The post Movie Review – Alien: Covenant appeared first on The Scribbling Geek.

If you’re only there for the Xenomorphs, Alien: Covenant will satisfy. Otherwise …

Movie Synopsis

While on route to Origae-6, the colony ship Covenant is damaged by a neutrino shockwave, forcing the crew to awake from stasis. Subsequently, the crew receives a human transmission from a nearby habitable planet, and on investigating, learns of the ultimate fate of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw from the Prometheus mission years ago.

Snappy Review

So I’ve read, Alien (1979) was a winner because it so successfully, so creatively, combined different genres of fear. Claustrophobia, paranoia, and most of all, body horror. Aliens (1986) continued this formula with the introduction of a new motif, that of motherhood. The famous slugfest at the end of Aliens wasn’t just one bitch against another. It was a desperate mother against a furious one. Both, metaphorically, embodied so much more than just survival.

Which, to put it in another way, translates to a slew of potent possibilities for future sequels. There were many attempts, including one curious crossover. In the late 2000s, Ridley Scott and company decided not to go forward, but backward. Rather than explore what happened beyond Ellen Ripley, they decided the juice would be in investigating the Xenomorphs’ origins. And with that, all associated planetviews and philosophies.

Which isn’t a wholly bad idea per se, except Alien is at its heart, a space horror franchise. The criticism for Prometheus applies to Alien: Covenant in every way. The story simply does not have the shell for the many lofty ideas tossed about. In fact, the more it blabs about these, with Byron and Shelly quotes, the more it distracts from the main attraction, which is that of Xenomorphs ambushing and tearing hapless humans apart. This is salvaged to an extent in the second half, by the story dropping these concepts and the mystery of the Engineers, and reverting to grisly one-on-one combat. Unfortunately, the fun of the slaughter is already lost at this point. Frankly speaking, the revealed purpose for the Xenomorphs came across as rather staid too. I would really have preferred that the movie focused on uncovering the Engineers, or just killing Xenos one after another. Mixing the two just didn’t work in so many ways.

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