Praetomorph (Alien Covenant)
Posted by Darkness on May 15, 2023 (Updated: 06-Sep-2023)
The Covenant Xenomorph.
The Praetomorph, also known as the Planet 4 Xenomorph appears in the 2017 movie Alien Covenant, however these two aliens were David’s creations using the black liquid and not exactly the same Xenomorphs we’ve seen previously.
Appearance
At first glance, the Praetomorph looks very similar to Xenomorphs encountered previously but has some clear differences. It lacks any of the biomechanical features, its arms and legs were longer and thinner. Its limbs lack skin and you can see its bones protruding as well as its muscles and blood vessels. Their teeth are made of semi-transparent bone rather than metal. The spines on its back and shoulders are smaller. The Praetomorph also has a thinner tail with a barb on the end. Like previous Xenomorph, it also possesses an inner jaw allowing the alien to penetrate all sorts of material.
Behaviour
How the Praetomorph is created, follows a similar path to a normal Xenomorph. An alien egg (albeit an egg that David engineered) produces a Facehugger which implants a Chestburster embryo. One of the key differences is that when the Chestburster form emerged, it was much more developed. It was not a snake-like creature – instead, it was a smaller version of what it would become with limbs and an elongated head. The life cycle is the quickest ever seen. The Chestburster emerged moments after Oram had regained consciousness and in a matter of minutes, it had grown into a full adult alien.
The Praetomorphs are less intelligent than normal Xenomorphs but were seen to be more relentless and aggressive. When the first Praetomorph climbed onto the Covenant cargo lifter, it attacked the ship’s crane claw after jumping onto it which crushed it to death. The second Praetomorph tried to attack Daniels but was trapped under a truck. It escaped but then was hit by a second truck in its pursuit of Daniels, forcing it out of the Covenant.
Story
In 2094, Elizabeth Shaw and the android David departed from LV-223 in an Engineer spacecraft and reached the Engineer homeworld – later known as Planet 4. David exterminated all the Engineers on the planet with the mutagen. Shaw was killed and David began studying the flora and fauna on the planet. He was stranded on the planet for over a decade and furthered his research and experiments to create the perfect organism. He used the dark liquid as well as tissue samples taken from Shaw and the dead Engineers to create Neomorphs from the indigenous lifeforms on the planet. He continued his experiments to create alien eggs which contained Facehuggers.
When the crew of the Covenant found him in 2104, he was able to test out his experiments. When the Covenant captain Oram killed a Neomorph, David led him into his laboratory where he’d performed his experiments. David further led him down into a chamber that was filled with lots of large eggs. Oram approached one of the eggs, which opened and a Facehugger attacked him. When Oram regained consciousness, seconds later a juvenile Praetomorph burst from his chest.
Xenomorph
Lopé and Cole went in search of Oram. Cole found Oram’s body and another Facehugger attacked them. It attached itself to Lopé and Cole used a knife to cut it off, causing acid to burn Lopé. As Cole helped him, Lopé saw the now-adult Praetomorph watching them from a vent. Lopé ran while the alien pounced on Cole and killed him. The creature pursued the crew of the Covenant when they were trying to escape in the Covenant cargo lifter. It managed to climb onto it but was crushed by a crane claw.
Xenomorph
Lopé is taken to the medical wing of the Covenant. The ship’s computer told Daniels that a lifeform was present on the ship. Daniels and Tennessee head to the medical wing and find Lopé dead with a hole in his chest. A second Praetomorph is now inside the ship. The alien was tricked into coming to the Terraforming Bay and they both trap the alien in a Terraforming Truck. They try to eject the alien but the truck is stuck. They release a second truck which hits the alien and ejects out of the Covenant.
Behind-The-Scenes
Many concepts of the Praetomorph had been produced but director Ridley Scott wasn’t happy with them. There was one particular piece of Giger’s artwork that they had kept referring back to – Necromonicon IV as well an anatomical waxwork from the Italian medical museum in Florence from the La Specola Anatomical Collection.
The next stage of the process was to make real-life versions. The team’s first breakthrough came was a head that Bradley Simmons had sculpted. Conor O’Sullivan had photoshopped images of this, twisting it into the proportions of Giger’s design and asked Bradley to sculpt another head based on this and Giger’s design.
Ridley immediately approved it. He then had the clay model scanned and Colin Sulver deconstructed it in Zbrush – splitting it into a skull, dome, and jaw. They molded the sculpt and used the mold to create stunt heads. The skull, jaw and teeth were printed in nylon in Melbourne, and the dome was printed in clear Resin SLA in the UK, due to the availability of print sizes.
When the two came together, they fitted perfectly. They molded these to produce the core, over which Bradley sculpted a skin as well as lightweight clear resin versions for the suits. Bradley’s new sculpture was then molded and produced in a combination of foam latex and silicon.
They made two different versions of the body. One was a puppeteered Bunraki-type suit and the other was an actual suit. Ridley preferred the actual suit due to its practicality but it was smaller and looked like a man in a suit. The puppeteered suit was large, 8ft tall with the actor using carbon-fiber raisers to achieve the height. The raisers made it difficult to use on uneven ground so it was impractical in a lot of locations. They also made an animatronic version for close-up shots.
Trivia
- The Praetomorph is not an official name of the creature, as such. It was used in the Alien: The Roleplaying Game and was derived from the word Protomorph. Protomorph was the name used in the conceptual stage of the Deacon from Prometheus. ‘Prae’ was taken from the novel Alien: The Cold Forge which was used to describe the mutagen. The creature was referred to as a Xenomorph on set.
- Ridley Scott said in the Alien Covenant commentary that the alien is capable of regeneration after suffering fatal injuries.
- In the Alien Covenant novelisation, the alien is said to be a biomechanoid and have “an exoskeleton like black metal” but in the film, it doesn’t have any biomechanical features. The lack of those features was done on purpose to signify that the Praetomorph is a stage between the Neomorph and the Xenomorph.
- In the novelisation, there was a scene where the Praetomorph and Neomorph battle. When Daniels and Lopé escape the temple, the Neomorph from earlier appears. Daniels and Lopé open fire but the Neomorph dodges the shots. The Praetomorph then appears and battles the creature. The Praetomorph quickly kills it.
- The creature’s motion capture was done by Javier Botet who worked on 2007’s REC and 2013’s Mama.
Merchandise
NECA released the Praetomorph in 2017 when the film was released. It was simply referred to as a Xenomorph. It was slightly different to its film counterpart. It possessed shoulder tubes and the tubes on its back were more upright whereas in the film, there were no shoulder tubes and the tubes were pointed differently. The reason for this is that NECA based its figure on Colin Shulver’s concept art.
Gallery
