Alien: Covenant (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Follow Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Director: Ridley Scott
Distributor: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Duration: 122 minutes

Alien: Covenant (Blu-ray) – Movie Review

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Rating: 9.0/10 (2 votes cast)

The Alien series was being kept alive by the Alien vs. Predator movies, which proved to be entertaining but weren’t able to properly captivate the essence of what the original Alien movies were about. When Promotheus was released, fans of the original movies could rejoice as it showed a promising start of upcoming Alien movies, even though this title did not bear the same name. Now with Alien: Covenant hitting the stores, we once again resume our journey through the massive tale that is induced by the Alien saga, albeit with a somewhat fresh start of things.

Alien Covenant 1

As expected, our planet is slowly unsuitable for preserving human life, or at least the total amount of it and thus colonization expeditions are sent into outer space in order to create a new home for our species. This brings us towards the Covenant, which is sent to the far off planet Origae-6, which is a perfect match with our Earth. Sadly, something goes wrong when the ship is struck by a sudden outburst in the middle of space, damaging the ship, and waking up the crew, who have to watch over more than 2000 colonists. When something goes wrong in the waking up process, killing the commander Branson (James Franco), Daniels’ (Katherine Waterston), Oram (Billy Crudup) gets promoted to the rank of commander, and now he’ll have to lead the mission and make the hard-to-crack choices. While the crew still mourns the loss of commander Branson, they have to decide their course of action from now on, but they are surprised by a random transmission from space, which is clearly of a human nature. When Oram decides to check out the newly appeared planet, Daniels protests, but there isn’t all that much she can do.

Alien Covenant 2

When eventually diverging their course, and landing on the surface of the planet from which the signal originated, it’s clear that something of a humanoid nature once lived on the planet. When further investigating the matter, they encounter a ship that will look eerily familiar to those who have watched Prometheus. Here they discover that other humans have already tread in these footsteps, but before they can properly learn the truth, two crew members fall ill, showing unknown symptoms, bleeding all over the place, spawning a strange white creature in their dying breath. All hell breaks loose for the crew of the Covenant before they know it.

Overall the flow is fairly relaxed, without giving too much away at the beginning of the movie. You’ll slowly be thrown in with the sharks, as the story unfolds, showing the predicament of the new commander’s choices of visiting the new strange planet. Nonetheless, there is more than enough action to go around the moment the shit has hit the fan. It’s clear that this movie builds further on the events that occurred in Prometheus, but in case you missed that one, you can still happily enjoy this movie without having to watch Prometheus first. Nonetheless, you’ll be missing some subtle clues and hints that might just make you a bit more comfortable in knowing the entire back-story of what has unfolded before the crew landed on this strange new planet.

Alien Covenant 3

In many ways it’s clear that Katherine Waterston is a not-so-subtle wink towards Ripley, who was played by Sigourney Weaver in the original movies. In many ways she puts down a top notch performance, while pulling off a few badass scenes that might just hint towards her playing in several movies in this new Alien series from now on. Another wink to the older movies is the android played by Michael Fassbender, which is a clear reference to Bishop from the first Alien saga. Again this is done in a proper fashion, respecting the source material, albeit with original twists and turns along the way.

The special features on this Blu-ray edition are fairly interesting, especially seeing they provide a bit of extra content that contributes to the overall story of the movie. You’ll get some extra insight in how the crew prepared for their voyage, how Walter, the android, was made and other snippets on the planet itself, which are simply very entertaining extras, personalizing the movie even more. Other than this original content, you’ll get to watch the typical extras such as a making of sequence, commentaries, galleries, theatrical trailers and so on.

Conclusion

Alien: Covenant is a welcome addition to the Alien franchise, and it’s clear that with Prometheus and Covenant, Ridley Scott wants to build himself a new Alien saga. We can only welcome these movies, as they are neatly executed, with a familiar sense of horror and suspense like the older movies. While the originals are hard to rival, Covenant is certainly a great watch for Alien fans.

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Alien: Covenant (Blu-ray) - Movie Review, 9.0 out of 10 based on 2 ratings

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