'Alien: Covenant' Spoiler Review: Ridley Scott Makes His 'Frankenstein'

(In our Spoiler Reviews, we take a deep dive into a new release and get to the heart of what makes it tick...and every story point is up for discussion. In this entry: Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant.)In 1979, Ridley Scott unleashed Alien on unsuspecting moviegoers, creating something that would end up becoming iconic in the process. Scott, a filmmaker with a background in graphic design, took what was essentially the type of B-movie that cluttered up drive-in theaters and turned it into something greater – a haunted-house picture set in space, dripping with atmosphere and dread, heightened by grotesque creature designs from nightmare-expert artist H.R. Giger.Alien would turn into a franchise, although Scott stayed away for most of it. He returned for the sort-of prequel Prometheus, one of the most polarizing films of his career. Fans expecting another Alien were sorely disappointed, as Scott no longer seemed interested in the simple, dread-inducing terror of his 1979 film. Instead, the filmmaker wanted to use the Alien mythology as a framework on which to build a more complex, existential examination of the origins of humanity.Scott could've walked away from the Alien franchise after Prometheus, but instead he seems committed to riding this out to see how far it will go. He has returned with Alien: Covenant, which loaded its trailers and promotional material with the familiar xenomorph alien that fans are familiar with. This film, Scott seemed to be saying, would be the Alien-type film Prometheus was not. It was a trick, though. The filmmaker had more complicated, complex ideas in mind. They don't always work, but you have to at least appreciate his willingness to experiment with them at this stage in his career.Spoilers follow.

The events aboard the Covenant are fine, but you can tell they're not where Scott's heart lies. He doesn't rush to get to the second half of the film, but once he's there, it's clear this is the material the filmmaker truly wants to focus on. It's here that Alien: Covenant becomes a completely different film – a big, bold gothic horror story set in space, the type of tale that would make Percy Shelley – and Mary Shelley, for that matter – swoon. This is the section of film that will likely turn off fans hoping for another Alien film, but it's actually the most intriguing segment of Alien: Covenant.On the planet, Alien: Covenant devises several nasty ways for the crew to meet a bloody end. If you thought the classic chestburster sequence from Alien was unpleasant, Scott tries to top that twice. First, he concocts a terrifying, tense sequence in which a character becomes infected with an alien parasite only to have a creature known as a "neomorph" – a kind of albino precursor to the xenomorph – burst out of his spine. Almost immediately after this sequence, another character has another neomorph come rupturing out through his mouth, as if he's regurgitating a monster. It's nightmare fuel, and this lengthy sequence shows that Scott still has what it takes to terrify.The crew members who survive are rescued by a cloaked figure who is, of course, David. David takes the crew back to his home, a vast necropolis – a tower housed in a courtyard full of petrified corpses. It looks like something straight out of Gustave Doré's paintings depicting Dante's Inferno. David tells the crew that he and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) were the only two survivors from the Prometheus mission 50 years ago, and that they landed on this planet after the ship they were on accidentally unleashed a bioweapon on board, killing the planet's inhabitants.David seems uninterested in the human members of the Covenant, but he takes a particular interest in Walter. He invites Walter into his Frankenstein-like workshop, full of billowing curtains, flickering candles and anatomical drawings that would look perfect framed at Guillermo Del Toro's house. David is downright seductive towards Walter, and if you've ever wanted to see Michael Fassbender shamelessly flirt with himself, Alien: Covenant has you covered. The flirtation sequence gives Scott a chance to highlight the differences between David and Walter: Walter can follow commands, but he, unlike David, cannot create. David finds this revelation far more tragic and upsetting than Walter does; he's almost heartbroken at the potential Walter lacks. This sequence once again highlights that Scott is most interested in David – David is the tragic antihero of the Alien prequel saga. He's the Roy Batty, violently reaching out for more life while being unconcerned with the lives he takes in the process.David reveals to Walter that the bioweapon that destroyed all life on the planet was not unleashed by accident – he unleashed it intentionally. He also killed Elizabeth Shaw, using her body to further his ghastly experiments. David has spent the ten years on the planet conducting research and creating life – monstrous life that will eventually develop into the xenomorphs we all love and fear.The neomorphs begin knocking off the Covenant crew, and Oram foolishly finds himself a victim of the facehugger after learning David's true nature. "Take a look," David tells Oram after showing him a basement filled with the familiar Alien eggs. "Perfectly harmless, I assure you." Before you can say "John Hurt," a xenomorph has burst forth from Oram's chest and set its retractable jaws upon the survivors. Daniels tussles with David, who nearly has the upper hand until he's stopped by Walter. Daniels flees, and Scott then reverts the film back into familiar Alien mode, which is unfortunate. One gets the sense that Scott realized the audience might be growing tired of all the gothic melodrama he's been building up and wanting standard chase scenes. Some fans may desire this, but the film starts to run out of steam when it enters its final, predictable act. You want to stand up and shout at the screen, "Bring back the weirdness!"

Since Alien: Covenant is technically a prequel, it trafficks in the same problem other prequels do: it over-explains things that didn't need explaining. It de-mythicizes the mythology. When the characters in Alien found a foggy room filled with giant eggs, audiences were chilled, wondering, "So who is laying those eggs?" James Cameron answered this by introducing the giant, monstrous alien queen in Aliens. Yet here, Scott has David claiming he invented the eggs. So where does the alien queen come in, then? Perhaps it's a chicken or the egg scenario – which came first, the xenomorph or the egg? Revealing that David is the one who created the egg, and by extension the facehugger, saps some of the power away.There are far too many characters in the film, which is a problem that Prometheus also suffered from. The first Alien had a total of seven characters (eight if you want to count Jones the cat), and we knew exactly who all of them were and what made them tick within the first 15 minutes. Alien: Covenant feels like it has approximately fifty characters, and we only get to know about four of them. The rest are simply there to become monster chow, and it weakens the film. Why should we spend time with any of these people if the film barely even takes the time to tell us their names? The entire crew of the Covenant are couples, but Scott neglects to actually tell us this, which seems like something that could've been easily solved with a line of dialogue. Perhaps it'll appear in the inevitable extended director's cut.As for the characters we do get to know, Waterston is great here, and while the film's finale turns her into Ripley 2.0, the character is much different: more fragile, less assured. McBride is also very good, and he and Waterston share an easygoing chemistry that makes you want them to co-star in more films together. Crudup makes the most of his part, which is a bit underwritten. Having him repeatedly say that he's a "man of faith" is lazy exposition, and there was probably a more organic way to develop the character's belief system than just having him tell us about it. But the real standout here is, of course, Fassbender, who is affable and relatable as Walter and delightfully menacing as David.Scott wants to keep this franchise going, hoping to make at least one more sequel and perhaps three more after that. If he follows that path, one would assume he would eventually bring the films more in line with the original Alien franchise. It would be nice if he didn't rush towards that, though. In fact, he would do better to take a step back and attempt something even more ambitious than Alien: Covenant: an entire movie in the same vein as the second act of this film.During the second act of Covenant, David quotes Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias (he incorrectly attributes it to Lord Byron): "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" That seems to be the message of Alien: Covenant as well, for both the film itself and the Alien franchise. Decline is inevitable; what was once great will crumble and get lost in the dust. But we need not despair. Instead, we should welcome and embrace what might sprout up in its place. "Big things have small beginnings," David said in Prometheus. Perhaps Alien: Covenant is just the beginning. Who knows what gods and monsters await us further down the line.