20 May 2017 I just saw Alien:Covenant this morning, so I'm inclined to explore some thoughts about it, if you'd care to join me: One thing that stood out to me was the shift in focus on the direct object of fear between the first Alien movies and the most recent two. I am less familiar with the older movies, but if memory serves, the primary danger was individuated creatures: parasitic and violent animals that attacked the human characters. In Prometheus and Covenant, the primary danger is infection, and the macro creatures that result are only a secondary danger (and much easier to dispatch in comparison). The only really obvious mistakes the humans make, in both movies, is the utter absence of attention on biohazard considerations. The omission of this security measure is glaring, especially considering how large a role it plays in real-life scientific discussions about extraterrestrial colonization. And perhaps it makes the plot easier to write, but I find it much more satisfying of a story when the characters are doing everything right, and tragedy still descends upon them. I was pleased, however, with the amount of focus given to David, the idiosyncratic android turned completely insane android. Through him they filled a gap in the known progression of the xenomorph evolution: it was by his synthetic hands that a biological weapon was crafted into the classic facehugger-propagating species that we know and love. David's obsession with creation is an interesting artifact of the story of how he came into the world, though the reasons for his obsession with the xenomorph biology and why he finds them such a "perfect" life-form when compared to humanity are still a mystery (and in way of explanation I could enjoy probably three more movies about this character, please and thanks). There is a heavy mystical element to both Prometheus and Alien:Covenant that is addressed only vaguely. It shines brightly through the behaviors played out by the androids: the scene of the first conversation between David and Walter, in which memetic information is exchanged from one to the other in the form of music, is particularly laden with this ambiguous weight. But in the human characters, it is only addressed through very sparing dialogue. A couple words are exchanged here and there about humanity's place in the cosmos, and we are told that one of the main characters is a man of faith, but this faith never participates in the story in any meaningful way. Instead, the plot-based themes of both movies speak much more loudly, and carry vague ominous messages that a species would do well to fear both its creators and the things it creates. Speaking of which, I couldn't help but notice the use of language when it comes to the dialgue surrounding most of the primary story elements, as every major event seems to orbit the topics of biology, reproduction, and lineage. Specifically: the word "father" is only used in reference to one character: the man who created the David line of androids. Note that this is a technological relationship rather than a biological one (and it may be of note that this same male character had a human daughter, whom he never refers to as his child). Meanwhile, the term "mother" is used in a few different ways. Most commonly, it is used in reference to the colony ship that was crafted with the purpose of carrying thousands of humans to a new world. Additionally, the android David uses the word to refer to the role that humans play with the facehuggers, by which they produce the intended final form of the xenomorphs. Looking strictly at the language, it is heavily implied that a "father" is one who creates directly, with his hands and intention, to introduce a life form into the universe. A "mother" on the other hand, is a vessel which passively transports a life form to the next stage of being. All this is dependent, of course, on whether you think use of specific words illuminates anything about anything when it comes to the significance of a particular story or the psyche of its creators. I don't have further commentary on this point, but I thought it was of interest. All in all, I enjoyed the movie, and found it quite an interesting exercise to observe its various elements. I'm not sure there's much more story to tell in the Alien universe, but we'll see if there is to be any more.