Retro-HD Review (SPOILERS)

Below is the review from Retro HD that has been translated. 

Gigeresque Posted 3 minutes ago
Retro HD.com review. 4/5 stars!!

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In 2012, with the idea of relaunching the Alien saga, Ridley Scott threw a pavement into the pond with a prequel of a disproportionate ambition. Under the leadership of Damon Lindelof in the script, Prometheus was a real test by this desire to develop the origins of this almost evil entity haunting the cinema for 40 years. The filming of the film hardly began until the last jets of the scenario were not yet validated. This explains the 36 cut or alternative scenes completing the various video editions of the film.
Prometheus is an ambitious film, strong and sublime in its design. The feature film is also an imperfect essay, even sick, due to a vision not defined by Scott himself and the different drafts of the story. But a few years after its release, Prometheus reports on its relevance, Ridley Scott's unparalleled know-how, but above all to be a complex and effective entertainment.
Prometheus inevitably announced a sequel, this new chapter of the Alien saga not illuminated by a single film. Prometheus answered a few questions while raising many others. Six years later, Ridley Scott again won the command of the sequel, with the ambition to illuminate the mystical gleams of a series of films not asking so much.

It is true that besides a hardcore fan base, it would have been nice to fall into the bag of these multiple explanations. Did Alien, first of the name, and its aftermath, really call it a forced illumination? Sincerely, notwithstanding the fact that the two sequences ensuing from it are today as generous, ambitious, but especially timely films. After 4 feature films with very distinct personalities, difficult to renew a saga with little to say after a majestic and morbid Resurrection. A draft of a new, forward-looking, but far-reaching leadership, Prometheus emerges today on Covenant. Name of settler / pioneer ship traveling to an unknown land for a new life, crew members awakened after a technical incident find out what they think is a paradise still untouched. It is actually a dark and dangerous world, hiding a terrible threat. They will try everything to escape.

If the introduction indirectly clings to Prometheus, Fox and Ridley Scott's intention is to revive the passionate flame toward the original universe of the Eighth Passenger. From the first moments, Scott takes the viewer and fans through feelings with the cherished theme of Jerry Goldsmith become famous for the first film. A composition that will nourish the whole film in the image of fixed parallels such as a bridge builder between Prometheus and Alien. Alien - Covenant will not answer all the questions, but will proudly buckle some surprisingly. We will not pass here by the spoilers box leaving you the privilege of discoveries in the same way as this group of settlers proudly posing on this new planet. What Ridley Scott is doing with Alien - Covenant is not to lose the viewer on the road with the deployment of a so-called philosophy calling for our origins. With this sequel and with the help of Dante Harper, but especially John Logan, more down-to-earth screenwriter than Damon Lindelof, the director of Gladiator goes straight to the point, in the darkest horror . If he uses the predominant codes of saga (the relationship between man and machine, the right to creation, life, motherhood and the protection of a form of life), he accompanies the viewer towards a darkness Unexploited in previous films. One enters the den of the Creator, of the one whose horror will explode taking itself for god. At the heart of a cold, unhealthy and sincerely cold sequence, John Logan quotes Mary Shelley (creator of Frankenstein among others), Alien-Covenant's main and direct reference. A theme dear to the screenwriter who owes the Penny Dreadful series raising this same vision of creation.

If John Logan raises the veil on some crucial points of the saga, he does so with finesse and dexterity. He had dared to give origins to James Bond for Sam Mendes, he will give morbid origins to the Alien for Ridley Scott. As if he were the man of all perilous situations revealing the origins of some great cinema myths. Man has all the latitude to do it, confidence, but above all talent to make sense of it. Afterwards, for James Bond, the antagonism established towards the hero falls like a catapult shot. But it has been known since the production of the film, especially in the sense to give to this final, was complex by the rightful claimants. Here, the last word comes back to Ridley Scott giving himself all the rights, in particular to annihilate the Alien 5 wished by Neil Blomkamp. But the director is pleased with this partnership simplifying the lucubrations of Damon Lindeloff on Prometheus. John Logan ensures a more manageable cushioning for the continuation, a counting preserving a light production, a history less complex, but above all logical.

This stripping is not without consequence. Inevitably, John Logan annihilates all the mystical and philosophical dimension instilled by Lindeloff and the other writers on the previous film. Engineers, for example, clearly go to the trap door. They will remain the decoration of a mortifying place, the proofs of a calculating and cold act, the premeditation of an act not so surprising leading to the history of the myth. They will be the first witnesses of the overthrow of madness, the inexplicable one referring to this tiny man-machine relationship. Alien - Covenant clings to this cherished theme of the Alien saga, that of this relationship so fine in the relationship between men and machines. Is man so far from the monster? This same man created a machine in his image, melting in the mass to become his equal. Man is no longer the creator, but as raises the introduction of Covenant, the design of the monster who has applied himself to become the father.

The first quadrilogy raised the theme of the "Mother", notably by James Cameron's vision in Aliens (the director's cut version to privilege), but also in filigree by Scott himself with "Mother", the module managing the Nostromo, But also the Covenant. It is Ripley who will take over this mother figure, she lost her daughter (Aliens), before returning to it by protecting Newt. The fight with the Queen will raise this same point between two protectors of their ecosystems and progeny. Fincher will follow up by making him mother a queen in Alien 3 and Jeunet will make her the mother of a new race of Alien in the Resurrection following the morbid experiences of the new company.
For this new quadrilogy, Ridley Scott and John Logan have the fine idea to develop the notion of the father. This father, the creator of a new race, set himself face to face with him, praising the beauty and purity of what Peter Weyland was looking for in Prometheus. This immortality of the body and a new ecosystem taking these rights on this "Paradise Lost", the first draft of Covenant, makes sense here. This lost paradise becomes the new land of a breed in the making, this earth taking on the meaning of the writings of Mary Shelley and HG Wells, the adept of discovery, creation of materials, bodies and distant travels. By Alien - Covenant, one enters at the heart of the notion of the father, this creator bringing his seed to the manipulation and edifying gestation of a new supreme race. Ridley Scott finally comes to give a meaning to this whole thing, Prometheus no longer becoming that sick sketch, but this majestic introduction (certainly imperfect) to this Covenant, a monstrous point becoming crucial to a new journey towards darkness, Will not hear you scream.

http://retro-hd.com/critiques/cinema/1774-alien-covenant.html
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