Coming out of the latest (and greatest?) trailer for Alien: Covenant, you’d struggle to find anyone that was left bemoaning the lack of blood and extra-terrestrial gore. As part of his mission to drag the series back to its putrid horror roots, writer-director Ridley Scott has reportedly made a conscious effort to address the criticism leveled at Prometheus and use it as a means of improving Covenant. Spoilers: it involved adding more Xenomorphs.
Set a full decade after the doomed Prometheus voyage went to pot in spectacular fashion, Alien: Covenant heralds humanity’s first ever large-scale colonization mission. Headed up by Katherine Waterston and Michael Fassbender – he’ll play Walter, an updated version of the David synthetic – the crew decide to break course in order to answer a distress call (!), and it’s here, on a desolate planet with zero sign of life, that things start to go awry.
In true Alien fashion, Waterston and Co. stumble upon a crashed Juggernaut ship, which may or may not be Covenant‘s way of dovetailing with the ending of Prometheus. Let’s not forget that Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw was last seen plotting course for Paradise, so it’s all but certain that if Shaw really is to feature in Ridley Scott’s prequel-sequel, then this would be the best way to do it. Perhaps Rapace will appear via some form of digital echo/flashback a la Prometheus?
One thing’s for sure: Eagle-eyed fans have already identified those hanging dog tags as Shaw’s, and though he stopped short of divulging any further details, Covenant‘s VFX supervisor Neil Corbould teased a “surprise” relating to her wayward explorer.
“That’s the surprise of the film. You’re not meant to know she’s in it. Okay? So that got out there, as everything does… so I’m not going to talk to you much about it. You’re going to have to watch the movie to get that surprise.”
Originally penciled in for launch in August, Alien: Covenant will be with us on May 19th.
Published: Mar 3, 2017 11:01 am