Waiting for a John Hurt moment

Rating: 7/10 (19 May 2017)

A sequel to the prequel. Are we still on-message?
Ten years on from our last venture into deepest darkest space, another vast spaceship full of cryogenically dormant colonists is diverted by a radio signal to the planet where the Prometheus is marooned with robot David ('synthetics', they prefer to be called) the last survivor. Even before they find David, two of the crew inhale something nasty which puts the viewer on alert for a 'John Hurt' moment: there will be more than two of these.
The Covenant also has a synthetic crew member, Walter. Walter is an 'upgrade' of David, but his twin in looks, with both of them played by Michael Fassbender. Much as we had good Arnie and bad Arnie in the first two TERMINATOR films, we have good and bad synthetics here, supplying the main plot ingredient – unless you think of the mutations and killings as the main course on the menu, which they more or less are.
The CGI (awesome) and the pace (erratic) of this epic try, not entirely successfully, to blind us to the fact that both on the planet and back on the mothership, there is some heavy recycling of the first two episodes in this 38-year saga. Billy Crudup's captain is very much a re-run of the doomed captain of the Nostromo, and Katherine Waterston's ballsy Daniels is practically a clone of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley (who was, as we fondly remember, cloned herself in 1997's RESURRECTION). Michael Fassbender is glamorous and persuasive in his Frankensteinian double role, but some of us still yearn for Sigourney to return.
COVENANT is more of an action movie than PROMETHEUS, which ventured down the mock-philosophical road of the STAR TREK series. It's also more of a horror movie, with regular infusions of 'face-huggers' and slaughter. Good scary fun. This franchise still has a bit of (alien) life in it.