Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Covenant. Ok. You know, Alien Covenant is only 2 years old, but you would swear people have been fighting over it for at least 10 years. That’s how dense and intense the response has been to the second prequel in Ridley Scott’s lead-in to the original Alien, but it’s impossible to determine what’s going to happen with these films from this point forward. Not only did Covenant fall short of 20th Century Fox’s expectations, but by the time the dust had settled, Disney came along and bought the entire studio. While there’s been a decent outflow of Alien content in the meantime, from books and a mobile game to some comics and short films, the big wheels have stopped turning. People speculate, and one of these days, a certain segment of fandom will be proven right depending on what happens. However, it’s still important to reflect on where these movies have taken us and what’s ahead should that road open itself back up. Therefore, I choose to look at Covenant as a middle chapter, a bridge to something else. That’s what I’m considering as I examine how its attributes and flaws impacted me as a fan.
It’s also important to remember that Alien Covenant, like its predecessor, was supposed to be something else entirely. Prometheus served as a statement of intent, a means to show its audience that while the Alien universe is unique, it’s also very diverse. If that film was the jumping off point, surely the next installment had the potential to be bigger and possibly weirder. That’s what I expected anyway. And so it went from being Prometheus 2 to Paradise, and I’m not sure if it was the studio’s call or not, but "Alien" eventually wormed its way back into the title. Alien: Paradise Lost was a preliminary lock until the final title was revealed—Alien Covenant. Not only that, but Ridley Scott’s attitude towards the utilization of the xenomorph did a complete 360. He went from being adamant against using it again to fully reinstating the beast. The marketing wasn’t shy about pushing that fact either.
I must admit, the gradual erosion of Prometheus’ intentions was initially very disappointing because direct prequels struggle harder than most. There’s not only the unshakable burden of having to surprise the audience when they already know where things are leading, but there’s also the pressure of having to bridge the gap in a way that jives with what fans know, even down to minor details. It’s a very tricky undertaking. I mention this because the movie (possibly) upends certain expectations regarding where the xenomorphs come from. After the original film, it just became common knowledge that they belonged to the Space Jockey (Engineer). After all, it was an alien ship carrying aliens. No brainer. However, Alien Covenant seemingly posits that David, the android with questionable motives from Prometheus, is the true creator of the xenomorphs. I personally never believed it, but that’s neither here nor there. If you view Covenant as the middle chapter of a larger story, there’s still plenty of room for Ridley Scott and the writers to elaborate on that assertion or subvert it, but if the series ends here, it’ll be regarded as a failed attempt to push a preposterous explanation for the xenomorph’s existence. Ultimately, the presence of the xenomorph was very premature, but there was a lot more going on in this film that I really enjoyed.
For starters, David being the new torchbearer of the storyline was a solid development that stayed intact from its earliest days, back when it was still known as Prometheus 2. We always knew David had his own agenda, but Covenant leaves him stranded amidst the fallout of his genocidal actions for 10 years. When the franchise’s latest batch of victims reaches his location by way of a distress signal, he’s been playing with the black goo for so long that we’re eventually introduced to one of the most refreshing variations of the xenomorph genome: the Neomorph. It’s so savage by design that it could have carried the entire movie on its own. I just loved how the movie took aspects of the xenomorph life cycle that we’re all-too-familiar with and made them nastier. No longer are you afforded the luxury of willful ignorance by getting facehugged; you don’t know you’ve been infected until the result is clawing its way out of your back. Those aspects thrilled me. On top of that, there’s a character dynamic which lies at the heart of the film involving David and a newer android model named Walter, who is virtually identical to him. Responses to this vary; some people think it’s pretentious and homoerotic, while others think it’s very clever and deep. I’d say it’s all the above, and that’s what makes it so fascinating. It’s not something you would expect to see in an Alien film, but Michael Fassbender gives so much spark to both characters that you can’t help but follow along, even when David says, “You play, I’ll do the fingering.” It’s all a seductive ruse to assess Walter’s strengths and weaknesses through the guise of brotherhood. David knows Walter is not programmed to have emotions, so he has fun with that in a sociopathic way.
However, it’s after the xenomorph shows up via an admittedly beautiful chestbursting sequence (made possible by an unexpected musical touch from Jed Kurzel) that things start to veer south. Whereas the Neomorph takes the story two steps forward, the third act takes it one step backward by rushing aspects of the xenomorph’s lifecycle and the way they’re confronted. It just doesn’t feel like their presence was warranted beyond the studio’s insistence that fans would only stay invested in the movie if a xenomorph popped up. Would they have been more justified in a third installment? Absolutely. But again, people are getting hung up on how these prequels can logically connect to a movie that was made in 1979. At this point, a lot of aspects aren’t matching up, and if the storyline is ultimately abandoned in favor of a soft reboot, they never will. I feel like the prequels deserve a better fate than that, but only time will tell. In the meantime, it’s up to other storytellers to take a crack at what could happen next. After all, Alien is a cold universe, albeit one filled with diverging possibilities.
