Plot
In the early 22nd century, a colony ship owned by Weyland-Yutani, called Covenant, is transporting embryos to a new planet to repopulate, discovers a distress call from another planet.
Having recently lost several crew members including the ships captain, the new captain decides to investigate – despite the warning and objections from the previous captains widow.
When they get to the planet, they discover that a wreckage of another alien spacecraft with the belongings of missing Weyland employee Elizabeth Shaw aboard… but where is her android assistant David????
Direction
Directed by Ridley Scott, the original director of the franchise, and director of the previous installment Prometheus.
Scott has clearly moved with the times, and I’ve always quite enjoyed what he brings to the table. He has an almost eclectic filmography – that always brings something different.
Cast
Michael Fassbender is (one of) the only cast members to return from Prometheus to Covenant. Here he plays the ‘upgraded’ android Walter – who assists the crew of the Covenant. He also plays David – who has been stranded
on the deserted planet for a decade. To make it easier for audiences to know “who is who” Walter speaks with an American accent, and David still with a British.
Katherine Waterston plays ‘Daniels’ – one of the Covenant’s crew, and the widow of the ships Captain who dies in the opening moments of the film. She gets a “Ripley” type momnet later in the film, and is fairly solid during her performance.
Billy Crudup plays Chris Orum, the ship’s new Captain, following the death of the previous captain. He is a ‘man of God’ which doesn’t sit well with some of his crew.
Danny McBride plays ‘Tennessee’ – who is the ship’s main pilot – and clearly the screenplay makes use of McBride’s natural charisma and comedic abilities.
There is a slew of supporting cast – who mostly become ‘cannon fodder’. Some of them get more to do than others, and you do grieve them when the ‘go’. Some of them you don’t really get to know, but because all of the characters are pretty much married to one another – the remaining character grieves on our behalf.
In unbilled roles we have Guy Pearce returning as Peter Weyland and James Franco as ‘Daniels’ husband, and the original captain of the Covenant. Noomie Rapace, who was in Prometheus does not appear, but she is seen in flashbacks, and photos etc.
Breakdown
Set 15 years after the events of Prometheus, this is a sideways sequel to that film. Starting with a ‘flashback’ we learn of the creation of David by (many decades younger) Peter Weyland (from an unbilled Guy Pearce), and how the pairs ‘obsession’ with finding creation started.
In “present day” 2104 – we meet the crew of The Covenant – who have all been quickly awoken following a devastating accident aboard their ship. They are all assisted by Walter, the ship’s android, and an upgrade from the David model.
They are carrying thousands of embryos – to take to a much researched planet to populate it as another Earth. They discover a distress signal coming from a nearby planet, and chose the week long mission to go there above another two years in cryo sleep to get to the planet they were assigned.
The accident killed the ships captain, and his widow – Daniels, begs the new captain Chris to continue their mission instead of heading to unknown destination.
Does this all sound familiar? Because it feels as if this has been done at least a few times previously. Once at the planet – one group stays aboard the ‘main’ ship – while a scouting ship heads down. There they have the standard “bad connection” to the mothership, and there is even a storm that is passing through soon that makes things harder. Can someone spell cliche???
Soon the group of the ground start to get infected by an alien virus, and for some reason there is less protocols in place to handle infections (at least Meredith Vickers had the balls to burn it all down instead of letting it aboard the ship!). Because of the lack of foresight – this leads the gang to get trapped on the planet when their scouting ship explodes during an alien attack. One down I found here was the reliance on CGI effects for the Aliens. Considering how great the first film was with practical effects, and the fact that Ridley Scott directed the first film almost 40 years ago – you would think he’d up his game… but instead it is rather disappointing to see the final product.
The second half of the film, where David reveals himself to be on the planet, having crash landed over a decade ago with Elizabeth Shaw after escaping the Engineers planet. However now he is shown to be much more sinister, and antagonistic. He has created the alien hybrids, after exterminating all of the Engineers from this planet.
The scenes of Walter and David are done well, especially given the two are shown in one shot multiple times. There are also significant differences between them, as Walter’s upgrades mean he is unable to create – which amuses David, but plays it off as empathy as he tries to teach him.
There are a few solid fight sequences between the pair, which has some of the better practical effects paired with special effects.
We get the stock standard “group in mothership” coming to rescue “group on ground” following them being decimated by the Aliens – and the scene aboard the mother ship being attacked by an Alien while “female hero” Daniels straps herself on to kill it is good, but I found Waterston more ‘cute’ than badass.
The third act does just ‘keep going’ – and the big shock reveal – that Walter, who has beaten David in a battle, and gotten aboard the mother ship at the last minute… is actually David… just as he puts the survivors into hyper-sleep… is not that much of a shock. It does wonder how it will be addressed in future films….
Overall
Waterston is cute as Daniels, but she isn’t a ‘strong’ female lead.
Some cliche moments, and obvious twists have been seen before.
By now the… group lands on an alien planet… there is a mysterious infection that slowly takes out the team… there is an antagonist among them… there is a solid female lead and hero… is a tad redundant… this was still pretty good.
3.5/5
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Ryan's Movie Reviews 