Alien: Covenant, directed by Ridley Scott, takes us on a journey with a spaceship aptly named ‘Covenant’. With its direction towards a faraway planet, the crew and the new residents of said planet are in hypersleep. Only one person, a humanlike android named Walter (Michael Fassbender) is awake and in complete control of the ship.
Now as far as the science is concerned, they get a D- because they explain absolutely nothing in the film. The hypersleep, the embryos (why do they have them?), how are they surviving while in hypersleep, it seems like they stole ideas from various sci-fi movies the past three years and put it together for this.
After a disturbance wakes up members of the crew, they start receiving strange messages from a planet they’re unfamiliar with. The captain makes a bold (and stupid) decision to track the foreign signal and follow it (and guess who’s there waiting for them…).
What I just did in the first three paragraphs is what they’ll spend the first hour doing in the film. The first 70 minutes or so are dedicated to building the plot and character development. Most people are coming to see this for the inevitable, but the writers are going to make you wait (Oh we’re gonna force you to learn this story! There’s a story!).
When you finally get to the action, the new generation of alien is just as creepy as the original (pictured above). They’re even faster than the original, they’re solid white with spikes along their spine and tail, and they’re equally as hell-bent on death. But how are they able to survive and multiply on this planet? That, they actually do explain.
This is the point where they connect Prometheus to Alien: Covenant, so to avoid any spoilers, I’ll leave that alone for you (you’re welcome). The action from there on is awesome. There’s comedy, there’s death, and of course, aliens. Just when you think you’ve seen all the ways they can hatch, find a host, or simply kill someone, the producers shock you with something new.
I give Alien: Covenant 8 out of 10. Audiences should be satisfied with the mountainous levels of suspense. Again, you’re going to be listening for the first hour or so, but thankfully the movie is two hours and two minutes. This is one of those fun films to see on opening night. But know that it is Rated-R for a reason so unless your kids have already seen Alien films in the past, leave them at home.
[…] on, the film is 2 hrs. 21 mins and you won’t have to sit through the first hour of nauseating character development (the first half of Alien: Covenant was a straight snooze fest). This one’s cool for kids […]