Alien: Covenant (2017)

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Going back to my 'Prometheus' review, I mentioned it being something along the lines of a "prequel to a prequel." In that case, this movie represents the second prequel, and gives us further development of the Xenomorphs, as we learn how they grew into the monsters we all know and love. This time around, I'd argue that there's a bit more for the 'Alien' fans, and just speaking on a personal level, I felt like it tied 'Prometheus' and 'Alien' together quite nicely, giving us more to draw from 'Prometheus'.

I think a big part of the problem with 'Prometheus' is the whole existentialism plot that one kinda sorta has to be able to accept as a potential human origin theory, throwing religion and evolution both out the window. For yours truly, I just find the whole thing fun to think about. I'm not one to argue on any level, and believe in "live and let live" when it comes to such things. But at the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves that 'Prometheus' is just a movie that has fun with the "Engineer" theory (in short, an alien race created us).

Picking up eleven years from where 'Prometheus' left off, the ship Covenant heads towards planet Origae-6, carrying a crew of colonists and human embryos, meant to populate what they hope to make a second Earth. Here, we meet the ship's monitor, an android named Walter (Michael Fassbender), who is forced to reanimate the ship's crew during an emergency. Several casualties occur as a result of a neutrino burst, which damages the ship significantly, and ultimately kills the captain, Jake Branson (James Franco) in his stasis pod.

Following the rude awakening, no one is keep on getting back into their stasis pods for the remainder of their trip. But while the ship is being prepared, as these films tend to go, they receive a signal from a much closer, much more habitable planet, which they could get to without having to go back into stasis. Branson's widow, Daniels (Katherine Waterston) protests the trip, considering their set mission, but the ship's new captain, Chris Oram (Billy Crudup) overrules her opinion, and heads to the closer planet to check things out.

Here, an expedition team is deployed to investigate, and track the mysterious signal to a crashed ship. This is where a couple of crewmembers get themselves infected by microscopic spores that lead to some pretty brutal suffering, and the eventual alien for this film, the Neomorph, which, if you can believe it, looks like it has a much more painful birth than the typical chest-bursting Xenomorph. From there, it's fairly typical survival from the alien creature as per usual, but with this, there's a whole continuation of their overall creation.

I won't get into spoiler territory too much here, but we do learn that inspiration was taken from the Engineers who "made us," and there's more existential plot here, carried over from 'Prometheus'. So, much like 'Prometheus', this chapter may not be for everyone. Having said that though, I feel like this does a better job than 'Prometheus' by giving it a bit more of a bump of action. There are dry moments here and there, but I feel like the action and body horror (again, really well done and cringe-worthy) make up for it.

I think it's safe to say that one can treat these prequel films much the same way they could treat the 'AVP' films in that because they are all full-blown prequels to the franchise, they can easily be ignored if one doesn't like them. I still enjoy the ideas behind these films, but can understand where others might come from with their criticisms. Much like with other horror franchises, whether the film is good or bad, I can still have fun with its concepts, and in my own way kinda like 'Prometheus' and this. They still don't top the first two classics by any means, but I just don't find them to be that bad.

3/5

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