In a weird way Alien: Covenant feels a bit like a bait and switch. Over the last few months, it felt like the talking points surrounding Alien: Covenant were something like, “Well, we know you didn’t love Prometheus, so we are going back to basics and are just going to make a scary Alien movie.” And for the first act of Alien: Covenant, this is true.
When the second act starts, it’s such a dramatic shift in tone that it wouldn’t feel out of place for Ridley Scott to introduce it by saying, “Hey, everyone, thanks for coming. Look, I know I promised you an Alien movie, but the truth is I still have a lot left to say about Prometheus, so I hope you enjoyed the Alien-type opening, now sit back, relax, and get ready for Prometheus 2.”
Within the past couple weeks, Prometheus 2 officially got a new title and a synopsis detailing the sequel to the prequel to the Alien franchise from director Ridley Scott.The movie is called Alien. Prometheus 2 is now called Alien: Covenant, and everyone’s confused. Now, some official word has come down to validate Ridley Scott’s continued insistence that Prometheus 2 is coming.
Put it this way: If you ask me, “Do I need to see any of the prior Alien movies before I see Alien: Covenant?,” the answer is, yes, you need to see Prometheus. The film is set ten years after the events of Prometheus, and I had just kind of assumed that Alien: Covenant would be peppered here and there with references to Prometheus. I could not have been more wrong. Instead, they went all in.
The film is set in 2104 initially aboard the Covenant, a colonization spaceship with 2,000 sleeping civilians on board headed to a distant planet. The only conscious crew member is Walter (Michael Fassbander), an android just like David from Prometheus, only he speaks with an American accent. After a solar burst hits the ship, the crew is awakened to assess the damage. Not everyone’s sleeping pod opens successfully and the captain of the crew, also the husband of Daniels (Katherine Waterston), is burned alive, leaving Christopher Oram (Billy Crudup) in charge.
(It’s hard to tell who plays the doomed captain when he’s in the pod, but when Daniels is watching old videos of him, we learn it’s James Franco. This is an odd casting choice because a James Franco cameo in a movie usually brings a lot of laughter. And this was no different, as the audience I was in laughed and laughed while poor Daniels is tearing up remembering her dead husband.)
The Covenant is still seven years away from its destination, but while awake, the crew receives a rogue transmission from a nearby planet that appears like it can sustain life. So they decide to investigate and possibly colonize this planet.
The Covenant is still seven years away from its destination, but while awake, the crew receives a rogue transmission from a nearby planet that appears like it can sustain life. So they decide to investigate and possibly colonize this planet.
Guess what?: There are aliens on this planet. Or, at least, there are some spores that, when they get inside a human, aliens start popping out. This sequence is terrifying, gross and a lot of fun – in the spirit of the original Alien.
And then David shows up…
And this is when Prometheus 2 starts.
My biggest problem with Prometheus is I never understood David’s motivation to poison Holloway with the “black goo” they find on the planet. Remember that? For no real reason, David puts the goo in Holloway’s drink just to see what would happen. Back when Prometheus came out, I reached out to writer Damon Lindelof to ask about this. He’s got a pretty long answer (which you can read here) but the gist of it is Lindelof wrote a scene explaining all of this and Ridley Scott decided not to shoot it.