Alien: Covenant opens a little early in the United Kingdom – May 12th, in comparison to the U.S. theatrical release of May 19th – and sure enough, last night London played host to the film’s world premiere.
A raft of Hollywood talent descended on the green carpet – and no, you read that right – including everyone from writer-director Ridley Scott to Michael Fassbender, who is on board to play not one, but two cutting-edge synthetics in Covenant. The first, David, ought to be familiar to those of you who have seen Prometheus. Last seen on a (one-way?) mission to the Engineer home of Paradise alongside Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), the spoiler-ridden prologue for Alien: Covenant all but confirms that Fassbender’s unruly android is up to no good. Walter, meanwhile, is the AI that watches over Katherine Waterston’s Daniels and the entire Covenant crew once they retire to hypersleep for the remainder of their intergalactic journey.
One detour later and they arrive at a barren, yet strikingly beautiful alien planet, one that houses a dark, horrific secret in the form of an extra-terrestrial lifeform – the perfect organism, as it were. Those Alien pursuits can expect to find a different strand of the Xenomorph in Alien: Covenant – dubbed the Neomorph, this goblin-like creature seems to prefer to exit a human through the spine after it’s finished its gestating process. Nasty, we know.
The end result looks to be a film that doesn’t shy away from the franchise’s putrid horror roots, and following last night’s London premiere, the first knee-jerk reactions to Covenant have surfaced via Twitter. Don’t be expecting exhaustive reviews of Ridley Scott’s prequel-sequel; instead, these Tweets act as more of a litmus test to determine how the film is being received in its initial screenings.
#AlienCovenant is an intense, strange and nightmarish continuation of the franchise. A great companion to Prometheus & the Alien mythos.
— Arctic Ninja (@arcticninjapaul) May 4, 2017
Bloody, odd, mysterious and a staggering picture of madness at times. Horrific in unexpected ways. #AlienCovenant
— Arctic Ninja (@arcticninjapaul) May 4, 2017
https://twitter.com/chriswright69/status/860402306503901184
Signing off for today! The #AlienCovenant premiere was great but truly exhausting – the movie is definitely worth a watch
— Robert Boehme (@RBoehme86) May 5, 2017
#AlienCovenant is definitely better than Prometheus, bringing back the needed horror into the franchise. Deadly beautiful and mysterious
— Jordan Samuel (@JordanESamuel) May 4, 2017
We’ll find out what all the fuss is about when Alien: Covenant hits U.S. theaters on May 19th.
