Ridley Scott, director of the original 1979 Alien and prequel Prometheus, has opened up about his aims for the franchise and his plans to make the upcoming Alien: Covenant the beginning of a trilogy. Speaking at a press conference in Sydney, Australia, where Covenant will begin shooting in March of next year, Scott made it clear that he means to take control back of his highly influential science fiction series.
Alien: Covenant, previously titled Prometheus 2 and Alien: Paradise Lost, will tell the story of the crew of the colony ship Covenant, who discover what they think is an uncharted paradise but is actually a dark, dangerous world, whose sole inhabitant is the synthetic David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition. The story arc begun in the film will continue through two sequels, leading up to the events of Alien. THR reports what Scott had to say about the extended project:
“I was amazed that in the 3 (Alien sequels) that followed that no-one asked the questioned ‘Why the Alien, who made it and why?’ Very basic questions. So I came up with the notion of Prometheus 1, which starts to indicate who might have made it and where it came from“.
And once Covenant has set up the new arc: “There’ll be another one and then another one which will gradually drive into the back entrance of the film in 1979. So in other words, why was this space jockey there and why did he have an Alien inside him? And those questions will be answered“.
However, all this talk of answering questions posed in the original film has gotten Scott into trouble before; with Prometheus denying its audience a sense of resolution, in place of further questions. This does not seem to have deterred the British director, who in an interview with IGN stated his intentions regarding the upcoming trilogy: “I’m trying to keep this for myself. I let the other one (Alien) get away from me – I shouldn’t have… I’m trying to re-resurrect the beast and let it off the hook for a while because I’m coming back into the back end of Alien 1“.
The Alien franchise has steadily decreased in quality since its inception, and Scott’s initial return did little to bring back the critical response of the original. Whether the director will be able to bring back a creative spark is up for debate, however it looks like no one else will get their hands on an Alien title anytime soon. With Neill Blomkamp‘s Alien 5 on indefinite hold; it seems that we’ll be trawling the past for a while before we see more of the future. Alien: Covenant will be released on October 6, 2017.
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