Ridley Scott
Alien: Covenant

By now, Ridley Scott is one of the most maligned filmmakers in Hollywood, at least by the critics. And yet, even his latest films, while not extraordinary, had shown some minimal signs of solidity. As for this new Alien, it was implicitly understood for some time that critics would consider it a bit of a flop, while the most ardent fans would enjoy new typical sequences of the franchise. In my view, the film contradicts both these predictions.

Alien: Covenant is obviously a film with some naiveté, but I left the theater fully satisfied. Let's immediately explain and downplay the criticisms: it’s obvious that if you make a film that includes the word Alien in the title, you’ll have to include some scenes with monsters bursting out of people’s stomachs. It’s the normal syntax of the saga's cinema, it cannot be helped. Saying that Covenant is a mannerist remake of things we’ve already seen is a bit much. About predictability: it's clear that since there is a tetralogy that follows chronologically, the Xenomorph will manage to survive. But everything else is to be discovered, and it seems to me that Scott and the screenwriters (talented ones) go to great lengths to construct an interesting, deeply haunting scenario full of philosophical and religious-anthropological references.

What is actually most surprising about Covenant is that the fear and terror don’t come so much from the death sequences, massacres, or horror. Those are internalized by the audience. Here, terror is different; it is conceptual. Without revealing too much, the thematic core of the film is constituted by a reflection on being a deity, on the ability to create. And the issue reverberates in many games and references between the many creators (many Prometheus) and the many creatures that rebel against their fathers. The red thread connects all the premises of the 2012 film to this one’s developments, further rehabilitating Prometheus and enhancing its philosophical scope with Covenant.

How much is creation an act of love and how much instead is it an act of narcissistic selfishness? And how much will the created accept the ontological superiority of the creator? Obviously, as in the best tradition of the saga, these cues can be subject to contemporary readings, in this case referred to the relationship throughout history between man and god. A second interesting cue is the weakness inherent in humanity, in the choices man makes based on his feelings. Although sometimes the characters are a bit too clumsy, what makes the various behaviors and mistakes of the protagonists thematic is this continuous recurrence of choices at a crossroads: priority is consistently given to feelings, to emotions, to the desire to be appreciated and recognized as friendly by one’s peers. But a god, if he wants to be one, must be alone.

As for the more aesthetic component, I found the bloodless parts truly evocative and chilling, when the film’s negative protagonist enunciates his theories, his ambitions. The horror is paradoxically given by his being too human yet devoid of morality: and his creation is proof of this. A god is only a god because he is a creator, or must he have a moral foundation? Does such a distinction really exist, or does every creature, like every child, deserve love just because? The planet on which most of the action takes place is perfect for creating cosmological suggestions, for suggesting a remorseless, terrifying solitude. The horror is truly all interior and amplified by pitch-black atmospheres.

The violence, shootings, and manhunts arrive as a surplus compared to the film's conceptual core. And they are dignified, being limited to specific phases and often differentiated from the imaginary of Alien. It’s pointless to focus on the darkness, on the unknown of where the Xenomorph will come from. These tricks have already been widely exploited. And so here the duel becomes spectacular, even too much so, recalling some somewhat excessive passages of The Martian. The most typical moments are present, but they are necessary and confined. There’s a late attempt in the final part to refresh these pieces with appreciable ideas such as assuming the alien's point of view or using entirely dissonant music. This is to emphasize the obviousness of certain developments: “I’m showing you this thing, I know you knew it would go this way, but let’s take two minutes to watch it together. It’s fun, isn’t it?”

There are so many other nuances that it makes no sense to anticipate here, but they help greatly in thickening the film’s solidity. Certainly, the not-insignificant problem remains that the protagonists often behave like perfect idiots. But one must also keep in mind that the crew is unaware of everything. Not the viewer, and for this reason, Ridley has, I would say, worked well to propose several variations and insights.

Then there’s the character issue: if Katherine Waterston’s Daniels owes too much to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley (but her terrified wide eyes are all hers), here we have a Fassbender possibly in one of his highest performances ever. I won't reveal why, but there is really something to be pleased with. Even the characters of the Covenant have their minimal narrative dignity, there is a bit of space for many of them, and this helps the emotional dimension, which undeniably struggles a bit to take off. Not free from defects, certainly, but fully convincing in the conceptual construction. A horror less of a genre and more of an auteur.

7/10