Alien – Covenant / movie review

Alien Covenant is a sequel to Prometheus. Yet, if you haven’t seen Prometheus, you won’t be lost. The story carries itself quite well. If you enjoyed the original Alien movie, you will appreciate this one. Here I have written a spoilerish synopsis. I really haven’t included spoilers, but if you really hate having a clue about a movie ahead of seeing it, perhaps you should stop here and go see it.

The story begins with a prelude where we see David, the Artificial Intelligent Synthetic Human from Prometheus, conversing with his creator on the day he first becomes aware. The two discuss the question of who created mankind.

Next, we jump ahead in time to Covenant, a large colony vessel carrying two thousand people in cryo-sleep to a new world. Walter, A.I. Synthetic replica of David, is manning the Covenant while the crew of 12 is in Cryo-sleep. Walter converses with the A.I. computer controlling the ship referred to as Mother. Mother is the Covenant.

An unexpected solar flare from a nearby star damages the ship enough to wake up the crew, who lose the captain of the to a catastrophic failure in his Cryo-tube. The crew, tasked with getting the ship safely to the new planet

While they are performing repairs to the vessel, they intercept a transmission which happens to be a rendition of “Take me home, country road” by John Denver. Intrigued, the crew traces the source of the transmission to a nearby planet. The new captain makes the decision to check out this planet, diverting from the course to the colony planet still years away. His vision is to cut short the trip to land on this much closer planet and start the colony sooner. His decision is not popular with the rest of the crew.

The captain, Walter, and most of the crew fly the lander down to the surface to explore and find the source of the transmission. A skeleton crew is left on Covenant to observe from space. This planet has no animal life, only plant life. One of the crew members is infected by some spores when he steps on a fungus. The spores quickly morph into a Xenomorph, bursting out of his chest. Chaos reigns as the remaining crew desperately try to get back to the lander, which is destroyed by an explosion. Walter loses a hand while fighting the Xenomorph.

Whilst the Xenomorph hunts the crew, a stranger in hooded cloak mysteriously shows up. He scares away the Xenomorph and saves them, taking them to a fortress built by a long-lost race. This stranger is the source of the signal they intercepted. It is David, who has been stranded on the planet, biding his time, studying the Xenomorph biology. David and Walter are identical, save the missing hand from Walter. David has taken a liking to the Xenomorphs, a desire to perfect biological life, imprinted by his creator. Walter and David lock in mortal combat over what to do with the inferior life forms, humans.

Meanwhile the skeleton crew on Covenant make a daring rescue attempt, whisk in and save what remains of the landing party. Hero-T flies a space tractor down to the planet. The rescue is complicated by a fully formed Xenomorph hell-bent on stopping them. The heroine of the film uses her mountain climbing skills and cunning in a harrowing effort to scrape the Xenomorph off the hull of the rescue craft.

Returning to Covenant, the decimated crew are confronted with another Xenomorph. Working with the one handed A.I. Synthetic, they succeed in getting the damn thing off the colony ship. Peace reigns with only our heroine, Hero-T, and Walter surviving the ordeal. They have succeeded in preserving the 2000 colonists and unnumbered viable human embryos for the mission to colonize a far-off planet.