Alien: Covenant (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner)
	Actors: Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds, Prometheus), Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 22.05.2017, Costanera CinePrime
Synopsis: The colonist ship Covenant suffers from an accident on his trip to a far-away planet. During reparations they receive a signal from a nearby planet that they decide to go and investigate.
Review: I can understand that hard-core fans of the Alien movies feel betrayed by this prequel Covenant as they did already by Prometheus which story took place ten years before. Indeed those two movies do not anymore depict the survival of a strong character (Ripley = Sigourney Weaver) facing one or a horde of Aliens. The key to appreciate them is to take some distance to the franchise, like I think Ridley Scott did in the past twenty years. To that respect the title and poster are largely misleading, contrarily to the previous movie. I was rather frustrated by Prometheus because of insipid characters (including the one played by Noomi Rapace absent from this one) and a too open ending (I have just down-graded the movie from 7 to 6/10), but I appreciated that it tried to tackle a topic much greater than a simple closed-quarters horror movie: the origin of the Aliens and our own. Thus I was very satisfied to finally see the continuation of that story arc after five years of patience. Here again the Aliens apparitions are anecdotic (what most probably disappointed the fans, you should definitely not expect a Horror movie) and Scott rather focuses on topics dear to him: faith (through the character of Oram), love, creation, survival, spiritual search... Most of those are carried by the two synthetic characters played by a brilliant Michael Fassbender. Androids have always been remarkable in the saga, remember Ian Holm playing the malfunctioning Ash in the first movie, and Lance Henriksen the cult Bishop in James Cameron's Aliens. But David and Walter and another kind, created by Mr Weyland himself, and the dialog they have together at the middle of the movie is its stronger scene for me, and Ridley Scott obviously enjoyed the challenge of shooting it and duplicating the one actor. One could reproach the movie some inconsistencies in its story, the reaction of its characters or the science but the saga has never been renowned for that, but rather for showing us less and letting us imagine more. I like how Scott does not over-explain things, a default often too present in recent movies. At the end of the projection I was not left excited or thrilled by the Alien attacks, but rather pensive about our place in the Universe and how Covenant deals with it.
Rating: 7 /10