Countdown to Alien: Covenant: The Weyland-Yutani Corporation

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A cornerstone of the Alien franchise, the evil mega corporation Weyland-Yutani has been around since the very beginning.

As fictional universe’s go, a good many of them have a common thread or element to them that mirrors an all too real threat  also faced in the real world. The Corporation. The Company. Not just any company, but a larger than life, evil mega corporation. One out for not only profit, but power and control as well. Take Marvel Comics’ example of Roxxon, based off of the very real Exxon. Sometimes starting out with positive intentions, and sometimes corrupt from the very beginning. Which one the Weyland-Yutani Corporation started out as, as Weyland Industries, is still unclear.

The story of Weyland-Yutani is still being expanded upon, and with Alien: Covenant just under 2 weeks away, a new layer to the story will be added. The history of the company began though, very much in the background of the the original Alien, in 1979.

The story begins in the future

In the now classic Alien, the first introduction to Weyland-Yutani is that of the company behind the commercial freighter ship; Nostromo. The Nostromo crew were awoken early by their on-board computer, Mother, to respond to a distress call from nearby LV-426. As the movie progresses, the crew members are picked off one by one by the Xenomorph that was picked up planet side. Late into the movie the truth is revealed that the crew was sent to the planet in the hopes of returning with a sample of the alien. This order, “Special Order 937”, was carried out by the ships A.I and the android Ash, and was to be fulfilled by any means necessary. It was priority number one, with the human crew being completely expendable.

This is the beginning of the narrative behind Weyland-Yutani. A company that has broader and more sinister interests that confilict with the image they project. What isn’t clear at the time, is how the company had knowledge of what was located on the planet. They obviously were aware of the derelict spaceship and what was on-board, and desperately wanted it. But for what purpose?

Hadley’s Hope

During the period between Alien and Aliens, roughly 57 years, a colony was established on LV-426 called Hadley’s Hope. This would seem completely insane unless you were a multi-trillion dollar company bent on bio-engineering Xenomorph’s into a weapon under your control. Then this would be perfectly normal.

Ellen Ripley, sole survivor of the Nostromo, was awakened from hibernation 57 years after escaping, and provided the coordinates to the derelict spacecraft on LV-426 to Weyland-Yutani. This prompted company representative Carter Burke to relay the information to residents of the colony for investigation. Never revealing what they would find when they arrived. This was to intentionally spark another incident, one that the corporation hoped to keep fully in their control this time. Burke, presumably under orders from Weyland-Yutani, was attempting to infect two survivors with embryos. With the embryos implanted, he could return with them to Earth for the purpose of research and ultimately profit. The ensuing failure again forced the United States Colonial Marines to be called in to resolve the situation. With no escaping contamination, Earth was in the clear. For now.

Showdown on Fury

After the disaster at Hadley’s Hope in Aliens, the protagonist Ripley escaped with others in the Sulaco and crash landed on the penal colony world Fiorina “Fury” 161 in Aliens 3. It doesn’t take long for things to go awry and then the realization sets in. A Xenomorph made it onboard before the previous escape and is now loose in the prison. With no weapons on site, the administrator has no other choice but to call in help.

Enter, again, Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

What’s worse is that Ripley  herself is infected, not only with an alien parasite, but with a Queen. As has been the case with the previous films, the Weyland-Yutani machine is concerned only with the preservation of the Xenomorph menace at all costs. Their obsession leaves none in their path safe from achieving this primary objective. Faced with death inevitably anyway, Ripley casts herself into the prisons molten furnace just as the Queen bursts through her chest, thus killing them both.

With all inhabitants now deceased, Weyland departs the planet, and the prison is shuttered for good. But the company might not be as empty handed as they appear…

Clone Wars?

The events of the 4th film Alien Resurrection take place about 200 years later in the year 2381. And boy, this one’s a little weird. Someone was able to get a blood sample of Ripley before her death, but after her infection, and are working on creating a cloned Queen Xenomorph. With a Queen, they would be able to produce eggs in large quantities, giving them  weapons that have been sought after for decades.

As a result of the cloning, Ripley 8 (the eighth attempt) is alive and enhanced due to the mixed DNA between her and the Queen. The Queen is equally changed, as she can birth almost fully grown Xenomorphs, with no incubation or host needed. The offspring of which look truly horrifying and not in a good way.

The deviation from previous endeavors is that Weyland-Yutani is seemingly no more. Decades earlier, large mega-corporations were outlawed, and after legal battles and appeals failed, they folded. In their place, United Systems Military rose to power and were charged with the peacekeeping throughout all systems.

So the scientists onboard were not part of Weyland, at least not in any seemingly official capacity, but no less corrupt and weapons hungry.

Ultimately, the attempt failed after Ripley 8 killed all of her previous clones, the Queen and most of her offspring. The others died as the ship they were on, the Auriga, burned up in Earth’s atmosphere upon reentry.

Last flight of the Prometheus

In between the movies there are various books and comics that flesh out more story surrounding Xenomorphs and the Weyland-Yutani corporation. I’m not going to cover them, or the Alien Vs. Predator films, due to their questionable inclusion into the main canon. That’s not to say that they’re not worth checking out, there is still plenty of good content in a lot of those stories.

That leaves the more recent film, Prometheus, the next addition to the story, and one that goes back before Alien to touch on the foundations of Weyland Corporation.

Weyland Corporation, sans Yutani, was founded in 2012 by Sir Peter Weyland as a technological breakthrough giant. Pioneering some major advancements in transportation, robotics, security and eventually terraforming. Think of them as a fictional combination of Nasa, Apple, Lockeed-Martin and Halliburton. Great strides are also made in the health industry through patents on cures for major diseases such as cancer.

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Upon gathering their own research on aliens and humanity’s possible origins, and following the work of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, Weyland corporation green lights an exploration mission in 2091. Commissioning the vessel Prometheus, and tasking it with setting out for a planet in the Zeta II Reticuli system. Unbeknownst to the crew, the aged Peter Weyland was hidden onboard in the hopes of finding a way to prevent his imminent death. It doesn’t go well for him. What started out as a genius who took his ideas, and built a corporate empire to help “Build Better Worlds”, in the end just became a tool to further his own selfish agenda. Perhaps, inadvertently altering the company itself; starting it down the path of control, dominance and power.

Covenant and beyond

Alien: Covenant will no doubt add more to the checkered history of Weyland-Yutani and leave it’s own set of unanswered questions. Sending willing participants out to colonize new worlds is a pillar of the companies business model, but do they have some knowledge of what they will find when they arrive? Is that, in part, the purpose of some of these expeditions to begin with? Hopefully, some of this will be revealed.