TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 8: ALIEN: COVENANT (2017)

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

You've reached the end of your journey at last. As you touch down on the planet that you'll colonise as your new home, you feel calm. Until you're suddenly ambused from the field of cultivated wheat by critical appraisal of ALIEN: COVENANT offering insight into what elements of this best-of of the Alien franchise don't work, what the film has to say about colonialism and genocide, and what we learn about the Xenomorph. Content warning: body horror, death, chemical warfare, space travel, genocide, colonialism and imperialism, biological experimentation, serial killing, antisemitism, Nazism and fascism.Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remixFull references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/JKLEGAS4This podcast was recorded during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labour of the actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Get away from her, you bitch away from her, you bitch! Hello, and welcome back to the Xenapod, podcast where we're watching all the alien franchise films in order, contextualizing them, and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, and joining me for the last alien franchise film is my co-host, Jim Ross. Hello, Jim. Hello. How are you?

I am good. We're recording this fairly soon after the last one, so I haven't had time to come down with any new child-born nursery-based illnesses yet. Not quite yet. The pathogens, the spores have not entered your bloodstream quite yet. They're not infected your air canal. No, they haven't. It does feel a bit like that.

I've found out that apparently some child-toed illness you can get is called hand-foot and mouth disease. which sounds delightful apparently it's unrelated to foot and mouth disease that farm animals get but yeah it does it does feel like being the parent of a toddler is a little bit like being stranded on an alien planet with the airborne pathogens sometimes delightful well before we start discussing alien covenant the last film in the alien franchise that we're covering i'll just say that this podcast was recorded during the twenty twenty three sag after strike but not the wGA strike because they managed to get a deal and end the strike just a few hours ago as we're recording. Arrah! Yeah, so good for them. They seem to have got everything they asked for and everyone seems to be very happy about it. But sag after it are still on strike, so I'll say, without the labour of the actors, currently

on strike, the film being covered here would not have existed. So we are covering Alien Covenant. The 2017 film, Ridley Scott's sequel to Prometheus and the prequel. to Alien his first film in this franchise. Now, what is your experience of Alien Covenant, Jim?

So this was actually another film. So, we said on the last one, Prometheus was a film I was pretty hyped for and I saw it on opening night. I wouldn't say I was quite as hyped for Alien Covenant because I think my slight disappointment Prometheus had had time to bed in

by this point. But, you know, I still like Ridley Scott as a director. he makes a few turkeys every so often but he usually has I have this theory where basically like once a decade he makes a masterpiece and if you look at his history I would stand by that right I don't think this film is that but I was very hype for it so not only did I see this on opening well I say I saw this on opening night I saw an opening day

I actually went to a midnight screening of this because we're hitting the period where I can actually find the tickets from my screenings for these films and my ticket for this says the opening day at 12.01 a.m. Wow, where was that? Yeah. That would have been 2017

that would have been probably the View Omni Center in Edinburgh because I would move back to Edinburgh by then. I think that was the closest multiplex to me at the time yeah. Yeah, I vividly remember seeing this at the Peckinplex in London.

Great, great cinema in southeast london with a couple of friends at least one of whom listens to this podcast so hello but i remember vividly hating it i i really did not like it and i was kind of dipping my foot into film criticism not writing for anywhere at that point just putting stuff up on medium and i hated this film so much i felt like i had to write something because i had such a visceral hatred response towards it. And I think that might have come across in a lot

of the previous episodes where I've said I've alluded to hating alien covenant saying alien covenant's the worst. You know, subtle implications here and there. And so the big twist of the xenopod that we have been building to, I really liked it when I watched it again.

I thought it was great. Whoa. I did not see this covenant at all. That's my art for podcast. Oh dear. I really, really enjoyed it. And I don't know if I've just, you know, got Stockholm syndrome after, you know, the last films we've seen are Alien Resurrection, Alien versus Predator, Requiem, Prometheus. And now I'm just endured to this kind of thing. But, I mean, we can get into it as we discuss it, but I really enjoyed it. I thought it worked really

well. That's interesting because I think so I didn't I can't remember if I reviewed this No 2017 I wouldn't have done a radio review of it. I didn't do a written review of it. Take one published one which is written by my friend and colleague and one of the site's

sort of co-founders Gavin Midgley. Yes I read it and quite a negative review not too enthusiastic. Yeah and I think my I think I was more positive on it than Gavin was at the time I enjoyed it

I think re-watching it re-watching it I think I still enjoyed it I think its flaws are still very obvious but I think unlike

you know we'll get into this I think unlike Prometheus I don't think its flaws necessarily detract from the viewing experience

while you're watching it I think it's one of those things where you start to look at it and this is why it's interesting to look at it in the context of this podcast of this podcast I think a lot of the flaws and the disappointments I get from this film come from where it fits into the overall scheme of things.

I think it's a self-contained thing on its own. I think it works pretty well. I think in terms of where it fits into the overall picture, it starts to get a bit messy and inconsistent and I think thematically muddy. You know, we'll get into that. So I think my reaction is much the same, but looking at it from this new viewpoint with us, you know, going through the series as we are here, I think my issues with it are maybe slightly different. Same here, more or less. The main problem I have with it, which we will discuss,

I still have with it, but it doesn't burn in quite the same way. Maybe I'm older, maybe I've mellowed out. And the other problems that I had with it at the time didn't really bother me this time. I disagree with some of the things I wrote in that early review that I simply do not stand by anymore. So, for context, Alien Covenant came out on the 12th, of May 2017 in the UK, 19th of May 2017 in the USA. Budget slightly reduced from Prometheus

are 97 to 111 million dollars and a box office of about half what Prometheus took in, 240.9 million. In 2017, the big films of the year were Star Wars, The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, the fate of the Furious. I don't know what Fast and Furious number. remember that is. Eight. Oh, Fet Eight. I get it. Yeah.

Yeah. Despicable Me Free. Jamanji, welcome to the jungle, Spider-Man Homecoming. Something called Wolf Warrior 2. Oh, that's a Chinese film. Guardians of the Galaxy

Volume 2, 4 Ragnarok, Wonder Woman. So we've got a little chunk of Marvel films in there, Star Wars, Disney. These are all big studio films.

This came out in May. Healing Covenant came out in May. So in May, In May, we have Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 coming out at the start of the month. Alien Covenant came out the same day as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Long Hall, and a few days before they watch, and Pirates of the Caribbean, dead men tell no tales. Why is it there always a Pirates of the Caribbean film? When we go through stuff that's coming out, there's always, it's just that.

That really is a franchise that just wouldn't die Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh man, I scroll down a bit further to June, and Wonder Woman came out, DC film, and The Mummy with Tom Cruise, the start of Universal's Dark Universe series. Ah, yes, that long-lived shared universe. The funny thing is, I saw that remake in the movie. I didn't actually think it was that bad. It wasn't that great either, but, you know, it was no worse than any other. I didn't see it.

My main memory of it is the trailer they accidentally put out with the unedited audio. There's no music. There's no music so you can hear all the scream sound effects and they sound ridiculous. It's got to be on YouTube. Look it up. It's well worth your time.

Yeah, it reminds me of I don't know if you've ever seen those fake sort of like, you know, there's music videos without the music so you just hear kind of like the rustling your clothes and squeaking your shoes and something. It basically reminded me of that right, but it's actually genuine. It's kind of all he was. But yeah, it's got Tom Cruise doing a very

strange little scream. Because he's a strange little man. He's a very strange little man. So, almost immediately after Prometheus, it left a lot of questions, and Ridley Scott was very open about saying he'd like to do a sequel to it,

which would be a direct prequel to alien. Damon Lindelof, who we talked about in the last episode, had some ideas about the sequel, but he didn't want to be involved. He thought that a fresh voice would benefit the franchise at this point. Ridley Scott then decided that an additional film would be required between whatever sequel to Prometheus came out and the original alien. So he has this idea for a

free part film series, Prometheus Alien Covenant and Question Mark. He had some ideas around Paradise Lost. The original film's title was called Alien Paradise Lost in reference to the Milton poem, which we'll talk about because it's very thematically resonant for this film. Scott was thinking about these ideas and changed the name to Alien Covenant and brought on screenwriters John Logan and Dante Harper. So John Logan is a quite well-known screenwriter. He's worked on Martin Scorsese films like The Aviator and Hugo. And perhaps most pressingly for you, Jim, he worked on Skyfall. And Spector, actually, I think, as well, which I thought was

yeah, okay, we're not going to re-litigate those James Bond films here, but Spector, I thought was a dreadful film, and a good example of everything we've moaned about in the last two episodes of, you know, I get that reference, and leaning on iconography and stuff, but yeah, yeah, anyway. But he's won

Tony Awards, he's won Golden Globes, he's been nominated for Oscars, but he also wrote a Star Trek nemesis, which is a load of shite. So, John Logan, really racking up the DVD box so he put together this script

and they confirmed who the cast would be the first person to be confirmed coming back was Michael Fassbender because he carried that last movie, Prometheus. That's not fair, Numeropass was very good as well, but she was confirmed as not returning or returning in a very limited capacity as we'll discuss through this film.

And the only other thing about the making I have is, interestingly, this was the second film in the Alien series not to be filmed in the UK. So Alien Resurrection was also not filmed in the UK, but Covenant was filmed in Australia, in Sydney, and parts of New Zealand. So, without any further ado, shall we run through Alien Covenant? Absolutely. We open with a shot of an eye. It turns out to be David's I. And we have a scene between David, the android from Prometheus, played by Michael Fastbender, and Peter Wheland, played by Guy Pearce, with not quite as much prosthetics as the end of Prometheus, in a huge white room. Wayland identifies himself as David's father,

and we get into these kinds of father-son creation themes that are carried over from Prometheus. David asks Wayland, if you created me, who created you? And again, we're carrying over those themes from Prometheus of where humans come from. Whalen refuses to accept that humanity is a product of pure biological chance. David also plays some Wagner. The titles of Alien Covenant appear in space over like the alien titles bit by bit. We're introduced to the Wayland-Utani colonization vessel Covenant, which is flying through space heading for a planet to be colonized. Like the Prometheus from last time, everyone is in stasis. Only the android, Walter. is responding to calls from mother, the onboard computer, who we recognize from Alien,

to deploy solar sails, to recharge the ship, to check on the crew, to check on embryos. There's embryos that will colonize the planet when they land. As we'll become clear throughout the film, Walter is kind of the inverse of David from Prometheus, and I don't think I mentioned it last time. but letters, the first letters of the Androids in the Alien franchise, are very significant. So we have Ash, A, Bishop, B, Call from Resurrection C, and David D. And we can tell that Walter is the inverse, because his name begins with W, which is three letters from the end of the alphabet, just as David is free letters from the start of the alphabet.

An energy pulse hits the ship, and Walter initiates an emergency crew revival. Walter puts out a fire on the bridge while the crew struggle to revive everyone. The captain, Branson, is burned up in a cryopod malfunction, and Branson is a split-second cameo from James Franco. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he basically gets more scream time in the sort of like prolog marketing videos that were put out than he actually does in the film. Absolutely, he's got a very, very tiny role.

Which put me in mind of the Wicterman with Nicholas Cage, where James Franco is just in the last scene and no other scenes. Our hero, Catherine, played by Catherine Waterston, was Branson's lover, she goes through his stuff and she mourns him, and there's some interesting character stuff in how she reacts to these random objects, and I found it quite effective. She's clearly very upset. She talks later to Walter about the dreams that she had of building a cabin by the lake with James Franco's character, and I thought it was all very good. I thought it was leaps and bounds beyond the character stuff in Prometheus. I think I'd agree with that, right? Because I think in Prometheus it's obviously going, and you made references

during the episode, it's obviously going for a similar thing to what happened in alien with Prometheus, right, in terms of having the crew get together, have them interact with each other and try to establish character. I actually think this film does in this opening segment, and I'm going to refer to the David part as well,

it does a lot more with a lot less, I think. It just feels a lot more believable, but you get a nice window into, I think, how Walter is maybe a bit more muted than David, but can empathise, perhaps better, or has better understand, you know, a bit better emotional intelligence of humans, let's say. Catherine Watson's performance at this point is very good. And I'm going to heart back to that initial scene with Guy Pearce and Fastbenders, David, because that, I actually think personally that, is up there for me is probably my favourite scene in amongst any of the scenes in Prometheus or Alien Covenant to be honest. Oh wow. I really thought that was, I really thought that was excellent and Fast Bender in particular does so much with so little there and the fact that he is

this quite stilted robotic presence but he still manages during the, so the key thing in that scene is kind of the arrogance of Wayland where you know like David questions him in the way that you made out kind of like you know well you'll die I won't you're my creator so you know why my

basically why should I serve you and Whalen's response is to make him serve him some tea that is literally right next to Wayland and it's across the room from David yeah right and the very slight hint of contempt that David

that Fastbender manages to communicate in that little moment is just beautiful. I absolutely love it. Very precise little movements and very creepy energy. He's doing a lot with his face but very subtly.

It's really terrific stuff. And frankly Guy and frankly Guy Pearson that one seat that you get it's head and shoulder. Even his kind of like hubris and arrogance and his whole thing about kind of like I refuse to believe that I'm the

you know humans are a result of biological chance. The absolute arrogance of the man just comes absolutely shining through, in a way they didn't really with Prometheus, and now maybe that's due to kind of like the way he was hemmed in with the prosthetics and scenes that were cut and stuff, but this, just on

its own, it's just a beautiful little sort of like vignette that I think just makes so much more out of, particularly the Whalen's character in Prometheus, but I think it sets up David, maybe a little bit better than Prometheus did as well. I really do love that scene. A fun little detail is he also has what we're meant what we may be meant to interpret as the original of michael angelo's david in the

middle of the room and it's too tall for the room so there's a little carve out of the top and the bottom of it to ensure it fits but yes as you mentioned we're clearly in the alien briefing scene we're meeting the characters it's the breakfast scene from the original alien all over again that was also reiterated in prometheus so billy crudup is the captain now because of uh James Franco's death, but he doesn't feel able to do it. He's set up as this kind of middle manager who has suddenly been thrust into leadership and he is quietly undermined by multiple crew members. He wants to assert his authority, but he can't.

The crew is entirely couples because I think that's the point of the colonization mission that these families are going out into space to colonize it. So he talks to his partner about how he feels that he wasn't put in charge because he is a man of faith and therefore is seen as irrational, seen as unable to make rational decisions for the crew. The crew fix the ship. There's some scenes of them fixing things up in the terraforming bay and fixing the solar sails and blah blah, blah. The crew defy Crudup's direct orders to not mourn the captain, to not have a funeral for the captain, and they have whiskey, well, Jack Daniels, neat with out ice or a chaser, which is correct.

It's just a shame it's Jack Daniels, to mourn their fallen captain as they flush him out into space. So far, this takes a lot longer to get to the point than alien. And I'll bring up my original review here, where I wrote that the first act before reaching the planet seems to take forever and accomplish nothing, which I entirely disagree with at this point. I think this builds tension in a slow beginning. in a slow burn kind of way but in a way that it's very effective

for later on when things start to ramp up I think there's some good establishing character stuff here and overall it works it does take longer than it seems it takes Alien or Prometheus but I don't mind that now I mean we'll get into this when

we're slightly further through kind of the recap of it what I will say is I think I think it works in retrospect right and I think in the sense that a lot of the things that are set up here have pay off later, which makes moments resonate better. What I will

say is, I do think, to the length of the film, I think it's a smidge over two hours, right? The first cut, the first cut was two and a half hours, and I think they took about 20, 25 minutes off that, so it's just as you say, just over two hours.

And I do wonder, depending on what that cut material was, whether it could have benefited from it, because the only thing I would say is the pace of the film, like once you get to the third act, let's say, it accelerates

enormously, and I'm not sure that it's to the film's benefit, if I'm honest. So that's, that would be my, now whether you, it's up to, you know, it's up to the individual whether that means that they maybe should have moved this bit along a little bit

quicker or they should have had a longer film to allow a little bit more breathing space for some other bits later on. That's a debate that can be hard, but that's the only thing I would say about the pace of the opening. I think it gets a good payoff later, but I do wonder if the film suffers for it later on. Yeah, as I say,

I think they've struck a good balance. There was also viral marketing for this, similar to Prometheus, a series of short films that kind of do a lot of world-building and do a lot of the establishing that they don't have time for in this film, because they're already doing a lot of establishing.

So there's a film where James Franco's character is talking to the crew and they're preparing to go to cryosleep and there's another one where David is with Shaw on the engineer ship. It's a lot of establishing stuff that I assume was in the first cut of this film but which was cut because it's too much. So while out repairing the solar sails, Tennessee, played by Danny McBride, picks up a strange transmission. Walter and mother decode it as a rogue transmission that turns out to be John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads, and also a map to the source of that transmission.

Crudup orders an investigation to the habitable planet in that system and thinks that they should just go there instead of carrying on to their ultimate destination. Kevin Waterston disagrees. But the crew go down to the planet in a lander. This scene is reminiscent of the dropship scene in aliens, where they're landing for a sea. storm and there's a lot of turbulence. And I think this was the first indication of how much this film is in dialogue with the elements of previous films in the series, or at least parts of the franchise that this film considers to be significant. I think between the lander, the guns and the crew here, this film is sort of positioning itself as the aliens to Prometheus's alien.

and this will be a theme throughout the film I think to some extent it's positioning itself as a kind of best of of the alien franchise in some sense a compilation of these different elements so you've got crew coming together in the same way as alien you have the guns the landers the more military aspects of aliens and when we get to the creature

there's a creature that very closely resembles the dog alien from Alien 3. And, you know, surprised as I was to like this film to such an extent, I'm also shocked to discover that I agree with Peter Bradshaw, who wrote for The Guardian, saying that this was the greatest hits compilation of the other alien film's freaky moments. Yeah, yeah. I can see that assweight to it. I think as that develops, though, just to offer a counterpoint, right? Because I really, find myself on the fence about this film. I quite like it. I want to like it more, but then there's aspects where I'm not not keen at all. What I will say is I think that's to the detriment of

quite a lot of elements of the film, right? Because the thing I find funny about this is it's a Prometheus sequel, right? But to me, it's not, does it do its job as a sort of alien prequel come spin-off. In some aspects, in terms of set pieces, right? And I think we're kind of getting to the point now where we'll come up against that in the recap. I think in that sense, yes, it does achieve that pretty well, I think. In terms of it being a

thematic prequel, I don't think so, because it's too beholden to Prometheus. But the thing is, because this is also kind of a reaction to Prometheus, which was kind of a you know, look warm to okay reception, and Riddley Scott seems to have taken that on board. It's also not satisfying, as it maybe could be, as a sequel to Prometheus, and again, it finds itself caught between two stools. In the way, in the same way Prometheus was kind of caught between two things, but this kind of ends up caught between two different stools, you know, but it's still kind of ultimately the same problem. So this kind of greatest history aspect If it was just the alien film

And this is where kind of like it's in position in the franchise Because if it was just the mainline alien films I could see how this would work But the need to tie together Prometheus And you know kind of like the original strand of films I think is what basically makes this a rather A confused film on some levels And it gets away with it because there's some technical stuff

That's superb I think But in terms of where it all fits in the eye ideas, it doesn't cohere. And I think this is the start of this issue, basically, in the film for me. Yeah, yeah. I can see that. I don't think it particularly marries Prometheus and alien particularly well. But they land it's a lush green world with naturally occurring water.

They land in a shallow lake. Crudup starts planning the colony immediately after they've landed. And they also discover there is wheat that seems to have been cultivated, which is an odd thing to discover on a planet you've never heard of. They go hiking up to find the source of the transmission, which is coming from up in the hills. There's no sounds of bird or any kind of wildlife, but something large has knocked down a bunch of trees. They're also cut off from the ship by an eye on storm blocking communications. A crew member has a cigarette and steps on some spores which release tiny fungi or tiny parasites that move as if they're intelligent and they burrow into his air canal and infect him.

They discover a derelict spaceship, the kind of magnet derelict shape, the horseshoe derelict shape that we used to from Alien and Prometheus. And they discover inside Elizabeth Shaw's dog tags from the last film. Walter discusses what happened to them Prometheus 10 years ago, and they also activate a hologram of shore in the planetarium room from the last movie. We've really got the slow burn on tension at this point as crew members are seen in jessexie. spores and getting steadily sicker and sicker, it's kind of ramping up to the inevitable disaster. As I mentioned the soundtrack as well, which haven't mentioned so far, but the soundtrack by Jed Curzel really leans into this idea of dialogue with the previous movies, because

it is a lot of spins on Jerry Goldsmith's original score for Alien. And I think it combines some themes from Prometheus, but it is a lot of spins on Jerry Goldsmith's original score for Alien. but if so, a lot more subtly. Apart from the scene later where David plays the Prometheus theme on a flute. So the sick crew members head back to the lander, they discuss quarantine protocols, the sick crew member gets locked in the med bay, and something emerges out of his back, which looks like a tiny, bony, white xenomorph. The wiki calls it a blood buster, and it immediately kills another crew member.

The creature escapes, and in pursuing it the entire lander, blows up. Another one emerges from another crew member and runs into the wheat field. This is the creature that I said resembled the dog alien from Alien 3. It's a lot more skeletal. It moves very quickly. It's all white. The wiki calls it a neomorph. There's a scene where it attacks several of the crew and eats Walter's hand. And then a mysterious robed figure arrives and sees off the neomorph and the remaining crew follow him. This kind of wizard figure leads them to a city full of desiccated corpses and I think all this

looked great. There's some great visuals of this empty city David calls it a necropolis and takes them into this seemingly temple kind of thing and takes them down to a cavern there. I don't think the production design is quite as

good as Prometheus but you know it looks good I think this film in general looks pretty good. I think the exterior and you got a slightly better look at it during a flashback sequence that kind of follows on a little bit from this segment here. I don't think the exteriors are more interesting. I don't think the interiors are as interesting as Prometheus was. I think this sequence though, I think it is very

effective. And I think the neomorph attack, right? I like that because it is something a little bit a little bit different to some of the stuff that we've seen in previous films, right? It's kind of it's almost like somebody took the idea of the xenomorph to a certain extent and then the chest burst in the first alien film. Because one of the, one of the, or even some of the, the facehugger attacks, let's say, in aliens and things like that, because it's kind of combined the savagery of the full creature with the kind of speed of those smaller ones, right? Because the thing in the

and you know, I don't think that's seen in alien in terms of effects has maybe aged as well as some other stuff, right? But the thing that's kind of terrifying about it is it just, it emerges from John Hurt and then just scuttles off at Tots feet. It's like, where the hell is this thing gone, right?

And this thing, the Neoborff in this film, it's, you know, it's running around at a wheat field and it's kind of like it's quick and it's fast and they can't hit it. And it is absolutely savage and the sort of like the attacks, it's feral and it's rabid

in a way that certainly the original alien, right, from the 1979 film, in a way that that isn't. Yeah, I think it's implied in a lot of the alien films that when the chestburster emerges it's quite vulnerable.

It's quite weak for those first few hours of its life cycle. Whereas here the neomorph kills straight away and immediately seems very very vicious. On the neomorph attack scene, I think it also worked well because despite being set at night, you can see what's going on. So it is dark, but it's not impossible to see things. Unlike certain other films in this franchise, we could mention. Requiem. Yeah, exactly. The robed figure is revealed as David, and we get some of the best scenes in the film from Michael Fastbender playing

David here. He explains that Shaw and himself arrived there 10 years ago and that the chemical weapon payload in their ship was accidentally released, which killed all biological life and mutated into the form that has spawned these parasites that become neomorphs. He welcomes Walter as a brother. Almost as a second fort, he walks past Walter and says, hello brother. So there's still a storm that blocks communication back to the covenant. Tennessee pusses the ship within 80 kilometers of the storm system to attempt to communicate with the ground crew. And then we have Walter and David playing off one another for a bit. So Walter explores David's creepy caves, and David has, I think Fassbender's performance

is great here at getting across how David has just gone mad. He has clearly gone mad with loneliness and with the flaws of his creation. It gives himself a haircut, so he looks almost exactly like Walter at this point. He's got anatomical drawings of local fauna all. over the place like serial killers den he teaches walter how to play the flute david's david's study and labanus

are as creepy as fuck right there's real kind of like i and it's another this is an element of the production design where like i'll go back on what i said previously where this aspect of it is fascinating like there's drawings all over the place that kind of like heart back to

concept art previous films and it It is kind of fascinating, and it looks really creepy, and it looks really weird, and it's funny, actually. I kind of, like, basically, if you were to marry the aesthetic of the alien films, like, almost, and this is ironic given he directed Alien 3, like, David Finchers, like, seven. This is kind of the vibe I got from it. It's got that same sort of, like... I was going to say Zodiac. Same director.

Well, actually, well, yeah, well, yeah, well, there you go. Yeah, exactly, right? And yeah, no, Zodiac would be a good touch point here as well. It's got that, just that unsettling, creepy aesthetic to it, right? But obviously it's got a kind of like a biological twist on it here, right? But it's, the way it's communicated through kind of set dressing and set design, the way it's put across just the way that David's mind is just not so much twisted and warped, but maybe it's gone too far down a path that his flaws have laid out, right?

And the end result is just disturbing, basically. Yeah, it is. We get these chats between David and Walter, where David talks about how he pitied Wayland when he died, how he turned out to be unworthy, and Walter talks about how he was designed to be more efficient, but was not allowed to create. So in some sense they have wiped out some of the flaws, quote unquote, of the David model,

which was discontinued because it was too idiosyncratic, too human. It had this yearning for creation that the Walter model does not have. And this speaks deeply to how David and Walter's characters will develop. David also quotes Osamandias, who he says was written by Byron, and he flashbacks to what actually happened when he arrived in a scene that is maybe my favourite visual in the film where they arrive on the engineer planet and he deliberately drops all the chemicals from the last film

all the sweaty little jars that I mentioned in Prometheus and this pathogen spreads out into a cloud above these gathered engineers and completely wipes them out he just commits genocide as soon as they come to the planet it looked great. It's a horrifying scene. I think it worked really well. I said in my first review that this was my favourite scene in the film. I mean, there's a couple of interesting things about this scene. One, one is within the film, the other one is kind of outside it. And the first one is that this is actually in one of the prologue marketing things, right? You don't see the

very end of it. But it doesn't leave a lot to the imagination, I think, which I've found quite No, short film called The Crossing where David and Shaw are alone on the ship, and it ends with him dropping the jars on the engineers. You don't see the effect of that, you don't see them all die, but it's pretty obvious what he's going on from the scene. So I find that interesting. The other thing, I mean, the other thing that's, and this is where we start to get into the stuff about how well the,

the way the slots in the series as a whole, right? because this is where it's most obvious this one flashback scene really is the only place where I think it really explicitly embraces its role as a Prometheus sequel yeah right and it's just interesting that the inclusion of certain things later on in the film is clearly and even kind of just the general approach of this film is clearly a response to Prometheus right and Ridley Scots on record is as basically saying that right you know so that's that's not that's not that's interpretation on my part. But the funny thing is, one of the criticisms of Prometheus is it set too many things up that it didn't answer, right? Now, I only have limited sympathy

with that idea, because I think, you know, you should leave some things ambiguous. I think Prometheus's issue was it didn't close things off thematically in some senses, right? It didn't need to necessarily close things off explicitly with like, you know, spoon-feeding you what a solution was, but it did need to do a better job of wrapping up its ideas and stuff. But the thing here is, it doesn't provide answers either, right? You know, I think it leaves, it does leave a lot out here. And so in terms of it working as a Prometheus sequel, I don't think it really does, and I think this is indicative of why it doesn't. What's interesting about this, though, is the scene at the start of the film with Wayland, right, and the way that you

see David's characters develop through the kind of, you know, the creepy study and interiors that we've just spoken about, actually make this scene make sense, right? And it actually lends a little bit more to Prometheus. I actually think that, I actually think that it kind of improves some of our understanding of David's motivations in Prometheus. So it's a very complicated relationship this film has with its predecessor as a sequel, right? Some things it does well. Overall, I don't think it really does it brilliant, but it's a very complicated dialogue it has going on with Prometheus, I think. Yeah, I think the major element carried over from Prometheus is David's character, but as you've alluded to, this does not answer the questions

raised by Prometheus. The main sequel hook for Prometheus was, Sean David are going to find the engineer's home world to find out why the engineers wanted to kill them. And we don't get any of that here particularly. There's a lot of, there's speculation on the Alien versus Predator Wiki as to, did they even arrive at the engineer's home world? Does it make sense that the engineers would have a planet where there's one city and a load of figures that look like engineers but look superficially different and are wearing like rags and stuff? Are these even the same engineers from Prometheus? Because they are positioned quite differently. As a sequel, it doesn't pick up on any of those questions,

and it doesn't seem interested in those questions. All we're taking over is David's character, his motivations, and more seriously hooking into Alien as a prequel to Alien. So the neomorph sneaks into David's refuge, and it sneakly kills a crew member. Tennessee gets through to the ground crew, and he takes the covenant down to 40 kilometers. David finds the neomorph, having killed this.

crew member and attempts to communicate with it. Crudup finds them and David tells him not to shoot but Crudup shoots the neomorph to death and David is mad about it. So Crudup finally confronts David demanding to know what's going on. And David tells Crudup that he's been investigating this pathogen and how it has mutated and he has been cultivating these parasites and breeding them into new forms. But his efforts have been frustrated by the complete absence of hosts for his parasites. So he's got close to the perfect organism. and he's managed to create these eggs, but they've been waiting for what he calls a mother, a human host, and Crudup looks into the egg, and there's a facehugger, so he gets got by a facehugger.

So I think this scene is very exposition heavy, but I think Fastbender sells it as kind of creepy David. And then we, David waits for Crudup to wake up after the infection, and a chestburster emerges from Crud up, and it kind of recognises David as his creator. So David puts his hands up, and the little chestburster puts his little bony xenomorph hands up as well. And this was the scene that I most hated when I first saw this film, but that I think works quite well, as long as you're not too mad about the idea of explaining xenomorph. Yeah, and I think this is where, as well, a lot of this film,

as a standalone kind of like progression of scenes, right, this interaction between Oram, David, Billy Crudup's character and David. I think it works on its own quite well. I like the way that Crudup's character interacts with David. I don't really... I see a lot of criticism of the fact that he looks into the egg, but I mean, you know, like...

So did Kane. This happens in the original, I mean. Yeah, you know, like, I don't think that's a particularly meaningful criticism, really, if I'm being perfectly honest. It's not... Like, I do understand some of the criticisms that exist to this film, of again it's the supposedly smart people doing stupid things thing i'm not really sure that this

actually fits into that right because it's kind of like it's a split second lapse in judgment basically you know like you know we don't peer into the thing but you know by the time you've done it it's too late right so i i quite like i quite like the scene on its own in terms of like the emergence of the chest buster again i've seen some criticism of this that this thing basically is like a little mini xenomorph right but and that you know it doesn't look like the chestburster and so one

there is an argument to be heard about whether this is exactly the same creature anyway right I'm not I'm not overly concerned with whether it is or not right but even if it is you know we're talking about a film that's being made like you know

40 odd years after the you know after the first film it's probably reasonable to assume that you know if they could have portrayed it this way in 1970. Maybe he would have. That was my interpretation. My interpretation was that Ridley Scott is saying with this scene that he always wanted it to be a tiny version of the xenomorph, but they didn't have the technology to achieve that back then.

You know, combined with it, it's a different scenario as well. I mean, let's face it, the chessburster doesn't really get a lot of screen time in 1979, right, for understandable reasons. It comes out and seems away across the floor. Yeah, exactly, right? So logically, I don't really have any issue with any of this and I think the scene in and of itself is actually quite good I think this is where I start to have the issues with the film and I don't have a problem with explaining the origin of the xenomorph right I if we want to explain the origin of it on film I'm okay with that as long as it's a compelling story or there's a compelling idea behind it right I don't need it I don't need it to be unknowable right in the way to

was in 1979, if we have a good idea to attach to it. My thing is, right, and this will kind of progress as the film goes on, we'll probably have a little bit more discussion about this towards the end. For me, the origin as presented

here, it's too neat, it's too wraparound, right? The idea that this creature, which terrorizes the crew of a whalen, Uttani ship, a hundred or so years after the events of this film was actually

born from an android experimenting with the biology on a nearby alien planet and that android's flaws come from the arrogance of his creator who was Peter Wayland one of the original it's too neat, it's too

wraparound and I think even as a kind of like comment on the arrogance and the flaws of humanity which I think is partially what it's trying to get it again we'll talk about it's partially maybe what it's going for it's still too neat

and it doesn't really work as that sort of thesis about kind of you know the arrogance of man trying to create and control and it coming back to bite them in the arts again it's too neat that's my problem with it

it's not the fact that we have an explanation it's the way that that explanation wraps around and dialogues with the other films I think it dialogues with the other films in a way which is, is, I don't want to say improbable, but it's not, it narrows the universe in a way that kind of shuts down the commentary that is trying to achieve. Yeah, I agree with everything you've said, but I do think, I am the person you mentioned at the start who thinks the alien should be fundamentally unknowable. I mean, this franchise is called Alien. It is supposed to be Alien. It is supposed to be Alien. It is supposed to

to be unknown, unknowable, mysterious, lovecraftian cosmic horror. We're not supposed to know where this savage creature came from, and it shouldn't matter, particularly for the first film, it should be entirely unknown. And I think that explaining it takes away a lot of that power, and it is specifically explaining it in the way that you've mentioned, this neat wraparound way, where the alien fundamentally emerges from humanity, from humanity's creation, this android, through Wayland's creation, through Whalen's company, through this kind of rapacious capitalism that Wayland is a signifier for, that makes it, that reduces the universe, you know, that makes

the galaxy so much smaller. And I'd compare it to when you find out in Star Wars episode one that C-3PO was made by Anakin Skywalker. Like, it's a small detail that shrinks the universe down to this one family, the Skywalker family, which has been a recurrent problem of the Star Wars films, but that's another podcast. So, yeah, it shrinks everything down in a really unsatisfying way. I also have, I had problems, I have problems with the gender politics of how this is done, In particular, the original film was kind of ambiguous about whether the alien was male or female, where it came from, and aliens kind of expands on this with the kind of monstrous feminine,

where it's an allegory for female power against masculine power, and to find out that the alien is created in this film from a male figure, from an android, complicated by the coding as gay which I mentioned in the last film but still a kind of father figure for me strips the xenomorph of a lot of that ambiguously sexual power

and kind of asserts male authority over this creature and its creation in a way that I find quite unsatisfying yeah and I think this is where I think basically the film could have gone down two paths and it tries to have its cake and eat it right

he tries to do both because I actually think a lot of that threat if you think about the way he behaves towards Walter and particular the way in which shortly after this

I don't want to jump the gun on the recap but the way David then interacts with Daniels, Catherine Watson's character a lot of that threat is transferred to David himself

right and I find that interesting because basically what the film actually wants to do is I think it wants to present David, it basically

almost kind of wants to present David as the monster, right? And David as this reflection of the worst impulses of humanity, right? And basically he has inherited the flaws of his creator in Weyland. He has inherited the arrogance and the delusions of grandeur and everything there, right?

It's kind of probably trying to show the products of the society we create are inherited, inherently flawed in the way we are. I have more on that in a couple of scenes. Yeah, and I think that that's an interesting thing to put across, right, and we'll talk more about

David later on, because I have a lot of thoughts about him in this film, and basically it is the strongest helmet of this film, as far as I'm concerned. But in trying to marry and cover the origin of the alien at the same time, it does undermine

some of the messaging with that, because a lot of, I A common strand through the first set of films is the arrogance of humanity to think that they can control this organism, right? They want to harness it for their own ends, right? And the idea is that they can't, and they shouldn't be able to, and it's arrogance, right? But this completely undermines that, because it's a product of humanity that creates it and can, in fact, control it, right? Because there's explicit scenes of this, right, where he calms, the neomorph. and the Xenomorph acknowledges it, you know, so it, it, it, it confuses those themes, I think,

or it confuses the way that this film interacts with those scenes, because also, you know, those films still exist, you can take them on their own terms, right, the heterarchical kind of structure that we spoke about in the last episode, but it does, it means that it doesn't, this film does not interact with the themes of those films particularly well, in my view, and I think it does other things much better, this is what, one where it's a very confused film. And I think it's more confused than Prometheus. Prometheus was unsatisfying in some ways,

but I think it was reasonably certain about what it wanted to talk about. I don't think this film is when it comes to the aspects of the alien life, to be honest. I disagree with that. I think it's a lot clear about what he wants to say than Prometheus, but I fundamentally do not like what it has to say. It's kind of, it's an extension of Ash from Alien. where Ash, the android, was obsessed with this perfect organism that transcended humanity, and that was...

And that phrase is used as a direct coal bag as well, basically. So David is obsessed with the perfect organism and goes so far in his loneliness and his madness as to create the perfect organism, the xenomorph. But it's an extension that doesn't work for me. Like, it takes it too far in the way that we've just been talking about, and you've just been talking about. Yeah, there's an article by Antoine.

Tony Osana that I found, essentially reviewing the film for the Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, that talks about Covenant being about male gestation and birth, which is the kind of inversion that would terrify male spectators, because men are not used to, males are not used to giving birth and having things ripped out of them. I simply don't think it's as effective as alien was, more subtly implying that. And I think by having this male creator, it kind of falls apart. So Walter finds, Walter stumbles upon Shaw's body, which was clearly experimented on by David. David mournfully plays the Prometheus theme on his flute, and Walter confronts him about releasing the pathogen.

And here's where we get into some of the thematic stuff around creation and humanity's creation, continuing the sins of the father, you know, kind of thing that you just mentioned. David says he wasn't created to serve. He says that he's standing up for synthetic life and for the act of creating new life. And he views colonization, the human colonization, as the act of a dying species, desperate to spread itself out into the stars. Walter points out that David is broken, and he does this by pointing out that he was wrong about who wrote Osamandias. Byron did not write Osamandius. Shelley wrote Osamandius. David just gets kind of mad at this and kills Walter with the flute.

but what we see Walter's skin healing itself. So I like this scene a lot, and I think this scene brings out a lot of the film's themes around colonization and genocide and creation. It explicitly positions colonization and spreading out in this way, taking over territories that aren't yours, as an act of destruction that is viewed by humanity as an act of creation. and I think there's a lot of kind of

in the scene that we just talked about a few scenes ago where David commits genocide against the engineers he has this kind of blonde look he has this Aryan look about him he's also into Wagner so I mentioned he plays Wagner at the start of the film he plays Wagner at the very end of the film as well

which we'll get to I'm not saying Wagner was a fascist but Wagner was appropriated by fascists He was quite liked by fascists. And he was an anti-Semite and talked a lot about the perils of miscegenation and he's kind of racial things. He wasn't a very nice man, but he was very much appropriated by fascists. So we have this intersection of David as representation of Aryan fascism, of purity, trying to create this pure, perfect organism. while decrying colonization, but also going about colonization. He is also destroying in order to create,

and he is exactly, as you've alluded to, perpetuating the capitalist and colonialist sins of Wayland, of trying to spread out into the stars and create something by destroying what's already there. This is very thematically resonant for me, and a damn sight more interesting than a lot of the previous films that we've seen. I couldn't actually find any academic papers that talk about this, which surprised me, because I think it's such an interesting reading of these films, but I did find an awful lot of articles for this film from non-English-speaking countries a lot more than I've found for the previous films.

So this seems to have had a large cultural impact outside. the UK and the USA. So there's lots from Japan, Korea, India, and Mexico. And not for Japan, obviously, but for the other countries, I wonder if that speaks to the kind of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism of the film and how it appeals to

people in those countries more than the UK and the USA. Well, particularly in the case of a few of the countries you mentioned, I think another layer that's probably worth that adding to this is that one of the ways that Dave and Walter

contrasted is also Walter as an American accent. Now, of course, you know, America's no stranger to the idea of colonialism in a slightly different form to Britain, but like there is an element of the fact that, the fact that David speaks with this sort of like cut glass English accent really does kind of like lead into this a little bit as well. So I do wonder if it's something that maybe some English speaking analysis is maybe oblivious to. But I think, but I, like you, I am surprised, right, because it's just, it's so, it's so obviously there, right? You've got an act of genocide. You have this kind of desire for the perfect superior, dare I say, being. And, you know, I mean, come on, the choice of, the choice of Wagner is no accident. I mean, it's really not, you know. So, like, it's very much there, there in the film. sure it's buried under the layers of body horror that you know we've spoken about and all these other things going on that you would expect in something that has you know alien as the primary title here but this these are the ideas that I think the film is the most interested in right and it's more and when I said so like it wasn't sure about what I wanted to say I do think it's sure about what he wants to say here but I don't think it's sure about what he wants to say around it I think the ideas that it's delivering through the David character, right, and his behaviour and his motivations, right, I think are

good, and I think they're clearer than Prometheus. I think Prometheus had a tighter focus in terms of its ideas, you know, and they were maybe a far more metaphysical, and he just didn't execute them very well. Here, I think it executes this particular strand of ideas very well, but then the other stuff around it in terms of how it interacts with the other alien films, that's a lot more muddled. This, to me, what we've just spoken about, this is where this film is at its strongest and at its most interesting. And I also think it sits alongside the themes of the original strand of films quite well. I think it complements it quite well, and it's a different idea that I don't think has really been put forward in the other films, right? we've spoken a lot about what is going on those

and it doesn't it doesn't address these in the same way right and I think this is the most interesting aspect of this film and it's kind of a shame that it was to me anyway that it's not pitched and retooled in the way that really kind of like properly foregrounds them

and makes them the real anchor of the film but I agreed there's a lot in previous films about obviously capitalism and anti-capitalism and capitalism as a real monster behind it all the driving force that

that brings all this up and the kind of alien as a metaphor for these kinds of forces that destroy the working class but I think this is the first films to bring in those kind of rich links to colonialism and imperialism and capitalism

and capitalism I think there's an excellent spin-off film in here right? I think there's an excellent film that maybe shares some elements of a universe

with the alien film, but I really do think you could take it, because basically I think a lot of these ideas right, and it probably still requires Prometheus to exist, right, but we've kind of discussed the issues of Prometheus in that episode. So if it exists

as a sequel to Prometheus and it was kind of a spin-off and it didn't feel the need to kind of sit within the same timeline, chronological, and kind of like, you know, end to end with the alien films, I think there's a much better film in here that shares elements of that universe, but tries to address different things, right?

Because I think kind of basically what this film, when it's doing things well, what it's doing is it's harboring, sorry, it's harnessing kind of the unknowable elements of the universe and mankind's attempts to control and have dominion over them and the way that that ends up kind of like undermining and destroying things right whereas previously it's looking at and and it looks at that from kind of the idea of um creation and destruction and trying to become a god yourself and control the environment around you right whereas in the mainline films it's a much more kind of it takes much more kind of like aim at corporate, you know, the hubris of corporations and, you know, the military a little bit in resurrection and kind of institutions, let's say, right? Whereas I think this has a much more spiritual bent in the kind of like it's seen as a flaw of humanity as opposed to a flaw of capitalism. But the thing that's interesting is if you have them with spinnels, then they can interact, right? Because they do interact. But the focus is different. Where it has a problem is because it's trying to be a prequel to.

alien, right? I realize it sounds a little bit ridiculous, but basically that's where it's problem comes in because the way that it tries to marry them together ends up kind of undermining some of the things that have been said about those aspects in other films.

But I think there is a version out there in a parallel universe, I think, where it's a spin-off and it kind of has these things running in parallel and it says similar things, but it doesn't undermine each other in quite the same way. Yeah, yeah. One of the articles that I did find, like I say, I found a lot of these non-English-speaking articles, which were not in languages that I can read, so I couldn't read them.

But it sounded like they had interesting titles, so I've put a few of them in the Tera references for this episode. One of the ones I could read, which is by Imad Ildin Aisha, is about orientalism and science fiction and orientalism. and in a brief paragraph argues that Covenant extends Ridley Scott's de-gendering and de-orientalizing aims of the original alien. Now, I wouldn't go that far. I don't think it's particularly successful at doing that, but I think it is pushing in that direction, certainly, in a way that's not entirely successful, but I applaud it for trying it. Like, I think trying that kind of thing is a lot more than we've had from the last few films we've seen. Daniels, Catherine Walterson's character, discovers what David has been doing. And this gets a bit repetitious, because she's the third character so far to discover what David has been doing. And stumble on his mad laboratory.

The xenomorph and a facehugger kill two crew members. Meanwhile, Daniels and David fight. But Walter saves her, and he and David fight. David says that Walter can either serve in heaven or reign in hell. And that's the Paradise Lost stuff, the Milton stuff, that. Ridley Scott alluded to with his first title. Incidentally, there's also allusions to The Tempest, where David is kind of this monstrous Caliban character

that they find on this mysterious island, this mysterious planet. And again, I found an interesting article comparing this at Tempest, but it was in Japanese, so I couldn't read it. So Tennessee manages to get the lander down, one of the teromorphing landers, down to the planet, but the xenomorph manages to get onto the lander, and there's an action scene where the xenomorph is attacking the lander and Daniels is trying to shoot it while dangling from the lander.

She uses a big crane to capture and crush it, which seemed to me to be in dialogue with aliens and the conclusion of that, where Ripley's in the crane suit, you know, the kind of best-of alien franchise that I thought this was attempting to do. I also thought that while we're on the subject of this dialogue with previous films, I think, in some sense, this is trying to resolve the identity crisis that you have identified throughout this podcast. I think this is trying to bring together these disparate elements

from the other alien films, and I get the sense from you that it's not entirely successful in doing this. No, I don't think is. One thing I would say, and this is not the deepest sort of like critical the deepest aspect of the critical analysis of the film of kind of gone through here but to me actually I really do think kind of like as we start to move towards the conclusion of the

film with this kind of like action piece of it I actually think this is probably too reminiscent of other films right it's it feels too much like a response to Prometheus and it's like okay well you didn't want Prometheus here's alien here's aliens I quoted Peter Bradshaw in the

Guardian earlier saying that it's a compilation and I think he ultimately says it's reliant too much on those previous films so if you haven't seen them you don't really know what's going on and I agree with that point as well I really hate to agree with Peter Bradshaw but here we are so the remaining crew returned to Covenant and Walter is also with them mother reports an unidentified life form on the ship because although it feels like the film has ended its actually not. The medbay is covered in blood and a crew member has been chest bursted. Two crew members are having a sexy shower when the xenomorph comes upon them and kills them and Daniel and Tennessee tracked the new xenomorph. At this point we get the franchise's first ever

point of view shot from a xenomorph. So it's kind of dark but with these weird squiggles like heat haze in front of its vision. I don't think it works at all. I like the idea that the alien does not have eyes and cannot, does not have vision in the same sense that we do. I thought this was terrible. I also don't particularly see the need for it.

I mean, in terms of kind of just, you know, logistically establishing how the xenomorph is moving through the ship. They have CCTV footage which they actually cut to during this kind of sequence like, you know, or rather the sequence that follows this. It really doesn't need this.

The funny thing is, actually we keep talking about this being dialogue with the other alien films this is the one part of the film that felt like it was in dialogue with bloody alien versus predator requiem to be honest with you it felt like the unnecessary kind of like addition of the xenomor vision this kind of like you know almost the punishing of the people who are having said like if anything it's actually the one part of this film that really feels quite a lot like aliens versus aliens sorry versus predator requiem which i found quite amusing yeah i didn't pick up on any of that but I can see it now that you mention it.

So it's also a recapitulation of what happens in Alien when the alien is pursuing them through the ship and they're shutting off doors to kind of block it into certain paths. Daniels and Tennessee lower it to the terraforming bay so they can open it into the airlock and flush it out into space. And you get a lot of shots of the xenomorph in this and it's generally a lot more skeletal than in previous films

because they're using CG. here and that allows them to be thinner and it's not a man in a suit you know it's not the man in the suit who so effectively portrayed the alien in the first film or the recurrent man in a suit who portrayed them in a later films is it as effective I don't think so it looks a lot weaker you know because it's so skeletal and so thin it looks like it needs to have a good meal you could snap it like a like a twig I don't know. It worked okay for me, to be honest. I don't like the look of it. I like the look of the original alien, and this didn't really work for me.

I think the problem is, I think by this stage in the films, you know so well what they look like, that it's really kind of easy to spot differences. Because the one thing I would say is I quite like it in the sense that it does appear less. human, right? You know, because I think that, you know, there is quite a humanoid form to the early ones for obvious reason. And here it's more kind of like they're more of a bipedal

creature. So I don't, I don't dislike it. What I would say is I don't think it certainly doesn't improve over anything, I think, is what I would say. Yeah, fair enough. It didn't, yeah, it wasn't a problem for me, but I you know, I don't think it's an improvement in any way, so.

They don't need to flush the alien out into space, though, on the front of a giant terraforming machine and it falls back down to the planet. Tennessee goes down to cryosleep and Walter, who is definitely Walter, puts Daniels into cryosleep.

Just before she goes to sleep she asks him to help build her cabin but it's clear on his face that he doesn't know what she means. Oh no, it's David. But it's too late and the cryosleep takes effect and she is left screaming

that David has snuck onto the ship as Walter. I think this is a very obvious twist. I pinpointed it the first time I saw the film, but I think it worked a lot better for me, this time round, particularly the kind of subtle creepiness that Michael Fastbender brings in that last scene when he's suddenly unearthed as David. You know, he says, oh, don't worry, I'll tuck the children in. And then he goes into the bay where they're keeping all the colonists, and he implants a couple of tiny face-hugger embryos that he's been carrying around among the colonists,

thus implying that the entire colony will be destroyed and turned into his perfect organism of xenomorphs. He puts on some Wagner, the entry of the gods, into Valhalla, while he does this, and it's a very nihilistic ending. It's a very dark ending. that I didn't really remember at all but I actually really liked

I like the ending the interesting the interesting thing about that is I have been unable to decide in my head whether whether the Walter David switcheroo right

I've been unable to determine my head whether that is meant to be a twist for everyone or just the characters in the film right because it seems so painfully obvious to me. It seems obvious. Narratively, I just

wonder why it's presented that way if it's meant to be a twist, you know? Yeah. It's obvious from the minute that David cuts his hair, so he looks exactly like Walter. When you've got these two identical robots played by the same actor,

it seems obvious that there's going to be a twist later where one is playing the other. Or something is going to hinge on one being confused for the other, right? I think it is meant to be a twist, and I think when you see it first time, it's a twist that's so obvious. It's insulting that they think you're not, you haven't figured that out. Second time around, I think it plays a lot better because you can focus a little more on Fastbender's performance where he is playing David, but with enough Walter in him to kind of throw audience members off the scent. We end with the final report from Walter, talking about how the ship is going to continue to the colony, and we fade to credits.

So as I've... Yeah, it's a bleak ending. This entire colony is doomed, and David, the kind of destructive colonizing creator, the mad robot, driven mad by years of not being able to create, is going to create by destroying 2,000 or whatever people. an entire space colony. And overall, as I've said, I like this film. I think it works really well. I think it builds attention effectively. It builds character effectively. The script is a lot better than Prometheus. I don't like what I've said, the explanation of the xenomorph. I'm still angry about that, but not as angry as I was because on a whole, the film worked for me, as in it was entertaining and I was involved in these characters and they

lives, particularly David and Catherine Waterson's character. So yeah, I'm a lot happier with it now than I was when I first saw. I would consider this the best alien film since aliens. I'm trying to say, I maybe agree with you there. I think as I've kind of alluded to a few times as we've gone through this, I do find that this a confusing film to process how I feel about it in a sort of binary way, right? And not to go completely off topic about the rotten tomato justification of film criticism, but it's a good example

right, of how considering films in this good, bad binary or this kind of multi-layer binary of, is it better or worse than these other films, right? You know, like, drop your alien films, letterbox ranking,

right? I would find it incredibly difficult to determine with this film because there are a lot of things I think it does really well, and I enjoy a lot more I certainly find it a much as a self-contained film right

in terms of observing the characters and their interactions and kind of the plot of the film in a standalone sense I find this a much less frustrating film than Prometheus

right? That's what I'm saying as a standalone film craft film as a film unto itself I think this works in a way that I didn't think Prometheus worked

I think the script just completely hampers Prometheus but I think this is entertaining in and of itself Yeah and I think it does interesting things with the David character

in particular right but where it's where it really doesn't work really is as part of the larger franchise that we have been

speaking about this entire time and I I find that an interesting thing because it's kind of, from a marketing standpoint, it's the selling point of this film, right? You know, like the trailers, I recall it, it ends with a shot of a xenomorph snarling on a drop ship, right? That's the pitch of this film. They're making no bones about this being an alien film in the marketing.

I mean, it has alien alien in the title. They showed the xenomorph like straight up in the trailers, like it wasn't hidden at all. Oh yeah, and they lean hard into that both with everything. I mean I was in a second-hand DVD shop a few weeks ago I think I posted this on socials where I saw this I saw this kind of like cover sleeve for a 4K disc which said alien was like holy crap is I do okay I don't have that

let's get that let's see how much this is second and I got up close to it and there was this tiny tiny tiny little covenant below it right you know so like even down to kind of like you know the the sleeve art for like the home video release. It's leaning into the fact that it's an alien film, but the thing that's really ironic about it is that is the aspect of it that doesn't work

because it, as we've already discussed when we got to kind of like the emergence of the xenomorph from Billy Crudup's character, it makes it too neat, right? And I think where I differ to you is, I'm okay with knowing a bit

more about the origin of the xenomorph, but it it should really just kind of like go back if you take alien in 1979 as the starting point it should just kind of go if you are going to get any sort of explanation i feel like it should go backwards from that but still keep it largely unknowable right in terms of kind of like its actual true origin in the sense of the way that the characters and prometheus were looking for their origin right it it should keep that unknown i'm okay with knowing more about it, but not to the extent that its entire, you know, its entire

creation story is obvious, right? And I think this film, in trying to talk about that, it's used the xenomorph as part of that structure, and I think that undermines the other, I think that undermines the other films, and therefore it undermines this film's relationship to them, right? When I think it, as I say, some sort of spin-off parallel idea with some of the notions that this film has. I think it could have worked superbly, and there's a lot of this film does well. So that's what I find ironic about it. I do think it's a pretty good film.

I enjoyed it. I think it's got a lot of interesting ideas. I think it's got a fantastic central performance of Michael Fastbender, and a lot of the ideas they communicate through that character are great. But completely ironically, it's its relationship to this larger franchise, which does not work for me. at all. Yeah, I think linking in with the rest of the franchise are the weakest elements of it. Yeah, in terms of the origin of the xenomorph, which I said, you know, doesn't work for me in

this film and completely sort of undermines it. I think after I saw Prometheus, I was sort of satisfied with that. I was like, okay, so the xenomorph was another creation of these engineers, like another a biological experiment that the engineers did. From there, you can sort of chart how a derelict engineer ship ends up with a load of eggs in the cargo hold for alien. And I was pretty satisfied with that. I think this actual explanation is a lot worse and works a lot less well, as we've said, around neatness and making the universe smaller and tying it all into humans undermines itself and undermines the core idea of alien and the alien. of the alien.

Yeah, you know, I mean, I even think back to kind of, like, you know, the iconic kind of things you associate, you know, in space no one can hear you scream. Well, that's a lot of shite here. You can sing a bit of John Denver and somebody will hear you. You know, like, you know, it's, like, it's aspects like that just make no sense to me. Whereas, like, if the, the, kind of the xenomorph,

and I use xenomorph kind of loosely, because obviously it's not really origin, that we see in Prometheus there and let's say that in this kind of fantasy fantasy universe of mine Prometheus was maybe slightly better executed but that that would be okay right because then kind of like

it becomes this parallel strand thing and the way that they would then dialogue would be kind of you know humanity is a creation of the engineers and you can see with David them making the same mistakes that the engineers make with humanity and their experiment

with this pathogen, right? There's a nice, to me there's a nice parallel there. But curiously, I don't really feel like... Like, the film kind of, like, gets across the parallels with David and his creating and the arrogance with Wayland, right? So it's an idea that's there, but it never really entertains the notion that there's a parallel between humans and the engineer race, right? Which I think is...

Which I think it is there, but I wouldn't say it necessarily in... engages it, with it that much beyond kind of like that one little clip from David's flashback, right, where we kind of like see the actual payoff of him and Shaw arriving on the planet. So it is strange to me because it's, it is the, it's the history of this franchise that undermines this film and that this film undermines. And I think that's a very strange position for this film to be in. I think that's maybe why it has a slightly confused reaction, where it's sometimes considered better and it's sometimes not, because I think that's really just, that is the film. It does a lot of things better than Prometheus, but because

it's trying to respond to Prometheus and also sit alongside the alien films and also kind of like develop some of its own ideas, it doesn't, it doesn't have a satisfying place, right? It doesn't have a satisfying way that it sits into that larger story. And that's unfortunate, and I think that's what that's what ultimately kind of undermines it. Yeah, I mean, I said at the start that Scott has this idea for one more sequel to bridge the gap between this and alien. And maybe that will make this whole endeavour work in retrospect. But as it is, as it stands in 2023, I think it's pretty clear that these films are not as good as the original alien and do not work in that sense. And I think we've clearly, despite what I think of this film's attempts to resolve the identity crisis,

we're still very much in the throes of that franchise identity crisis that we've been charting the entire podcast. And this film is another example of it. Yeah, I mean, the funny thing is, like another film between, and don't be wrong, if it ever appears, I'll be happy to be proven wrong if it does. But it's more, when I look at the ideas this film's communicating, the way it links into the rest of the series and all the rest of it like narratively from a plot perspective

I can see where this would go right potentially but in terms of like ideas and the way it links in and the sort of thing that is communicating beyond just plot beats I don't really see where this film goes from here it's actually wrapped it up too neatly right as we said before in terms of like the wraparound nature

of these creatures' existence and how they relate to humanity and the fact that they relate to humanity at all basically it's made it too neat and not to jump the gun on any future discussions that we might have this alien film Alien Romulus

that's meant to be coming like next year or the year after or something right? The idea that that seems to be a younger cast as a spin-on and it's kind of semi-unrelated I think kind of speaks to that idea There is nowhere for this to go other than this, you know, this modern concept of the soft reboot, right, where it's related, but it's not actually, you know, because this has tried to marry things together and it hasn't really managed it. Like, it's the relationship and the weight of this series and this franchise is what causes this film to, I don't want to say fail, fails a bit strong, but it is the source of its greatest weaknesses. I don't think it fails

but yeah it's definitely the weakest points I agree like where more do you take this other than seeing the derelict ship with the alien eggs

in the whole crash on LV426 and who cares we can intuit that that happened we don't need to see it on film so to wrap things up we can do a quick last round of xenobiology

where we talk about what we learned about the alien creature in this film which is where it came from, the origins of it. So the chemical that the engineers created that we saw in Prometheus mutated the indigenous life on this planet into neomorphs.

David, the android, did some experiments on the neomorphs and ultimately produced this thing that comes from an egg that latches onto a human host and then grows a xenomorph in the chest of the human. host. I don't know where the queen comes into it, but I don't think either does Ridley Scott or the screenwriters, and they don't care, and we don't care. So that is Alien Covenant, and that means we have come to the end at last after eight episodes of the Alien franchise. I wanted to propose that we do one more episode after this, offering wrap-up, some thoughts and some looks at the

future of the Alien franchise. That sound good to you? I was also going to propose that we give our rankings of these films but then you went off on one about letterboxed rankings no no we could we could do it I mean honestly like my um my my whole thing is using the delivery of lists as an opportunity to rail against the use of lists so I'm perfectly happy to do it well look forward to our next episode where we have a 15 minute rant about lists and rankings in cinema criticism absolutely but until then thank you you very much for joining us for this tour of the alien franchise.

Please continue to follow us on Twitter to hear anything that we might do in the future at the Xenapod and follow us on Blue Sky at the Xenapod.biscay.com. If you go to take on cinema.net, you'll

find a full back catalogue of the episodes of this podcast embedded there, or you can follow the links through and get to your preferred source, whatever that may be. and just kind of keep an eye on that section of the website I think this has been a good project, it's a good example of the sort of thing

that we want to do with maybe some of the more popular films that take one because we try to focus a little bit on kind of like more festival stuff and smaller things but I think where there's interesting things to say about big films we like to do that and that's a good example of this and I'm kind of hoping to do more projects like this in the future

so I would say just keep an eye out for that sort of thing and keep an eye on the socials for the next thing that we plan along these sort of lines or if we do future episodes of this because I think given there is potentially another alien film coming out in the next couple of years or so

and there are other alien things kicking around that we've not looked at there is the potential for that right so we'll do a wrap-up episode where we kind of like try to bring our thoughts together on the entire series but I would in the modern world of Hollywood and as strikes start to be resolved

I would be very surprised with that as the end of this as a franchise and the CDs, so there'll be other things to look at. Super. Well, thank you very much for joining us. And we'll end by saying, hopefully, this transmission will reach the network and be relayed in 1.36 years. This is Walter signing off. Security Code 31564F. It's game over, man. It's game over. You know,

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