'Alien: Covenant' Continues To Mine Old Ground

Almost 40 years ago, Alien was a B-movie with A+ production values and performances, and the scariest monster the movies ever gave us. The new Alien: Covenant is a shamelessly high-minded, Byron-and-Shelley-quoting existential inquiry into the origin of three species and the nature of belief that goes slumming in genre territory just enough to get itself greenlit.

Guess which one is going to last? My money's on the one that already has.

At least is an artistic upgrade to , the to which it is a-iverse he created and then left to others. Specifically, others who've had careers as celebrated and far more consistent than his own: James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Their follow-ups varied in quality and ambition (and yes, is ), but none addressed where their nightmare beasts came from, or who the long-dead, inhuman "space jockey" seen briefly in was. To Scott, this apparently amounted to artistic negligence. Because after 35 years away from the chest-bursting game, the thrice-Oscar-nominated director of the wretched sequel , among too many other films, opted to answer these questions... in the most ponderous, deflating way possible.