A new Alien: Covenant international poster has arrived, with humans and android characters at the forefront. Ridley Scott delivers a quasi-prequel to his original Alien film in 2012 with Prometheus - and though the movie performed well enough at the box office, for a lot of people it veered too far away from the standard Alien formula and was a bit of a disappointment. In 2017, Scott will take another shot at breathing fresh life into the Alien series with Covenant; a film that promises to return the franchise to its simpler, more survival-horror-based roots.
The story of Alien: Covenant picks up where Prometheus left off, with the crew of a colony ship discovering Michael Fassbender's android character David on an uncharted world. Fassbender and fellow Prometheus star Noomi Rapace are joined in the new film by Katherine Waterston, James Franco, Guy Pearce and Billy Crudup, among others.
As the publicity push for Alien: Covenant picks up steam, more-and-more images and trailers are being pushed out to the public, including the below international poster from 20th Century Fox; featuring new Alien series cast-members Waterston and Crudup alongside Fassbender (as the android Walter). The image also features the unmistakable shape of the Xenomorph, its teeth bared, along with a couple of facehugger eggs and the giant alien ship (in case there was any question about this being an Alien movie).
The poster has clearly been designed to connect the new characters directly back to familiar elements of the Alien world. Katherine Waterston with her short haircut gripping her weapon and looking concerned instantly conjures thoughts of Ripley, as the reluctant fighter in Aliens (Ridley Scott has already shot down a rumor that Waterston's character and Ripley are related). Fassbender looking over her shoulder seems vaguely sinister, which is in keeping with his ambiguous character, and the series' overall treatment of android characters as potentially sketchy.
Thus far the promotional material for Alien: Covenant has had a unified purpose: drive home the idea that this movie will be more like the original Alien, a straight-forward outer space horror film, and less like the convoluted, confusing and at times silly Prometheus. Though moving away from Prometheus is probably a good idea, it can also be argued that moving too close to the original Alien will simply invite different kinds of hazardous comparisons.
Many fans are hoping that Ridley Scott has locked back in to the magic formula that made Alien so compelling: an ensemble cast encountering a strange mystery and finding themselves menaced by a completely mindless, ravenous alien. Questions about the origins of the Xenomorph, and deeper questions about the very nature of human existence, didn't figure in to that formula at the start. Of course Scott isn't simply ignoring that Prometheus and all its bigger questions ever happened, but he does appear to be gracefully veering away from that film in hopes of re-establishing the franchise, with plans for many more Alien movies to come.
NEXT: Alien Covenant Trailer #2 - What We Learned
Source: 20th Century Fox