Alien: Covenant is the follow-up to 2012 movie Prometheus, which is the second installment of the Alien prequel series and the 6th overall film Of the Alien movie franchise. The film is directed by Ridley Scott, and stars  Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, and Danny McBride.

 I have to start this review by saying that I am slightly biased, all those who listen to our podcast, may have heard me mention that I am a fan of the Alien movies and I have been eagerly awaiting this installment. With that said let me get going with the review. This movie takes place 10 years after the events in Prometheus with a crew of a colonial vessel heading to a new planet to be colonized.  After unforeseen events, the crew is awakened from cryo-sleep,  and intercepts a transmission shortly thereafter and following up with an investigation the movie kicks off.  

I don’t want to  give any spoilers so I’ll stop with that little bit and I’ll give you my take on the  film. Overall I would have to say that this movie is much better than Prometheus  in some ways because it answered some questions in the overall alien movie universe. Whereas Prometheus, in my opinion, posed more questions than answers.  I have to say the best parts of this movie are the symbolization of creation and also showing the flaws of man.  Michael Fassbender’s betrayal of the two different Androids really hammers  these points home. The movie does a good job with the showing of human emotion, from the grief of lost, fear, anger, and the testing of one’s faith. The alien is really a backdrop in the film because of it’s simplicity, you know what the alien is about and what it’s driven by.  The question is how will humans deal with it, and on that note is my one knock against this movie.

Alien: Covenant is a good movie that had a great movie inside of it, except for certain points in the film where it was extremely predictable.  I said a couple of times to myself I saw that coming, and when I think about it I’m not shocked by the predictability of certain scenes, because Hollywood likes predictability and  the safety net that goes along with that, financially speaking.  I feel that most big budget films have a certain formula that the movie executives feel comfortable with and that is the formula that they are going to stick with.  Although there are also scenes in this film where Ridley Scott did show his creativity and originality, while dealing with what I can only assume was pressure from the studio.  Well I don’t want to go into a rant about Hollywood and it’s creativity problems, so I will wrap this review up with this.  Alien: Covenant does a pretty good job in making one understand what the point of Prometheus was while slowly showing you the evolution of the Alien creature.  In that regard Alien: Covenant does it’s job pretty well so I will give this film a 7.9 on a scale of 1 to 10.

-Nick