It was the year 1979 and it appeared on the cinema screens the first "Alien". The director, Ridley Scott, had just achieved some notoriety with "The Duellists", from 1977, and was preparing to open a new era of science fiction on the big screen.
More than 35 years have passed, and, unfortunately, we are forced to admit that the times of space, of cinematic fantasy, of reality cannot coincide and Scott offers us a not so updated version of his first work on this theme. The first "Alien" comes more than ten years after Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece "2001 A Space Odyssey" where the anthropological, existential dilemmas between man and machines were dramatically re-proposed. In “Alien: Covenant” the discussion resumes with the initial scene where a human and an android – David – question themselves about their nature: “I know that you created me. But I don't know who made you." A debate that encompasses the entire film, always with the "mother" on-board computer that controls the command of the spaceship, and allows the narration to flow fully on this trend without getting to the bottom of it, assuming it is possible in the 120 minutes of viewing. The film still leaves many unanswered questions while we're away with the actors in this film not remotely resembling 1979 newcomer Sigourney Weaver.
“Alien: Covenant” is in fact the third film in the successful series signed by the English director. After “Alien Prometheus” of 2012, which takes up a part of the title but little of the previous story, it was reasonable to expect a creative and productive gap of another level. Instead, already from the first bars of this last work we are forced to change our mind and the sensation of what has already been seen immediately emerges.
First of all the central themes: long journey into space in search of a new land to colonize, then the dimension of the impending catastrophe and finally the horrific and threatening unknown in the form of an alien, all enriched by man and his technological double who, just like his mentioned 1977 film, they continue an endless duel. The real man's space Odyssey has just begun and if anything this film exposes in all its banal and dramatic reality how much still separates us from the near future.
With this "Alien: Covenant" we are, in fact, grappling with the same narrative dynamics and sometimes you have the feeling of seeing the same scraps of scenography used in the first Alien. However, audiences in the United States rewarded him with receipts while it seems that in our country it does not enjoy better luck. The visual distortion of the special effects has by now accustomed us to very different visions and it is no longer sufficient to re-propose a winning scheme in the past but, perhaps, less good in the present and even less in the future. Science fiction in cinema marks time and to see something new we are forced to wait for new visionaries.
