• Alien: Covenant

    May 11, 2017 - By 

    A recurring theme in Ridley Scott’s late-career return to the Alien universe, with 2012’s Prometheus and now Alien: Covenant, with more possibly on the way, is the disappointing and disastrous consequences of hubristic father figures chasing perfection. The ill-received Prometheus, part Alien teaser, part Lindelofian word cloud, spun its mythic pretensions into a gorgeous, cynical and narratively garbled take on will and birth, outlining how humanity’s space-monk creators tried to wipe us out once they realized their children’s deep, deep failings, deploying a weaponised virus that escaped their control. A formulaic monster horror with an interest in sci-fi abstractions, Covenant…

  • In Space, No-One Can Hear You Scream – The Music of Alien

    May 21, 2014 - By 

    In a way, the sheer ordinariness of it all seems like a crime. The death of a person is always a difficult thing, but the death of an artist can sometimes imbue a life with near mythic qualities. So when HR Giger fell down the stairs in his home in Zurich and subsequently died from his injuries, it feels as though the man was cheated of the gruesome, yet appropriate demise many of his admirers may have imagined he’d have preferred.Giger was always a strange fit for our world. A fine artist who scored his greatest success with a sci-fi…