‘Alien: Covenant’ Trailer Breakdown: New Planet, Same Problem

Posted on Wednesday, March 1st, 2017 by Jacob Hall

“You hear that? Nothing. No birds. No animals. Nothing.” New Zealand is so beautiful, even when it’s been color-corrected to look like it’s hiding a secret.

The location work here is promising – Ridley Scott and his team seem to have created an area that is simultaneously inviting and totally creepy. That’s no easy feat.

It’s a tiny thing, but I’m a big fan of Walter’s head tilt here. Fassbender doesn’t move quite like a human. He looks ever-so-slightly programmed, which is disconcerting and fascinating in equal measure.

The last time we saw this ship, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and David the android (Fassbender) were using it to head on a mission to track down the Engineers’ home planet. Is that why it’s here now? Did they succeed? What happened to the two sole survivors of Prometheus?

As you can see from the interior, Shaw and David’s borrowed ship has seen better days. It apparently hasn’t moved in a long time and nature has begun to take its toll. We know that Alien: Covenant takes place ten years after Prometheus, so we have a pretty good idea of just how long it’s been idle.

This is one of the sets I was able to explore while on location last year, and it’s just as dark, creepy, and filthy in person. In a little piece of movie magic, only a stretch of winding tunnel was built for the interior of the Engineer ship. Different set-ups and alternate dressings will make it appear much larger.

We were only able to watch one scene being filmed during our set visit, but here it is: Walter and Daniels come across a makeshift living quarters while exploring the derelict vessel and find a set of dog tags. Elizabeth Shaw was here.

Of course, the ship is also home to a new and nasty surprise: a whole bunch of alien eggs. This will not go well.

Can someone tell Oram that this is not a good plan? That maybe approaching the creepy egg as it opens up is not the best course of action?

The egg and its interior look very close to the original design from the 1979 Alien, and this is very much a case of not fixing something that isn’t broken. This looks as nasty as ever.

Curiosity killed the colony ship science officer, I suppose.

We visited the creature shop on our set visit, and this effect was demonstrated for us. It’s almost too simple: inside that egg is a bungee cord-powered launcher that shoots a rubber facehugger into the air. If you film it in slow-motion, you get a very smooth and very scary leap.

Speaking of things that aren’t broken not being fixed, the bottom side of the facehugger still looks… Okay, let’s be frank: original Alien designer H.R. Giger was all about vaginas and anuses. Giger has passed away, but his legacy lives on.

Remember the rumor that Katherine Waterston’s Daniels was the mother of Ellen Ripley, the lead character in the original Alien movies and one of cinema’s greatest badasses? It’s a rumor that makes me roll my eyes – it makes the vast Alien universe feel so…small. Then again, there’s no getting around it: both on set and in the trailer, Waterston is the spitting image of a young Sigourney Weaver.

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