00:00Where is it?
00:06Ridley Scott's Alien Covenant is now in theaters, but almost 40 years and a half dozen movies later,
00:11even die-hard Alien fans may have trouble figuring out exactly what they need to know
00:16going into this movie, especially with the film taking place 10 years after 2012's Prometheus
00:21and 18 years before 1979's Alien.
00:24So here are five things you need to know before seeing Alien Covenant.
00:28First, alien xenomorphs were made to be used as biological weapons.
00:32In Prometheus, we learn the alien group known as the Engineers have created these weapons
00:37to eradicate life on Earth. While little is known about the parasitic lifeforms they created,
00:41we do know the creatures are linked to a mysterious black goo.
00:45Many different species who want nothing more than to infect another biological lifeform
00:50live in the goo, but the goo itself is also able to cause mutations.
00:54Also important to remember, the survivors of the ship Prometheus went off to find the Engineers
00:59at the end of that film.
01:00Next, different types of aliens are created after cross-species infections.
01:05We saw this at the end of Prometheus, when an alien burst out of an Engineer's chest.
01:09This alien that was spawned from a single drop of black goo, cross-infected by two human hosts,
01:15a squid alien and an Engineer, it looked similar to the xenomorphs that we're already familiar with
01:19from the Alien franchise. Next up, facehuggers not only creep me out, but they also don't
01:24exclusively infect humans. Throughout the entire franchise, we've seen this happen mostly
01:29to humans, creating the xenomorph that we are so accustomed to. But there are actually more
01:34infection possibilities than just humans, as seen in 1992's Alien 3, when we witness a facehugger
01:39infect a dog. Finally, xenomorphs behave differently if they are in proximity to their queen.
01:45In Aliens, we see xenomorphs capture the young character Newt, played by Carrie Henn, in order
01:50to take her back to the queen for infection. In films featuring no queen, the xenomorphs have
01:55one goal — kill everything. Our point? It's important to remember that depending on who
02:00they are around, a xenomorph may act differently.
02:03For a full breakdown of everything you need to know before seeing Alien Covenant, head to THR.com.
02:08I'm Tiffany Taylor for The Hollywood Reporter News.
02:10This episode of The Hollywood Reporter News is brought to you by American Airlines,
02:14Hollywood's favorite airline.
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