Film Review - Alien: Covenant (2017)

Alien: Covenant is the new Alien film once more directed by Ridley Scott and this film takes place 10 years after the events of Prometheus from 2012 and the crew of the Covenant is awoken after a serious accident which leaves Walter the Synthetic (Michael Fassbender), Daniels (Katherine Waterston), the Captain (Billy Crudup) and Tennessee (Danny McBride) among others they later find a new planet and decide to go down and investigate but they may end up finding something sinister.

I was very nervous going into Alien: Covenant the previews for the film were not the best (the sight of the Alien in full view had some laughing when it showed before Fate of the Furious) and the Alien series has not been the same since James Cameron's 1986 sequel which forged a new direction but with the posters saying "Run, Hide" could I be persuaded.

Sadly not as I was very disappointed in this movie for two reasons:

- Firstly I thought that the feel of the film felt very predictable in the sense that when watching the film I felt like Ridley Scott was both remaking his original Alien film from 1979 as well as rebooting his 2012 film Prometheus and neither really felt all that satisfactory mainly because firstly Prometheus was not the best film wise and should probably have been left alone.

But secondly remaking the original Alien in the sense of trying to replicate that same sense of the slow burn, the mystery and the wonder all of that represented doesn't work anymore it worked in 79 because we didn't know what to expect you went to this Alien film thinking "Oh this is another Sci-Fi film it could be fun" and THEN you were shocked out of your skin here I felt like "I know what's coming Ridley hurry up."

- Secondly the characters in the film tend to become a bit of a gelatinous blob after a while Crudup was good as the captain but a lot of the others don't really seem to stick out all that much, Waterston was fine but very much lacked the strong presence Sigourney Weaver had and Fassbender really needs both a sharp director and a strongly focused script in order to really shine and if you've seen Brent Spiner do both Data and Lore on Star Trek the Next Generation his arc becomes very predictable.

But lastly when I came out of this movie one phrase came to my mind almost immediately and that was "Cameron was Right" and by that I mean when James Cameron set out to make Aliens he made it very clear that while he was very respectable of Ridley's vision he couldn't do what he had done and decided not to he would build on it and make his sequel a combat film and it worked beautifully as well as having a woman at the centre of the film this time there's a real sense of everything going backwards and very much in the same way the Prequel Trilogy sent Star Wars backwards.

And so that was Alien: Covenant a very disappointing entry in the series that sadly is only worth recommending to long time Alien fans, 1.5 out of 5.