Alien: Covenant (2017)

29 May 2017

Time will have to tell if I like Alien: Covenant more than the original 1979 Alien (9/10) film, but I will say it's in the running... it depends how it ages. In addition to continuing the history from Prometheus (2012, 7/10), it offers a deeper perspective of the franchise: cold, dark, and hollow.

The story isn't as questionable as Prometheus, because they didn't try to check a bunch of boxes for continuity purposes. Also the Covenant crew are colonists, so they have more of a right to be stupid (compared to the Prometheus crew, which did some pretty dumb stuff). The film definitely has teeth, aiming to keep the franchise both fresh and disturbing in a surprising but not quite surprising way considering Scott's hints.

Its faults are minor - Ridley Scott's working off a formula... not bad in itself but can make rewatching any of the series a little tiring and predictable (because they're all so similar). The other thing is that the mix of characters isn't quite right to the original formula, so the character interactions still bump around clumsily at times.

For now, a strong addition to Scott's Alien series. 8/10