Alien: Covenant beat out Guardians of the Galaxy over the weekend, and that makes me happy. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Alien movies that have high production values (courtesy of Ridley Scott). This particular movie was also rated-R, which makes it even more of an accomplishment because of the significantly reduced audience size. Any Alien movie that isn't rated-R would automatically be a red flag to me. The xenomorph and everything that has to do with it is such an originally terrifying creation that getting an "R" rating in this case is pretty much a badge of honor.
So did I like the movie? Yep. But I also liked Prometheus. If you are looking for a continuation of the story that was started in Prometheus, more spectacular scenery of the Engineers including another Engineer ship and a fantastic city of Engineers, and then on top of that more symbolism...you will find those aplenty in this sequel. No explanations are handed out to you either. Rather, the director assumes you are intelligent and in watching the events unfold on the screen, you actually get quite a few answers about the Engineer civilization and the continuing story of David the android. Ridley Scott does a great job of framing the entire Alien saga as a basic struggle between a creator and the thing that was created. It's actually kind of mind-bending and fascinating.
Does a creation owe its creator anything? It's that kind of basic question that is answered in Alien: Covenant. I just hope there are more movies, because I have different questions now than the ones I was left with at the end of Prometheus.
Today is Alien:Covenant release day! To celebrate this special follow-up to the story which saw its "germination" in Prometheus, I thought I'd share some Alien xenomorph knowledge with you (the xenomorph is the name of the creature created by H.R. Giger and which has concentrated acid for blood). In terms of what most people know about the xenomorph, nearly everyone is familiar with the idea that it bursts out of an animal's chest after a facehugger creature (hatched from a leathery egg) deposits its load in the host's esophagus.
So here's some knowledge that's considered canon, and it's from the 1993 issue of the official Aliens magazine:
"While the term 'impregnation' and 'implantation' are liberally used to describe this process, they are not strictly accurate; studies by Lasalle Bionational have shown that no actual embryo is inserted into the host. Instead, the infant Xenomorph begins its life as a knot of specifically tailored cancers that bring about chemogenetic restructuring of the host's cells, essentially "building" the chestburster from the host's own biological material at a cellular level."
So the Facehugger deposits a tumor into a person's esophagus, which then co-opts its host's cells, and grows into the xenomorph. That they knew this all the way back in 1993 just adds validation that the Alien vs. Predator movies were indeed terrible and should in no way be considered canon. Also, for decades there has been this idea behind the original Alien that it was in fact some biological weapon created from material that could co-opt genetic material from a living host. In other words, it wasn't just something that Ridley Scott pulled out of his ass to make Prometheus.
I'm looking forward to seeing the movie tonight, and I can't wait to review it on Monday. In the meantime, if you are out and about and see an alien penis snake and are a scientist, it still wouldn't be advisable to reach out and pet it.
Alien: Covenant comes out May 19th. It's less than a month away, and I'm not ignoring all the love from Twentieth Century Fox. If you don't know, the studio's been releasing (ahead of the premiere) lots of promotional materials that include pictures and videos related to the film. One of the more serendipitous finds that came out was a walk through of the Australian set for Alien: Covenant done by former Myth Buster's engineer, Adam Savage.
If you watch the short clip, you can see how Adam gets totally sucked in by the details of the alien ship that Dr. Shaw and David the robot (from Prometheus) use to pilot the vessel to the home-world of the Engineers (I'm guessing that's what the photos released by 20th Century Fox are showing when they give us images of the ship that Shaw's piloting, rotating in the air and docking with a much larger vessel). I've included a still of that image below so you can see what I'm talking about (fans are calling the other ship "The Scorpion" because of its tail-like appearance).
Below the ships is some kind of city, obviously not populated by humans but by Engineers (the tall muscly beings from Prometheus). I love how all of these images appear so awesome...in the true sense of the word. In other words, they inspire "awe" in me because they don't look like anything that I've ever seen before.
I think that if I were lucky enough to be in the same situation, I'd be just like Adam. That is, in a state of wonder, looking at the carefully designed set pieces in Australia and just allowing myself to drown in this world that Ridley Scott envisioned decades ago and brought to life alongside H.R. Giger. Just look at the attention to detail in the video, all the controls on the console, the pilot chair designed for the much larger Engineers, and the space suits and ribbing along the corridors. This is A-list treatment and production values applied to a fantastical science-fiction story. Below is a short that includes a lot of details from the ship, and bridges the gap of time between Prometheus and Covenant wherein we learn some of the fate of David and Noomi Rapace (Dr. Shaw). I expect that these are part of the main film, and it's a joy to watch.
I've thought about H.R. Giger quite a bit these last two weeks, not only spurred on by Covenant's impending release, but because I wanted a simple print of one of his well-known alien works (to get framed at some point) to hang on my wall in my new home. But good lord are they expensive, and it's not like I'm buying an original. This is just a photographic print, and they are definitely not in the "affordable" range unless you want one that's no bigger than a small plate. I suppose I could get something H.R. Giger-inspired, but it's not the same thing.
To clarify, nowadays there's lots of copycats for the late H.R. Giger's work. And the artists that are "Giger-inspired" definitely know how to draw as well as he did, but they don't possess any of his genius. People that have transformational ideas only come around once in a generation it seems (if we're lucky). Aside from Giger, two that I can think of that created the kind of transformations that inspired copycats galore are Kurt Cobain and Steve Jobs. These are by no means the only ones, but you can at least understand where I'm coming from and get the gist of how important I think H.R. Giger was as an individual.
Is there anything wrong with a knock-off? Of course not. But it doesn't inspire love, you know? We see this in genre writing all the time. Fantasy is replete with Tolkien and Martin knock-offs, because people develop this urge to consume more and there's only a finite amount of stuff to consume.
It got me thinking about the nature of reality, and how I make assumptions all the time that people share my same reality. Maybe this is wrong though. I can never be sure, right? Earlier this week when I was at work, the janitor came through the door as I was watching the front desk. Where I work, there's a front desk office, and at the time, I was the only one there. When the janitor pushed his garbage can through, he stopped, looked at me, and asked, "Are you watching the front desk?" My first instinct was to think, "Why would he ask that when I'm the only one here? Isn't it obvious I'm watching the front desk." But then I thought...maybe he sees a different reality. I can't just assume that he's in the same reality as me. He could be seeing three different people here, and he may just be asking me to validate that I'm the only one here so that he could be more firmly anchored to the reality that everyone believes is the real reality.
So I answered his question, "Yes, I'm the only one watching the desk."
And I saw a little relief in his eyes as he went about his work. You know...the kind of relief that someone gets when they ask for affirmation about something, and they get it. The whole experience was kind of mind opening.
So then I started to think that maybe transformational geniuses like H.R. Giger, Kurt Cobain, and others aren't really part of the reality that you and I take for granted (if you and I even exist in the same reality to begin with). When you start to think like this, then you realize that what those people saw was probably normal for them. In a way, through their art they were just able to share that other reality with us in ways that we felt alien, but allowed us to grow creatively in an entirely new direction.
Maybe that's the whole point of art, and a true artist is someone that lives in another realm and just visits those of us that live in the most common realm some of the time because everyone's reality is just a little different from our own.
I finally put into words what I've been feeling for a long time. The universe in which Alien, Prometheus, and other films take place (under the guidance of Ridley Scott and not the other directors) has a distinct Lovecraftian atmosphere to it. Though I'm no fan of Lovecraft's actual writing (which I find borish), I think that the man had excellent science fictional ideas and poor execution. That, however, could simply be because of the era in which Lovecraft lived.
For one, Alien has the same kinds of themes as Lovecraft: we aren't alone in the universe and if we could grasp the whole truth of what's really out there, it would drive us insane. That pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole xenomorph egg to chest-burster thing. The aliens themselves might not be godlike, but the ones that created them, a.k.a. the Engineers, certainly are.
Second, Lovecraft uses words like "cyclopean" and "non-Euclidean" and "primordial" to describe the Great Old Ones. In Prometheus (certainly) in the heiroglyphs left by the Engineers and in the opening montage, there is a feeling of something ancient and powerful and beyond our ability to understand going on in the worlds that are visited by the Engineers. If these aren't "cyclopean" and "non-Euclidean" I'm not sure what qualifies to fit in those descriptions.
And last, the set pieces were designed by H.R. Giger, whose work has a definite cosmic horror feel to them. Giger's most famous book after all is called The Necronomicon.
Think about it for a moment. The Alien movies (Covenant included--which is out this May) would fit quite well with the more science-fiction bent that Lovecraft explored as it developed, probably most evident in the novella, At The Mountains of Madness, where a group of explorers in Antarctica find a lost city that holds some kind of monster (I think it was an Elder Thing).
Anyway, that's my case and I'm sticking to it. It's also (probably) why I just love everything Alien. I think I just love stories that have to do with ancient unknown civilizations from another time (similar to what you get in the background of the 1930's version of King Kong).
