Design flaws

In the first scene of Alien: Covenant, billionaire space-exploration funder Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) posits that the only thing that matters in life is discovering the answers to two questions: Who made us and for what purpose?

The scene is a flashback that occurs before the events that unfolded in 2012’s Prometheus, the prequel to both Covenant and the original 1979 classic, Alien. Weyland then tells his android David (Michael Fassbender) that he doesn’t believe it’s possible for humanity, infinitely complex and capable of such genius and creativity, to be the product of accidental evolution. Such design must have an engineer.

The scene is rife with thematic portent as David, himself, is a brilliantly constructed entity. And, as we saw in Prometheus and even further in this film, he is capable of free will that runs counter to his creator’s intended design.

These are weighty concepts that, for a time, seemed to preoccupy writer/director Ridley Scott’s work. Certainly, they did in Prometheus. Unfortunately, beyond the opening scene, Scott doesn’t use much of the story to extend the discussion and instead goes right for the jugular (and spine and stomach, and oh, just about any body part capable of being ripped off and squirting blood).

The script makes passing references to religion in the character of Christopher Oram (Billy Crudup), captain of a ship carrying 2,000 colonists to a new, hospitable planet. Oram frets that his beliefs have undermined his career, complaining, “If you’re a person of faith, the company thinks you’re an extremist and not to be trusted with authority.”

To be fair, given all the decisions Oram makes after this, his superiors would be perfectly right to think he can’t be trusted with authority, person of faith or no. After a mysterious transmission arrives from an unmapped planet midway through their journey, nearly every decision he and his crew members make is idiotic beyond belief.

First, they scuttle their minutely researched, years-in-the-making plans and decide on a whim to visit said planet. Once there, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be a team of highly trained military and scientific specialists, they wander into calamity with no more forethought than a bunch of teenagers in a cheap slasher flick.

Landing on an unknown planet with no evidence of life beyond vegetation, they don’t so much as don face masks. They don’t begin with an aerial survey. They don’t reconnoiter their landing area, then return to their ship to safely deliberate on initial findings. They don’t even establish a security perimeter in case of hostile engagement. Perhaps in the year 2104 there are no longer any war movies or sci-fi thrillers that could have taught them such rudimentary protocol.

What the crew does do is split up, start hiking through ponds and rivers, smoking, disrupting local spores and pollens until doom in the grossest and most R-rated form arrives. The action is undeniably well-paced and jolting, but Scott unfortunately once again frames his horrific assaults on the human body with disturbing sexual and reproductive imagery.

When the crew at last stumbles upon a character last seen in Prometheus, the plot turns to a been-there, done-that mad scientist resolution. If the film means this to offer any sort of answer to Weyland’s philosophical questions, it’s ultimately a nihilistic and despairing one.