Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Alien Covenant: How Did We Come This Far? (SPOILERS)

It's been nearly forty years since Ridley Scott gave us Alien (1979), the innovative bridge between Horror and Sci-Fi which still haunts the public consciousness with its unforgettable body horror and rundown take on futuristic space travel. Thirty odd years ago, James Cameron did the unthinkable - create a sequel that equaled (some say surpassed) such an iconic film with his own masterpiece, the action classic Aliens (1986). From that point on, Fox decided to rub out the series' integrity as they milked its cash potential with sequels of gradually denigrating quality, eventually culminating in the much-maligned Alien vs. Predator crossover. The second of those films was a C-grade movie so forgettable it felt like a sophomore film project.

Scott decided to follow up on the original film (ignoring the franchise as a whole) in a sense with 2012's Prometheus, which was marketed not so much as a prequel but simply a film that preceded the original Alien within the same shared universe. While it shared many deep connections with Alien, it was indeed an entirely different sort of film. While Alien has taken a life of its own as a cinematic masterpiece, its ambitions were small. It wasn't much more than an expertly crafted slasher film, with the theme of corporate evil simply serving as an intriguing plot twist to add to the film's tension. Prometheus on the other hand is a film entirely about deep themes such as creation and faith. It didn't result in a better film. In fact, one of the major complaints about Prometheus was that its ambitions far exceeded its grasp.

Alien: Covenant serves as a sequel to Prometheus, albeit one that is intended to point toward the direction of the original Alien film. This means that it shares the grand, epic scale of Prometheus while providing more beloved creatures and features viewers have come to demand from an Alien film, evident in some of the Prometheus' criticism. As a result, Alien: Covenant is an odd, mixed bag of a film experience. Like Prometheus, its epic themes of creation tend to be at odds with its sometimes surprisingly workmanlike action and creature effects. It's almost as if Scott is attempting to pepper his vision of the Prometheus tangent with elements from the first two Alien films. While it's a delight to see chestburster, facehugger and the xenomorph creatures as we know and love them, they're also so familiar that we applaud their appearance rather than recoil in horror.

Covenenant's premise is predictable, but not to a fault. A colony ship receives a distress signal from the planet where the survivors of Prometheus crashed. You can guess the rest to a T. A group of explorers from the colony ship discovers what appears to be an uninhabited planet only to find that it's essentially a testing ground for David (Michael Fassbender), the sinister android from Prometheus who is strongly implied to be the principal creator of the Xenomorph creatures.

These further explanations to unravel the mysterious origin of the creatures is the best feature of this film, and Prometheus. If anything, Covenenant heighten one's appreciation of Prometheus. At this point, it's clear that Scott is attempting to answer many questions from the original Alien film within the span of several films. So far, Scott has shed light on the origin of the Xenomorphs, the "Space Jockey" creature from the first film, the often untrustworthy Weyland-Yutani androids and how they are connected, providing a surprisingly satisfying story of creation in the process. It's a story that will require a familiarity with the original Alien films and one or two more films to complete, but it's a direction worthy the franchise's deep and mysterious back story.

Unfortunately, these aspects fall at odds with the film's tendency to be gaudy, if not outright silly at times with its visual effects. Even in the worst of the Alien films, it's clear that the magic of the Xenomorph creatures and their enduring menace lies in practical designs. Thus it's surprising that the director of the first masterpiece of subtlety would green-light some of the most laughable creature designs seen in the franchise so far. There are at least two "chestburster" scenes in the film which are properly built up with the right amount of tension and horror only to be completely deflated with monsters who could have easily fit into a video game film adaptation from twenty years ago.

The first two Alien films were revolutionary in their dystopian, stripped down approach to a distant future set in space, from Scott's cast of "truck drivers" to the dark, haunting industrial designs courtesy of James Cameron in Aliens. Like Prometheus, Covenant takes advantage of modern designs, from pseudo-smartphones to holograms that look like they were designed at least thirty years after the future depicted in Alien. One can excuse Covenant for its gloss as its a prequel, and the Alien timeline could simply depict a timeline in which those technologies have degraded. This isn't to say Covenant isn't a sightly experience. With its sprawling, gorgeous scenery and impeccable set designs, it holds up with the best of any contemporary sci-fi blockbuster. As a visual auteur by nature, one can't blame Scott for having fun flexing his craft.

The cast is mostly forgettable, with Katherine Waterston filling in the requisite Ellen Ripley-like role, Billy Crudup as a bumbling recently-promoted captain and Danny McBride as a tough-as-grits pilot. While everyone turns in a fine performance, there's unfortunately little that can be done with these necessary yet completely unoriginal caricatures. The glaring exception is Michael Fassbender, who plays dual roles to great aplomb as the helpful android Walter and the shady David, who has grown into a villainous role since his introduction in Prometheus. David is a character who intrigued us (thanks to Fassbender's icy, unnerving portrayal) in that film and is revealed as an important component of the entire Alien universe. If anything, Fassbender distracts from the film's creature antagonists as an android who has independently harvested some of the worst habits of humanity.

It doesn't seem fair to dub Alien: Covenant a bad film by any means, but it's wildly uneven, buoyed only by Scott's peerless talents. It does suffer the unfortunate fate of being tied to one of the most beloved sci fi franchises of all time. Comparisons to the original films are unavoidable, despite Scott's endeavor to make a completely different type of film with his new series. Alien: Covenant seems to be the first step towards bringing us the creatures we all love from those first films, but it's also a hurried step. Even within the span of a very long two hours, it seems that Scott could have saved a thing or two for the next sequel. Even with all of its bumps and mishaps, Covenant is still very competently made, and it's always a joy to see another entry in this franchise, whether it's horrible or merely okay. It is at the very least, a worthy continuation of the franchise's return to form made with Prometheus.