The prequel Alien films are truly flawed but I’d say my appreciation for Prometheus grew after Alien Covenant came out as it kind of shows some sort of direction in leading up to the events of Alien. It’s too bad that we may never get the third and final film to the prequel trilogy to bring Ridley’s story to a close. Though his vision did kind of suffer from the backlash Prometheus received because, for an Alien prequel story, it’s very... ambitious and lacked the beloved Xenomorph that followers were anticipating.
Alien Covenant is a result of the backlash as Ridley really tweaked his vision by downscaling the story and introducing the Xenomorph, albeit a bit prematurely.
Alien Covenant doesn’t go into Shaw’s story so much, but it does address what happens to her and David’s turning point as he explores the world of the Engineers and experiments with their engineered black goo. We don’t get to see this happen and we don’t even get to see much of the Engineers. We’re given a glimpse of what happened following Prometheus’ ending and then it jumps right into the results of David’s experimentation.
I actually thoroughly enjoyed Covenant, but it’s biggest flaw, for me, is that it abruptly jumps into the creation of the Xenomorph. The main threat should have been the Neomorph (which was actually a very scary creature that deserved more screen time) for the entire film and then the official facehugger/Xenomorph would have been the cookie crumb at the end that would lead into the third movie. But angry fans and studios execs played a hand in forcing Ridley to cut to the chase.
Alien Covenant is a result of the backlash as Ridley really tweaked his vision by downscaling the story and introducing the Xenomorph, albeit a bit prematurely.
Alien Covenant doesn’t go into Shaw’s story so much, but it does address what happens to her and David’s turning point as he explores the world of the Engineers and experiments with their engineered black goo. We don’t get to see this happen and we don’t even get to see much of the Engineers. We’re given a glimpse of what happened following Prometheus’ ending and then it jumps right into the results of David’s experimentation.
I actually thoroughly enjoyed Covenant, but it’s biggest flaw, for me, is that it abruptly jumps into the creation of the Xenomorph. The main threat should have been the Neomorph (which was actually a very scary creature that deserved more screen time) for the entire film and then the official facehugger/Xenomorph would have been the cookie crumb at the end that would lead into the third movie. But angry fans and studios execs played a hand in forcing Ridley to cut to the chase.