Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Prometheus (the second in the Alien prequel saga) is an all-out space-action-horror affair. Michael Fassbender returns to the role of the creepy-genius droid David, but this time the same actor also plays a second, superficially similar droid with different programming.
A quick outline of the premise from Wikipedia: “In 2104, ten years after the Prometheus expedition, the colonization ship Covenant is seven years from reaching planet Origae-6, with 2,000 colonists in stasis and 1,140 human embryos in cold storage. The ship is monitored by Walter, an advanced android model that physically resembles David. When a shockwave damages the ship, Walter reanimates his 14 human crewmates, themselves couples/colonists. Ship's captain Jake Branson dies when his stasis pod malfunctions. While repairing the ship, the crew picks up a transmission of a human voice from a nearby planet, which appears eminently more habitable than Origae-6.”
The crew detour to the appealingly Earth-like planet, which, inevitably, is too good to be true. Before long, everything kicks off. As with Prometheus, the characters take stupid risks by walking around alone and with nothing to protect them. You just know someone is doomed when they wander off saying they will be back in a minute...
But the thrills are considerable. There are some remarkable scenes, such as an attempted take-off of the survivors’ rescue ship with the alien and the heroine Janet Daniels (Katherine Waterston) both clinging on to it. It’s like an action set-piece from a James Bond film, but set on another world and with monsters. The chase scenes in the Covenant corridors are also highly effective, but it lacks the haunting suspense and claustrophobia of the original Alien and is far less scary as a result.
The same themes about God, creation and the meaning of life are explored, but it’s tighter all round than Prometheus. It’s also more ambitious and convincing psychologically. Ridley Scott manages to have his cake and eat it, constructing a philosophical puzzler that simultaneously works as a guns ’n’ gore thriller.
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