The lasting impression made by Prometheus (2012) was that director Ridley Scott is more comfortable in ancient Rome than outer space. Confused and confusing, it was ordinary at best.
He has gone some way towards redeeming himself with its sequel, even allowing for the fact that the last forty minutes are taken up with the Big Fight – for it to be repeated ad nauseam in films such as this suggests that there must be a hell of a lot of punters out there who find it exciting; I don’t. (Or maybe it’s just a case of the CGI guys being like kids with their toys.) The story is set in the year 2114, with the spaceship The Covenant carrying 3,000 sleeping colonists from Earth to a planet in another galaxy.
A malfunction leads to the captain’s death, whereupon the less-loved Oram (Billy Crudup) takes control of the mission. Among the crew is Walter (Michael Fassbender), the latest model android – his doppelgänger, David, from the previous generation, has evolved into an omnipotent megalomaniac ruling his own world. Tempted by the siren song transmitted from an unknown source (John Denver’s Country Road, The Covenant changes course to investigate. Big mistake. When a party from The Covenant finds where the tune is coming from, all hell breaks loose. For sci-fi fans, this is probably the most riveting segment of the movie and, even if the genre is not your cup of tea, the appearance of the first alien, bursting from within the body of its human host, is pretty impressive. Without doubt, it’s the most grotesque creature ever imagined by any art department – naked, with a satanic tail and a bulbous head with hideous teeth (but no genitals), its numbers multiply fast to attack the trapped crew.
The narrative is easier to follow than it was in Prometheus and Scott does not get bogged down again in questions about God and creation, but there’s only so much a non-tragic can take and, in the end, I was worn down by it.
