Let’s get this out of the way first – SPOILERS! Then this: Alien: Covenant is not a very good movie.
It’s not offensively terrible, in fact it goes out of its way to be as inoffensive as possible. Even the gore seems polite.
I’d give you a synopsis but you can just as easily take all your favorite scenes from the Alien franchise, arrange them however you please, add in a cartoon villain whose motivations are entirely incomprehensible and then go fix yourself up some Jiffy Pop.
Alien: Covenant goes to great lengths to piss away the entire ontology proposed in the film it’s meant to act as a sequel to, ostensibly annihilating the god-like Engineer race in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it CGI eruption that has all the heft and drama of a 80s video game.
But at the same time it seems to tell a story beneath the surface narrative. And a lot of its riffs will be well familiar to anyone versed in Ancient Astronaut Theory. Which, let’s face it, was arguably extraneous to the running plot of Prometheus (space mission finds remains of alien race mixed up with the xenomorph progenitors).
As Gordon and I discussed, it also feels like it meant to originally serve as the advance guard for a new AAT media blitz*, a plan that appears to have been scuttled in the wake of Hurricane Trump and the resultant cold (for the time being) civil war the country has been plunged into.
I’ve never seen divide-and-rule politics as divisive as what we’re seeing today, with the ostensible goal being to atomize the population into impotent, squabbling subsects in order to preempt any potential challenge to oligarchal rule, even if the oligarchy itself is itself carved up into mutually antagonistic camps. (I should mention here that this whole program seems to have fired up in the wake of the Occupy movements).
Of course there’s also the fact that the easiest social grouping (tribe, country, empire, etc) to conquer is one that’s divided against itself.
Just saying.
But even this miserable turn of events seems to resonate with the AAT perspective as well, specifically the “gods at war” subplot running through Zecharia Sitchin’s bibliography, as well as some of the theorizing emerging on the fringe science circuit.
Now, there’s a strand of thinking among those who wrestle with the Fermi Paradox, essentially arguing that high technology is inherently anti-adaptive and inevitably leads to self-destruction.
What this theory essentially proposes is that we’ve not had any (acknowledged) contact with extraterrestrial races because they’ve all been wiped out by their own advanced technology (read: ‘weaponry’). This of course is a wildly egocentric assumption (“extraterrestrial races are all as savage and murderous as we are”) and automatically presumes that our own high technology is not in fact some kind of alien intrusion, even if it behaves every bit like one.
I bring this up because there are two running themes in Alien: Covenant I do want to unpack, because they do (obliquely) reference some of the basic tenets of AAT (the film seems to keep a lot of its AAT on the DL).
First off is David’s genocide of the Engineer planet. This was a fairly ridiculous subplot, essentially chucking everything we were told about these beings in the first film. This is a billions year-old race that seeded all life on Earth and yet they’re all defeated by a lone android who had hijacked one of their spacecraft? Huh?
Wouldn’t they naturally have some kind of defense infrastructure that would have intercepted this ship before it ever reached orbit? There’s no attempt at following the story’s own internal logic.
Now there are all kinds of ways you could have made sense of this. The Engineers had degenerated over the millennia and lost their high technology, that they’d become so drunk on their own power that they never expected any exterior challenge, etc etc etc. But the film makes absolutely no attempt to sell any of that.
But by the same token there’s a fascinating allegory at work here, even if it’s unintentional, and that ties back to the war of the gods theme running through a lot of AAT theorizing.
Note that the Engineers aren’t decked up in their Gigeresque finery in the apocalypse scene but look more like the kind of quasi-Medievals familiar to space fantasy fans. They also look pretty stupid gazing up at the approaching ship like the hapless New Agers in Mars Attacks.
But were they in fact the Engineers? Some fans don’t seem to think so.
A closer look at the (humanoid) aliens in the film may suggest that this in fact was another descendant race, the clue being the skintone (matte and pinkish as opposed to chalky white and moderately reflective). They also don’t seem quite as black-eyed. Another clue is their reaction to the ship, arguably suggesting these people were expecting their gods to return.
MARS, ATTACKED
Is this a fakeout or a reference to another covert subplot altogether? It’s possible there was a revelation that this was just a descendant race in the original script but that all got lost in the rewriting process.
Perhaps David’s apparent plan to kill off the human colonists- who are both his progenitors and another descendant race- are the clue here. Either way, the story (mankind’s cousins wiped out by a space invader) ties in pretty neatly with the theories put forth by plasma physicist Dr. John Brandenburg:
“Dr. Brandenburg has previously theorized that the red color of Mars and the radioactive substances in its soil are the result of a thermonuclear explosion from natural causes. He now says that the “high concentration” of Xenon-129 in the Martian atmosphere and uranium and thorium on the surface are remnants of two unnatural nuclear explosions, most likely triggered by alien invaders.
“Who were these aliens invading and eventually wiping out? Brandenburg believes Mars once had a climate like Earth and was inhabited by two civilizations – one in a region called Cydonia Mensa and another at Galaxias Chaos. Why these two regions?
‘Analysis of new images from Odyssey, MRO and Mars Express orbiters now show strong evidence of eroded archeological objects at these sites.’
According to Brandenburg, the Martians maintained a high civilization, albeit a non-technological one:
He says Mars once had an Earth-like climate home to animal and plant life, and any intelligent life would have been about as advanced as the ancient Egyptians on Earth.
There’s also David’s genetic tinkering with the xenomorph genome. As a self-styled god, David here is playing the part suggested by AATheorists, who postulate that the Anunaki went through a series of experiments in creating the modern human genome and eradicated unwanted models while they did so.
Strangely enough, this also correlates to the AAT-friendly origin myth put forth by the ancient Greek writer Hesiod in his landmark Works and Days. Hesiod, significantly, was apparently deeply influenced by Babylonian literature, the Enuma Elish in particular.
And the war of the gods certainly correlates to the Titanomachy, or the wars between the Olympians and their progenitors, the Titans.
So is there an unspoken inference that David is the titular Prometheus, defying the “gods” and shepherding the engineered development of the xenomorph race? In the context of the film itself it’s really hard to care one way or the other but it does suggest that there was in fact a lot more meat on the bone in previous drafts of the script.
THEY’RE EVERYWHERE
But it’s worth noting that the Alien franchise is not only another example of a major SF property that revolves around AAT it’s also an example of a SF franchise onto which AAT was grafted midstream (at the same time it was grafted onto the Predator franchise).
Some franchises have AAT baked into their genome at conception (Star Trek (more or less), the Space Odyssey series, Battlestar Galactica) but many more seem to have it implanted sometime into their runs (Quatermass, Doctor Who, X-Files, Indiana Jones, Transformers, Jonny Quest, Godzilla, Doom, Halo, Assassin’s Creed).
This raises a very simple question: why? Is there in fact a AAT cargo cult at work in the entertainment industry? I mean that sounds ridiculous, right?
Well, maybe it seems a bit less so when you look at the influence the Nine had on the Star Trek franchise (relaunching on television this year) or the fact that one of the most powerful cults in Hollywood is explicitly AAT-oriented right down to its very core. There’s also the Mormon Church, which is at the very least AAT-compatible.
On the other hand, there’s also the Brookings Report.
The report has become noted for one short section entitled “The implications of a discovery of extraterrestrial life”, which examines the potential implications of such a discovery on public attitudes and values. The section briefly considers possible public reactions to some possible scenarios for the discovery of extraterrestrial life, stressing a need for further research in this area. It recommends continuing studies to determine the likely social impact of such a discovery and its effects on public attitudes…”
One detail that caught the eye of researchers like Richard Hoagland is the mention of possible artifacts discovered on our neighbors, artifacts that might call our entire view of our planet and our very existence into question.
“While face-to-face meetings with it will not occur within the next twenty years (unless its technology is more advanced than ours, qualifying it to visit Earth), artifacts left at some point in time by these life forms might possibly be discovered through our space activities on the Moon, Mars, or Venus.”
And then there’s this passage, which basically explains why so many STEM types are so deeply wounded by AAT:
“It has been speculated that, of all groups, scientists and engineers might be the most devastated by the discovery of relatively superior creatures, since these professions are most clearly associated with the mastery of nature, rather than with the understanding and expression of man. Advanced understanding of nature might vitiate all our theories at the very least, if not also require a culture and perhaps a brain inaccessible to Earth scientists.”
Huh.
And the money quote: suggestions for how that eventuality- or some kind of alien contact- might be managed by the Managers.
Continuing studies to determine emotional and intellectual understanding and attitudes — and successive alterations of them if any — regarding the possibility and consequences of discovering intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Historical and empirical studies of the behavior of peoples and their leaders when confronted with dramatic and unfamiliar events or social pressures. Such studies might help to provide programs for meeting and adjusting to the implications of such a discovery. Questions one might wish to answer by such studies would include: How might such information, under what circumstances, be presented to or withheld from the public for what ends?
And lo and behold, 57 years after the Brookings Report we get this:
The solar system that humanity calls home may have once been inhabited by an extinct species of spacefaring aliens, a top scientist has suggested.
A space scientist has suggested ancient extraterrestrials could have lived on Mars, Venus or even Earth before disappearing without a trace.
In a fascinating academic paper about “prior indigenous technological species,” Jason T. Wright from Pennsylvania State University raised the fascinating possibility that evidence of these extinct aliens could exist somewhere in the solar system.
Wright is an astronomer who received global attention after suggesting an “alien megastructure” had been spotted in orbit around a distant star.Now the stargazer has said advanced aliens may have left behind “technosignatures” for us to find — if only we knew where to look for them.
Of course, this is exactly what Richard Hoagland has been talking about- and has been roundly attacked for doing so- for at least the past 40 years. But I suppose it’s different when the very same theorizing comes from within the priesthood.
It’s funny; last night I was cutting the grass and thinking about stuff. You know, like you do when you’re cutting the grass. Then I started mulling over how simplistic and repetitive the Ancient Aliens show is and how quickly Giorgio Tsoukalos transformed himself into a cartoon character.
But then I realized that’s how educational indoctrination works in our culture.
All kinds of teaching and training materials in public schools use cartoon characters, right? Walt Disney probably made a fortune licensing his characters for educational films. And it’s through repetition that people really learn anything.
So Ancient Aliens might chew over the same gristle year after year but that helps keep its messaging consistent as its audience ebbs and flows (read: enters/graduates high school). Love it or loathe it, you have to acknowledge that there’s a cogent methodology at work there.
Government-conditioning program or cult indoctrination, they all work out of the same toolbox.
Is it all leading up to some major revelation, the way ‘Disclosure’ advocates expect? Or is all leading up to some massive Project Blue Beam type of hoax?
Well, why would anyone expect it to? Why would anyone expect the skies to open- or not- as the climax of all this conditioning?
The answer, of course, is Hollywood. Because that’s the way it works in the movies. Real life doesn’t usually work that way.
However, no matter who or what is behind all this the fact remains that, like it or don’t, AAT (and the UFO topic in general) have already dramatically changed our culture, our technology and our society. Certainly our popular culture.
Being a bit long in the tooth it still boggles my mind how many younger people take the basic assumptions of AAT for granted, even if they haven’t read a page of Sitchin or Von Daniken or even watched a single Ancient Aliens. They don’t have to. So much of their favorite pop culture is neck deep in it.
*You can toss in the Sekret Machines project here, spearheaded by former Blink 182 guitarist Tom Delonge and Peter Levenda of Necronomicon and Sinister Forces fame, and involving all kinds of Deep State heavies such as John Podesta.
