Disclaimer: This article reveals twists and important details integral to the plot

Alien: Covenant is an exciting prequel to the original Alien that does a tremendous job comprehensively explaining the origins of the first edition. The film is a thriller but contains elements of a good mystery movie. All the alien combat scenes were intense and captivating while the build up of the plot was entertaining enough to keep the audience engaged.

The movie starts by showing the creator of the synthetic, artificially created humans with superhuman capabilities. The creator is conversing with the synthetic, and the synthetic questions why he, the human with superior capabilities, is the servant. The story then begins to follow the eerie journey of the spaceship, Covenant, as it sails through space looking to colonize Origae 7, a planet inhabitable like Earth. Mid-flight a malfunction kills the captain of the ship, leaving the entire crew with a new and inferior captain. Later they intercept an intermission originating from an undiscovered planet.The new leader foolishly decides to board the planet to investigate. Upon landing they discover that the original synthetic and the ship of the creator has been stranded at the planet, setting up the stage for the story.

While the story does a good job of unraveling the complex origins and complications of each character and properly captivates the gruesome nature of the Alien series, the twist in the finale was too predictable.

Each colonizing ship has a synthetic. Every synthetic shares an identical physical body. At the climax, the Covenant’s synthetic fights a primitive synthetic from the creator’s ship stranded on the undiscovered planet, and at the zenith of their brawl the scene cuts away. Later the fight was never finished, but instead simply shows a synthetic running back to the ship. Cutting away at the most critical moment of the fight only reveals that the expected result is not the reality in the film. This rather predictable “twist” removed the element of surprise, making the film less entertaining,

Aside from that, the film was a thrilling two hours of intense and gross alien combat. Overall it was a great movie and a worthwhile two hours of entertainment.