Movies
What if ‘Alien: Covenant’ Were Found-Footage?!
While found-footage may be a dying subgenre, it’s also still a unique storytelling tool that I hope to see integrated more often into the traditional perspective.
Even though we won’t actually see this footage in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, Twentieth Century Fox has released this supplemental found-footage component that straps on a GoPro (our weapon of choice in making most of the V/H/S segments) and takes us directly onto the Covenant with Daniels (Katherine Waterston) as she sends a video message to her father as the crew embark on their mission. We’ve also just added a second video in which we also get to see Oram’s frightening crew transmission from Weyland-Yutani Corp’s mission. While the footage is not from the film, it was shot during production on set. All of the planet/extra footage was pulled from main unit’s GoPro camera dailies, we’re told, and most of that will not appear in the film. They’re basically a visceral first-person POV of different moments one will experience in the film. Expect even more leading up to the release…
“The cameras were mounted on the crew backpacks and positioned throughout the main colony ship and its lander unit, giving audiences an Alien perspective they’ve never experienced before,” explains the GoPro website. “GoPro, 20th Century Fox, and creative agency 3AM, partnered to create a series of original in-world crew messages to extend the narrative of Alien: Covenant. Each video highlights a different crewmember as they record a farewell message for their friends and loved ones back on Earth.”
It’s awesome, giving us a taste of what it would be like to actually be part of the crew as they find this new planet, and come across alien technology (such an Engineer suits) and landscapes. It looks like it would be one helluva found-footage movie and I wish it were actually integrated into Alien: Covenant. But alas, it’s not, even though it does actually hark back to James Cameron’s Aliens in which we actually got to see helmet cam footage from the marine’s perspective.
Would you guys like to see this footage actually in the movie?
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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