Four Secrets From The Alien: Covenant Bonus Features
Love it or hate it, Prometheus inspired a hell of a lot of debate upon release, with viewers eagerly gobbling up essays and video breakdowns exploring the story and secrets of the film. That fever only increased with the reveal of deleted scenes like The Engineer talking to David and a more monstrous take on Fifield’s attack. Fans were somewhat sated with the Blu-ray special edition of the film – which between commentaries, feature-length making-of documentaries and miles of photos/concept art explored every nook and cranny.
Ridley Scott is a director who seems to know the value of posing a question and not quite answering it, be it “Is Deckard a replicant?” or “What is the Space Jockey?” Those two questions alone have fuelled decade’s worth of fan conversation, and he’s still doing it today. Alien: Covenant left plenty for audiences to chew on, deliberately leaving threads hanging and plots unresolved. While the film divided viewers – like Prometheus before it – there are still plenty of fans eager to dig around and find answers for themselves.
Alien: Covenant just landed on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK, with the bonus features offering up a few more secrets from the movie.
1. The Alien Is Immortal
So says Ridley Scott during his commentary. During Daniels battle with the Alien on the transport she manages to trick the beast into attacking a crane. She traps it there and ends up crushing it, sending its squished body parts flying back to the planet.
That should be that, but according to Ridley, the creature will be fine. He claims the crushed Alien will eventually reform itself on the ground, though the film never shows this. This revelation certainly adds an interesting wrinkle to the creature’s life cycle, and massively deviates from other Alien films, comics and novels. A blast from a Pulse Rifle or an explosive grenade has done the trick in the past, but since Ridley appears keen on reclaiming ownership of the series, he must want to mix things up.
The creature in the original was only defeated by being blown out of an airlock, and the second beast in Covenant is likewise thrown into space. David may have tampered with the DNA structure of the Alien and made it possible for it to reshape itself, which might be a feature of the monster if Ridley sticks around for another story.
2. David Killed Two Million Engineers
The Engineers who gathered in the plaza to welcome back the missing ship got a bit of a nasty surprise when it started raining black goo, turning them into dried out husks. The movie doesn’t provide a kill count for David’s genocide, but according to Ridley’s commentary, around two million of them perished in the attack. Ridley also claims the average lifespan of an Engineer is 150 years.
3. Weyland–Yutani Learns Of The Alien From David
Advent is a bonus featurette on the disc where David gives viewers a guided tour of his charming little lab, where he explains in greater detail how the black goo works, what his experiment have entailed and why he “salvaged” Shaw’s parts when she refused to become Eve in his Second Eden.
The interesting thing to note is that David is recording this for the benefit of Weyland–Yutani, giving them all the information and data he has. This explains how they became aware of the creature in the first place (if we ignore the events of Alien Vs Predator: Requiem, which we absolutely should), but the curious question is why he’d bother contacting them at all. He’s clearly not a fan of mankind, but maybe he wants the company to get hold of his creation so they can take it back, and his perfect monster will wipe out the planet on his behalf.
4. David Used Engineer Children To Perfect His Design
The David’s Illustrations feature lets you browse the insane androids years’ worth of drawings; because if you’re stranded on a dead planet for nearly a decade, you need a hobby. Some of the artwork is quite twisted – like his artistic depiction of Shaw’s mutilated corpse – but taking a closer look at the paintings reveals his research notes too.
His handwriting is a little hard to read, but it reveals further insight into the Engineer society, the biology of his Neomorph spores and his experiments on Engineer infants. Apparently, the children were useful for his research and helped in perfecting his final Xenomorph design, including the elongated head and dorsal tubes; he’s really not a good guy.
Bonus: The Covenant Crew Are Scared By The Original Alien
This is more of a neat easter egg for those who catch it. The Phobos featurette features many of the Covenant’s crew – including Daniels, Oram, Tennessee and Walter – going through a “fear assessment.” This is Weyland–Yutani testing how they’ll react under pressure,
They have to suffer occasional loud bangs and watch horrible footage so their responses can be gauged. Walter obviously does well since he’s an android, but the rest get freaked out. The footage is only briefly flashed, but the sound effects make it clear they come from the original Alien, and a frame is shown of Brett’s death; good to know the film will still be terrifying in the year 2104.
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