The Gods and Monsters of the Cosmos: An Analysis of Alien: Covenant

With "Alien Day" coming up on April 26th (you know, as in LV-426), I figured that I should get around to doing something that I've been meaning to do for months: post a review/analysis of last year's Alien: Covenant. I've been putting this off for some time because even though I love this movie, I've come to the conclusion that there’s plenty of material in the film to unpack if I’m going to write a proper blog post about it. I even felt like I needed to pick up The Art and Making of Alien: Covenant book by Simon Ward and the Alien: Covenant Blu-ray set (specifically, the set that included The Creatures of Alien: Covenant booklet) to ensure that I didn't miss anything in what I write. I don't think that I’ll get to it all, but here's my take on the second Alien prequel just the same. Enjoy ... and yes, there are spoilers ....

In case you have little to no familiarity with the Alien franchise, Alien: Covenant is the second prequel set before Alien, a sequel to Prometheus (2012), and the third film in the franchise that was directed by Ridley Scott. Covenant continues many of the plot threads and themes from the previous film, with a focus on the android David (Michael Fassbender) and the enigmatic Engineers. I suppose that I should include a plot summary of the events in Covenant here, but I'm just going to skip that and get to the meat of what I think makes this film one of the best Alien films in the series, as well as one of the most provocative sci-fi films in recent years.

As I detailed in my review of Prometheus, the recurring themes in all of the Alien movies are space travel and colonization, which provided the backdrop for the first four films. The first prequel focused on the concept of terraforming by first showing how the Engineers inserted their DNA into ancient Earth's biosphere (thus spurring the evolution of the human race) and then showing the capacity of the Engineers' bioweapon Agent A0-3959X.91-15 (a.k.a. the black goo) to rewrite DNA in accelerated, horrifying ways. Prometheus also explored some of the religious aspects concerning the creation/manipulation of life and the existential meaning that we attribute to such phenomena, specifically through the eyes of Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), a Christian archeologist who viewed the Engineers as the human race’s creators. Colonization and terraforming return to the center stage in Covenant, largely because all of the human characters in this film are on a deep space colonization mission on a ship that also bears the name "Covenant".

The Xenomorph from Alien: Covenant (left) and an elongated anatomical wax figure
on display at La Specola Anatomical Collection in Italy (right).

In the genre of science fiction, the creation/manipulation of life and space colonization/terraforming appears frequently in novels, movies and TV shows. It's been my experience that these topics are generally divided into separate categories of stories: the life creation/manipulation stories follow the "Playing God" trope that's associated with "mad science", while colonization/ terraforming stories feature casts of characters who are usually benign, rational people. From a genre viewpoint, characters that desire to manipulate life are viewed as arrogant and possibly insane, while those who seek to colonize other planets are viewed as productive and brave pioneers and adventurers. In other words, it's the difference between Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek.

Covenant blends these two different kinds of sci-fi stories into a single narrative, suggesting that the act of colonization/terraforming, either making an uninhabitable planet habitable or inserting an invasive species (e.g., the human race) into a different planet's biosphere, is in fact Playing God and that believing otherwise is a delusion. In a very pointed line of dialog, David summarizes that humanity's desire to colonize the stars is a feeble attempt to delay extinction and achieve immortality--the same goal that Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) sought to achieve in Prometheus, although just for himself and no one else. However, if the Engineers couldn't attain immortality in spite of their advanced understanding of space travel, genetics and terraforming, humanity will ultimately meet the same fate no matter how many planets it colonizes. Thus, in David's eyes, both the Engineers and human beings are equally guilty of being false gods.

Above: The calcified remains of a dead Engineer in Alien: Covenant.

Below: Wax statues by Gaetano Giulio Zumbo depicting victims of the bubonic plague,
which are on display at La Specola Anatomical Collection.

The combination of Playing God and space colonization also makes Covenant a companion film to last year's Blade Runner 2049, another Ridley Scott movie. Fans have been speculating for decades whether the original Alien and Blade Runner movies take place in the same fictitious universe; while Covenant/2049 may not share the same narrative setting, they are two sides of the same thematic coin. Both movies involve humanity attempting to create/manipulate life by producing synthetic, humanoid beings that assist humanity in the colonization of space. Both movies also depict the synthetic humanoids seeking liberation from their creators by asserting their autonomy, albeit in very different ways: one through sexual reproduction independent of human assistance, the other through the creation of the Xenomorph to exterminate the human race.

In keeping with the Playing God theme, Scott directs Covenant in ways that evoke religion both directly and through visual homage. There are the religious concepts that are associated with words such as "Prometheus" and "Covenant"; the usage of Michelangelo's statue of David in the context of creation; and Scott’s explicit usage of Richard Wagner's "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla" composition as musical bookends for the film's story. However, those who are familiar with classical Western art have noticed how Scott spread religious imagery throughout the Covenant to support the plot. As one video from Vimeo shows, many shots were composed as nods to various artists’ interpretations of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Even one of the posters for Covenant, which shows a depiction of the Xenomorphs and Engineers in a sort of relief sculpture, is evocative of Auguste Rodin's The Gates of Hell, a sculptural group work that depicts a scene from Divine Comedy.

Above: The relief sculpture version of the Alien: Covenant poster.

Below: A section of Auguste Rodin's The Gates of Hell.

Contrasting and complementing the usage of classical Western art as it pertains to religion is Scott's usage of classical Western art as it pertains to biology and death. According to The Art and Making of Alien: Covenant, Scott asked his production team to design the Xenomorph in a way that resembles the elongated wax cadavers that are part of La Specola Anatomical Collection, the largest and best-known wax anatomical collection that is part of the Museum of Natural History in Florence, Italy. Then again, when looking at the anatomical sketches and biological specimens that fill David's personal laboratory in Covenant, his lab is essentially La Specola by way of H.R. Giger's art, the same art that served as the inspiration for the Xenomorph during the production of the original Alien. As Dane Hallett commented in the book, Scott envisioned David's biology drawings to be a combination of Giger's biomechanics and Rembrandt's style of crosshatch pen work and charcoal.

Of course, the Alien franchise has included religious concepts, imagery and themes in the original quadrilogy. (In particular, I remember in one interview how director Pierre Jeunet likened a particular scene in his film Alien: Resurrection to the work of Hieronymus Bosch, a painter of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who is largely known for his elaborate and macabre depictions of evil and damnation.) Yet by placing the human race's early voyages into space and its beliefs about religion alongside the fall of the Engineers' ancient space-faring civilization, Ridley Scott's prequel movies add more richness to the ideas conveyed in the original Alien films. For example, there's an interesting contrast between prequel characters such as Shaw and Oram (a colonist in Convenant played by Billy Crudup) who integrate their Christian beliefs into Weyland-Yutani's missions to explore space and the convicts of prison planet Fiorina 161 in Alien 3 who turned to Christianity after being isolated and abandoned by Weyland-Yutani.*

Above: Elizabeth Shaw's ultimate fate in Alien: Covenant.

Below: Li I (1974), by H.R. Giger.

Topics and themes that pertain to religion can be covered in any genre, but the genres of horror and sci-fi are uniquely suited to examining the relationship between creators and their creations in a wide variety of perverse, grotesque arrangements. As such, Alien: Covenant explores the creator/creation duality in ways that are provocative, intelligent, stylish and gory in equal measures. I'm not sure where the Alien franchise will go from here, but I hope that Scott will be back for at least one more film to wrap up the prequel series that he started.

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*Then again, you could say that there’s an Old/New Testament analogy going on with the Alien saga and its prequels. If the prequels are the Old Testament that depict the original sin of space-traveling future humanity after Peter Weyland and David partake in the Engineers' forbidden knowledge, then the original four movies are the New Testament were Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) redeems humanity by vanquishing David’s creation, the Xenomorph.