I really wanted to like
Prometheus. After the unambitious and disposable AVP films, here was
the director of Gladiator returning to develop his original vision.
Unfortunately no amount of depth can excuse the fact that the surface
layer is a largely nonsensical plot centred around an improbably
stupid cast of characters. There are tons of articles and videos
online dedicated to 'explaining Prometheus' not just because there is
so much to examine, but also because the film does such a poor job of
explaining itself. Prometheus claims to be a prequel without actually
setting up the original film and flirts with being an Alien movie
without actually spending much time on a proper Xenomorph.
Alien: Covenant does a
solid job of addressing the worst of these failings. Although it is a
direct sequel that requires Prometheus in order to make sense, it
promptly clears the decks in order to focus on the subject of
civilian spacefarers getting hunted by horrifying monsters. Although
competence levels vary, the crew as a whole acquit themselves about
as well as you'd expect under the extreme circumstances.
Covenant also finally
gives the original Alien the respect that it deserves. Of all the
factors that turned a basic monster movie into one of Western
cinema's revered classics, the genius design of Giger's creature is
definitely one of the most potent. Since horror monsters are less
scary once you've seen them, the sequels have often looked for a way
to improve on the design – but only the original Queen has really
added to the creature. In Covenant Scott uses the prequel conceit to
cast the original design as the perfect organism, a final form that
the protean horrors of the earlier scenes evolve into.
I enjoyed Covenant a
lot and feel that it is easily the best Alien film since Resurrection
– and a worthy equal to all but the first two. Despite this, I left
the theatre with a sense of dissatisfaction that took that took me a
few hours to properly understand. I will be exploring that element in
this article, since it is the subject on which I have the most
interesting things to say. However I do still recommend that you see
the film, without spoiling what should be a tense ride with detailed
foreknowledge. For those of you who have, let's look closer at that
ending and what it means for the series.
The ending of Covenant
is not one that has any ability to take the viewer by surprise.
Anyone with any experience of the medium will be alert to the
possibility and Scott does nothing to prevent us from being certain
of the twist before its 'reveal'. But unlike Oram's lemming-like
encounter with the Facehugger (which actually drew laughter in my
screening) knowing what is coming does not prevent the scene from
being truly chilling.
It isn't that Daniels
dies (or at least seems certain to do so) but rather the fact that
she loses absolutely all agency. This isn't Ripley diving into a vat
of molten lead to take her nemesis with her. This is Ripley being
cocooned into an Alien hive with no-one but Ash left to hear her
screams. When you consider that Daniels has seen detailed drawings of
what is intended for her – and that she knows she cannot escape
from the tube because she recently watched her husband die inside one
– this is about as dark an ending as you can possibly get.
It isn't surprising
that such an ending would cause me to leave the cinema with more
unease than satisfaction. Such a sensation is pretty much the point.
But I concluded that my niggling feelings ultimately stemmed from the
fact that I was dealing with the conclusion of two protagonists'
tales – because Covenant also provides a final ending to the tale
of Elizabeth Shaw.
One requirement of
moving on to new things in this follow-up to Prometheus was the
infliction of Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome upon Dr Shaw. This was
always going to feel like a let-down – after spending an entire
film watching her fight for survival against the gravest odds, being
informed that she had died off-screen was disappointing and arguably
cheapening. Even so, these feelings have to be weighed against the
widespread disinterest in spending another film chasing after the
motivations of the moronic and unlikeable Engineers. Unlike Hicks and
Newt, Shaw was not sacrificed in the service of a story inferior to
the one in which she had starred. Daniels' status as part of the crew
makes her a better fit for the protagonist of Covenant – and
frankly putting both her and Shaw up against the same Alien would
have left me feeling that it was outgunned.
Before her death, Shaw
evidently rebuilt the other 'survivor' of the last film – the
synthetic David. Despite the poor outcome of this choice I don't
actually mind it. Whether you read her actions as the pragmatism of
the Prometheus' greatest survivor or the lived commitment to
forgiveness of a dedicated Christian, it feels more like a reasonable
in-character move than the result of throwing out the Idiot Ball.
We are initially told
that Shaw died in a crash-landing upon her destination planet. David
has built a monument to her memory and speaks of her with great
fondness. However we later learn that she was actually killed by
David, who experimented on her body in order to improve the Xenomorph
species. In the absence of an Alien Queen it is strongly implied that
her reproductive systems were critical to creating the first
generation of eggs (despite the huge size of the eggs we've seen, the
regurgitated Facehugger embryos at the end suggest they are viable
from a very small size). It is unknown how much Shaw suffered before
her death, but she certainly perished helpless and against her will
thanks to his actions.
This is a deeply
uncomfortable set of revelations due to the harm Shaw had already
received from David in the previous film. His deliberate actions
caused the death of her husband and impregnated her with an Alien. It
was only through her own acts of resistance against David's attempts
to have her carry the 'pregnancy' that she was able to remove the
creature before it killed her. There is a lot to unpack there, but it
is hard to escape a sense of sexual violence from the whole thing.
The theme of sexual
violence has always been deliberately emphasised in this series. At a
biological level, the Xenomorph survives exclusively by raping other
species. All the stages of the original creature exhibit threatening
phallic imagery, which is reinforced by the penetrating double jaw
attack that serves as their deadliest weapon.
This sexual threat was
originally intended to be targeted at the male members of the
audience via the default all-male crew. The momentous decision to
change the gender of Ripley (and Lambert) meant that some of this
subtext ended up aimed at the female characters instead. One example
comes from the synthetic Ash, who attempts to choke Ripley using the
end of a rolled magazine in a cubby hole decorated with girly
pictures. That scene is presumably the inspiration of the forced kiss
against Daniels that David performs in Covenant. Although not as
severe as the attack on Ripley in Alien3, it is highly uncomfortable
to watch despite being surrounded by far graver horrors.
This, really, is what
made me uneasy about the ending. In addition to all of the other
factors that make Daniels' fate so awful, she is ultimately helpless
in the hands of a man who has sexually assaulted her in the past. But
this isn't unique to Daniels – David even states that what he is
going to do to her is exactly what he did to Shaw. By adding an
epilogue to Prometheus, this one film gives the series a recurring
theme of 'male-coded predator murders the heroine he violated and
gets away with it'.
This is... extremely
different to the over-arching narratives of the Ripley saga. Given
Scott's skill as a director and obsession with layered meaning in
these new films, it is hard to imagine he did not notice that his
creative decisions would stack up that way. Given the immense
importance of the female domination of this series to a huge number
of people, it is even harder to imagine why he thought it was a good
idea.
I cannot say how much
this thematic issue actually troubled the majority of those who saw
this film. But with Scott intent on creating two more prequels, it
would be a shame if he became sci-fi's next George Lucas by diverging
from the sensibilities of his audience. So far he has shown less
interest in absolute inter-film consistency than geek culture is
accustomed to, but it is still unlikely that anyone other than a
Wayland-Yutani conspirator will end either upcoming movie with the
ability to share their story. If that is so, I hope that the next
female lead will at least be able to seize meaningful control over
the manner of her own death.
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