Three stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, profanity, nudity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang
In space, no one can escape being
surrounded by idiots.
The Alien franchise, just shy of four decades old, continues to crank
merrily along, of late shepherded by founding director Ridley Scott. To some
degree that’s a good thing, because his films always are handsomely mounted,
crisply paced and graced with compelling ensemble casts.
They’re also usually a great deal
smarter than this newest installment.
Alien: Covenant suffers from the same
bone-stupid plotting that made the recently released Life — a rather blatant Alien
rip-off in its own right — such an infuriating experience. Nobody has a lick of
sense, the various characters utterly ignoring chain of command and basic
safety protocols, while bickering and squabbling like school kids. As I’ve
noted in the past, if these numbskulls represent Humanity’s Finest, then we deserve to be massacred by outer space
nasties.
This aggravating film’s script
comes courtesy of Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan and Dante Harper, who
sacrifice plot logic on the altar of routine gore effects. You’ll find little
genuine suspense here; all the alien attacks — whether by the now-familiar
ovomorphs, facehuggers, chestbursters or adult xenomorphs — are telegraphed by
maddeningly unhurried reveal shots.
Most of these encounters are
by-the-book horror flick stuff: Somebody hears something, s-l-o-w-l-y turns
around — or peers at something — and whammo!
More blood on the screen.
This film offers neither the
shock of the opening installment, nor the full-throttle energy of James
Cameron’s immediate follow-up, 1986’s Aliens.
Most subsequent films were
disappointments of one sort or another, until Scott re-ignited the franchise
with 2012’s Prometheus. As a prequel
to everything that had come before, the Jon Spaihts/Damon Lindelof script
established an intriguing back story that explored the creation of the
xenomorphs, the origins of mankind, and the space-faring race of giant
“Engineers” who apparently seeded life throughout galaxies. Very high-falutin’
God stuff.
This new film takes place 10
years later — still roughly 20 years prior to the events in Alien (for those who pay attention to
such things) — as the deep-space Earth colony ship Covenant makes its way to
the distant planet Origae-6. The crew and 2,000 colonists are deep in
hyper-sleep, the ship monitored solely by a synthetic android named Walter
(Michael Fassbender) and an onboard computer dubbed Mother (voiced by Lorelei
King, sounding very much like Sigourney Weaver). Once the journey is complete,
the settlers hope to establish a new human outpost.
A freak celestial event triggers
all sorts of on-board damage, prompting Mother to waken the crew. The captain’s
sleep pod malfunctions and kills him, putting control in the hands of his
second: Oram (Billy Crudup), an insecure nebbish whose religious faith is
regarded with suspicion by most everybody else, and who clearly lacks the
psychological strength for well-reasoned command decisions.
Thus does this story succumb to
its first — but far from last — case of “movie (il)logic.”
Repairs are made, but Covenant is
years from its destination. Established options are tabled when one of the
pilots, the hard-charging Tennessee (Danny McBride), picks up an unusual radio
signal: definitely human, of somebody singing — of all things — a John Denver
song. They track the signal to a nearby planet, which at first blush seems to
be an undisturbed, Earth-like paradise of cloud-capped mountains, lush forests
and fields: perhaps equally viable as a colony home.
Never mind that Origae-6 was
meticulously scanned and probed, before this colony mission was launched, and
is known to be safe ... whereas this
uncharted planet is a total unspecified quantity. Never mind, as well, that its
Eden-like qualities are compromised rather severely by nasty, planet-blanketing
storms. Oram deems it worth checking out, and leads the bulk of the crew to the
surface.
Which they then explore without
bio-hazard suits or anything else — gloves, even? — that could protect them
from this world’s unidentified dangers.
Sigh.
This was pretty much the point at
which I checked out.
Needless to say, our
under-trained, brain-dead and essentially defenseless heroes aren’t alone on
this world. And, as has been the case with previous series entries, this
adventure messes further with xenomorph biology, accelerating gestation to an
absurd degree, solely so Scott can start splashing the environment with — his
own words, in the press notes — “a lot of claret.”
Few of the crew members establish
much of a presence, although our hearts and minds definitely are with Daniels
(Katherine Waterston), the terraforming expert who blossoms under stress into
the stalwart Sigourney Weaver/Ripley surrogate. Waterston covers an impressive
— and always credible — emotional range, as Daniels struggles past loss (the
deceased captain having been her husband) and wins our respect as the one
person who behaves intelligently and uses her scientific smarts.
Aside from Walter and Tennessee,
the other modest standouts are biologist Karine (Carmen Ejogo), navigations
expert Upworth (Callie Hernandez) and security head Lope (Demián Birchir). The
rest are just, well, wafer-thin victims.
Gruesome encounters aside, the
series also has been known for its fascinating depiction of synthetic beings,
and Fassbender’s Walter is no exception. The actor has the bland,
looking-past-everything gaze that immediately feels inhuman, and the gentle
cadence of his voice immediately evokes memories of HAL, from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Fassbender also moves
intriguingly, like a mime lacking a script, but with a sense of awareness; it’s
as if Walter constantly modulates his behavior in order to “blend” with his
human comrades, and not disturb them with any semblance of “otherness” (which
is, in fact, precisely the case). It’s a richly compelling performance, and we
can be pleased that the storyline spends so much time with both Walter and
Daniels.
The other intriguing aspect of
this series’ depiction of synthetics is the uncertainty factor. The first
film’s Ash (Ian Holm) proved to be a malevolent entity answering to vile,
pre-programmed instructions by the sinister Weyland Corp. that has financed all
deep-space missions. Bishop (Lance Henriksen), in the next film, was resolutely
one of the Good Guys ... and so forth, as the films continued.
The synthetic aboard the
Prometheus, David, clearly was suspect, with delusions of creator grandeur.
Given that David also was portrayed by Fassbender, the actor’s return here as
the android “twin” Walter immediately raises questions in our minds, which can’t be known by the Covenant crew ... and that’s
tantalizing.
Indeed, there’s much to admire
here: the impressive planetary scale and atmospheric verisimilitude provided by
special effects supervisor Neil Corbould; the eerie, unsettling Jed Kurzel
score, with its welcome references to motifs from previous films; and Dariusz
Wolski’s gorgeous cinematography and Chris Seagers’ awesome production design.
And, yes, the performances by Fassbender and Waterston.
Scott also builds to a kick-ass
climax that (finally!) delivers some Cameron-style excitement, along with an
epilog that’ll rattle unsuspecting nerves.
Such a shame, then, that all this
good stuff is undercut repeatedly by so much dumb-as-a-post behavior. It’s hard
to retain any emotional involvement when so many of these shallow characters
have the nitwittedness of thick-headed teenagers in low-rent horror flicks.
I expected better of Scott, who —
in turn — should have demanded much
better from his writers.
1 comment:
The problem with horror... One horror movie? It's possible to do one really good ghost story. It's a classic cautionary tale with a bad or barely survived ending. In a one shot, it can shine and shudder us into sleeping with a security blanket for a few weeks. Those are the movies we love. But they're all ONE SHOTS.
Put it in a franchise? The first one may, May, be good. Everything else after that, however, requires stupidity on the part of the characters. How else is the big bad going to go about killing off the cast? The smart ones remember the first story, or have common sense imparted from other cautionary tales, and Don't Fall For It. What you get out of screenwriters is "Darwin: The Sequel". Then "Darwin: The Culling of the Idiots". And if the second two actually made enough money, you get this concept, that should have died after the first good film, kicked down the storyline until you get "Darwin: Do You Get The Point Now?"..
The challenge in horror for a franchise is to have the horror up its game, and do so in a way that doesn't end up being campy. Not many are able to pull it off.
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