Now, I'm not really one for writing a review, I go in with a good plan then slowly become more bored of writing it but here goes nothing. Alien Covenant is the follower on from Prometheus which in my opinion, while not really up there with the first two alien films of the franchise, was quite good, adding more lore to a beloved franchise of mine. Alien Covenant follows on ten years from the events of Prometheus with crew of the Covenant, a ship on the way to colonise a inhabitable planet. They pick up a rogue transmission from someone and essentially shit goes sideways from then on.
What I can say about the film is that Ridley Scott is back to his best. He's had some shit films in his day but Covenant is a return to his best, not quite Gladiator and the original Alien good but up there. It hasn't quite the subtlety of Alien but some of the horror is clearly done by the man who made sci fi horror what it is so A- for Scott. Alongside this, it's back to the good old days of gore which was what was missing for the most part from Prometheus. This film has some of the goriest deaths of the entire franchise and that is plus in my books when it comes to Alien. Scott is also sure to keep the realistic feel of the spaceships, still thankfully opting out of the shiny, lens flare aesthetic of Star Trek or Star Wars and instead keeping the more industrial, ugly, unstreamlined designs which better fits the genre.
One of the negative points of the writing, while building more on the lore and bringing us closer and closer to finding out how the xenomorphs came to be, is that not many of the characters were entirely memorable. There was the ripley type character who, much like the one in Prometheus, just doesn't have the acting talent to hold a candle to Sigourney Weaver, there's the religious one and there's the Texan with hat who is one of the more memorable characters, due in most part to the hat. The stand out actor by a mile is Michael Fassbender though.
He has to deserve his own paragraph, I'm sorry. As some of you may know, I want to be an actor and if I could be half the actor Fassbender is, I'd be happy. The man plays two identical looking androids and has such a powerful control over his own physical movements and facial features that he can portray two seemingly identical characters but with slight nuances in the way they hold their body or even their face that they are distinguishable. He doesn't go for the bog standard awkward, unhuman android but rather the uncanny valley where he seems human but you can't put your finger on why he isn't.
All in all, the film is a great watch and if Prometheus put you off the franchise reboot then this film most definitely will bring you back on.
