The whole point of Sir Ridley Scott’s Alien prequels was to reveal where the Xenomorphs came from, but sadly they left fans with even more questions about their origin than before. Moviegoers first became acquainted with the deadly extraterrestrial race in the 1979 original when the crew of the Nostromo discovered a batch of mysterious eggs on board a warship. Three sequels, a couple of spinoffs and a pair of prequels later, we still don’t know the full story behind those eggs, but according to Scott, the next entry in the series would have filled in all of the blanks.
After delivering the lukewarmly-received Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, the filmmaker began work on a third prequel, tentatively titled Alien: Awakening. Apparently, this movie would have fully bridged the gap between the precursor films and the original Alien, but it seems Disney’s big-money acquisition of Fox has led to the project being sidelined.
“I still think there’s a lot of mileage in Alien, but I think you’ll have to now re-evolve. What I always thought when I was making the first one [was] why would a creature like this be made and why was it travelling in what I always thought was a kind of war-craft, which was carrying a cargo of these eggs.”
“What was the purpose of the vehicle and what was the purpose of the eggs? That’s the thing to question – who, why, and for what purpose is the next idea, I think.”
In their own convoluted way, Prometheus and Covenant did shed some light on the origin of the Xenomorph, revealing what kind of creatures they evolved from and positioning Michael Fassbender’s android David as the species’ architect. It was also strongly hinted that the eggs on board that Engineer warship were intended to be a kind of biological weapon, though it seems likely we might never get to see the final movie that would have joined all of these dots together.
As Scott himself has hinted at, there’s a good chance Disney might flick the reboot switch on Alien after the divisive reception and below-par box office performance of Covenant. This would be a shame, since the Alien prequels brought some interesting ideas to the table, for all of their faults. Prometheus, in particular, added depth to the franchise by tying the story to the origins of life on Earth.
That said, this added depth also detracted from the original Alien by compromising the way it preys on our fear of the unknown. Disney might want to keep that in mind when the time comes to revive the sci-fi franchise.