The movie Ridley Scott ultimately produced wasn’t the one he had in mind as the sequel to Prometheus, but Alien: Covenant has finally arrived in theatres to mixed reviews. In fact, that (also contentious) 2012 film was the director of Blade Runner’s eagerly awaited return to the sci-fi genre, and he did it by passing it off as a prequel to the movie that first made him famous: Alien. Passengers take notes When Damon Lindelof was invited to weigh in on the Prometheus script, he changed it from being a straight prequel to Alien to more of a standalone science fiction movie. Jon Spaihts had originally intended for the movie to feature the return of the facehuggers and the iconic xenomorph. The movie revealed xenomorph predecessors instead of concentrating on that well-known monster, placing a more emphasis on the Engineers, the creatures responsible for the original creation of mankind.
The planet that the Prometheus crash-landed on was being used by the Engineers as a containment/creation zone for a biological weapon, as was revealed at the end of Prometheus. When the organism they made turned on them, they were on course to exterminate humanity, leaving behind the lethal tomb that the Prometheus crew discovers. The only two survivors at the end of the film are Michael Fassbender’s severely injured android David and Noomi Rapace’s Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, who suggests that rather than heading back to Earth, they should instead try to discover the origins of the Engineers in order to better understand why they wanted to put an end to their creation of humanity.
Lindelof revealed that the two had already sketched out the answers to the questions asked in that film. Scott and Lindelof were quite upfront about their ambitions for a Prometheus sequel shortly after that movie’s debut.
“What are the answers to the questions that Prometheus is presenting that are not necessarily definitively set out in the body of Prometheus?” Ridley was particularly interested in discussing. It’s not a given that there will be sequels, so if there isn’t one, just be content with what we offered them in this movie, I told him. We should be ready for people to feel frustrated if we’re going to be withholding, so we have to be extremely careful about what we’re preserving for later.
As it was originally intended for Prometheus to establish its own distinct franchise that was even more dissociated from Alien, Lindelof continued:
“There are two kids in this movie; one of them grows up to be an alien, but the other kid will grow up and God only knows what will happen to them. And that is what the Prometheus sequel would entail.
Scott insisted that Shaw and David needed to be alive at the end of Prometheus in order to set them up for the eventual sequel:
“I know how it will end. I am aware that it is crucial to keep [David] and [Elizabeth] alive and that it is crucial to return to their original homes rather than mine.
Scott had previously figured out that Shaw and David would think the Engineers to be quite terrible beings when they met them:
Because they’re such belligerent fuckwits, the Engineers And given their ingenuity in creating horrifying gadgets and weapons that would make our use of chemical weapons appear ludicrous, who wouldn’t characterise them in that way? Therefore, I’ve always believed that the godlike being you’ll see isn’t all that nice and is most definitely not God. This is not what she anticipated, and she adds, “I think we should get the hell out of here because there won’t be anything to go back to.” If we’ve opened up this door, which I hope we have because I would definitely like to do another one, I’d love to explore where the hell [Dr. Shaw] goes next and what does she do when she gets there, because if it is paradise, paradise can not be what you think it is. That wasn’t necessarily planted in the ground at the end of the third act, but I knew that’s kind of where we should go. The word paradise has a very dark and sinister connotation.
If you’ve seen Alien: Covenant, you’re probably asking yourself, “Uh, what?” at this point. It’s true that the movie that eventually became the Prometheus sequel bears little similarity to the one Scott and Lindelof were envisioning in 2012, but that’s standard in Hollywood. Scripts are created, alter, and evolve, and Scott obviously decided to take his in a different way.
The Prometheus sequel’s script is credited to John Logan and Dante Harper with a “story by” credit going to Michael Green and Jack Paglen. Lindelof decided not to return to write it. The removal of the Shaw character is undoubtedly the biggest change in this story. Rapace did go back and film some scenes for Covenant, but these were ultimately edited and distributed online as a sort of prologue to Covenant that bridges the gap between what happened in Prometheus and where we find David in Covenant.
As Shaw meticulously pieced David back together, David drove the Engineer ship back to their home planet while Shaw was placed into a deep sleep. The final scene of that segment is footage from Alien. When the presumed-lost spacecraft finally arrived, David attacked a legion of Engineers with a biological weapon.
As we see in Covenant, David’s animosity toward Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), his own creation, started almost as soon as he was “turned on.” However, David played the waiting game, biding his time until he had the opportunity to strike revenge on his creator, his entire race, and the species that gave rise to them all. In essence, David creates a predatory murdering machine that rips anything resembling a human to shreds because he despises and believes that humanity is so inferior.
What happened to the plot line where Shaw and David were being followed as they fought the Engineers? David effectively ends the Engineer saga before the Covenant ship even lands in Alien: Covenant, while it’s plausible that some colonies may still exist somewhere. The franchise makes it seem as though we’ll never learn the precise reason the Engineers chose to destroy humanity, yet Scott already gave us the answer back in 2012.
In this first plot plan, we would essentially find out that Jesus Christ was an Engineer messenger sent to Earth to end horrific combat. The Engineers became furious, he was crucified, and the end of humanity followed:
“We had that in the draught for sure, but we later decided it was a little too obvious. However, if you consider it from the perspective of “our kids are acting up down there,” there are times when it seems like we’ve lost control and are parading around in armour and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. They also received a lengthy run. a millennium before the beginning of their real breakdown. Let’s send down one more of our agents to see if he can put a stop to it, you can say. What’s this? He was crucified.
It’s probable that this plot line will still be developed in Alien: Resurrection. The conclusion of Covenant appears to be much more focused on David—Scott claims he has one or two movies remaining before we reach the timeline of the original Alien. Additionally, the glaring question that an Alien prequel posed has finally been addressed: Who was the xenomorph’s creator? It was your friendly neighbourhood android David, who is now in charge of the Covenant’s more than 2,000 colonists while Tennessee (Danny McBride) and Daniels (Katherine Waterston) are in a deep sleep.
Who knows where things will go from here, and even if Scott did publicly reveal the details of the Covenant sequel, there is no assurance that the plot will endure as shown by his remarks regarding Prometheus 2 back in 2012. It will be intriguing to see if Daniels and/or Tennessee make a comeback in the Covenant sequel, or if Scott once more unceremoniously eliminates the movie’s main characters. According to Scott, the Covenant sequel’s script has already been written.
Regardless, it appears that Scott is now far more interested in presenting David’s narrative than continuing to investigate the Engineers.
