Ridley Scott's Canceled 'Alien: Covenant' Sequel May Never Conclude The $644 Million Alien Franchise
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The Alien franchise, established by Ridley Scott’s iconic science fiction-horror film, Alien (1979), spawned several sequels and, in recent years, a new set of prequel films that, though convoluted and occasionally confusing, attempted to explore the origin of the iconic Xenomorph alien species. The results of this effort, unfortunately, have been unsatisfying for most moviegoers, and a planned third prequel movie set sometime after the last prequel film released, Alien: Covenant (2017) has since been canceled, leaving the origin story and the final piece of the “bridge” to the original Alien film incomplete, which, unfortunately, makes the story left by the two prequel films, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant all that more unsatisfying.
Prometheus featured a team of scientists exploring a structure on a distant moon that they believed might be clues to the origin of life several years before the events of Alien. The expedition ends in disaster, with most of the crew dying during their encounter with a mysterious race of beings known as “The Engineers,” who were thought to have created life on Earth and some of their new and deadly genetic creations. The Engineers were first hinted at in the original film, Alien, as having been the crew of the derelict spaceship, the same kind of which is featured in Prometheus, found on LV-426, where Alien and Aliens (1986), as well as a subsequent video game, Colonial Marines, are set. The ship’s possession of a large supply of Xenomorph eggs in Alien, as well as that of a large alien corpse (resembling an Engineer in retrospect), hinted that the Engineers may have been the ones to have created that “perfect” alien organism.
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However, the subsequent events of Alien: Covenant appear to retcon that idea completely, making the android, David, introduced in Prometheus, as the actual creator of at least an early form of the Xenomorph through what we later learn are a series of ghoulish experiments performed by David on his former traveling companion and survivor from Prometheus, Elizabeth Shaw. After tricking one of the members of the expedition, Oram, who encounters David on a now abandoned planet, into becoming a host for the first Xenomorph, the crew is forced to confront the new creation. The crew, led by Daniels, manages to destroy David’s Xenomorph. However, in a shocking turn of events that ends the film on a horrific cliffhanger, David is discovered to have replaced the crew’s android lookalike just as the crew, including Daniels, is being placed back in cryosleep. David is also shown to have brought his experiments aboard, hinting at a very dark future for the rest of the seemingly helpless crew.
Due to the cancellation of future Alien prequel films, that is, unfortunately, where the story started in Prometheus currently ends, without the last bit of “connective tissue” between the prequels and Alien, specifically how the derelict ship discovered by the Nostromo crew in Alien on LV-426 and its cache of Xenomorph eggs wound up there, let alone the fates of David and Daniels and the rest of her crew from Alien: Covenant. It is always possible that there could be an official conclusion in some other format (i.e. book, comic, etc.) someday, but there have been no such plans announced to date, and it will, for now, have to be left to fans’ imaginations. However, The next installment, Aliens: Romulus, is set to be released this year and is not expected to be a continuation of Alien: Covenant, although when and where the film is set currently remains unknown.
The synopsis provided by IMDb.com is minimal, stating only that “Young people from a distant world must face the most terrifying life form in the universe.” Whether Romulus will be a reboot for the franchise or a continuation of the established lore remains to be seen. There is also one or two planned Alien TV series in development by Fargo director Noah Hawley and Original Alien director, Ridley Scott, respectively. The series envisioned by Hawley would be set on Earth and explore the Xenomorphs in a more open and uncontrolled environment, something that Ripley from the original Alien films always worked to prevent in the original films.
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Source(s): Screenrant, IMDb, Pocket-Lint
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