Review: “Alien: Covenant”

Here’s a case study on how a lazy script can sink a movie that has everything else going for it.

I have a lot of respect for Ridley Scott, and the 6th entry into his Alien franchise is both effectively directed and beautifully shot. Honestly, it looks amazing. Unfortunately, while Alien: Covenant borrows the great creature design and increasingly more complex  mythology of the series, it comes across as a run-of-the-mill horror film, with all the perfunctory story beats that entails. Ultimately, I am most disappointed by how stupid the characters are. That’s a hallmark of horror cinema in general, sure, but not the Alien films specifically, and it feels lazy to not write them into more difficult situations that would have made their deaths more impactful. If the characters fail due to hard choices, that’s good writing. If they act out of clearly established internal motivations, that’s good writing. If the best explanation for their behavior is that it is necessary to introduce the next conflict or move the plot forward, then the seams are starting to show.

Before I get to any specific examples of this general dumbness, let me lay out the basics of the plot. A crew of space pilots, space scientists and space soldiers sets out on a mission with thousands of cryogenically frozen settlers to set up shop on a newly discovered habitable planet. There is an android named Walter (Michael Fassbender) who is in charge of the journey while the crew is in deep sleep. After an accident caused by solar flares, the crew is awake, the captain is dead, and they are receiving a transmission from a nearby planet that indicates that there are (or were at one time) humans there. After much debate, they decide to check out the signal, particularly because the planet may offer an alternative settlement location and none of the crew are real jazzed about the prospect of going back into hibernation for the next several years. Most of the crew goes to the surface of the planet, while the pilot and a few others remain in orbit with the frozen settlers. Inevitably, shit starts to go down.

So far, so good. I mean, we know that going to the planet is a terrible idea, but the characters don’t understand that they’re in a horror movie. Even when they meet David (an earlier version of the type of android that Walter is, also played by Fassbender) and things are clearly off with him and the planet in general, I can see them accepting his help. After all, the alternative is dealing with the titular aliens (or xenomorphs, whatever… nerds). From this point on, however, the decision-making just gets worse. Take terrible decision #1:  While the crew is stranded but ultimately believed to be safe, there are terrible ion storms surrounding the planet, cutting off communication between ship and crew. The ship’s monitors indicate that the storm will last for 8-9 hours. So instead of holding tight, pilot Danny McBride decides to put the whole ship full of thousands of people in extreme danger, flying into the storm in order to restore the signal. I get that his wife was among the stranded crew, but given the responsibilities of his position he’s practically committing a war crime. Terrible decision #2:  After crew members on the planet start disappearing one by one, and horrible things are clearly afoot, Katherine Waterston orders the remaining squad to split up to go find the missing crew. That’s fine for some idiot teenager at Camp Crystal Lake, but it’s painful to watch the film’s Ripley surrogate act with such cliched idiocy.

I won’t give away the film’s twist ending, even though the filmmakers have no qualms about telegraphing it from a mile away. I think the thing that Alien: Covenant really hammered home for me was how important the story is. In my review of ultra-low budget The Witching Season, I called out some of the filmmakers for not investing more in the writing process, because that’s the one thing that can make their work better that doesn’t cost money. That point is really underlined here when a great director, great cast and north of $100 million is wasted on a bad script.

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