“Alien Covenant” is the latest film in the “Alien” franchise.
The “Alien” franchise has gone through as many changes as its xenomorphs.
Ridley Scott’s 1979 chamber-horror piece became James Cameron’s terrifying 1986 carnival ride (“Aliens”). Then came further-flung and further-out iterations of the monster and initial protagonist Ripley (Sigourney Weaver); then video-game-and-comicinspired crossover “Aliens vs. Predator” movies; then Scott’s return with the big-question-asking “Prometheus” (2012) and now his new “Alien: Covenant.”
“Covenant” writer John Logan, who has been nominated three times for an Oscar, says that the “Alien” franchise is testament to “the muscularity of the central idea; that different filmmakers can go down the hall to the right or to the left. It’s still the same hallway. We prefer to walk straight down the middle.
Logan, who worked with Scott on “Gladiator” and is writing the “Alien” film to follow “Covenant,” and Scott’s longtime costume designer Janty Yates (”Gladiator,” “Prometheus”) have had a view from the womb of how the new film that opens Friday, May 19, continues the series’ evolution.
“One of the great provocations of the whole ‘Alien’ series is ‘What is life?’ ” adds Logan, working on his first “Alien” movie. “In ‘Prometheus,’ the characters are grappling directly with ‘Where did humanity come from?’ So those themes continue in ‘Covenant,’ but … this movie has its own DNA and its own sort of house-of-horrors charm.
“‘Prometheus’ was a beautiful fugue. We wanted to do a roller-coaster horror movie. When you look at the original ‘Alien,’ the structure is profoundly nuanced in terms of building suspense. It’s a very slow build, then it all goes straight to hell.”
Since Ripley’s final appearance in “Resurrection,” the series has had no other constant than those nasty xenomorphs … until now.
The new film opens with Michael Fassbender’s android character David, introduced in “Prometheus,” being born.
“David opening his eyes,” Logan says. “An artificial life form asking, ‘Who am I?’ and “What am I?’ ” Then you follow iterations of that and that character. “David lives in a state of seething resentment against the gods who created him. David is, in a way, our dark protagonist through this movie and leading into the next one.”
“Prometheus” takes place about 30 years before the first film and “Covenant” 10 years after “Prometheus.” In a recent interview with Fandango, Scott said the next film would be “Awakening” and would take place between these two prequels.
Costume designer Yates, an Oscar wnner for “Gladiator,” has worked with Scott on 11 films. She says, “‘Gnarly’ is a favorite word of his. That will mean anything from a sort of porridge linen for a cloak to sort of edging of
a breakdown on a cuff. He comes in and demands talcum powder and Vaseline to break costumes down. I think he kind of broke the mold there (with ‘Alien’). No one had seen a grubby spaceship. People wearing Hawaiian shirts and looking grungy. And he does apply that to everything.”
Yates says, unlike “Prometheus” and Scott’s “The Martian,” “Covenant’s” spacesuits emphasized comfort and accessibility. Except, that is, for “Danny McBride’s spacesuit, which we called ‘The Big Yellow.’ It was based on not only an underwater suit, but also on two props. … Ridley loved them, literally two pieces of set decoration from the galley in ‘Prometheus.’ ”
She says it was an enormous undertaking, including setting joints on ball bearings, but special-effects costume makers “SBFX and associate spacesuit costume designer Michael Mooney did the most superlative job.”
Yates acknowledges relationships are more at the fore in “Covenant” than elsewhere in the series. When one character loses her spouse, “for the first section, she’s wearing her husband’s clothes.”
Logan says that is by design, especially because the characters are colonists.
“The reason I chose to name the ship ‘Covenant’ beyond a tip of the hat to Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped’ is, I read a lot about the Mayflower and the pilgrims … signing a covenant, a social pact, was integral to building a society. They’re all romantically coupled. With the exception of Walter (a crew member played by Fassbender), who is an android, they’re all in stable, romantic relationships: gay relationships, straight relationships.
“What it gives us in the movie is that, when people die, it’s your wife, or your husband, your lover. It’s not your colleague you work with across the room.”