I don’t know about you but I’m pretty excited for Alien: Covenant that’s opening this weekend. In fact, I’m so eager that over the last week or so I went back and watched all five of the previous Alien movies. For the most part these movies are darn good storytelling. But the first is still the best.
Alien is the perfect science fiction horror movie. I don’t think it gets any better than this. They’ve tried, but never were able to recapture the terror of the original Alien movie directed by Ridley Scott.
James Cameron was smart to go with sci-fi action with scary elements in the Aliens sequel rather than to go hard for the horror element.
Ridley Scott came close with his prequel Prometheus, but that chapter of the Alien saga still disappointed fans of the franchise. Truth be told, I really like that movie a lot.
I remember first encountering the movie Alien when I was a little boy. It came on ON TV and gave me nightmares. How I don’t know since my parents wouldn’t even allow me to watch it!
Released in 1979, Alien holds up even today.
It is still eerie and contains plenty of scares. The aloneness of deep space is powerfully conveyed. You feel like you’re stuck out their on the Nostromo with Ripley and the crew from the opening credits.
Ellen Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver is of course the hero of this tale. She’s the one who figures that the beacon that re-routed the Nostromo to the planet wasn’t a distress call, but a warning.
And Ripley’s the one who doesn’t want to let crew member Kane back on the ship with a face-hugger wrapped around his head. She’s afraid of contaminating and thereby killing the entire crew.
The malevolent android Ash has other instructions from the corporation however. By disobeying Ripley’s orders, he has doomed the crew by bringing the soon to be chest-bursting nearly indestructible alien on board.
Unlike most movies, Alien doesn’t set up the hero of the story right away. We don’t know this is Ellen Ripley’s tale. She seems to be just a part of the crew. For all we know, Captain Dallas is the main character.
This was a nice touch that must have made it hard for audience to know who they should be rooting for to live right away. It’s hard to imagine a studio making a big budget sci-fi film with that in the story structure today.
What will Alien: Covenant give us this weekend? I don’t know but I’m eager to find out. As a sequel to Prometheus and a prequel to Alien there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Will we finally find out how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation found out about the alien in the first place and wanted one for it’s bio-weapons division?
My only hope is that this story is told right. And maybe it will scare me a bit too.
But not too much. I still don’t like having bad dreams.