DVD Review: Alien: Covenant
Alien: Covenant is the sequel to the prequel Prometheus, and a prequel to the announced prequels to the original Alien film. In other words it’s the first film of the Alien prequel trilogy. Now don’t hate me, but I didn’t see Alien until way after I had made my way through James Cameron’s Aliens (my first Alien film) and those that followed including the regrettable AVP films. By the time I got round to watching Alien I was done with the series. But Ridley Scott’s film that birthed a franchise got me interested in Xenomorphs again.
So excited I was when Prometheus was announced, even more so when Alien: Covenant was.
Alien: Covenant is set 10 years after Prometheus, in 2104, and is set on a colonist ship, some seven years away from it’s destination. This ship contains 2,000 settlers sleeping blissfully in their Cryo Pods, a shit load of embryos (Science will populate this new planet), and the small crew, also asleep in their pods.
So who, you may well ask, is at the helm of this essential ghost ship? That would be Michael Fassbender, an upgraded version of David, who goes by the name Walter, and of course the ships computer, Mother.
But of course a freak storm hits the ship and emergency measures are put into place and the crew is woken. I mean it would be the most boring film ever if something didn’t wake the crew early, right? Very conveniently, whilst out side making repairs to the ship one of the crew picks up a radio signal from a nearby planet. Upon scanning the planet they realise that it is a better match for population than the one seven years away. Might be worth a closer look?
When only one of the crew has reservations about the planet – and she makes sure she goes on record – they deiced that a planet this good that is only mere weeks away, is definitely worth checking out.
Yes, I think we all know this is the biggest mistake the crew of Covenant will ever make.
Now if you’ve seen the trailers, you kinda know what to expect, and Covenant lives up to the expectation of those trailers.
As you can imagine, shortly after the crew set down on this undiscovered planet, things start to go wrong. And if I say any more we’ll quickly dive into spoiler territory. Lets just say that things pick up pretty quick and the film becomes a wild ride with plenty of twists and shocking revelations.
What I will say is that the film has many great characters, but the stand out ones are the cocky cowboy hat wearing Tennessee, the pissed off girl in the white singlet from the trailers, played by Katherine Waterston and of course Michael Fassbender’s creepy as fuck android Walter who comes off as a cross between a subservient butler and a pathological serial killer. Hell if the storm hadn’t hit and the crew stayed in their pods, Fassbender’s Walter alone on a massive ship could have made for an engaging film. Fassbender is that good in this role.
Rating: R16 Violence, offensive language & horror.
FILMGUIDE rating:
