Alien: Covenant

The colony ship Covenant is transporting thousands of human embryos and a crew of specialists to a distant terraformed world where a new settlement will be started. After a catastrophic event alters their course, the crew detects a nearby planet that looks habitable and opts to investigate, hoping to salvage their mission. What seems like an untouched paradise soon reveals dangerous lifeforms and unsettling discoveries that threaten both ship and crew. Tensions build between human leaders and an advanced synthetic whose loyalties are ambiguous, and personal loyalties shift, and ethical questions about creation complicate their decisions daily.

Ridley Scott returned to helm this 2017 entry in the Alien franchise, following Prometheus, with a screenplay drawing on the original creators Dante Harper, Ronald Shusett, and Dan O'Bannon. The film was marketed as a horror science fiction continuation worldwide.

The movie opened widely in theaters in 2017 and reached a global audience. Its theatrical run brought in substantial revenue, but industry observers noted results fell short of some expectations for a franchise installment of this scale relative to predecessors.

Alien: Covenant reignited debates about franchise direction and android characterization, largely because Michael Fassbender's portrayal of two synthetic models attracted attention. Imagery of alien organisms and tense shipboard sequences became references in fan discussions and online analysis, while the film's moral questions fed into ongoing conversations about creation and control.

Critical response was mixed, reflected in a 6.2/10 average from user votes, with praise for visuals and Fassbender's performance and criticism aimed at pacing and story choices. The film tackles themes of creation, faith, colonization, and the ethical cost of scientific ambition, often in unsettling terms, among longtime fans too.