ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

alien: covenant (2017) movie

Genre              |  Science Fiction

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   122 minutes

Released         |   11 May 2017

cast

Michael Fassbender ... David / Walter
Katherine Waterston ... Daniels
Billy Crudup ... Oram
Danny McBride ... Tennessee
Demián Bichir ... Lope
Carmen Ejogo ... Karine
Jussie Smollett ... Ricks

director

Ridley Scott

writer

​Dan O'Bannon ... (based on characters created by) and
Ronald Shusett ... (based on characters created by)
 
Jack Paglen ... (story by) and
Michael Green ... (story by)
 
John Logan ... (screenplay by) and
Dante Harper ... (screenplay by)

cinematographer

​Dariusz Wolski

music

​Jed Kurzel

film editor

​Pietro Scalia

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​240,745,764  

Australia                 $6,939,228​​​​​​​​​

North America       $​74,262,031

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the best dialogue

Walter: One wrong note eventually ruins the entire symphony.

Oram: I met the devil when I was a child and I've never forgotten him. So, David, you're going to tell me exactly what's going on or I am going to seriously fuck up your perfect composure.
David: As you wish, Captain. This way.

Oram: What do you believe in, David?
David: Creation.

ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) MOVIE IMAGES

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Posters

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Posters

ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, members (Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup) of the colony ship Covenant discover what they think to be an uncharted paradise. While there, they meet David (Michael Fassbender), the synthetic survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition. The mysterious world soon turns dark and dangerous when a hostile alien life-form forces the crew into a deadly fight for survival.

ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 8 May 2017
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐½

ALIEN: COVENANT serves as the course correction the long-running Science Fiction/Horror franchise was in need of after the narratively challenged PROMETHEUS attempted to take the series in a different direction back in 2013. Ridley Scott, returning to helm his third Alien-universe feature film strives to take ALIEN: COVENANT back to the formula that worked for him forty years ago, when the original ALIEN (1979) surprised and terrified cinema audiences.

As a slow-burn thriller, COVENANT works quite well; its deliberate pace and ongoing revelations building to the confrontation audiences have come to expect between the human protagonist and the more-human-than-human antagonist. Scott and Gladiator screenwriter John Logan wisely choose to use the hostile creature in a minimalist fashion; one of the deliberate choices made to parallel the first film. Where the film falters is in the execution of some key set-pieces where the staging comes across as clumsy and cliche-ridden in terms of genre tropes that a filmmaker of Scott’s experience should know how to avoid.

The movie opens with an extended prologue that pre-dates the Prometheus mission. The sequence, between Guy Pearce’s Peter Weyland and Michael Fassbender’s newly-activated David android, provides additional exposition to help explain Prometheus in the broader context of the ALIEN franchise and as an apology for that film’s meandering predilection with religious motifs and ancient tales of creation.

The theme in ALIEN: COVENANT is the same as PROMETHEUS, but it’s stated with much greater clarity and purpose. Man created the Android. The Android is perfect. Man is not perfect. What should replace Man? There is delicious irony in the answer to that question, but it’s not without spoilers and it’s better left for the viewer to find out the answer to that question.

The film proper jumps to 2104, ten years after the Prometheus mission, aboard the USCSS Covenant; a deep space vehicle headed for Origae-6, a habitable planet far across the universe. The ship is diverted from its mission when a neutrino burst damages one of the craft’s solar energy sails, forcing the 15 person crew out of hypersleep to effect repairs. While on the spacewalk to fix the damage, Danny McBride’s Tennessee picks up a strange message which turns out to be an interplanetary version of John Denver’s “Take Me Home”. Viewers who know their Alien movies will be acutely aware of what happens when the ship diverts course to answer an unknown space beacon...

Across the board, performances are, at worst, solid and, at best, fantastic. The standout is Michael Fassbender, playing the dual-role of the artificial intelligence David and his newer, less idiosyncratic update, Walter. Fassbender has the ability to convey so much with the slightest facial twitch or eye movement that the viewer is consciously unaware that something has happened; yet in their subconscious they know that “something” has changed (not always for the best).

Franchise fans will become wrapped up in discussion about Katherine Waterston’s Daniels, comparing her to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, but, the young actress brings her own take to the “tough heroine” role. First of all, she’s more vulnerable than Ripley ever was. Daniels starts the movie is a pretty ordinary place due to the aforementioned neutrino burst that damages the Covenant, but also kills a number of the ship’s crew and colonists in their cryo-sleep modules. Nor is Daniels as forthright as Ripley. She states her case, but doesn’t have the physical presence to intimidate the same way Weaver was able to in either of the first two Alien movies.

Billy Crudup, as Oram, provides an interesting take on his character as a man of religious faith thrust into the role of ship’s Captain at a time of extreme crisis. Oram’s character represents the continuation of the PROMETHEUS question, “Did (a) God create Man?”, but also serves to remind everyone that the saying “I was blind, but, now, can see” doesn’t always mean revelation ends well!

In addition to the performances, ALIEN: COVENANT is a visual delight. The deliberate pace of the story, especially in the film’s first half, allows the viewer to revel in Dariusz Wolski’s camera work; a highlight of Ridley Scott’s recent productions. Chris Seagers’ production design is a reflection of the director’s ongoing fascination with environment over all other matters. The design of the Covenant is a cross between the Prometheus and the Nostromo; capturing the technology life-cycle between PROMETHEUS and ALIEN (of which there is a twenty-four year gap).

With such attention to environmental detail, it’s shame ALIEN: COVENANT slips on the metaphorical banana peel, with some sloppily staged set-pieces and head-scratching decisions by key characters that make the viewer feel like screaming at the screen. ALIEN: COVENANT is a better movie than PROMETHEUS, but it addresses only some of the criticisms levelled at the 2012 film. To get all the answers, viewers will have to wait for the inevitable sequel to COVENANT, but given the new film’s choice of endings, it may a challenge to keep viewers interested long enough to see the franchise end where it all began back in 1979.

ALIEN: COVENANT MOVIE (2017) USEFUL LINKS

​Alien: Covenant (2017) - IMDb
​Alien: Covenant - Wikipedia
Alien: Covenant (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes

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