, of all things, Wagner on a conveniently adjacent piano. It’s guaranteed to induce a hearty groan from anyone who’s seen a science-fiction movie in the last forty years, yet this prologue is so sententious that it casts a dour pall over the rest of the movie.

 

It’s another forty minutes or so before the plot of the film really gets going, after taking much too long to introduce a crew of no fewer than nine characters – half of whom, don’t worry, will be alien fodder before too long. You’ll have to wait nearly an hour before seeing so much as a hint of an alien, which is a bit of a problem, especially because the alien hijinks in Covenant aren’t anything we haven’t seen before. There are blundering humans who unwittingly infect themselves with alien spores, alien eggs that ought to ring a bell for fans of this franchise, and things that go bump in the dark. There’s even a familiar piece of heavy machinery that plays a significant role early in the film’s climax; it’s not the cargo-loader from Aliens, but it’s close. 

 

Indeed, Mark Kermode has rightly called Alien: Covenant a “greatest-hits” collection, reprising so many recognizable moments to diminishing effect. One senses that Ridley Scott is re-staging them with all the dramatic flourish of the original King Kong, as if to say it’s all been building to this – ta-da! Yet we’ve been down this road once or twice already; we’ve seen it all before. There’s an instinctual fear of the darkness and of sudden scares, and Scott is deft at manipulating the audience into being startled, but at the same time any eagle-eyed Alien fan will probably spot some of these jumps coming. (Cautionary tale: if you’re in space, never ever go into a medical bay.)

 

Just about the only fresh thing the film does is to cast Fassbender as the dueling android twins David and Walter. Fassbender shines in these twin roles, not least of all because of the different accents he employs. He manages to make both characters visually distinctive in their mannerisms and bearings, yet Alien: Covenant finds a way to wear out your patience in a few navel-gazing sequences where the two androids explain the plot to each other before – and I cannot make up this level of narcissism – kissing. It’s a perfect metaphor for how enamored the film is of itself and its own weighty, needless mythology. 

 

You sense that the makers of Alien: Covenant are trying, really trying. Katherine Waterston is a fine update on the Sigourney Weaver archetype, and the film gives her enough room to carve out a unique take on the role. But no one else is quite trying at the level of Fassbender and Waterston, and the film is mired in its own reflection. There are things that will always work in an Alien film, but that doesn’t mean you can string them together time after time for a guaranteed winner. It took me four years to watch Alien: Covenant; maybe I should have waited a little longer.

 

Alien: Covenant is R for “sci-fi violence, bloody images, language and some sexuality/nudity.” Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan, and Dante Harper. Starring Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, and Demián Bichir.

Monday at the Movies - September 10, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-Four of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week we continue our long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy,” concluding the series proper.

Alien Resurrection (1997) – As the final installment of the “Alien Quadrilogy,” Alien Resurrection is an entirely bizarre film that never quite knows its own identity and consequently very nearly resists being enjoyable.  Sigourney Weaver is back, this time as the clone Ripley-8 who’s been induced to give birth to yet another Alien Queen.  Wonky biology ensues, and Ripley-8 ends up helping Winona Ryder and Ron Perlman escape from yet another ship filled with Xenomorphs.  There’s a definite tension between the script by Joss Whedon and the direction by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a written tongue-in-cheekness that never comes across in the hypersexualized horror of the visual.  Instead, we have a film with a tonally uncertain first act (in which Dan Hedaya’s broad caricature of a military man is never played as anything less than genuine), a too-pat second act that doesn’t do anything new, and a third act that’s so far beyond the pale that it’s more grotesquely uncomfortable than thrilling or entertaining.  As not-quite-Ripley, Weaver’s work is difficult to assess, in part because the film never knows quite how much of her core is still Ripley and how much isn’t; the other cast members aren’t well-developed and often devolve into clichés (Ryder’s character seems to exist only to drop F-bombs for unintentional comic relief and to retread issues of otherness from Alien and Aliens).  There are a few moments worth mentioning – the aquatic Xenomorphs end up being scarier than you’d expect, and Brad Dourif’s obsessive scientist doesn’t get enough screentime – but overall this is a disappointing end to a series that I’ve enjoyed more than I expected.

That wraps up our look at the “Alien Quadrilogy,” but you can read the review that started it all with Prometheus (2012), Ridley Scott’s demi-prequel to the series.  There are, of course, more Xenomorph movies yet to be reviewed – two entries in the Alien vs. Predator series.  Is there interest in seeing reviews of those?  Let me know!

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - September 3, 2012

It may be Labor Day today, but The Cinema King isn’t taking a vacation.  Welcome to Week Thirty-Three of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week we continue our long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy,” and with our 33rd week it’s appropriate that we cover a threequel.

Alien³ (1992) – David Fincher’s first film, the third in the Alien franchise, hasn’t been treated well by critics or fans alike.  I don’t know the extent of the director/studio conflict that surrounded this film – although I am extremely curious to see the “Assembly Cut” of Alien³, more so than with the other director’s cuts in the series – but I can say that the film is more competent than its detractors give it credit.  (Is a competent “bad film” actually good?  I’m not sure.)  What fans of Aliens won’t like is the sequel element here, in which Newt and Hicks die off-screen and Bishop is reduced to a nearly-lifeless husk.  Alien³ is more a sequel to Alien, restoring the terror of the single monster and removing the cannon fodder element I didn’t like in Aliens.  In concept, then, the Alien is scarier than before, but its execution doesn’t quite work; the dog/Xenomorph hybrid is rendered with some bad special effects that look jerky and extremely unreal.  What is real, though, is the strong performance Sigourney Weaver turns in; watching her character evolve from the frightened underwear-clad kitten rescuer into a tough-as-nails full-on nemesis for the Xenomorphs has been a real delight, one that deservingly solidified her iconic status in the annals of science fiction film.  Unfortunately, the rest of the cast doesn’t quite line up, in part because the film doesn’t do a good job of distinguishing them; except for Charles S. Dutton, they’re all pudgy bald British men with very few distinctive traits (something perhaps rectified in the Assembly Cut?)  All told, Alien³ is a competent movie that does some things very well while flopping on others, striving for but never quite attaining the excellence of its grandfather.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - August 27, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-Two of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week we continue our long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy.”

Aliens (1986) – Aliens changes up a lot of what worked in Alien, swapping director Ridley Scott for James Cameron and moving from claustrophobic horror to expanded action.  It’s a film that tries almost too hard to distance itself from the original, but although it’s so different from its predecessor Aliens succeeds on a number of levels.  Returning as Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver steps up her performance as Ripley suffers from PTSD after her encounter aboard the Nostromo; Weaver successfully evolves her character from fearful victim into proactive hero as she leads a military platoon against the Xenomorphs.  The rest of the cast is passable:  Lance Henriksen plays android Bishop, but he doesn’t do as much as Ian Holm in Alien, and Paul Reiser is surprisingly scummy as a company man whose only investment is in weaponizing the creature, while Bill Paxton plays an entertainingly campy soldier whose every line is a catchphrase (“Game over, man!  Game over!”).  And the action scenes are first-rate; much as it pains me to laud James Cameron, he does strong work filming the chaos of a full Xenomorph squadron’s assault.  But in this element perhaps rests the film’s greatest detriment; we see entirely too much of the Xenomorphs (indeed, we even have a name for them now).  There was something to be said about the original film’s refusal to let us see the creature fully, so an element of horror is lost when the creatures are seen in full lighting; worse, they’re not indestructible, which makes them mere cannon fodder at times.  But what Cameron sacrifices with the visible Xenomorphs, he reclaims with the Alien Queen, whose final sequence with Ripley and the iconic cargo loader is as exciting as anything the film offers.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week, but stay tuned later this week for our no-spoilers-barred review of The Dark Knight Rises!

Monday at the Movies - August 20, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-One of “Monday at the Movies.”  With the summer blockbuster season officially closed (I, The Cinema King, decree it – so let it be written, so let it be done), and in the wake of Prometheus, it’s time for that long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy.”

Alien (1979) – Ridley Scott has been mostly canonized for Alien, and not without reason; more than thirty years later the film remains frighteningly effective and gruesomely imaginative, even with the lights on (how wonderful this film must have been in a full darkened theater!).  The story, a hybrid of science fiction and horror tropes, mutates frequently, much like its eponymous creature, so that the audience never gets a comfortable handle on things; instead, we’re put on edge at every twist and turn.  The cast doesn’t do Oscar-caliber work, but they too are pivotal in subverting expectation, particularly Sigourney Weaver, in a star-making performance as the heroine Ripley, and Ian Holm, in brilliant creepy form as the shady scientist Ash.  As with Prometheus, this is a film that functions as much on a visceral level as an intellectual/aesthetic one, with a pervasive feeling of suspenseful dread over the whole affair.  Scott wisely knows how much to show and how much to conceal, such that the creature might even be behind your sofa (you’d best make sure it’s not).  But unlike its prequel successor, Alien never aspires beyond its ability; we don’t need to know why the crew of the Nostromo is in space, nor do they have any goals but survival – nor, in this case, do they need them.  This is an insular and claustrophobic film which feels as taut as its scope.  Kudos especially to H.R. Giger, whose sexualized designs pervade the film and give it an offbeat sensibility that quickly and efficiently distances Alien from those other spaceship movies while setting an aesthetic tone for the future of the filmed future.  Effective and intelligent, Alien deserves its status as a cultural icon.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!