Meet the Big, Bad Xenomorph in new Alien: Covenant Trailer

What we enjoyed so immensely about the Alien: Covenant teaser we shared last Thursday was the call back to Ridley Scott’s original Alien. Here we met a crew of eclectic characters, mostly made up of couples, all willingly marooned aboard a spaceship, grousing about the minor indignities of space travel without having any idea just how bad things are going to get. For Covenant, this meant talking about leaving Earth for good in order to colonize a new, distant planet. They seem, all in all, like a good group of people.

The Covenant crew. Courtesy 20th Century Fox

This was a perfect set-up for the film’s new trailer, which hints at just how bad things are going to get for the crew of the Covenant. “You’ve all sacrificed so much to be here,” Katherine Waterston’s character Daniels says at the outset of the trailer, having no idea those sacrifices will seem like child’s play once they reach the distant planet. At first glimpse, the planet seems lovely—soaring vistas, forests, and…wheat. Who was growing the wheat is their first question. Their second is, why is it so quiet here? (Quite, as you no doubt know, is never a good sign in a horror film.)

The trailer hints at a film a lot larger in scope and scale than Prometheus, with a larger cast and what appear to be a lot more aliens. The trailer gives you a glimpse of a face-hugger, and, most spectacularly, a new, terrifyingly buff xenomorph, perhaps the greatest sci-fi horror villain of all time.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Covenant stars include Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Demián Bichir, Danny McBride, James Franco, Callie Hernandez, Billy Crudup, and Carmen Ejogo. 

Alien: Covenant hits theaters on May 19.