In space, no one can hear … your entire crew get torn to shreds by hyper-reproductive aliens. That’s a pretty solid way to sum up each and every movie in the Alien series. And after five movies, “everyone dies” is basically a foregone conclusion. So much so that the franchise seems to be having a little fun with the notion — the nearly five-minute Alien: Covenant prologue, which shows the crew eating their final meal before going into cryosleep/being gored by aliens, is literally titled “The Last Supper.” I don’t know if you’ve read the Bible, but what happened after the Last Supper was not chill. The preview clip released Wednesday also features Callie Hernandez (late of Blair Witch) nearly coughing up a lung, which is director Ridley Scott’s way of overtly trolling an audience he knows is just waiting for bodies to drop. She makes it to the end of the teaser, but no matter. These people are all gonna die — you know it, I know it, and the devious-ass marketing team over at 20th Century Fox definitely knows it.
Since we’re all on the same page, why not be productive and look ahead? There are 15 beautiful, hip, young-ish people in the Covenant prologue — the aforementioned Hernandez, Katherine Waterston, Amy Seimetz, Alexander England, Tess Haubrich, Nathaniel Dean, Demian Bichir, JAMES FRANCO, Danny McBride, Uli Latukefu, Benjamin Rigby, Jussie Smollett, Carmen Ejogo, Billy Crudup, and Michael Fassbender, whose character is actually not a person but a robot. I’m assuming only one of these people (cough Katherine “Don’t Call Me Ripley” Waterston cough) is making it out of this movie alive. That means at least 14 people are going to die, most of them from aliens ripping through their guts. What order are they going to go in? I’m so glad you asked.
1. James Franco
Aside from the fact that James Franco is a stunt king who would absolutely sign up to get his eyeballs get ripped out (or something gross like that) 10 minutes into a movie, there’s some hard evidence behind these odds. Franco’s participation in Covenant was announced just two months ago, a full eight months after the movie began filming. Was Fox trying to keep his role a secret? Maybe. Or he was brought in at the last minute specifically to die a gruesome, borderline hilarious death. Another hint: Franco appears to be the captain in this prologue, but in the first trailer released for Covenant, Billy Crudup’s character is referred to as captain. And finally, Franco is wrapped up in a comfy blanket in the latest preview and actually says the words, “I’m feeling kinda queasy.” Yeah bro, that’s ’cause you have an alien inside of you.
2. Jussie Smollett
In any movie like this, you have to be extremely worried for couples. Pairing off in a body count movie is basically begging for you or your partner to be slain early so that the other must dramatically forge on. Smollett’s character appears to be wifed up with Hernandez’s, the girl who almost chokes to death — between the two of them, I’m picking him to go first. One, because he’s just recognizable enough for an early departure to be surprising. And two, because I’m pretty sure that’s him getting murdered in the first trailer after trying to have sex in a shower.
3. Callie Hernandez
The coughing episode is a fake out, and we know Hernandez makes it further than Smollett simply because a shower-dwelling alien picks him first. The question is, does Hernandez’s character make it out of that shower after watching her boyfriend die?
4. Carmen Ejogo
Covenant’s first trailer opens with Amy Seimetz’s character watching Ejogo in a locked room with a man whose back rips open at the spine, and the last we see of Ejogo, she’s futilely thrusting a small knife at the figure. That’s probably not an effective way to fight an alien who just ripped a man apart from the inside. Ejogo’s character is also a real Judgey McJudgerson in the prologue, and haters never last.
5. Tess Haubrich
To be honest, I can’t get a read on this girl, but she’s nowhere to be found in the trailer, so I feel confident assuming she’ll fall into this squishy middle section of the people who aren’t important enough to die first or last.
6–7. Benjamin Rigby and Uli Latukefu
Same here.
8. Alexander England
I have faith in this guy to survive the early round of cuts, but again, he’s absent in the first trailer, so savor your time with Fake Chris Hemsworth.
9. Amy Seimetz
The star of Upstream Color is going to get pretty deep into Covenant, mostly because she’ll need to do that thing in movies where characters subvert the characterizations laid down by others. “I am not a drunk idiot.” [Throws down bottle, picks up futuristic weapon.]
10–11. Demian Bichir and Nathaniel Dean
These two dudes are a package item — in all of the footage released for Covenant so far, they haven’t not been together. So yeah, they’re definitely gonna die as a team. They also seem plucky and like they don’t care enough to be afraid of aliens, though, so they won’t die that fast.
12. Billy Crudup
Oh, Billy, you beautiful man. You are going to die one horrible death. Every monster movie needs a patriarch overflowing with hubris who doesn’t understand the level of shit he’s gotten a large group of people into until it’s too late. He says things like, “We need to keep going” and “I’m the captain around here and I make the orders!” Crudup is THAT GUY in Covenant, which means he’s going to make it pretty far (while a ton of people die because of him) before dying in stunningly grotesque fashion.
13. Michael Fassbender
You saw Prometheus; you know how this works. You also know that Fassy isn’t leaving his house to be slaughtered in the first half-hour. It’s safe to say Fassbender’s android Walter — a twin to David from Prometheus — is going to be around for most of this movie. (Side note, though, it’d actually be really nice if this time around there wasn’t a drawn-out back-and-forth over whether the robot is evil or not. All robots are evil.)
14. Danny McBride
Kenny Powers is not just here to provide comic relief. He’s here to wear a cowboy hat, kill some aliens, and probably die a tragic, needlessly violent death just as everything starts to feel safe again. Katherine Waterston and her haircut will never forget him.