Katherine Waterston Likens ‘Alien: Covenant’ to a ‘Voyage Into the Unknown’
Have you heard? Alien: Covenant is coming out soon. There’s a trailer. You should watch it. Katherine Waterston is the latest actor to take on the rich world of the Alien movies, and her new character is the latest female protagonist to take on the xenomorphs (or Neomorphs, as we’ve heard whispers of a new breed of alien stalking the galaxy). her character is a science officer aboard the ship Covenant, and Waterston describes her journey as a venture “into the unknown.”
In a new interview with Collider, Waterston talked a bit about Alien: Covenant and the future of the Fantastic Beasts universe. First, she described her character Daniels and how she fits in with the rest of the Covenant crew.
She’s the chief terraformist on this colonization mission, so she’s basically a space gardener. She’s an impressive woman, and she’s smart and capable and everything, but she’s just a member of the crew. She’s not a warrior or anything. It’s just that the circumstances push her into a very unexpected kind of combat, and she just happens to be one of those people, it turns out, that when push comes to shove, she’s got a great deal of strength and confidence. It’s not necessarily something she knows about herself.
She also spoke about the look of the new planet, and how it seems a lot more hospitable than the Alien planets have in the past. Although we all know that’s not the case.
Yeah, although if you wonder about what’s out there, it’s more likely that if there’s life anywhere else, it’s in a place that’s hospitable, and obviously, different sorts of God-knows-what alien creatures could be adapting and emerging on planets that can tolerate totally different atmospheres than ours, but it makes sense to some degree that life would lead to more life on some other planet. Does that make sense?
When asked what the connection was between this movie and Prometheus, besides Michael Fassbender’s synthetic, she was a little more cagey.
You’re just going to have to wait to find out. Yeah, there’s this Carl Sagan line that’s something like, ‘Modern science is a voyage into the unknown with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop.’ I feel that’s the case with these movies. You’re going into the unknown, and you will be humbled.
The new Alien movies certainly seem a lot more philosophical than the first, which was essentially a straight-up monster-in-the-house horror narrative. Prometheus dealt with Big Ideas like the conception and nature of humanity and creation itself, and it sounds like Alien: Covenant may be doing more of the same. With a little room for some chest-, back-, and head-burster action, of course.
Alien: Covenant hits theaters May 19, 2017.