David (Prometheus).
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| The "money shot". |
Why do I keep doing this to myself?
Growing up Alien and Aliens were two of
my favourite films, a love that has followed me into adulthood.
Alien 3, after initial disappointment
as a teenager, I've grown to appreciate as a beautiful disaster.
Alien Resurrection, however, I believe is total and indefensible
garbage, for which all those involved should be totally ashamed of
themselves. That film marked the absolute low-point for the franchise
till Aliens vs Predator and the subsequent sequel. It's not that I
took offense to the notion of a cross-over, simply that the films
were as life affirming and enjoyable as a one-way trip to a Swiss
clinic.
By that point I couldn't see how things
could get any worse and hoped (Christ, how I hoped) that would be an
end to it.
Then, news surfaced that no other than
Ridley Scott was returning to the franchise, for a prequel to his first Alien. That got me curious, and as the release date grew closer
and closer, my expectations ran higher and higher.
Long story short: Prometheus was shit.
Poorly defined relationships, and a smorgasbord of forgettable
one-dimensional characters who only serve to drive the story into a
number of contrived hoops- and for what? Some hackneyed space-Jesus
plot! Hardly an original idea. And to top it off, the crowning turd
in the water-pipe (something you'd not even credit for a film in the
Alien franchise) no fucking alien!
Anyway, Mr Scott is returning to the
series for this next installment and has decided to back-track on his
“I-know-best” NO-ALIEN policy.
We've had a number of little teasers so
far, including two trailers (one much more subtle than the other), a
closer look at the new stock-android (it seems most crews feature
one, even though this was a major surprise to those on board the
Nostromo first time round), and a
“bloody-hell-it's-in-broad-daylight” view of the new 'Xenomorph'
design- although I need to add at this point, I personally hate it when people call the aliens Xenomorphs like that's their official genus, it's a term used by the Colonial Marines to describe a generic 'bug' before they even meet their first monster...
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| One of H.R. Giger's early designs- look familiar? |
I wasn't entirely sure about that
'money shot' at first, but given how everyone and their dog knows how
the alien looks these days (Scott once famously said he spotted the
alien in Disney Land), maybe it's better to tackle that head-on.
Looks like much of the bio-mechanical styling have been dropped in
favour of a more naturalistic and 'butch' design- the alien till this
point had always been predominantly slender and feminine. In truth,
it sticks quite accurately to Giger's original sketches from the first
film, and I feel like that's a bold move on Scott's part.
Other 'tools' in the marketing
campaign for Alien Covenant are the release of a number of clips. One of these is entitled Last Supper and provides a look at the new soon-to-be-doomed crew, while another shows Shaw (Prometheus' only human survivor) repairing David the android's destroyed body. Given how one of the things I loathed about Prometheus
was the lack of group dynamics and believable
characters, I was relieved watching Last Supper to see a little more of the 'old magic'
at play; the scene felt believable and intimate. Obviously this is
just a small window into a feature length film, but it's reassuring. A final clip revealed a now-repaired David essentially laying waste to what appears to be the Engineer's homeworld with their own weaponised black toxin (which truth be told felt a little like a spoiler).
However, for everything Alien Covenant
might be doing right, it may be making further errors. News is now
circulating which throws the whole premise of the current Alien saga
in a different direction... Apparently David, the android who just
barely survived the events of Prometheus, is responsible for
engineering the particular strain of alien we've so far seen in the
franchise, thus entirely decoding the subtext of the film cannon.
What had once been a case of 'man is inferior to nature / man is not
on top of the natural order of things' is now 'man sows the seeds to
his own destruction': man created A.I, A.I creates the alien, alien
destroys man.' Scott is quite pleased with this little gimmick,
pointing out that while the 'man vs nature' trope has been played out
quite often, this particular little avenue of creativity is fertile
ground... Aside from my own reservations (personally I actually really
like the 'man vs nature' trope) what the blinding-fuck is Ridley
Scot actually talking about? 'man sows the seeds etc' is a trope as
old as the hills! I mean, Christ alive, that's the entire through-line
for the Terminator franchise for a start! Man creates A.I ' Skynet,
Skynet creates terminators, terminators destroys man', not familiar
at all? Ridley! This is James Cameron's shtick, you've probably
heard of the guy, he got the job of doing a sequel to your first
Alien film! Off the back of his first Terminator film! I despair, I really
do...
Am I the only one who thinks Ridley
Scott as actually suffered some sort of stroke?
Anyway, long story short, I'm off to
see Alien Covenant when it comes out. Here's hoping it's good.
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