The familiar-looking Xenomorph creature from the Alien movie series has thus far been mostly missing from the marketing (with the exception of a poster) for the upcoming Alien: Covenant. The first trailer released in December relied more on horror elements, afraid of what was lurking in the dark, ready to attack. A prologue last week introduced us to the crew of explorers tasked with colonizing a new world.
Where was that oblong head? What about the extended set of teeth?
However, the new trailer gets rid of the mystery, revealing a newer (0r older, since this film is a prequel to the original 1979 Alien) version of the fearsome monster. And it’s leaner, faster, more feral and ferocious than any version of the creature seen before. The two-and-a-half-minute trailer waits until the very end for its big reveal, but it’s worth the wait.
The trailer begins with an upbeat, sentimental tone as Katherine Waterston’s Daniels addresses her crewmates that have given up their lives on Earth to create existence on a new planet. What makes the crew of the Covenant different than any we’ve seen in an Alien film before is that they’re not carrying freight or serving a military mission. These are couples, who are traveling to a new world to begin colonization. (That seems like a noble way of saying these people will be having a lot of sex.) Oh, all that love is going to get torn to shreds…
But the awe and wonder of discovering a new world quickly fades when it becomes apparent that another lifeform is waiting for them on the planet. It’s harvested wheat and left shit everywhere! And it’s just too damn quiet. It all looks so pretty. You people are gonna die!
There appear to be callbacks to Prometheus, with which director Ridley Scott indulged his need to tell a drawn-out origin story for his famous extraterrestrial predators. The spacecraft which Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and android David (Michael Fassbender) flew in search of the alien race that was attempting to create a new form of life appears to have landed on this planet. And it’s there where this new crew discovers those familiar eggs, ready to splay open and unleash those face-hugging hatchlings. Sorry, Billy Crudup!
This version of the xenomorph appears leaner, faster and more animalistic than any we’ve seen in previous movies. These aliens aren’t just lurking in the dark, waiting to attack. This looks like a sci-fi/horror version of an Animal Planet documentary. Based on this trailer, it could be the scariest evolution of these monsters yet.
Alien: Covenant will hit theaters on May 19, 2017.
