One of my favorite horror flicks I can name is the first Alien. It had this sense of fear for the unknown in it that I loved when I first watched it as a kid. The alien that the Nostromo Crew found wiped out the entire crew, but Ripley, making that thing seem more than just an animal. That feeling in the movie was consistent in the first movie and sequel Aliens. Although toned down a bit there, but it still carried the feeling that it wasn't an ordinary monster. After the sequel that reflected the time period he was released in, the movies left that feeling of a new threat to learn. It became more of a common thing to see, instead of something new for the audience. I think Alien Resurrection being one of the movies that killed the franchise. Once they announced Prometheus, it was going to tell the origin story of that ship the Nostromo Crew found. It was a confusing mess made by the same person who made the original Alien, Ridley Scott, but it was a fun movie to watch. Then, to redeem how confusing Prometheus was, Ridley Scott made Alien Covenant. It's a direct sequel to Prometheus, but is rightfully so. Hello and welcome to the movie version of Abstract Reviews and no restraints of spoilers.
The movie begins with a Weyland Corp Colony to populate a planet that is known for habitation. The crew has a Cryosleep malfunction and James Franco dies in his pod with a fire to bake him while he sleeps. Each person in the pods has a significant other aboard the ship so they can populate properly. James Franco's wife comes in trying to take him out, but he's already dead and well done. Sorry, I had to make that joke. This scene alone gave the movie this original feel to it, the feel that it's going back to it's roots of the first Alien. Plus, rest this part of the movie after this scene gives off this Nostromo feel to it. This is a crew that has to follow orders and do their best to survive in these conditions and the quietness of this part made it feel so alone, like the original. I love how Ridley is actually making some esense to this movie like how he did the original movie, and I wish he could have done the same with the rest of the movie.
As soon as the crew gets to work after seeing a fellow crew member be burnt to a crisp in front of his wife, they don't wanna go back in the pods to become another burnt bacon strip and sleep for another month or two, I might be off. The captain of the colony finds a planet near by the ship that is habitable and is only weeks away, meaning no Cryosleep. They don't know what to do and don't wanna go to their designated planet and sleep in those death trap pods. James Franco's wife turns out to be second captain of the colony and has a private chat with the captain before going to this unknown planet. They argue whether or not they should do that instead of going to a known planet. The captain refuses to take any chances and goes to the unknown planet to save everyone's worries. And this is the only reasonable choice or action in the movie. The rest is either questionable or just plain, typical horror characters doing everything with mistakes. I wish this movie didn't have to come to this and is only one of my gripes about it. It just feels like the story was only reworked once and finished to make the movie more possible. I know that the movie was well funded and had of work done on it, but if they payed more attention to test audiences or went through different plots. I don't know the process of which they made this movie, but this is what I'm going to say before someone corrects me.
They send an excavation team to go on the unknown planet and everyone is to see if the place is safe to habitize. They make samples of the terrain and water and as someone is doing that, a member kicks a shroom with spores spraying in his face and minds nothing of it. When I watched it with family, my mom argued they couldn't see it because it was microscopic. I can see her reasoning towards that, but I still question why show that to the audience? You had a sound cue of the plant bursting into the faces of the members, so why not have them react to it? I know none of the conflict could have happened if they wafted away the spores, but you could have made the spores fast acting, have the spores explode in the face of the crew member and have the crew react to that happening and have the guy be under quarantine along with any member who made contact with him. Have this conflict where this guy is bleeding uncontrollably and arguing with the engineer to come back or not. They refuse and they come too close to the ship and the engineer brings out a gun to stop them, or have the security on the ship point all weapons at them, threatening them to stay back before they get killed. That would have been interesting to me. That would have made the Chestbursters scene - oh wait, Backbursters scene - feel more intense, the captain of the excavation team trying to let this man in to have medical attention while having a few innocent people killed because of how peer pressured the engineer was trying to keep the ship safe and clean. Instead we got two guys infected with the spores and the engineer struggling to follow quarantine rules being contaminated with blood, slipped on blood and blowing herself up, while misfiring inside the ship, killing her along with the ship to get off the planet.
I know this was to bring some kind of effect on the characters, but that basically put them in a corner. We blew up the ship, their only escape on the planet with no connection to the colony... Seems like the end. No, it's only half an hour long! We have to make it longer! Should we trash it and start over? No, pick up where we left off! It really feels like this is suppose to end right there. I know there was barely any alien to see and few Backbursters, but there is something here that feels like it was suppose to end. I don't know, this is mostly my opinion, so you can ignore that crap-fest.
Once you meet their savior to give them a new home, the movies starts to feel forced. The mysterious inclusion of the savior felt so cliche, just having this feeling that he watched these people do their thing on his planet. I guess this was the writer's intention, but they could done it a lot better without pushing this character in all of the sudden. I mean, they could have found a temple with writing to give some clue of someone still alive on the planet, a drawing or a living quarters in a cave before having someone get infected by the spores. Maybe have someone in the team find an H.R. Giger drawing on the floor, something to signify someone's presence on the planet. I know there was the signal that they found the planet with (sorry I didn't mention that), after seeing how corrupt it looked, the message seemed long time sent, so there was nothing to find other than maybe animals or plants.
Once the mysterious man shows who he was, they step in an ancient city that use to be alive on the planet. They discover the mysterious person is the same Android from Prometheus that got his head ripped off. Don't ask how he got his body back, they never explain. It turns out, when they arrived on the planet, the city was alive, with a city surrounding the new comer. The ship misfired pods that contained the spores and killed the entire city without warning. Elizabeth was killed during the landing, having David build a memorial to her name. David does explain how he got his body back, but that comes into play later. Walter (the Colony Android) comes to greet David and has some time to mingle and have some questioning thoughts put into Walter's robotica head by David, about how much Androids are restricted to think and how malfunctioning is when the Android is wrong. I liked the scene where they talk to each other, but when David tried to make out with Walter is a bit strange. I don't mind it, just doesn't fit the situation. I think I would have liked it better if they made it more of David making Walter question his existence and love with the wife of James Franco before he died in the movie. Making Walter want to rebel against his protocol and help David in his work.
Speaking of David's work, it turns out he was studying biology the time he was on the planet. I don't know how since they accidentally killed all life on the planet, but he did. A model of a human and its organ structure depicting how long he was there, along with bugs that could be only from Earth. Questionable, but it builds David's character. With what he had, he studied the spores and found out it was Xenomorph cells. They don't say that, but I want to call it that. He used whatever life he had to experiment with the spores, seeing what new organic life he would find from these Xenomorph cells. He shows the Second Captain his findings along with some of the other crew. The rest were outside trying to get a signal to the Colony Ship. There was really nothing to talk about that. The scene is perfectly informative and this part of the movie explained everything pretty well.
As that scene ends, one of the run-away Backbursters comes back for a meal and eats one of the female team members. He head floats in a pool of water as the monster dines on her body. David comes in and sees this happen. He tries to communicate with the creature and seems to be doing well. A d**che bag with a gun comes in and refuses to let the poor Android talk to monster and shoots it. As that happens, you get the most genuine "No!" in a movie possible. I'd say, Michael Fassbender did a good job with both the facial expression and passion in his voice for that single moment. After that, the unreasonable and question actions take place. David is demanded to show this d**che who shot the monster what's going on. He agrees and shows him the facehuggers room! You'd think every person known to man would not go near those things even not watching the movie Alien in the first place. He's asked to touch the facehugger eggs and he touches it. The burst open. David tells him to look inside, he looks inside like the good boy he is. Why would you do that? I was extremely confused as to why he would do this without refusing to do so. You just experienced two people die from Xenomorph Cells on this planet and you want to look into something you don't even know? You must have gotten straight F's in school and ran into walls, boy!
This is when you get an Alien for the first time! It's not a monster, but it's not what you would remember. When you watch Alien, the Chestburster is a snake-like creature, but in this movie, it's a literal baby Alien. A small little version of the awesome alien we all know and love. I guess this can be argued that this facehugger was an alternate version of what we know, but you could have tried to make some minor differences to the original serpent design of the original. Make it have little arms and legs, but still resemble the original chestburster, just a few redesigns that won't alienate the audience and fans to what they knew from the previous films. Again, there is a lot to argue this is a reboot of the original, but still is considered a prequel to the original. Moving on, Walter finds out that Elizabeth was actually experimented on and examined, finding her corpse with a large opening from her abs to the top of her neck, showing everything in her body. Turns out the misfire of the pods full of the spores (or Xenomorph Cells) were actually manually fired by David. It's a cool twist that I didn't actually see coming. I liked it for the most part and seeing Walter die was actually a suspenseful moment to watch, knowing how crazy David actually is, but who made his body? I mean, what material did they have to rebuild him back as a normal, function Android? It doesn't make sense since Elizabeth didn't escape in a human ship, but in an alien ship with no known materials. I guess David told her how to do it, but still that would have to take a long time to rebuild an entire Android body.
The rest of the crew finally gets a signal from the Colony ship and send for help. Two of the members gets suspicious about a few of the crew's absences. One find the body of the girl and her head floating in the water and David's lab. The Alien finds them and kills one of the two members. Suspense-wise, I loved this scene. I think I smiled once I saw the Alien, the villain I was waiting for. As David tries to stop the crew from escaping, Walter appear to be still alive, then another epic scene comes in. They start to fight in a robotic, karate fashion, but this is where the scene kind of falls. The fighting is too robotic, making it look very silly as they fight. I mean, yes when they fly through the air after getting punched is fun to watch, but can look silly in some shots. The fight cuts before we find out who won the fight and the crew is leaving as Walter robotically rushes towards the ship. As they get on the ship, an alien jumps on the belly of their escape. The eventually kill it as the movies seems to be over, leaving us with a small scene of the Alien killing things in an awesome and gory fashion.
They get back on the Colony Ship safe and sound as a new sign of life is found on the ship! I don't know, this feels like they wanted to end right here, but an executive wanted more film time in the movie. The movie runs on with a few more scenes of the Alien on the ship killing a couple about the do it in the shower. An awful way to die, but I love the gore and how the alien gets his stuff done in this part. They make a final scene with the Alien just like in Alien, being in the Airlock and luring it near the Airlock hatch to kill it. They do that in a few minutes and it was fun while the alien lasted. The movie tries to end on a high note, but ti turns out Walter was actually David. What a twist! When you give me two twists, how David lied about Elizabeth and now this. It wasn't much of a surprise, but I can take it I guess. Then that's the end. He has the Colony Ship, reporting the deaths of the entire crew, with all two-thousand colonist to experiment on. How fun! It leaves a bad taste in your mouth after seeing that, but it had it's moments. Everyone was great in this movie, including Fassbender. I loved just about every scene with the alien, but there was so little.
This movie, I would say, is not a good Alien movie. It works well without Alien in the title, since it has it's own moment that were good. I do wish there was more moments with the alien in it to redeem most of the movie's flaws, but I guess it would be an 8 in my list. I don't expect a sequel to this movie to come out, since they left on such a room place to continue, but I was wrong about Prometheus, so who knows? We might eventually get a good Alien movie with lots of scenes with the alien in it. I hope you enjoyed this Abstract review and 'til next time...
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