To say Ridley Scott is back in form in the sci-fi world would be a little premature. While The Martian was definitely a great quality movie, his follow-up with Alien: Covenant did not live up entirely to expectations.
Still, Covenant was a much better movie than Prometheus ever was. At least there's that.
The marketing has impressed and raised hype and expectations. And to a degree, Covenant did satisfy there.
The beats were quite similar to Scott's first Alien movie. The slow build-up in the beginning, the small crew, the detour. And very quickly, the sci-fi turned into horror, and it was all done very well. None of those silliness with characters who were supposed to be intelligent like in Prometheus as the beats moved very fast in the middle.
But, as I'm not someone who studied the Alien franchise, here was also where I got a little lost as these baby Xenomophs look quite dissimilar to the one in the first Alien movie. So is this how Xenomorphs looked and behaved before Alien?
Also, perhaps I have to revisit Prometheus again, but I do not recall Michael Fassbender's character in that one had an evil turn at the end which would led him to his actions as proposed in this one.
But these were actually easily overlooked in the grand scheme of storytelling. The negatives however came in the final act. That's where I thought Scott still let his vision fall apart.
First were some of the ways individual crew members were picked off one by one, which did not feel inspired. Second, the "temple" where the crew were led to did not have the sense of space; and it did not feel like how one person's scream cannot be heard throughout the whole vicinity. Just like how there was too much time spent between the two androids that did not involve anyone else.
And the final showdown thrusted Katherine Waterston a little out of character as she very suddenly became someone she did not seem to be when the story started. Her character act, if you will, jumped from level one to level five.
Sure, I get that I am nitpicking a few things here; but watching the movie progressed just did transition as smoothly as I had hoped. And that shower scene felt very out of place in relation to the events that just transpired.
Had it been a better movie, I would not have minded paying tickets to watch it again.
Nevertheless, a very enjoyable movie to take us back into the Alien mythology and I'm looking forward to what Scott has in store for us next.
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