Could Alien: Covenant Be the Best Alien Movie Since Alien?

With Alien: Covenant’s trailer creeping its way on the Internet this Christmas, I’ve been wondering whether Ridley Scott could deliver the very best Alien movie since his original 1979 film.

Have you ever been asked what your favourite movie of all time is? Well I have, and one of the movies that I always come back to is Ridley Scott’s Alien. I still remember the very first time I watched it, mostly through my fingers, on the TV in our cellar. It was the perfect location to watch one of the most terrifying films ever made, in my opinion. I must have watched it about ten times since and it keeps on surprising me. It’s certainly stood the test of time and no Alien movie since the first one has come close. Now that I’ve seen Alien: Covenant’s trailer, I really liked what I saw and am hoping that it could rejuvenate the Alien franchise.

It’s safe to say that no Alien movie has really touched upon what the first film managed to achieve. James Cameron’s Aliens drastically changed the tone of the original film and turned the terrifying Xenomorph from the first movie into canon fodder, then we got just a load of sci-fi rubbish, and the less said about the Alien vs Predator movies the better.

It’s incredible to think that the franchise is still alive after so many poor movies, but Ridley Scott has decided to set things back to the way they were. OK, not everybody loved Prometheus. It has huge plot holes, a lot of clunky dialogue and it doesn’t really make much sense, although I honestly believe that it’s the second best Alien movie ever made. Hopefully Ridley Scott can go one better with Alien: Covenant.

Alien Covenant

Looks like he’s in some discomfort

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What I really love about Alien: Covenant’s trailer is that it seems to recapture the tone, look and feel of Scott’s original film. Prometheus did this to a certain extent, but it all got a bit too bogged down with the ‘Engineers’ and trying to link the birth of the very first alien to us humans. It all felt a little bit silly, but I’m willing to go along with Scott’s vision if he stops trying to force feed it down our throats. I don’t mind knowing how the aliens came to be, but I’m much more interested in seeing a Xenomorph terrorise the crew of a rather rickety old spaceship. Judging by Alien: Covenant’s trailer we’re going to see a little bit of both.

Alien: Covenant will see the return of Michael Fassbender as David, and he’ll also be playing another android called Walter. Noomi Repace and Guy Pearce also return. But it was the casting of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’s Katherine Waterston that really got me excited for this film. She a perfect fit for this franchise and after having seen a short snippet of her from the trailer, it looks like we’ve got another Ripley on our hands.

Alien: Covenant

It looks like Katherine Waterston will kick some ass as Daniels

We don’t know what the fuck’s out there!

What I’m hoping for in Alien: Covenant is a perfect blend of old and new. We all want a return to Scott’s 1979 Alien, but it also needs to have a more modern touch to bring it into the 21st century. This is even more important after recent sci-fi films such as Ex-Machina, Arrival, Gravity and even Ridley Scott’s very own The Martian.

Science fiction is in a very good place right now, but the science fiction horror genre isn’t. Maybe Alien: Covenant can change things. It needs to if the Alien franchise is to stand any chance of surviving past this movie. Even though Neill Blomkamp is currently working on an Alien 5, I’m not too sure whether 20th Century Fox would be willing to invest any more money into the franchise if Covenant were to be poorly received.

Alien: Covenant will be in UK cinemas on May 19th, 2017.

Alien Covenant

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