Libertarians in space: Is Alien: Covenant a parable about the privatization of space?
The “Alien” movies suggest that making space exploration into a private, profit-seeking venture won’t end well
Director Ridley Scott’s “Alien” science fiction horror film franchise continues with its sixth installment that debuts in U.S. theaters this week. “Alien: Covenant,” the second prequel in the series, picks up years after the events depicted in the 2012 film “Prometheus,” in which a small group of explorers from Earth is sabotaged by a relative of the intelligent, acid-bleeding space monsters first introduced in the 1979 original.
Along with Parkour-adept parasitic extraterrestrials, a common thread runs through Scott’s “Alien” films: In his universe, space activity is a private, commercial enterprise. The first film takes place on the Nostromo, a commercial cargo transporter named after a 1904 Joseph Conrad novel centered on a fictional South American private silver-mining concession. In the subsequent films we learn the back story that Nostromo was owned and operated by the fictional Weyland Corporation, an intergalactic mining company focused on terraforming planets for profit that wants to capture, study and weaponize the aliens.
Unlike Scott’s 2015 feel-good space film “The Martian,” which is focused on scientific research and intergovernmental cooperation for the advancement of science, the “Alien” films depict a grimmer, for-profit take on space exploration. Even without the monsters, outer space from this perspective is a dark and cruel place, characterized by blue-collar workers toiling in the outer reaches of the void on behalf of a giant soulless corporation back home on Earth.
http://www.salon.com/2017/05/15/libertarians-in-space-is-alien-covenant-a-parable-about-the-privatization-of-space/
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