Boiled down to the basics, the "Alien" movies are monster movie/slasher movie hybrids. Over the years, we've seen variations on this theme -- the 1979 original is a moody, sterling example of both genres, "Aliens" plays up the action elements, and "Prometheus" noodles out some philosophical ruminations on life, the universe, man's need for deities, and who put the bomp in the bomp-she-bomp -- but these films all boil down to terrified, hauntingly-lit human beings having gross encounters with those deadly, acid-blooded beasties.
"Alien Covenant" almost completely gives itself over to the scary stuff; director Ridley Scott dredges up a little of the "Prometheus" balloon juice (this film is a direct follow-up to that prequel), but he's more interested in an interstellar version of "Friday the 13th," with a respectable ensemble of actors as the camp counselors and various fanged slimeballs filling in for Jason Voorhees.
It's the mid-21st century, and the Covenant is on a seven-year journey from Earth to a distant colony planet, carrying 2,000 deep-sleeping colonizers as well as several drawers full of frozen embryos. An unforeseen snag forces the ship's computer (known as "Mother") and android Walter (Michael Fassbender) to wake up the crew for repairs. A calamity with one of the sleeping pods puts a reluctant Oram (Billy Crudup) in charge.
While spacewalking, Tennessee (Danny McBride) picks up a signal that seems to be coming from another earthling, emanating from a relatively nearby planet with a hospitable atmosphere. Second-in-command Daniels (Katherine Waterston) argues that this confluence of events is too good to be true, but Oram insists they check out the situation, since taking the colony there would mean the crew wouldn't have to go back into the now-unreliable pods.
Eschewing both helmets and gloves, a landing party descends on the planet and starts indiscriminately stepping on things. And you can imagine where all this is going.
Screenwriters John Logan ("Skyfall") and Dante Harper ("The Delicate Art of the Rifle") rig up a few surprises along the way, from the relationships among the crew members to some call-backs to "Prometheus," but ultimately, "Alien Covenant" is engaging only in those tense moments where someone is about to have an alien go into them or come out of them, and in those jolts of horror in which slime and entrails explode across the otherwise somber cinematography of Dariusz Wolski ("The Martian").
The writers also perpetrate a twist of which the film seems inordinately proud, despite the fact that only the deeply credulous or cinematically inexperienced won't see it coming. And we're still in prequel territory here, it's not like the ending is going to be consequential or unpredictable.
At the same time, Scott isn't holding back on his trademark visual grandiosity - he reflects digital readouts across an astronaut's helmet like nobody else, and the art department gives the seemingly welcome planet a palpable sense of doomed grandeur. The Covenant doesn't have that resort-in-space flash that the ship in the recent "Passengers" had, but that's a fitting choice given that this voyage seems to be a more businesslike affair. (Jed Kurzel's powerful score calls upon some of the series' previous themes but emerges as its own unique creation.)
Waterston is a fine actress, and squeezes what she can out of a fairly minimal character, but Daniels is no Ripley, and Sigourney Weaver's iconic heroine continues to be missed here. The victims-in-waiting are a stellar bunch - the cast includes Demián Bachir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett and Amy Seimetz - but this is the kind of movie that's more about putting meat puppets in the way of the alien than about character development.
Still, the meat-puppet-consumption is pretty spectacular, and on a gutbucket genre-film level, "Alien Covenant" delivers when it delivers. As with so many of its monster-movie peers, however, there's just not much to it when the creature isn't preening for its close-up.
All 8 'Alien' Movies Ranked From Worst to Best (Photos)
Alien Day is upon us, and "Alien: Covenant" will soon be too. As you prepare yourself for Ridley Scott's latest prequel-sequel, revisit the films that preceded it in sci-fi's best franchise.
8. "Alien vs. Predator Requiem" (2007) Presumably acting under the assumption that the first "AvP"'s biggest problem was its PG-13 rating, this misbegotten sequel's creators decided to go for the hard R. Featuring zero compelling characters but plenty of gruesomely hard-to-forget deaths -- young children and very pregnant women are among the victims here -- "Requiem" might be best understood as a grindhouse-ready B-movie with a $40 million budget. More faithful to its source material than its predecessor, it at least takes the advice of "Aliens": nuke it from orbit.
7. "AVP: Alien vs. Predator" (2004) Fan-serving movies that alienate segments of their core fanbase are rarely destined for greatness. So it is with this one, which committed the cardinal sins of being set on Earth and carrying the dreaded PG-13 rating. Aspiring to greater heights than its gory sequel but rarely reaching them, "AvP" is probably most memorable for its tagline: "Whoever wins ... we lose." Truly.
6. "Prometheus" (2012) Ridley Scott's divisive prequel is clunky and uneven, but even those who fault its execution can't deny its ambition. While "big things have small beginnings" could almost be read as a backhanded compliment, Scott returning to the "Alien" director's chair for the first time since 1979 signaled a rebirth that, if "Alien: Covenant" proves worthwhile, will have been worth the growing pains.
5. "Alien: Resurrection" (1997) Here's something the mainstream media won't tell you: All four original "Alien" movies are awesome. Though it'd be foolish to suggest that the latter two are on the same level as "Alien" and "Aliens," so too would it be an oversight to deny the charms of "Amélie" director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's contribution to the sci-fi saga. Winona Ryder makes for a fine addition to the franchise, and seeing Sigourney Weaver play the hunter rather than the hunted is a refreshing change of pace.
4. "Alien: Covenant" (2017)
Part "Prometheus," part "Alien," this chapter in the saga is also the best in more than 20 years. It expands on the lore that Ridley Scott has become increasingly fixated on while also delivering the old-school thrills that made the series great in the first place. As the prequels slowly catch up to the original masterpiece, the larger picture is coming into focus.
3. "Alien 3" (1992) David Fincher disavowed his debut feature due to studio meddling, and no one else was especially pleased with it either. Watch the Assembly Cut and its 25 minutes of added footage, though, and you'll see that at least one version of this threequel is severely underrated. It's here we see that, no matter what she does -- including sacrifice herself -- Ripley will never be rid of either the alien or the Weyland-Yutani corporation. She was always a hero, and here she becomes a martyr as well.
2. "Aliens" (1986) Arguably the definitive sci-fi action flick (its only real competition was also directed by James Cameron), "Aliens" proved that sometimes more is more. There are almost as many one-liners as there are xenomorphs in this acidic sequel, most of them courtesy of the late, great Bill Paxton ("Game over, man!"), as well as what may be the series' most haunting line: "My mommy always said there were no monsters -- no real ones -- but there are." You don't know the half of it, Newt.
1. "Alien" (1979) The perfect organism. "Aliens" is more pleasing in a lizard-brain kind of way, but at its heart this franchise has always been better suited to horror than to action. The slow creep of the xenomorph itself, the murky mythos, the cold aesthetic: pulse rifles are great, but nothing gets the pulse racing quite like watching the doomed crew of the Nostromo happening upon LV-426 and changing the world of sci-fi forever.
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TheWrap critic Michael Nordine ranks all the films in the sci-fi horror franchise, including "Alien: Covenant"
Alien Day is upon us, and "Alien: Covenant" will soon be too. As you prepare yourself for Ridley Scott's latest prequel-sequel, revisit the films that preceded it in sci-fi's best franchise.
