Alien Covenant Thoughts by murnau

The Alien Covenant digital HD release is knocking on our doors, so please read some segments of the Alien Covenant Review written by murnau, then visit his site for more thoughts of him.

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’And Alien: Covenant delivers. Before I go any further let me put my cards on the table and declare myself a fan of Scott’s sci-fi and fantasy movies. Alien, Blade Runner, Legend, Prometheus with all its deficiencies – these have all enraptured me from youth to maturity.

Alien: Covenant will be no different, and its delirious cocktail of ideas, preoccupations and horrors will give me fat to chew on for years to come. But its joys and successes are matched by frustrations and failures that make the film a confounding ride for an Alien fan. Elation and deflation blur, making it a hard movie to get to grips with.

It’s always a challenge to make an ensemble cast appear more than a collection of monster-fodder red-shirts with one or two main characters floating on top. Covenant succeeds more than Prometheus; the motiveless stupidity that ruled that crew is thankfully absent here. The Covenant is populated with couples, and the grief felt amongst those that lose their significant others brings poignancy to the mayhem. It’s nice to see a male same-sex couple in the mix, subtly characterised.’

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’For those who have been paying (perhaps a little too much) attention, Scott’s best movies contain their own visual motif that crops up again and again, unusually foregrounded and curious to behold, an abstract layer of meaning – I’m tempted to say ‘poetic’ meaning – occurring on a different level than the story (seek out my essay on this subject on my ‘thoughts of murnau’ blog, for more). In this case the visual motif is: airborne particles. The black goo spores are the first example. They float and dance in the air far longer than is necessary for such a tightly-edited movie. The dust motes in the sunbeams around Ledward shortly before he disturbs the spore is another noticeable instance. The clincher comes in the climactic scene in the terra-forming hanger, when the final boss xeno is ejected into space (that’s the way the big kahunas always go out in the Alien franchise, right?). The glittering dust is so prominent that it’s puzzling: why is it so visible? If you ‘get’ Ridley, the explanation is clear: you’re noticing his visual poetry.’

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’There is so much detail, and so much allusion to poetry, myths, ideas, and Ridley’s other sci-fi classics, that I could go on and on. The script feels over-stuffed in places, and a little less of everything would have made for a more mysterious, ominous movie. That said, repeated viewings will bring out a lot more juice than most sci-fi movies of recent years (the execrable Life for example).

So, although it is not without its frustrations and deficiencies, Alien: Covenant is quite a ride. Now in his 80th year, Ridley Scott is as energetic, ballsy and confounding as he has ever been. Roll on the next installment!’

https://thoughtsofmurnau.wordpress.com/

https://thoughtsofmurnau.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/alien-covenant-review/