When last we saw David, Michael Fassbenderâs mad scientist android from Prometheus, he was a decapitated head in a bag, carried onto an alien spaceship by a woman heâd just helped impregnate with a squid monster. As Prometheus ended, this odd couple set off into space, seeking the grunting, black-eyed muscle gods responsible for seeding the galaxy with life.
As Alien: Covenant begins, its titular ship is under repair. After completing a fix, Tennessee (Danny McBride) picks up a stray communication, and the crew follows the signal to a pristine planetâat which point the film becomes four old Alien movies happening at once. David shows up. (Surprise!) Bodies explode. (Surprise?) And, after 20 years, everyoneâs favorite fanged penis-monster triumphantly returns. (There is a surprise here, though opinions will vary regarding its quality.) The result is a film thatâs much less ambitious than Prometheus, but also significantly less pretentious and stupid. Covenant aims lower but hits more frequently.
And yes: Danny McBrideâs drawling, cowboy-hat-wearing character is named Tennessee, even though heâs really just âSlightly Quieter Danny McBride.â Even if you donât like him, at least his personality sets him apart from the ambulatory alien chow that constitutes two-thirds of the Covenant crew. Katherine Waterston plays Daniels, who starts off interesting but ends flattened into a generic, Ripley-esque shape. Billy Crudup fights some remarkably shitty dialogue to find a few compelling moments for his blandly religious Oram. And DemiĂĄn Bichirâs Lope is a stand-in for director Ridley Scottâa cigar-chomping bit of gruff with a wiry beard and a gravelly bark.
Actually, Lope is the lesser of two Ridley avatars here. Scott, a man who waited until his 70s to get in on the whole franchise thing, has finally indulged in the pastime of his filmmaking contemporaries: sticking himself in one of his movies. Spielberg does it constantly, through actors like Tom Hanks. Luke Skywalker is little more than a heroic fantasy version of George Lucas. And every Woody Allen movie is about Woody Allenâstarring either himself or a more attractive actor doing an impersonation.
And Fassbenderâs David is Ridley Scott. For a 30-minute chunk in the middle of Covenant, Scottâs filmmaking ethos pours out of Davidâs mouth in the form of a long treatise on his artistic motivations and creative impulses. The speech, like the film, promotes the virtues of pure clichĂ©âclassy, mellifluous clichĂ©, drowning in obviousness and mistaking the sound as profundity.
This part of Covenant is fascinating. Not just because Scott lays himself bare, but because Fassbenderâs performanceâas both David and the Covenantâs identical-looking droid, Walterâis so good that when the robotsâ disagreements regress from philosophy into fisticuffs, it feels beneath them both. (Hell, the fact Iâdespite knowing how the movie was madeâstill considered Fassbender two separate characters as I wrote that sentence speaks to how good he is.)
But then David picks up a flute and plays a melodyâlifted from the score of Prometheusâthat serves as an announcement that Scott has finished grandstanding and now returns you to some Alien greatest hits. Almost every movie in the series gets multiple nods, save for James Cameronâs Aliens (which is too bad, as a bit of Cameronâs skill with action would have gone a long way here).
As the bloody, squealing, and somewhat satisfying rehash concludes, Covenant calls to mind the painting by H.R. Giger that inspired Scottâs original Alien: a sinewy, satisfied beast, curled in a ball and staring at its own tail. Covenantâs victory is minorâafter 25 years, the Alien series has finally managed to make a movie that, however slightly, is better than 1992âs Alien3. The question is whether the beast will uncoil and move forward, or remain content to suck on itself like a pacifier.