Originally published in Cinema Knife Fight June 6, 2017
So, there I was, leaving the theater with my brother Paul after having seen the newest movie in the Alien franchise, ALIEN: COVENANT (2017), and feeling… not sure, pensive, thoughtful, saturnine? It was an enjoyable enough movie (which would have been more enjoyable had I not seen the trailers and thus every significant scene in the film), and one which has been reviewed by others already, not least of which is our fearless leader’s great review here.
What you’re reading now is not a review. It’s more a
discourse on the case of prequels, of letting someone (even if the someone is
one of the original creators) tell you the back story behind what has always
been one of your favorite science fiction films. ALIEN: COVENANT,
and before it PROMETHEUS (2012), is slowly, but
inexorably, answering many of the questions we have all asked over the past
forty years about the original, horrifying, ALIEN (1979).
Where did that ship come from; why was it carrying all of those eggs? Who are
the xenomorphs, and where did they come from? All of it,
thanks in no small part to the visual genius (or madness) of H.R. Geiger. His
creature and set designs were so otherworldly that if there was no monster
killing people in the original film, we viewers would still have been
mesmerized by how different, how alien, all of it was.
Today, the director of the original film, Ridley Scott, is
allowing us to peer into the past and see the answers many of us have eagerly
debated over too many beers and too much imagination.
Walking out of the theater a week ago, I almost wish I
hadn’t looked. Don’t meet your heroes, the expression goes.
But we asked for PROMETHEUS, and COVENANT,
and have gotten what we asked for.
Before I continue with this, be warned. There is no way to
have a reasonable discussion about what troubles my movie-going soul with these
prequels, especially the most recent one, without giving away every plot
point. To wit:
SPOILER ALERT!!!
No, I really mean it. I’m going to talk about everything.
If you haven’t seen the film, but want to, then stop reading now. Come back
later; we’ll leave the lights on.
Last chance, turn back, abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
OK, so, here we go:
Scott has borrowed much for these last two films from the
universe created by the Dark Horse comics of the 1980s and 90s, especially in
the overall look and tone. One such series, Aliens: Hive (1992),
takes place on the aliens’ homeworld. Their “hives” look very much like what we
see when the Prometheus lands in its self-titled film.
(More on the concept of an alien homeworld later.) As well, the idea of a black
liquid with properties to transform living creatures into aliens themselves (or
something nightmarishly akin to them) was very similar to what I think is
the most horrifying of the comics series, Aliens: Labyrinth (1996),
where we watch, via flashbacks, passengers of a crashed ship full of families
taken prisoner and experimented on for years by the xenomorphs. Humans are
exposed to the contents of a pool of black goo, with which the aliens are
trying to save their own species. I’ve seen nothing on the web or elsewhere
comparing Scott’s films to some of these earlier comics (and there are quite a
few). Look some of them up (or ask Ned Utzig, he has them all). As the comic
series evolved, you’ll see how the world(s) they created are driving the look
and tone of the new Scott films.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s
pretty cool, especially for fans of the comics, of which I’m one.
One plot point (short-lived as it might have been in the
comics) Scott did not follow, and which begins my path of
angst, was the concept of the Engineers. In ALIEN,
the first encounter with the long-dead pilot of the alien ship is a memorable
image, with its elephantine eyes and trunk, its body nearly fossilized, so long
had it been in its seat. The original script by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett
called for this creature to be just that, one of an alien race unfortunate
enough to encounter the xenomorphs before us humans. This hapless being was
commonly referred to as the “Space Jockey” before the recent Scott films were
released, and others of its kind made an occasional appearance in the Dark
Horse comics.
In PROMETHEUS, we discover the truth.
The elephant-like attributes of this large creature are, in fact, a spacesuit
and helmet, worn by a very human-looking person. An individual whose people
happened to have created, well, humans (or so this is strongly implied in PROMETHEUS).
Later these humans – us – created robots, one of whom, named David….
But I get ahead of myself.
Seeing the crew of the Nostromo, even
now, climbing onto the massive bridge of the alien ship, coming across the
preserved body of such a uniquely alien creature in the pilot seat with a hole
in its chest, the rows upon rows of creepy eggs filled with the first stage of
such a nerve-shattering race of creatures, never fails to fill me with wonder.
This is one way an encounter with an alien race could be like (if you’re a
pessimist). Wondrous, alien (yes, I’m overusing this word but it’s the key to everything
I’m talking about, trust me), and religiously demonic in its different-ness.
The back story of this scene, though obvious in some ways
(Space Jockeys encountered an egg or two somewhere, were infested and died, but
not before leaving a warning to others who might find their ship to stay far,
far away). We wondered about the worlds they came from, their technology.
Much of these questions Scott’s first two prequels touch on.
The sets he creates are indeed wondrous and just plain cool. As the story progresses
through the two films, however, and the ending of ALIEN: COVENANT reveals
to us how the xenomorph we all know and fear came to be, it makes… well, it
makes me walk out of the theater with brother Paul in a quiet, somber mood.
Because –
I told you there were SPOILERS HERE, go away!…
Because humans, even if indirectly, invented the alien
creature which would one day terrorize Ripley and her crew. The Space Jockeys
are really human creatures who created our race ages ago. We then created David
the android, who begins tinkering with the Engineers’ technology after being
marooned for ten years on their planet, genetically refining it to the point
where that egg, with the face-hugger inside, is ready and waiting for the crew
of the Covenant when they arrive. We created David, so
we’re partly responsible for what he made.
If we take Scott’s films as gospel within the ALIEN franchise,
the universe suddenly becomes much smaller. If one looks behind the curtain of
humanity, there’s a race of pissed off scientists with no moral fiber who
eventually decide they don’t like us anymore. Assume for the moment they are
human, perhaps more than we are. So, the wondrous, magical, frightening alien
landscape introduced in the original film is not alien at all. It’s our past,
and our future.
And that’s my gripe: Why do so many recent filmmakers seem
to think that humans are, not only the center of the universe, but the only thing
in it worth any effort to talk about? I’m thinking about the awesome movie INTERSTELLAR (2014),
which was a trip and a half, no question, with a great story and stunning
visuals, but (another SPOILER coming, folks) ended with the
revelation that the mystical, highly-advanced race helping humanity was
actually the main character of the film. Again, the message is: it’s
just us out there folks, just us.
How absolutely sad—and boring. We cannot be the only
intelligent species among so many uncountable stars. I’ve watched sci-fi movies
my whole life. I’ve read countless books and stories, have written science
fiction myself. Why? Because I want to know what’s out there. If what’s out
there is just us, even repackaged a little… I might as well
start watching and writing documentaries.
I should reiterate, ALIEN: COVENANT (and
to a much lesser degree, PROMETHEUS)
is a good movie. It is well done and intense and many people not as vested
emotionally in the source material (or perhaps even them) will like
where he is going with the origin story. After all, there are many positives to
it as well.
For instance, “the company” (Weyland-Yutani) has been trying
to get their hands on an alien in every movie since 1979. They want to
weapon-ize it. This concept seemed strange to me with the original few films,
because these are not weapons but intelligent creatures.
The introduction of the Engineers’ experiments, the black goo which transforms
any living being at its very DNA core into something otherworldly and violent,
is what W-T is after. The new films show that they have known about the alien
technology for decades, assuming David the android kept reporting back his
findings until he became marooned on the Engineers’ home planet and began his
mad scientist work.
At the end of ALIEN: COVENANT, David
commandeers the title ship, loaded with two thousand colonists in blissful
cryo-sleep, and resumes its voyage for the planet to which they’d originally
been heading. There will be a third film, I’m sure of it, and there we will see
what fans of the Dark Horse comics have already known: there is an alien homeworld.
Not belonging to the Engineers, but the xenomorphs themselves. Thing is, it
will be created by David harvesting the colonists to grow a population of alien
creatures, with an entire planet as his laboratory. At some point, an Engineer
ship will arrive (or perhaps already be there), and someone will load it with
the eggs laid by the David-engineered queen (if Scott sticks to the James
Cameron interpretation), likely destined for Earth. The pilot will eventually
be impregnated by a facehugger and crash the ship on the moon LV-426 in order
to save humanity. Something like that.
It’ll work, and likely be done well. The story will have
come full circle, and many people will think it was clever. It is clever,
I do not argue that, but it’s not for me. Once the circle is closed, the dark,
mysterious wonder of the original O’Bannon and Geiger ALIEN universe
will have been shrunk to a far too manageable chunk. My universe, the one I see
when standing outside looking at the stars, is much bigger, and much more frightening.
I appreciate what Ridley Scott and his writers are doing.
For my part, I’m going to go home, and discard their answers; let the curtain
drop behind my childhood nightmares. When I watch ALIEN,
and ALIENS (1986), and pretend ALIEN3 (1992)
didn’t happen, I will appreciate what PROMETHEUS and COVENANT represent:
one more beer-tinged theory with a major budget to back it up. I will disregard
it, and look at the Space Jockey bathed in Dallas’s flashlight with the same
wonder I felt when first watching ALIEN. That was the
original script’s intent, after all.
Sometimes, it’s
better never to meet your heroes, or look for answers when the living,
breathing mystery can be far more frightening. Because when you ask, someone
will answer, and you might not like what they have to say.