jawed dullards and shrieking
bimbos are offered shelter in the
isolated home of a well-spoken
eccentric, happy to receive his
hospitality until they learn of the
hideous experiments he’s con-
ducting in his basement. The
second act thus consists mostly
of the villain explaining the wid-
er plot and his evil plans to us, as
though we’re James Bond tied
to a table by Blofeld. Yet despite
their verbosity, we never learn
the motivations behind this char-
acter’s villainous ways.
Perhaps the biggest of Alien:
Covenant’s many problems is
how its antagonist isn’t an alien,
or aliens, but rather a Baron Fran-
kenstein figure. The xenomorphs
are little more than the villain’s
attack dogs, and lack little in the
way of threat. It doesn’t help that
they’re entirely computer gener-
ated creations here, lacking the
tactile terror of previous install-
ments. A repeat of the iconic
NJ STAGE 2017 - Vol. 4 No. 5
chestburster incident is rendered
lifeless this time by an effect that
doesn’t hold up to modern stan-
dards. For such a high profile
blockbuster, the CG is surpris-
ingly poor at times, often on the
level of those found in early Paul
WS Anderson movies.
As with Life, the aliens here
have a hyper-accelerated growth
rate, and claim their first victim in
a set-piece that’s almost identi-
cal to the one that results in that
movie’s first casualty. The simi-
larities continue right up to
Covenant’s downbeat denoue-
ment. And like Passengers, the fi-
nal act revolves around surviving
characters being unaware of the
true nature of a fellow shipmate.
I use the term ‘characters’
loosely, as they’re all barely con-
ceived here. As with Rogue One,
ironically, the character with the
most personality here is a robot.
There are three married couples
among the central bunch, but
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