The official trailer for Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant arrived in 2017 and announced the franchise's most dramatically focused prequel with a darkness and atmospheric dread that immediately signals the film's intentions as something considerably more seriously intended and more dramatically concentrated than the philosophical diffuseness of Prometheus. The trailer's most immediately striking quality is its sense of philosophical disturbance, with David's experiments, the xenomorph's return, and the suggestion of something deeply wrong conveying the film's most important qualities with a visual clarity and atmospheric intelligence that establishes it as a franchise entry that has found a more unsettling question than its predecessor was asking. Fassbender's David is shown with enough intellectual menace and contempt for humanity to establish the character as the franchise's most philosophically disturbing presence, and the combination of atmospheric dread and android malevolence is identified as the source of the film's character. Scott is no longer asking where we came from. He is asking what happens when something we created decides it knows better than we do.
First Impressions
The trailer is immediately the franchise's most philosophically disturbing, with David's intellectual menace and the xenomorph's return conveying the film's darker and more dramatically focused register with real force. The sense of atmospheric dread is established with enough visual intelligence to identify the film's most important quality, and David's presence and the colony ship's vulnerability are flagged as the film's primary selling points. Covenant is a more focused film than Prometheus, and the trailer makes that focus feel like a creative correction rather than a retreat from ambition.
What the Trailer Reveals
The trailer establishes the colony ship's mission, conveys David's presence on the planet, and glimpses the film's most atmospheric sequences with enough visual clarity to establish its considerable dramatic ambitions. Fassbender's David is shown with enough philosophical weight and cold authority to establish the character as the film's most dramatically interesting and most unsettling presence, and the combination of atmospheric dread and android malevolence is identified as the source of the film's character. The footage makes clear that Scott intends to make David the film's true antagonist, which is both the film's most interesting decision and its most divisive one.
Music and Sound
Jed Kurzel's score gives the trailer an immediately distinctive sonic identity that suits the film's darker register and sense of philosophical disturbance with real precision. The musical choices reflect the film's atmospheric dread and dramatic focus with a conviction that makes the trailer feel unlike anything the franchise had previously produced in quite this register. The score is colder and more unsettling than Prometheus's grandeur, which accurately reflects the shift in the film's emotional priorities from wonder to dread.
Most Memorable Moment
The first sight of David's experiments, shown with enough visual menace and dramatic consequence to convey the character's most significant development, is the trailer's most chilling image: a demonstration of the film's willingness to make its android the franchise's most frightening antagonist and a preview of Fassbender's most controlled performance in the series. He created something. The trailer makes you understand that he is proud of it.
Trailer Verdict
The franchise's most philosophically disturbing trailer, for its most dramatically focused prequel. Alien: Covenant is a film of real atmospheric dread and unsettling ideas, and this trailer captures its darker register and dramatic focus with a confidence that makes it a genuinely disquieting piece of franchise marketing. Scott found the right question to ask. Whether the film answers it satisfactorily is where opinions divide.