​I have no trouble admitting that I’m not a big fan of “the sequel.”

Generally speaking, sequels tend to dilute the power of the original.  In an almost parasitic way, they “leech” off the strength of what came before in hopes of increasing a new chapter’s unproven , untested potential.  Instead of boldly going where no one has gone before, these follow-ups tend to take what’s already been established and plunk that down in a new setting with new effects; and studio executives hope that audiences will continue to feed from the trough without noticing very little new flavor has been added to the gruel.

Now, I’ll also admit that this isn’t always the case.  The Marvel films, in particular, have demonstrated a modern talent to add something to the mythology with successive installments, widening its comic book universe with memorable additions worth their own screen time.  Superman II did the same back in the 1980’s, giving Big Blue himself villains of equal strength with unmatched ruthlessness, requiring him to use his brain instead of his solar-powered brawn to defeat them in the end.  And – dare I miss? – The Empire Strikes Back launched Luke and his friends on their own near-spiritual journey to find love, loss, and the Light Side of the Force in that galaxy far, far away.

In contrast, the Alien franchise has had less-than-stellar results.  While Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) are a terrific one-two punch ably demonstrating how to successfully broaden the world-building cinema and expand the fan base, Alien 3 is often maligned as a disappointing miscalculation that killed much of the property’s cinematic appeal by burying it under layers of gloom.  Alien: Resurrection has been called the franchise’s “bad joke” largely owed to Joss Whedon’s surprisingly uninventive script and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s equally uninteresting direction.  I won’t even trouble with examining AvP: Aliens Vs. Predator (2004) or Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) not because they don’t deserve it but rather because it’s pretty clear that the films were popcorn films and weren’t perhaps clearly thought out as chapters in the overall arch of the Alien franchise.

Thus we arrive at the current destination involving Prometheus (2012) and – more recently – Alien: Covenant.
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For the record, Prometheus both was and wasn’t embraced as a film expanding upon the totality of the Xenomorph saga.  For a time, even Ridley Scott insisted in press interviews that it's unfair to examine it as the next chapter but instead a kinda/sorta cosmic detour within the same universe.  (Mind you, there was a time when everyone involved with Prometheus insisted it wasn’t even an Alien film!)  I’ve always felt that the resulting confusion didn’t quite serve the film all that well – how do you market much less discuss a story that both does and doesn’t “exist” within the established mythology – but the feature still managed to erect its own narrative foundation: viewers gathered trivial tidbit after trivial tidbit about what the galaxy looked like before Scott’s seminal Alien.  It may not have been all that interesting; it may not have been all the revelatory; but it managed to “fit” like an awkward puzzle piece into a hole audiences hadn’t seen.

Alien: Covenant (2017) takes place ten years after Prometheus's events, and – as even the title proves – the director, the screenwriters, and all players were (finally) aware of whether or not their chapter was part and parcel of the space saga.  To its credit – and maybe its detriment – Covenant expands upon most of the themes explored in its prequel, namely some ideas involving divinity, creation, and faith.

From the film’s IMDB.com profile:
“The crew of a colony ship, bound for a remote planet, discover an uncharted paradise with a threat beyond their imagination, and must attempt a harrowing escape.”

If some of what I wrote above is unclear, then let me state this emphatically: time itself has helped Prometheus inevitably ‘find’ an audience, and I suspect the same will be said of Covenant.

​For a film with ‘alien’ in the title, the latest from Ridley Scott has very little of it (or them) in there.  In fact, nearly the first half of the two-hour flick is void of any; and – once they do show up – they’re not really the Xenomorph we’ve come to know and love.  Instead, viewers are treated to what is best called an earlier, alternative version of them.  The script clarifies why that is – basically, the short skinny is that they’re a bio-engineer pathogen – but never quite explains why they were built except apparently to serve as a civilization-ending weapon.  As has sadly become the case in so much of cinema these days, the aliens are not practical effects but CGI constructions; call me ‘outdated’ but there’s still something to be said for in-camera scares versus computer trickery.

What is learned as the story develops into the second half is that these hungry critters are the manufacture of the last film’s synthetic David (as played by Michael Fassbender).  Not only did he loose them on this unsuspecting world but also he’s spent the better part of the last ten years tinkering with their genetics, dramatically expanding upon the whole “son becomes the father” theme of Prometheus (where David was paired up with Peter Weyland – his maker – as played by Guy Pearce).  For reasons never quite made clear, David has turned all psycho and is hell-bent on wiping out mankind, seeing it as an inferior species the way Science Fiction has painted artificial intelligence over the past few decades.

However, complicating David’s quest to fulfill our extinction is Walter, Covenant’s synthetic (also played by Fassbender).  Walter is the improved David, one who has the added benefit of evolution, that fateful process science says takes place after life itself is created.  Only a dullard would fail to see that Covenant exists largely for these two of mankind’s children to textually bump heads; and the tail end of the script ends up being a somewhat hackneyed, big screen version of 1960's Star Trek where Good Kirk and Bad Kirk share screen time to duke it out mano a mano.

Unfortunately, everyone else in Covenant feels very much like a character we’ve seen before, perhaps even in the same franchise.  Katherine Waterson’s Daniels – another of the film’s protagonists – is a smaller version of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley but with vastly kinder eyes; she’s inflicted with a tragedy at the film’s outset that largely sets her character’s arc in motion.  Billy Crudup’s Oram assumes the captaincy after said tragedy, but as he’s a Faith-based character it’s pretty clear right up front that not only will all of his decisions be flawed but also he’s destined for the graveyard once the wheel turns.  (Think of Charles S. Dutton’s scripture-quoting preacher from Alien 3 but lose all of the theatrical bravado.)  Danny McBride’s Tennessee evokes the joint aura of Alien’s Brett and Parker (played by Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto, respectively), serving as little more than a foul-mouthed Blue Collar addition to a largely White Collar crew.

​In case you’re missing it, let me be succinct: my chief complaint with Covenant is that, yes, we’ve been here before.  Maybe not literally but certainly thematically.  When crafting a sequel to a long-standing commodity, I ‘get’ that maybe you don’t have to be entirely original but in the very least one would hope we’d be treated to something fresh or inspired.  For truth in advertising, it probably would’ve been more accurate to advertise this as “Prometheus 2” as there’s very little in here that could stand on its own without having seen that motion picture.  That isn’t a bad thing … unless you were hoping to avoid similar box office receipts.

If you’re a major studio and you’re looking to capitalize on the success of Alien, then why not put “Alien” in the title of all of your releases, even those that have nothing to do with that universe?  Next summer, check out “Alien: The Simpsons.”  And after that “Alien: Facehuggers For The Planet Of The Apes”?  Coming this holiday season: “Alien: Home Alone 3”!

When all is said and done, I suppose the least that a franchise fan can hope for is that all subsequent chapters add something of substance to the legacy -- however small -- and I’m honestly at a loss as to what might stem from Alien: Covenant.  As I all too often have to say, it isn’t a bad film … it’s just flawed.  And utterly devoid of hope, a sentiment also present in every previous installment thus far.

What is more singularly human than "hope"?

​In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at 20th Century Fox provided me with the digital access to view Alien: Covenant for the expressed purposes of completing this review; and their kind contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.

I’ve honestly always had a love for independent films.

​As I’ve often opined, the traditional indie feature manages to tell a story without the typical studio influence – fewer chefs in the kitchen to muddle up the stew, less product placement to pull viewers out of the experience – and ends up generally delivering rawer content.  Granted, it may be argued that no indie flick is perfect, but I’ve found giving a storyteller greater creative freedom to weave a suitable tapestry is rarely a bad thing.  If nothing else, the picture will sink or swim on its own merits, and there’s nothing wrong with the artistic gamble from time to time.

Science fiction – on the other hand – is often a very hard sell on the indie circuit.  Largely, this is because SciFi and/or Fantasy features more often than not require a healthy dose of special effects, and these efforts can add significant economic weight to any fledgling, small(ish) project before everything else is “in the can.”  Practical effects rarely work as well as computer-generated ones, and audiences tend to shy away from any SciFi spectacle which looks less than spectacular.

Furthermore, the stuff of SciFi – things like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, or alien civilizations – have rarely fit within the standard indie mold.  The truest SciFi relies on world-building, and indie flicks are thematically more geared toward tearing down world views, often aligned with heavy emotional consequence.  Now, don’t get me wrong: some of the best Science Fiction products of, say, the last two generations have easily tinkered with the kind of existential angst one finds in grittier, more realistic films, but today’s mainstream audiences tend to respond better to these tropes being visually represented on the silver screen with more flash and sizzle needed to fuel a trilogy than any single artsy film.  I couldn’t say why, but – for this reviewer – it’s refreshing to see so many heavily-laden CG projects collapse under the weight of their own pixels (i.e. 2015’s Jupiter Ascending comes to mind, along with the much more recent failure of 2017’s Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, a film with words to spare in its title).  Look no further than AMC’s Humans (or even the Swedish original Real Humans) to see that good SciFi can exist without all of those phasers, transporters, and warp core technobabble, much less their visual requirements.

And perhaps that’s why I found Neil Johnson’s ROGUE WARRIOR: ROBOT FIGHTER so confounding.

Succinctly, this is an indie picture than never quite looks like an indie picture.  At times it does, but its graphics occasional hint at a major box office release.  Visually, it’s astonishingly uneven, almost as if the story morphed from something it once was into something everyone discovered in-transit it could instead be.  At times gritty and dystopian, I feel like ‘Rogue’ went rogue, its finished product falling right smack in that middle ground – the kind of place which used to be heavily populated with the traditional B-movie.  But it both does and doesn’t look like a B-movie … does it?

From the product packaging:
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“Sienna, a Rogue Warrior fighting a hyper-weaponized robot army, flees to the center of the galaxy in search of a mythical weapon that can neutralize any form of A.I.  Pursued by giant machines, Sienna loses everything she cares about in an effort to save the last vestiges of humanity in an A.I. controlled universe."

Science fiction fans have a lot of respect for their motion pictures.  They’ll happily swallow a bit of bilge from time to time so long as the payoff is worth the ride.  They can be incredibly forgiving if they’re given something reasonable in exchange for the silence, be it some splashy action sequences, a fantastic lead performance, or a swelling symphonic score.  More than perhaps any other genre, SciFi’s fanatics have fueled the success of such ongoing enterprises as Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Star Trek; and they’re always on the lookout for another.

Though it pushes a lot of the right stuff (pun intended), Rogue Warrior will likely not be that property.  Writer/Director Neil Johnson stuffed his film with many of the usual ingredients – war-gutted worlds of tomorrow, gun-blazing robots, spaceships and starfields aplenty – but not all of this added up to a satisfying conclusion, even leaving the film open for more, a dreaded misnomer for the typical indie fare.  The lovely Tracey Birdsall suitably headlines the space adventure, grounding it with a performance possibly as uneven as the narrative but still managing to command enough moxie to get an audience rooting for her along the way.  I wanted to root for her more, and a stronger, more cohesive story might’ve accomplished that.

Perhaps the failure here is best attributed to a story that feels as derivative as it does diluted.  Plenty of films have already explored mankind’s blighted future to great effect, and still more have peeled back the destructive layers of what happens once the machines we invent turn against us.  Rogue is packed to the gills with ideas – Earth’s resistance, genetic manipulation, vengeance by proxy, etc. – and thinning the narrative herd here may’ve given Sienna a cause – one single, solitary cause – that better served the story from start to finish.  But Johnson’s script meanders through an awful lot of smaller moments – a prison break, a secret origin, comically bumpy characters, and awkward sex (!!!) – and I found it hard to wrap my arms around what this heroine truly stood for much less what she needed (not ‘wanted’) to accomplish.
​

​Birdsall’s acting is sporadically rough, and I kept wondering if this was owed to the needs of the dramatic circumstance or loose direction.  Her action sequences were stronger than the quieter moments, and I think (again) a script that exploited those talents would’ve improved the end result.  The always watchable Daz Crawford chews scenery when required, and the affable Tim McGrath clearly delivers a grounded performance as one of tomorrow’s nerdy techs doing what he can to survive against the odds.  There’s a floating A.I. named Hoagland – a possible allusion to scientist/conspiracist Richard Hoagland, I assume – who musters a few laughs, many of which frankly the feature could’ve done without.

All of this said, Rogue Warrior isn’t a bad film, and – in truth – it’s far from it.  (For the record, I’ve seen far, far worse film releases from far, far more reputable production companies and auteurs – here’s looking at you, Michael Bay.)  As a story, it’s a bit jumbled with far too much exposition required to sell the premise, and the thinly drawn characters don’t serve the narrative the way they possibly could were the ideas and concepts here anchored more firmly.  Sadly, a few scenes do come off a bit absurd as they’re clearly shot in a contemporary residence (and its backyard) while all other locations are understandably bombed out beyond oblivion.

I could make a strong argument that while the flick embraces a few tenets of the traditional B-movie it could be seen by hardcore SciFi fans and maybe even a fair share of the independent film circuit if for no better reason than to demonstrate what’s entirely possible these days with a modest budget.  At times, the feature’s cinematography looks far too impressive for its own good, though some of the interiors end up getting washed out by way, way, way too much artistic lens flare.

Lastly, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that Rogue has been the recipient of several awards on the festival circuit.  While perhaps not garnering the critical praise all involved wanted, there’s something to be said for folks ‘in the know’ recognizing efforts worthy of distinction.  I don’t always agree with those organizations, but – as I said – I’d give this one a thumb’s up for the effort: it definitely tried hard to be something special.  My quibbles tend to revolve around the totality of the effort not delivering on its promise, but Johnson and Birdsall remain “ones to watch” in the territory of SciFi and Fantasy.
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​Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter (2017) is produced by Empire Motion Pictures and Pacific Coast Entertainment.  DVD distribution is being handled via eOne (aka Entertainment One).  As for the technical specifications?  The overall production is fairly smartly assembled, though I’ll admit I encountered some difficulty understanding all of the over-modulated A.I. audio tracks, and I had to back up the scene a few ticks to listen to it twice in order to be entirely certain what was said.  (Never a good thing.)  Lastly, if special features are your thing, there’s a director’s commentary along with some making-of materials and a handful of cast interviews to consume: it’s definitely a nice assortment.

RECOMMENDED.  While the story has a fair share of “been there, done that” moments, ROGUE WARRIOR: ROBOT FIGHTER manages to look fairly solid.  Truth be told, I honestly believe a tighter cut could’ve vastly improved the pacing, especially given the script’s reliance on “telling” what happened versus “showing” (much of it the backstory).  While imperfect, the film still boggles the mind over what’s possible with indie features in the modern age.

Happy Eclipse Monday to all of SciFiHistory.Net's readers!  I hope no one was unnecessarily blinded by today's celestial event and that everyone took the proper precautions to take in a gander at one of the hottest things in the Sol System ... namely our sun.

But speaking of "hot things" ...

The lovely Tracey Birdsall has made a foray into the realm of SciFi/Indie pics with her latest video release of Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter.  I'm in the process of penning a review for the site, and -- in the meantime -- I wanted to share that I've put up a collection of screencaps from the DVD.  (The short skinny is that it's an impressively photographed motion picture, and I tried to put up only the best snaps from my collection.)  If you're interested, then you can check them out right here.

As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!

​When David Carren made the jump from his failed start as a West Texas journalist to Hollywood screenwriting, he acknowledges that it was truly an education by way of the ‘School of Hard Knocks.’  “In the 1970’s, there really were no books about TV writing,” he cautions, “and there were no classes in screenwriting.  Most of the shows (of that era) weren’t very good because they were knockoffs of old movies, and they’d just look at an older idea and try to invent it with something new.”

In that respect, he admits there were many lessons he had to learn by way of unintentional mistakes.  “I was totally inexperienced: you don’t want to put rain, water, or animals in a scene.  You don’t want to spray glass (i.e. window breaking) because that’s a one-take operation, and it’s very expensive to produce.”

Carren even confesses his script for “Return Of The Fighting 69th” – a first season adventure for NBC’s Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, his first full-fledged screen effort – taught him a valuable warning involving warfare.

“I had this idea of using a machine gun that no one of Buck’s era knew what it was, and squibs were an elaborate and expensive gag,” he laughs.  “Well, the machine gun kept jamming!  The M1’s were perfect, but anything else jammed.  If you look carefully at the show, right as Buck’s about to back out of the door and he’s shooting it up at the air, it stops shooting and Gerard has this brief look of frustration on his face as the door closes.  That damn thing jammed every take!  I can’t believe we won the war with those things!”

Still, what Carren did have was an inexhaustible love of film as well as a desire to tell his own stories, even if that meant borrowing the voices of characters already created to get his start.  So he took a bus ride in 1974 from Texas to California, and the rest – as they say – is history.  The man’s IMDB.com profile today boasts a resume of over two hundred different credits in writing and/or production; and he’s made contributions to such television properties as Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gerry Anderson’s Space Precinct, William Shatner’s TekWar, and Syfy’s long-running Stargate:SG-1.

“The thing about writing for television is that the show has its own world and its own characters,” Carren explains, “and those characters have their own voices.  With any TV show you work for, you have to have your character’s voice patterned or similar or recognizable as the voices of the characters that have been established.  Most writers understandably get into writing to do their own stuff.  It’s actually a relatively small number of writers who can develop a career of any length or position in TV because they have to be chameleons mimicking the voices of their work with voices that have been established … and that’s often very difficult for a lot of people to do.”

However, getting a start in the 1970’s did offer Carren a unique advantage over those attempting to break-in to today’s competitive marketplace, that being even inexperienced yet talented writers could get an agent who could open doors to the ‘story pitching’ process.
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“Back in those days, there was almost only one producer and one story editor for each show,” he explains.  “At most, there might have been three people in the room.”  Today’s typical television program might by comparison have many, many more if production companies were still in the business of taking story pitches, a process he says disappeared in the 1990’s.

“And there’s almost no point in pitching unless someone in the room has the power to buy.  For Buck Rogers, I pitched the ‘The Over-The-Hill Gang’ meets ‘Star Wars’ to Bruce Lansbury, the show’s producer.”

Perhaps because “Return Of The Fighting 69th” was his first filmed script, Carren vividly remembers his time on the set.  “It was an 8-day shoot, which was very generous as most episodes were shot in 6 days.  I hung out on the set every day. I was in the dailies.  I hung out with the actors, which was a dream come true for any film buff.”

Indeed, Carren’s ‘Fighting 69th’ were a team of aging combat pilots forced into retirement precisely because they were considered too old to defend Earth, a sentiment the screenwriter has seen mirrored in his own life.  “In Hollywood, you hit your fifties and you’re done,” he cautions in remembering the project.  For that reason, many aging actors and actresses tend to transition from screen work to smaller television projects precisely because they are available and in need of work, a reality that presented Carren with what he considered the opportunity of a lifetime: to spend time on-the-set with some screen legends.

“We cast Peter Graves (Mission Impossible),” he says, “who was in between projects and available at the time.  We worked with Eddie Firestone (The Great Locomotive Chase; The Law And Jake Wade) and K.T. Stevens (Port Of New York; Alfred Hitchcock Presents) who was making films in the 1940’s.  We cast Robert Quarry (Perry Mason; Dr. Phibes Rises Again).  And we got Woody Strode (Sergeant Rutledge; The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)!  He was making films with John Ford.  See, older actors don’t work as much, and there are a lot of really good older actors.  As we developed the story, we got more and more interested in these other characters.”

As to the task of writing Science Fiction – a genre which unlike many others in network television requires a significant level of world creation – Carren takes it all with a smile.  “I love the challenge, but you’re always tearing your hair out.  I was well read in Science Fiction.  I knew the material.  I knew the source material.  You have to be ‘lettered’ in any genre like this.  Your ideas can come from all sorts of strange places and end up in all sorts of strange places.”

His experiences in crafting stories for Buck Rogers and Star Trek: TNG programs as well as scripts for Beyond Westworld, The Powers of Matthew Star, and the 1980’s version of The Twilight Zone has led him to creating a few rules to avoid the pitfalls of SciFi screenwriting.

​“First, whatever the franchise might be, bear in mind that Science Fiction is almost always more expensive to produce because there are almost always special effects or world-building involved or creative elements that are not off-the-shelf.  Sets, props, everything has to be new every week.  You could not go out and buy some clothes from Walmart or whatever and tailor them for the actors and then go to town.

“Second, you still want to create some colorful and science fictional aspect that brings out some side of that world, so the challenge is that you have to come up with an idea that fits that world, opens up some new parameter, makes things exciting, and yet you can still shoot it.”

For this reason, he cites his episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation – the popular fourth season outing “Future Imperfect” – as being one of his personal favorite creations.

“Everything used was a redress of standing sets because it was set on an alternate Enterprise,” he explains, showing how he used his rules to his professional advantage.

These days, Carren still has various projects under consideration, but more often than not he’s exploring his love of teaching the craft of screenwriting: he presently serves as an Associate Professor and Interim Chair for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Theatre, TV and Film Department, a unified program where the different artforms work together.  He speaks highly of the curriculum in an environment where the various artists aren’t at odds with one another but instead collaborate, a union that vastly expands the resources available to the students.  He’s even taken a page out of the history of his own professional experience and adapted it for class, taking the attendees through his process of creating a graphic novel and then adapting it for television, giving them an up-close-and-personal look at how entertainment works on varying levels.

​“If there’s any advice I can give to a writer it is that you find your own voice and then be willing to speak in other people’s voices so that you can have a career,” he advises.  “Take whatever you can learn, then forget it.  Forget it when you get into that professional situation because it’ll be completely different.  And then – when it comes in handy – remember it.”