'Alien: Covenant' Review

Sorry that all my Alien Anthology reviews this past week have been published later than expected but I should be making up for that soon with early reviews for Baywatch, Wonder Woman, and Baby Driver all on the way. I'm trying something different with this review and if it's well received, I'll be going back and altering previous reviews and use the template for future reviews.

'Alien: Covenant' Review

Alien: Covenant escorts the coupled crew of the colony ship Covenant bound for prospective planet Origae-6. En route the Covenant encounters a space storm and whilst making repairs, the crew receives a foreboding human transmission. The crew investigate its source only to find an even closer planet and head there in hopes of discovering a pristine paradise. Of course, as things always do in these Alien flicks, nothing goes according to plan and the crew are forced to fend for themselves on an unfamiliar world against an unknown entity. 

Alien: Covenant takes place between Prometheus and the original Alien, acting as a bridge between the two in more ways then one would suspect. Ridley Scott returns to the director's chair after experimenting with Prometheus and brings both his creative children together for an impressive amalgamation. The best way for me to describe Alien: Covenant would be that a studio executive locked Prometheus and Alien in a room and told them to play nice, only to return a while later and discover the two are now the best of pals. However, it's worth noting that Alien: Covenant bears the resemblance of a Prometheus sequel more than the guise of an Alien prequel. 

Jack Paglen and Michael Green set the story while John Logan and Dante Harper penned the film's screenplay, building upon the groundwork Prometheus laid out to weave a satisfying tale that answers some pressing questions Prometheus ignored (don't expect answers to every disregarded inquiry though). Ridley Scott and his team of screenwriters effectively meld the excellent elements of each (Prometheus and Alien) to great effect, finding a deft balance between horror and philosophy. At times the film strays too close to the plotting of both those films, feeling a tad formulaic and predictable, but Alien: Covenant will still successfully startle and surprise viewers. If you haven't watched Prometheus or the promotional Alien: Covenant prologues released on YouTube, I'd recommend checking them out before seeing Alien: Covenant to enhance your understanding of things but none of them are essential viewing and it won't affect your level of uneasiness if you opt out of watching any of them. 

Ridley Scott and crew demonstrate terrific technical prowess with commanding cinematography, magnificent visual effects, and striking scenery. Dariusz Wolski's camerawork amplified the serene essence in the film's quiet moments and instantly instilled a frantic vitality when things got terrifying. On the long list of Alien: Covenant's accolades, the hair, make-up, and production design teams collaborated seamlessly along with the vfx artists to craft some chilling chest-bursting sequences and an idyllic aesthetic to juxtapose opposite the gruesome bloodbath. The computer generated Xenomorphs manage to move with a fervent frenzy that simply can't be brought to life any other way so hats off to the animators behind that monstrosity. Meanwhile, Jed Kurzel's musical score fittingly intensified the proceedings. Kurzel's compositions strike a sweet spot, boasting vacant volume and an eerily intense, ethereal sound matching the duality of Scott's vision. 

Elsewhere, Alien: Covenant accommodates an accomplished ensemble who exceeded my expectations. Katherine Waterston offers an all-encompassing performance demonstrating her range, thus making Daniels a serviceable female lead. Billy Crudup also digs deep as Captain Oram and Danny McBride's serious turn as Tennessee was a shocking delight. The remaining crew members are serviceably portrayed by Demián Najera, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, and Tess Haubrich respectively, but these characters wound up feeling shallow in the grand scheme of things. I can say the ensemble worked together well as the sense of the crew's camaraderie is felt from the very beginning, aided by the fact each character has a spouse among the crew. The real scene stealer unsurprisingly turns out to be Michael Fassbender, who's definitely a proven commodity at this point. Michael Fassbender exceptionally brings a two-pronged performance playing the respectable robot Walter and reprising his role as sinister synthetic David. Fassbender excels in both facets, impressively playing against himself as two different droids with a similar basis. I won't say much else about these characters because that would approach the dreaded spoiler territory but I can say there's one scene that will make Fassbender fangirls around the world squeal in giddy joy. 

In conclusion, I highly advise a trip to the theater to see Alien: Covenant for fans of horror or the Alien franchise itself. If you're wondering about tamer offerings, I can vouch that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 holds up well for repeat viewings (I've now seen it three times) or you could give poor King Arthur a hand at lifting that epic sword and check out King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (which hasn't had the greatest run at the box office). However, Alien: Covenant definitely delivered the thrill-ride I was hoping for and stands as another strong science fiction entry in this summer season's blockbuster catalogue. Alien: Covenant is tense, riveting, and bursting all-around with accomplished aspects, making it the most satisfying suspenseful sci-fi epic this franchise has seen in years!

Film Assessment: B+

Retrospective Review: 'Alien: Resurrection'

My trek through the Alien Anthology nears its end with my Retrospective Review of Alien: Resurrection. My remaining Alien reviews for the week include a Throwback Thursday Review of Prometheus and a review of Alien: Covenant which should be uploaded in the next couple days.

'Alien: Resurrection' Review

Alien: Resurrection takes place 200 years after Ellen Ripley sacrificed herself to prevent another alien outbreak. Scientists at space station Auriga have successfully created a clone of Ripley along with the alien queen embryo inside her, with plans to breed and militarize the Xenomorph spawn. The Betty, a freighter hauling mercenaries and unconscious human cargo, arrives at the installation and things go awry as the aliens escape, prompting yet another extraterrestrial engagement.

Alien: Resurrection was another desperate attempt to prolong the Alien franchise after Alien 3 supposedly wrapped things up. Jean-Pierre Jeunet took over the helm as director while Joss Whedon penned the screenplay (it's crazy to imagine that this is where the writer-director of The Avengers was just beginning). From those two differing creative voices, it's not too surprising that Resurrection wound up tonally conflicted. Jeunet wanted to take things seriously like Alien, while Whedon was going after a more lighthearted affair akin to Aliens.

Those two clashing perspectives doomed the project from the start because the kindest thing I can say about Resurrection is also probably the worst. Resurrection is one of those middling movies that's so bad that it's good. You'll find it difficult to keep a straight face amidst the most outrageous, absolutely absurd situations occurring onscreen.

Whedon had actually originally written the script to be quite different with a cloned teenage Newt (the young girl from Aliens) as the lead but somehow Sigourney Weaver was brought back around and she was forced into the narrative. On that note, I find the decision to clone Ripley for the purposes of breeding an alien army to be nearly as idiotic as the multiple attempts to revive dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park flicks. If you're an intellectual aware that there have been at least three incidents involving Xenomorphs that left practically no survivors, why in the world would you try to make more of them? I understand the characters' greed outweighed their logic but it's really just a cheap ploy to bring back another alien, otherwise these movies couldn't happen (and in this case it probably shouldn't have). And it didn't help the film that the French director didn't speak a lick of English, I can imagine how much of a logistics nightmare this project must have been based on that fact alone. You can tell that Jeunet had a tough time directing and the creative clash behind the scenes because everything's so tonally inconsistent.

The talented ensemble don't ooze an ounce of charisma and are really just playing hollow caricatures rather than fleshed out characters. Whedon's dialogue would probably sound better if it were coming from more charismatic actor but the straight-panned dialogue delivery slaughters the intent.

Even Sigourney Weaver is bad in this movie, playing an over-the-top sex-driven freak rather than the badass heroine we've come to love. Weaver's Ripley 8 is only a shadow of her former self and I unfortunately could not bring myself to care about her character in the slightest. The basketball scene's more than enough to drive home my point (if you've watched Resurrection, you'll know what I mean). Winona Ryder goes a bit too far in the robotic direction as the android engineer Call, resulting in one of her worst performances I've ever seen. Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, and Kim Flowers fill out the remains Betty crew members as the disabled doofus Dom Vriess, ill-tempered Ron Johner, cold blooded Gary Christie, cocky captain Frank Elgyn, and the sexy Sabra Hillard. Each actor strings out a one-note performance with their hollow vessels, failing to add an ounce of interest. 

While I've brought up plenty of negatives, I actually found a COUPLE improvements from Alien 3. For starters, the Xenomorphs actually looked menacing as they should when they appeared. Although they pop up far too often to be an effective tool, it's much better than the effects atrocity in Alien 3. The production design matched the Alien aesthetic and let itself well to everything occurring onscreen. There's also an underwater sequence that was fairly delightful and thrilling that I quite enjoyed.

Other than those few worthwhile elements, there's not really any other positive things I can say. The score composed by John Frizzell honors his namesake as a frantic, frizzled mess of music but doesn't mesh well with ongoing events and the monstrosity that is "The Newborn" is one of the worst looking creatures I think I've ever laid eyes upon. I have no idea why that was ever perceived to be frightening by a studio exec, especially considering that they had one of the most horrifying cinematic creatures at their disposal. Alien: Resurrection aimed to restore the franchise, but wound up driving the Alien Anthology further into its grave.

Film Assessment: F

Retrospective Review: 'Alien 3'

Today I'm wading the troubled waters of reviewing Alien 3. I will be including some slight spoilers, so you've been forewarned. If you're curious what else I have in store, you can expect a Retrospective Review of Alien: Resurrection, a Throwback Thursday Review of Prometheus, and a review on Alien: Covenant all to be uploaded this week. 

'Alien 3' Review

Nominated For: Best Visual Effects.

Ellen Ripley is once again the sole survivor of this story when a piece of her ship carrying the cryo-sleep chambers mysteriously crash lands on Fiorina 161, a desolate planet housing a maximum security prison. There she encounters pious prisoners and their skeptical sentries, whom she must convince to trust in her regarding the potential alien contagion. It's fairly well known that Alien 3 had an especially troubled production process. The fact it would have to follow up sci-fi classics Alien and Aliens was a daunting task in-of-itself, but somehow good did indeed come from Alien 3.

Thanks to the middling movie, David Fincher was enveloped into the filmmaking community after successfully supervising a series of successful music videos. Fincher has since gone on to craft a number of wellregarded works I hope to review in the near future such as Fight Club, Se7en, and The Social Network. Unfortunately, Alien 3 wasn't the feature film directorial debut Fincher or any person would imagine it to have been considering Fincher had little-to-no control over the project.

While I've reviewed other films where studios intervened on behalf of making a profit like Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, or Fantastic Four (2015), Alien 3 is different in the sense that it's difficult to trace what decisions stemmed from where. Normally I'm able to have some reasonable idea where certain ideas originated (typically from either the writer or director), but Alien 3's a different case altogether. Some information has gone public such as Sigourney Weaver bearing her Academy Award nomination for her performance in Aliens as creative leverage and early drafts of alternate versions of the project but no real explanation behind everything that happened. It's probably most simply explained by the fact the studio interfered and that's that. Therefore, I'll be dissecting pieces of the film but won't really be able to properly credit any specific individual(s) so this review may be a little jumbled and hard to follow.

Alien 3's script is credited to David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson in the screenplay division with a story supposedly molded by Vincent Ward. It's impossible to tell how much control these individuals really had over the script though. To briefly take a detour from all the behind the scenes drama, I've got to admit that there are some interesting ideas buried underneath the script. The idea that an alien's chemistry changes based off the organism it's birthed from opens the door to infinitesimal possibilities (ie. when the alien emerges from the dog/ox depending on what version you watch). The sudden and immediate death/deactivation of your favorite surviving Aliens characters may boil your blood and Weaver's anti-arms insistence doesn't really make much sense considering Ripley's in a maximum security prison, but these creative choices raise the stakes and make the situation even more terrifying.

Of course somehow an alien is involved, because otherwise the title couldn't bear the Alien Anthology monicker, but it makes absolutely no sense when you sit back and think about Alien 3 as a successor to Aliens. I find it incredibly impossible to believe that Ripley wouldn't have thoroughly examined the ship for any semblance of alien life after defeating the alien queen and going back into cryo-sleep. Also, the characters in Alien 3 are mainly morose and sink into the solemn setting. I legitimately can't remember or really distinguish any of the characters other than Ripley, Dillon, and Clemens and I watched Alien 3 only last night. Alien 3 is a film devoid of joy or hope, which actually sort of works with the foreboding backdrop but doesn't allow for a particularly enjoyable or even nerve-racking experience. If you're not invested in the hollow personas running about on screen, it's difficult to latch onto the story even with Ripley at its center. Even the cinematography from Alex Thomson is bleak and unforgiving.

Elsewhere, the special effects in Alien 3 are absolutely atrocious. When the Xenomorph is prancing about the prison, the puppet never meshes in with his corresponding background due to poor green-screen work and it actually looks worse than any effect from Alien or Aliens. The practical costumed Xenomorph seems like a better alternative now, when you view how well that iteration help up in the preceding chapters. Alien 3's score composed by Elliot Goldenthal feels far removed from the story being told. The compositions could potentially stand apart from the film, but the end result is a little jarring when the two are pieced together.

The performances on the other hand are unfortunately as jumbled as the film itself. Sigourney Weaver paints Ripley in an unsettled frantic state, pursuing the Xenomorphic paranoia that would logically accompany anyone who had experienced the former film's events. I'm not sure Weaver's capable of a truly bad performance so her portrayal certainly does the film a few favors. I especially like how her arc comes full circle as she's unhinged and distressed that the one thing that's taken everything away from her is inside her. The fact the soon-to-be alien queen is the only thing keeping the Xenomorph from munching her down is one of the fascinating concepts at the surface of the film and I like how that enables a complex characterization for Weaver to work with. Charles Dance and Charles S. Dutton each offer appropriate attributes to the compassionate chief medical officer Jonathan Clemens and devout religious leader Leonard Dillon but the remaining ensemble's littered actors portraying disposable detainees. 

In conclusion, Alien 3 could have turned out far worse but is a disappointing continuation of Ripley's story due to the lack of any distinctive creative voice. Even with titillating ideas buried underneath the surface, Alien 3 found itself befoul of a parasitic relationship more dangerous than the titular beast; money hungry studio heads.

Film Assessment: C-

Retrospective Review: 'Alien'

Today I'm introducing a new form of review called a Retrospective Review. The basic idea is to provide another opportunity for me to review older films aside from Throwback Thursday Reviews as these reviews won't always tie into a corresponding release. However, the first couple Retrospective Reviews are all coming this week as an excuse for me to review the Alien Anthology, seeing as my Throwback Thursday Review schedule didn't have enough room built into it to review any of the Alien films. This week I'm reviewing all four Alien films' theatrical cuts and will save my thoughts on the respective Director's Cuts for another review down the line so be on the lookout for an Aliens review soon. Also, there will be some spoilers in the review considering the film's age and popularity.

'Alien' Review

Nominated For: Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects.
Won: Best Visual Effects.

Alien escorts the crew of commercial space-vessel Nostromo as they are awakened from cryo-sleep to investigate an intergalactic SOS. The crew board the alien starship and stumble across a nest of eggs when suddenly a parasitic organism leaps out, attaching itself to one of the crew members. The crew return to the ship and are able to remove the face-hugger, only to discover the creature spawned offspring when a little alien bursts out of Kane's chest and retreats into the ship's depths. The crew are left to fight for their lives as they're picked off one-by-one by the ever-evolving extraterrestrial.

Alien is widely regarded to be one of the best sci-fi horror outings ever created, considered a true hallmark of the science fiction/horror genre. Alien was directed by Ridley Scott, an unproved directorial commodity at the time who has since more than made his mark on science fiction. Scott understood that the task at hand didn't simply call upon him to make a "scary" movie but to authenticate tension over the course of two hours. The tense atmosphere of Alien is one that slowly creeps up on you, not unlike the titular Xenomorph, building and building for a quick release only to further escalate that foundation. The sense of uneasiness derives from a concoction of every technical element on display; the remarkable visual effects, the grungy production design, the vacant score, and the smart screenplay.

The special effects in Alien are timeless, it's been 38 years since Alien was first released yet the aesthetic still works. The creature design remains creepy as ever, the filthy set design projects the guise the ship's been lived in, and the production design, editing, and cinematography meld seamlessly enhancing the claustrophobic nature of the Nostromo. Jerry Goldsmith's spacial score mimicks the vacuum of space with a void sound at the film's start, steadily crescendoing to communicate a sense of unease in the film's more precarious moments. Goldsmith's compositions effectively transition between conveying a sense of comfort and urgency instantaneously, and the steady build of suspense allows for successful scares and a swelling of anxiety throughout the two hour runtime.

Screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett set the stage for a slow burn but as I've already attested to, the build pays off exceptionally well. O'Bannon and Shusett also cleverly wrote the proceedings so that you're not quite sure who the true protagonist is for a large portion of the plot proceedings. While that's grown increasingly more common amidst the horror genre, I thought it worked even better than usual in Alien. The writing duo do an admirable job crafting the crew as the dynamic between them adds further authenticity to their individual roles onboard the ship and the bond they share.

The crew's chemistry works no only thanks to the script but the powerful performances on display. Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto make up the company of the Nostromo and each provides a unique role in the story and an innate likability so you feel for these characters.

Weaver in particular stands out as Ripley, in-large part because she survives the whole she-bang but also because Ripley's such a fantastic female character. It's not too often that franchise bolster a female lead and even when they do, they typically succumb to tropes of a poorly written female character. However, Ripley's a strong female character that's not an annoyance or sex appeal. Ripley's an everyday woman placed in a scary situation but maintains a clear head throughout, following protocol at every turn. Weaver brings a levelheaded nature and a sense of relatable paranoia to her character that sucks you into the ongoing events.

Other actors who deserve an additional shoutout include Ian Holm's eerie portrayal of an analytical android Ash, Tom Skerritt's charming Captain Dallas, and Bolaji Badejo for making a menacing movie monster of the Xenomorph. In summary, Alien has truly stood the test of time. After thirty eight years Alien still chills and thrills, cementing its status as a magnum opus of sci-fi horror.

Film Assessment: A+