It was the Red Priestess Melisandre who warned that the night is dark and full of terrors, but Carice van Houten’s wicked shadowbinder clearly hasn’t set foot in Ridley Scott’s rejuvenated Alien universe.
After electing Alien: Covenant as the cover star of its latest issue (subscriber’s cover here; standard cover here), Empire Magazine has today conjured up three bone-chilling new images for Scott’s prequel-sequel, one of which may be considered a massive story spoiler. We’ve embedded it at the tail-end of the gallery, so if you’re wanting to go into the theater on May 19th with a relatively blank slate, avert thy eyes.
In terms of the other two pics, the first offers up what is perhaps our best look at the Neomorph to date. Hunched over a mutilated corpse, the demon-like alien is decidedly different from its next of kin in that it boasts milky, translucent skin, while previous quotes from Ridley Scott indicate that the Neomorph is actually more aggressive than the standard Xenomorph. Yikes! Meanwhile, the second image finds David (Michael Fassbender) in a flashback sequence with Peter Weyland, the power-hungry CEO of Weyland Industries.
When Empire asked screenwriter John Logan to delve a little deeper into the genesis of the Neomorph, the scribe reflected on how Ridley Scott tends to find a subtle beauty in the grotesque.
Some of those nature videos are so stomach-churning that they don’t pay me enough to watch them. But Ridley will see something to do with insects swarming, for example, which eventually finds its way into a movie. Usually, there’s some sort of grotesqueness we find interesting.
Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen; Alien: Covenant bursts into theaters on May 19th, and you can catch the final transmission from Katherine Waterston’s Daniels – a terraforming expert on board the interstellar vessel – below, before the brown stuff begins hurling indiscriminately toward the fan.