Alien: Covenant|Mitre Peak — The Silhouette That Sold an Alien World

The first photographs to leak off the shoot, in late March 2016, showed scaffolding and steel going up on the shore with one shape behind it that nobody had to caption: Mitre Peak, rising 1,692 metres almost straight out of the water. Build a spaceship in front of that and half the production design is done.

Rahotu is a piece of visual sleight of hand. From the road end and the boat terminal it reads as a single blade, which is how it got its English name and how it works on screen — one clean, hostile line against cloud. Get out on the water and it separates into five distinct summits standing in a row. The film uses the first version. Planet 4 needed a horizon that felt engineered by something other than weather, and a peak that looks like a tool does exactly that.

There is no track up it worth recommending and no need for one. The view the camera used is free: walk to the end of the foreshore at Freshwater Basin, or take any of the cruises that run out toward the Tasman. Go on a day when the cloud is torn rather than solid. The peak appears and disappears, and for a few seconds at a time the sound stops looking like a scenic postcard and starts looking like somewhere a crew would be very unwise to land.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.