Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant is the second film in the Alien prequel series, and the sixth installment in the Alien franchise overall. It is the third Alien film to be directed by Ridley Scott. In 2012, prior to the release of the first prequel film (fifth Alien film overall) Prometheus, director Ridley Scott began hinting at the prospect of a sequel as the film leaves many questions unanswered.[25][26][27] He said a sequel would follow Shaw, the protagonist of Prometheus, to her next destination, "because if it is paradise, paradise cannot be what you think it is. Paradise has a connotation of being extremely sinister and ominous." Prometheus co-writer Damon Lindelof cast doubt on his own participation, saying, "if [Scott] wants me to be involved in something, that would be hard to say no to. At the same time, I do feel like the movie might benefit from a fresh voice or a fresh take or a fresh thought."[28] In June, Scott said an additional film would be required to bridge the >100-year gap between the Prometheus sequel and Alien.[29]

As of August 1, 2012, Fox was pursuing a sequel with Scott, Noomi Rapace, and Michael Fassbender involved, and was talking to new writers in case Lindelof did not return.[30] In December 2012, Lindelof ultimately chose not to work on the project.[31] Early on, Scott stated the film would feature no xenomorphs as he wanted to phase the xenomorph out to focus instead on David 8, whose A.I. is the new alien lifeform.[32][33] However, Scott later made contradictory statements, confirming the xenomorph's presence in the film, mainly due to the feedback to Prometheus.[34][35]

On September 24, 2015, Scott disclosed the film's title as Alien: Paradise Lost.[36] In November 2015, he revealed the new title to be Alien: Covenant, and filming was set to begin in February 2016 in Australia.[37] An official logo, synopsis and release date were released on November 16, 2015.[38] During an interview concerning the development of the character of David since Prometheus, Scott indicated the dark turn which David would take in Covenant, saying, "'He hates them. He has no respect for Engineers and no respect for human beings.'"[39]

After the early participation of several screenwriters, John Logan wrote the final script for the film.

The initial screenplay was written by Transcendence screenwriter Jack Paglen in June 2013.[40] In March 2014, Michael Green was hired to rewrite Paglen's script.[41] Dante Harper later wrote a new script, but an extensive rewrite was performed by screenwriter John Logan. Logan had previously worked with Scott on Gladiator.[34]

For Logan, the main concept was to adopt a dual plot line for the film that would combine the horror elements of Alien with the philosophical elements of Prometheus. He said, "With Alien: Covenant, I just really wanted to write something that had the feel of the original Alien, because seeing that movie was one of the great events of my youth. It was so overpowering in terms of what it communicated to me and its implications, that when I started talking to Ridley about what became Alien: Covenant, I said, 'You know, that was a hell of a scary movie.' I wanted to write a horror movie because the Grand Guignol elements of Alien are so profound. We tried to recapture that with Alien: Covenant, while also trying to pay homage to the deeper implications of Prometheus. In terms of tone, pace, and how we chose to play this particular symphony, we wanted to create a really frightening movie."[34]

In late August 2015, Scott confirmed that he had started scouting locations for the film.[42] In October 2015, the Australian government attracted the production of this film, and of Thor: Ragnarok, to Australia by providing AU$47.25 million in grants.[43][44] Woz Productions Ltd., a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, visited Te Anau, New Zealand, on March 28, 2016, to scout locations for filming in Fiordland.[45]

In August 2015, it was announced that the film would star Rapace and Fassbender, while Rik Barnett was in talks to join the cast.[46] That December, Katherine Waterston was cast in the lead role of Daniels;[47] it was Waterston's second film alongside Fassbender, after Steve Jobs. Summer Glau, Carolyn Murphy and Alice Eve were also being considered. Dariusz Wolski, longtime collaborator with Scott, was confirmed to serve as the film's cinematographer.[48] In 2016, Ridley Scott stated that Noomi Rapace would not reprise her role of Elizabeth Shaw.[49] However, in June, it was announced that Rapace would shoot a week's worth of scenes (though no new footage of hers appeared in the final film).[50][51] Creature designer Carlos Huantes said in a 2019 interview that he believed it was the studio's decision to remove her from the film.[52]

In February 2016, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Jussie Smollett, Amy Seimetz, Carmen Ejogo, Callie Hernandez, Billy Crudup, and Alexander England were reported to have joined the cast.[12][53][54][55][56] In March 2016, newcomer Benjamin Rigby also joined the cast.[57] In December 2016, it was announced James Franco had been cast in the role of Captain Branson, husband to Daniels and captain of the Covenant.[58] The role of Branson in the film was limited to a cameo appearance of the deceased captain.

Adam Savage went on a tour of several of the props and stage sets used in the filming which included an alien spaceship which had first appeared in Prometheus. This set had to be recreated for Alien: Covenant as the set used in Prometheus had been destroyed.[59] In an article for The Hollywood Reporter, Patrick Shanley interviewed the art director for the film, Damien Drew, and creature design supervisor Conor O'Sullivan regarding the involvement of the San Diego Zoo and its representative Rick Schwartz as a consultant for the design of the realistic effects of the creatures and Xenomorphs appearing throughout the film as Scott wanted a more 'organic' feeling to the creatures as opposed to the 'biomechanical' inspiration of H.R. Giger which had inspired the creature designs in the original films.[60] Scott provided anatomical studies and references from La Specola, a natural history museum in Florence, to O'Sullivan as inspiration.[60]

The VFX supervisor Charles Henley summarized the several vendors that were used to support production of the visual special effects seen in the film when the selection process was discussed, stating, "Both history and need guided the decisions on which vendors we used. Ridley had worked with MPC on many previous projects, in particular Prometheus for which I was MPC's VFX supervisor as well as The Martian. There had a been a lot of great digital double and creature work done at MPC on recent projects so there was confidence they should be the lead facility. Framestore had recently worked with Ridley on space for The Martian, similarly Animal Logic now had the original crew who did the holograms for Prometheus. Also as we were shooting in Australia there was good reason and incentives to use Australian-based companies and so Luma and Rising Sun came on board."[61]

Milford Sound was used for principal photography.

Principal photography for the film began on April 4, 2016, at Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park, New Zealand,[62][63][64][65] and wrapped on July 19, 2016.[66] Some footage was also filmed at Leavesden Studios in England,[67] which included reshoots.[68] The complete list of countries used for filming were listed by BFI in Sight & Sound as the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, and New Zealand.[69] Previous partial lists often listed only one of the four countries involved in the development and production of the film.[70][3][71]

Effects houses Odd Studios and CreatureNFX provided the film's makeup and animatronic creature effects, respectively,[72][73] while Australian-based effects house Animal Logic provided the film's digital visual effects.[74] Approximately 30 people from CreatureNFX worked on the project for almost six months building animatronics.[73] Actors wearing creature suits with animatronic heads were used to portray the aliens on-set.[73][75]

Pietro Scalia, the editor of the film, spoke of the structural difficulty of integrating the two story lines in the final editing of the film and how the need to keep momentum was important. He did this by not repeatedly jumping between scenes which he said made parts of the film "belabored and tedious", as well as combining certain scenes and eliminating others. Another issue highlighted was the reveal of David as;

"Once the Covenant Story merges with the Prometheus storyline finding the proper structural order of the scenes proofed [sic] to be difficult because of the distinctive dynamics of the two story lines in addition to the separation of the two locations of the action. In one sense the action, the tension and unfolding drama going from one group to the other had to be balanced and spaced properly as not to loose the connective tissue of the film."[76]

Scott said the first cut of the film was two hours and 23 minutes long, which was eventually edited down to 2 hours and 3 minutes for the released version. Scott used test screenings to decide what to cut.[77][78]

The theatrical release of the film was accompanied by the release of a novelization by Alan Dean Foster, who also authored the novelization of the original Alien film from the 1970s.[100] A companion volume about the film's art and stage design was released at the same time, written by Simon Ward and titled The Art and Making of Alien: Covenant.[101]

A second Covenant novel by Foster was initially billed as a sequel to the film, before being revealed to be a direct prequel to Covenant under the title Alien: Covenant – Origins.[102] Titan Books, as publisher of the book, released a plot summary in advance of its release on September 26, 2017:

As the colony ship Covenant prepares for launch, and the final members of the crew are chosen, a series of violent events reveals a conspiracy to sabotage the launch. Yet the perpetrators remain hidden behind a veil of secrecy. The threat reaches all the way up to Hideo Yutani—the head of the newly merged Weyland-Yutani Corporation—when his daughter is kidnapped. Is the conspiracy the product of corporate espionage, or is it something even more sinister? While Captain Jacob Branson[lower-alpha 2] and his wife Daniels prepare the ship, Security chief Dan Lopé signs a key member of his team, and together they seek to stop the technologically advanced saboteurs before anyone else is killed, and the ship itself is destroyed in orbit.[104]

On April 26, 2017, 20th Century Fox released Alien: Covenant In Utero, a virtual reality interactive demo teaser for Alien: Covenant for the Oculus Rift and the Samsung Gear VR. The experience was produced by RSA, FoxNext VR, MPC, Mach1, AMD Radeon, and Dell Alienware.[105][106] The trailer is a first-person experience in which the viewer plays the role of a neomorph. The experience was executive produced by Scott and directed by David Karlak.[107]

Alien: Covenant underperformed at the box office grossing a worldwide total of $240.9 million, including $74.3 million in the United States and Canada and $166.6 million in other countries, against a production budget of $97 million,[4][108] not including marketing costs.[109] The film was a box office disappointment for the studio, especially when compared to Prometheus which had grossed a worldwide total of $403.4 million.[109][110]

Fox released the film in several countries before the United States.[111][112] It was released in 34 markets, where it debuted to $40.1 million, opening at number one in 19 of them. Its overall rank for the weekend was second behind the continued run of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.[113] The top openings were in South Korea ($7.2 million), the UK ($6.4 million), France ($4.5 million), Australia ($3.1 million), and Mexico ($2.5 million).[113] In China, the film was released on June 16 and grossed $30 million, topping the box office.[114][115] JUNE 18, 2017

In North America, the film was released alongside Everything, Everything and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, and was projected to gross around $40 million from 3,760 theaters during its opening weekend.[116][117]

It made $4.3 million from Thursday-night previews at about 3,000 theaters, and $15.4 million overall on its first day, which was below the $21.5 million Friday of Prometheus five years prior.[118] It went on to open to $36.2 million, down 34% from Prometheus's debut, but still finishing first at the box office,[4] as the third-highest debut of the series when not counting for inflation.[119][120][121] In its second weekend, the film grossed $10.5 million, finishing fourth at the box office and dropping 70.9%.[122][123][124] The film was pulled from 1,112 theaters in its third weekend and dropped another 62.3%, finishing sixth at the box office with $4 million.[125]

Fassbender's portrayal of two similar androids with different programming, David and Walter, was highly praised by reviewers.

Alien: Covenant received generally positive reviews from critics.[126] The film has a 65% approval from 406 reviews compiled by review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Alien: Covenant delivers another satisfying round of close-quarters deep-space terror, even if it doesn't take the saga in any new directions."[127] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 65 out of 100, based on reviews from 52 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[128] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, the same score earned by its predecessor.[120]

Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film three stars out of five, stating that Alien: Covenant is "a greatest-hits compilation of the other Alien films' freaky moments. The paradox is that though you are intended to recognise these touches, you won't really be impressed unless you happen to be seeing them for the first time. For all this, the film is very capably made, with forceful, potent performances from Waterston and Fassbender."[129] Geoffrey McNab, writing for The Independent, stated that it "certainly delivers what you'd expect from an Aliens film—spectacle, body horror, strong Ripley-like female protagonists and some astonishing special effects—but there's also a dispiriting sense that the film isn't at all sure of its own identity." He found the screenplay "very portentous" and concluded that "the crew members pitted against the monstrous creatures are trying their darndest to blast them to kingdom come, just as they would in any run-of-the-mill sci-fi B movie."[130]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times said, "Alien: Covenant is an interesting movie ... for all its interplanetary ranging, [it] commits itself above all to the canny management of expectations."[131] Trace Thurman, from Bloody Disgusting, gave the film a mediocre review, noting that although watching Alien: Covenant will make viewers appreciate Prometheus more, "this is a film that was made as a response to Prometheus critics but tries to appease fans of that film as well and it doesn't fully work." He also criticizes the overfamiliarity of the climax and insufficiently developed characters.[132] Collider's review of the film stated that Scott "finds himself stuck between two constructs—the action-horror beats of an Alien film, and the weighty, ponderous themes of a Prometheus movie—and by indulging both, he never fully satisfies either. The result is a messy film that is at turns, exquisite and infuriating."[133]

In a review for The Independent Clarisse Loughrey gave the film five stars describing it as "relentless and overwhelming, but all in the very best of ways" and as a "mightily impressive piece of cinematic engineering" which has brought together the Alien franchise. Loughrey praised Katherine Waterston for her "impressive work" as Daniels and went on to single out Fassbender for playing a "deeply frightening, scene-stealing antagonist".[134] Sinead Brennan for RTÉ, gave the film 7/10, but gave high praise to Fassbender who she says "steals the show; seriously, he's incredible".[135] Meanwhile, Neil Soans in a three star review for The Times of India, highlighted Danny McBride's performance as the most surprising given his comedic roots.[136]

Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com highly praised Alien: Covenant, giving it four out of four stars and stating that the film's structure, although repeatedly borrowing from other Alien films, serves a purpose not unlike the James Bond film series or Star Wars, "where part of the fun lies in seeing what variations the artists can bring while satisfying a rigid structure." He also emphasized that, like previous films of the series, real-world logic should not be applied to the film, and "[i]nstead you have to judge it by the standards of a fever dream or nightmare, a Freudian-Jungian narrative where the thing you fear most is what happens to you."[137] Seitz later voted for it in Sight & Sound as one of the five best films of 2017.[138]

In New York magazine, David Edelstein commented on David the android as representing a new generation of monster villains in the tradition of Frankenstein, stating, "In Star Trek, that man-machine nexus was...hopeful. Here, there's some doubt about David's ultimate motives, which puts Alien: Covenant squarely in the tradition of the Terminator and Matrix movies. And, of course, the novel Frankenstein, which carried the subtitle The Modern Prometheus. No less than Stephen Hawking—who survived with the aid of machines—has predicted that we have 100 years to live before evolved machines take human imperfection as justification for destroying humanity".[139]

Kevin Lincoln, writing for Vulture, gave a strong endorsement of the depiction of David as an arch-villain in the film stating, "... one franchise is showing it's still possible for a modern blockbuster to have a great villain. In Alien: Covenant, David—the android played by Michael Fassbender, first introduced in Prometheus—comes into his own as a fleshed-out, dynamic, and genuinely striking antagonist, one who isn't just an equal match for the heroes, but even becomes the central thread of the series. He's a huge part of what makes Alien: Covenant work."[140]

Writing for Vox, Alissa Wilkinson said that "Alien: Covenant is too muddled to pull off its deeply ambitious Satan allegories". She emphasized the Miltonic demonic aspect of the android David: "But David is a better Satan than Satan himself ... It's as if in the Alien universe, the devil has evolved, thanks to humans creating him. David, fatally, has the ability to create—something Satan never had—and he will use that power only to destroy. He doesn't have any real need to rebel against his maker, since from the moment he became sentient, he knew he'd already won. He is indestructible, and determined to make creatures that imitate his drive for total domination."[141]

At the 44th Saturn Awards, the film was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film, but lost to Blade Runner 2049, another film by Scott Free Productions (and of which Ridley Scott was an executive producer).[149]