The way Ridley Scott plans it, audiences will be just as freaked out by Alien: Covenant as they were with the original Alien in 1979.
On the film's set in Sydney, the legendary British director says the latest instalment in the seminal series will be a return to sci-fi horror after the more philosophical previous instalment, Prometheus, five years ago.
![Katherine Waterston faces a terrifying new version of the classic alien in <i>Alien: Covenant</i>.](/web/20170508235837im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/x/4/h/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvw1rd.png/1494149493467.jpg)
"What we did really well on Prometheus, considering that it was a ground zero idea that was starting all over again, was I discovered that people do have an appetite for the alien and what he means and his evolution – the egg, the facehugger, the chestburster, as we call them," he says.
The first Alien centred on a deadly stowaway on a space craft - "a fantastic creature", as Scott calls it – that grew with spectacular speed every time it appeared. As an infant, the so-called Xenomorph famously burst out of the chest of Kane, played by John Hurt, before terrorising the crew from the depths of the Nostromo.
![Michael Fassbender plays android David in <i>Alien: Covenant</i>.](/web/20170508235837im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/j/w/8/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvw1rd.png/1494149493467.jpg)
While Scott moved on to Blade Runner, James Cameron continued the sci-fi series with Aliens (1986), David Fincher with Alien 3 (1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet with Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Scott rebooted the series with a plan to eventually loop back to the original Alien and answer the questions: who made the alien and for what purpose?
The new instalment takes place 10 years after events in Prometheus, with the crew of the colony ship Covenant diverted to what looks like an uncharted paradise but proves far more dangerous than they imagined.
With Michael Fassbender returning as android David, Katherine Waterston (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) takes up a feisty action role, as Daniels, along the lines of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. Other crew are played by Billy Crudup, Demian Bichir, Danny McBride and Australians Nathaniel Dean, Tess Haubrich, Uli Latukefu and Benjamin Rigby.
And the all-important creatures include not just the Xenomorph but a more evolved life form, the Neomorph, which can also grow inside humans.
When it came to recreating the classic alien, creature supervisor Conor O'Sullivan says there were arguments – even fights – among the crew about how it should look.
"There was pressure from all the people that were working with us," he says. "They all had their agendas. It was quite stressful from that point of view.
"You move the thing around the workshop and everyone starts to impose their agenda on it. There's been fights.
"[Art director] Adam O'Neill was saying that when he worked on it, he could almost feel his stomach knotting up."
They came up with what O'Sullivan calls "a stripped-down killing machine" that will look more real and less mechanical than previous versions of the alien. Its design drew on Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger's conceptual work for the original film. He was part of the team that won best visual effects at the Academy Awards in 1980.
"It's more of an organism rather than bio-mechanical," O'Sullivan says. "Where you had pipes and wires and things like that, it tends to be more tubes and organic veins. It could be a real creature rather than this stylised, unworldly unreal thing."
O'Sullivan, who came to creature design with a background in both marine biology and art, believes the new look will make the alien scarier.
"It's always better to have one foot in the truth," he says. "If you're going to lie, you might as well keep it as close to the truth as possible."
Part of the pressure coming up with a new design was how influential the first two movies in the series have been over the years.
"If you talk to anybody from [creature design] or animal design or prosthetics, they'll always cite Alien or Aliens as one of the reasons they came into the film business," O'Sullivan says.
On set, Scott seems impressed once dancer Andrew Crawford is carefully transformed into an almost-three-metre-tall Xenomorph with a long black slippery head, remote-controlled flicking tongue and two spindly legs supported by blades. He asks the creatures team a series of questions that will affect the next shot: How fast can it run? How far could it go down a giant staircase nearby?
It promises to be another nightmarish life form terrorising the Covenant's crew, even if it takes inspiration from nature.
"You can't beat nature for some of the horror stories and some of the most beautiful things as well," O'Sullivan says. "The Alien creature was a combination of all your visceral desires and feelings if you think about it.
"It's hideous, it's beautiful, it's erotic, it's sensuous. It's also terrifying, a killing machine but it's also very beautiful and very primal. It's all of those visceral emotions fitted into one thing."
Does he listen to the impassioned fans of the series when it comes to how the creature should look?
"No, you listen to Ridley," O'Sullivan says. "They've all got their agendas. For some people it was Alien; for others it was Aliens. For me it's always been Alien."
Alien: Covenant opens on May 18.