“What changed was the reaction”: How ‘Alien: Covenant’ was ruined by the fans
For someone who’s become such a famously grumpy elder statesman of cinema, it’s funny to think that Ridley Scott only directed Prometheus because the studio insisted upon it and only reintroduced the Xenomorphs in Alien: Covenant because a vocal subsection of fans demanded it.
20th Century Fox had been initially developing a fifth Alien film as a reboot of the whole franchise and ultimately clashed with Scott when the filmmaker – who was only set to produce at that point – suggested the untested feature-length debutant Carl Rinsch as director. That turned out to be a wise move on the company’s part, though, seeing as the latter would eventually take the reins on Keanu Reeves’ 47 Ronin.
His brother Tony Scott even confirmed that “Carl is doing the prequel to Alien” to make it a family affair, with Rinsch in a relationship with Ridley’s daughter Jordan at the time. However, Fox would only give it the green light if the director of the seminal 1979 original returned, and he agreed on the proviso that Prometheus would serve as an origin story instead of a completely fresh start.
It was a big hit that earned over $400million at the box office, but the reception was mixed, to put it lightly. While many approved of the mythology being taken in a brand new, existential, and philosophical direction, there were just as many left infuriated that the signature creatures didn’t appear. Never mind the fact the movie didn’t even have Alien in the title; the people demanded Xenomorphs, and they didn’t get them.
Scott wasn’t planning on giving it to them in the sequel, either, at least not as first. In an interview with Yahoo, where he was asked outright if the mandible beasties were set to make their long-awaited return in the Prometheus follow-up, he couldn’t have been clearer. “The beast is done. Cooked,” he said. “There’s only so much snarling you can do. I think you’ve got to come back with something more interesting. And I think we’ve found the next step. I thought the Engineers were quite a good start.”
Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw was intended to return and continue uncovering the mystery behind the Engineers, only for Covenant to fall right back onto very familiar turf as a standard Alien entry that uses Michael Fassbender’s android David 8 as the connective tissue to Prometheus, with the nefarious machine cultivating his own strain of Xenomorphs that pick off a crew one-by-one.
Covenant was just about OK for what it was, but reverting to type was the wrong call. Ironically, after it was the fans who cried foul over Prometheus deviating so far from the established formula, giving them exactly what they wanted coincided with a drop in earnings of over $150m. Scott had compromised his initial plans, and he didn’t mind explaining why.
“What changed was the reaction to Prometheus, which was a pretty good ground zero reaction,” he confessed. “It went straight up there, and we discovered from it that they were really frustrated. They wanted to see more of the original.” His plans for a trilogy may have fallen apart in the aftermath, but Alien: Romulus will be released in 2024 and clearly has no intentions of trying anything new, so there shouldn’t be an outcry this time around.
