It's very hard to not call Prometheus a let-down. Regardless of what you actually thought of the film as a whole - for every person willing to cite it as the Alien franchise's equivalent of The Phantom Menace there's another enthralled by its high-minded creator exploration - it does have some unavoidably poor screenwriting. It's still hard to decide which is more perplexing - the geologist who gets lost in a structure he just mapped, the biologist who tries to snuggle a violent snake, or the businesswoman who can't think to run sideways.

But where Prometheus really let people down was its near-Lovecraftian pile of unanswered questions and its complete distance from the movie it was conceived as a prequel for. You could connect everything to Alien with some academic-level legwork, sure, but by that point all fun had been sucked out of the movie itself and the weight of what Ridley Scott was trying to do was lost.

With that in mind, Alien: Covenant feels like it was explicitly made to address these concerns in a way that is gratifying for Prometheus fans yet simultaneously acceptable to its many critics (in fact, Scott's been rather open about how he feels he dropped the ball with the prequel). And, in a roundabout way, it succeeds; the new release doesn't invest its entire runtime into fixing its predecessor, but through its tangential narrative ties up a lot of threads. While Prometheus still has those ridiculous characters, on a story and thematic point it's all the richer.

How The Alien Ties Improve Prometheus

Neomorph in Alien Covenant

When you boil away all the hype disappointment, the core of Prometheus' problem is at once trying to be an Alien prequel and a unique story without quite offering enough to be either. Covenant, on the other hand, is both.

In terms of wider mythology, the big impact is revealing the origin of the xenomorph (David bioengineered them from the Engineer's black liquid pathogen) and what happened to humanity's creators (David massacred them with the same goo). Certain Prometheus elements, such as why the Engineers ultimately decided to kill humanity, seem unlikely to ever be fully explored, and we're still a way off understanding how the derelict ship from the original Alien crashed on LV-426, but by simply moving the story closer to Alien the major disconnect feels less seismic than it did in 2012. There's also some subtle addressing of minor quibbles alongside that; we learn that David was dying his hair at the start of Prometheus because the synthetic is naturally brunette, and that Weyland's fear of death is his divine motivation.

Of course, explaining a movie five years later doesn't necessarily fix it - Neill Blomkamp retconning Alien 3 wouldn't have excused the Fincher-disowned dud. However, Scott's choice of themes provides a more active reframe; with Covenant he clues the viewer into what they should be looking at with Prometheus, making his vision altogether clearer.

Obviously you have the creation element, now the franchise's calling card, which is refined and made much clearer through the explanation of the previously mentioned mysteries (and has been discussed heavily elsewhere).

Within this, though, Scott manages to provide a proper extension for the debate of religion and what it means in the modern day. Obliquely the film is again set at Christmas and the mentions of "father" in reference to creation are upped massively. Shaw's devout Christianity in Prometheus - she retained her faith throughout her ordeal, offhanding the discovery of Engineers by semi-flippantly asking who created them - is even contrasted with the Covenant's Captain Oram, whose devout faith has been a roadblock in his career. But further, in providing the answers to the franchise's unsettling ambiguities, he actively prompts a debate on whether it's better to wonder or know - religion or science.

And looking to the series' future, Scott brings back sex. Prometheus had sexual elements for sure, but nothing that held a candle to Alien's oral-rape-produced penis monster. This is where Covenant really legitimizes its predecessor. The flute, a bizarre piece of Engineer tech used to turn on their spaceships, becomes a phallus substitute for David and Walter. The homoerotic undertones in their single-take first interaction are hard to miss - it's all talk of fingering - but it's further symbolizing the bringing of human psychosis to our creator's ideas. Scott is using Alien's sex themes to enhance Prometheus' themes of creation.

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Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and David (Michael Fassbender) - Prometheus

Prometheus Is Now David’s Story

Prometheus' protagonist was, ostensibly, Elizabeth Shaw - Noomi Rapace is introduced in the second scene and, as chief scientist, drives the first half of the movie forward. However, as the film goes on she becomes more passive within the story and her primary drive - the religion subtext - is downplayed. The events of the movie do have an impact on her character, but the arc doesn't feel complete.

That may be because, as Covenant's focus reveals, Prometheus was never really Shaw's story; it was actually an origin story for David. In the first film we see the loyal automaton in his idealized state, serving his father/master/creator Weyland and uncovering the mysteries of man's creators with childlike wonder, only to have everything ripped from him and his mind opened. Everything in Covenant picks up from this nexus point, and while the direct callbacks are vague (likely one of the changes made by Scott in response to the backlash), Prometheus looms strong.

This is a foreshadowed best in a key moment of discussion between David and Shaw that was at the time out of character for the former and unnecessary for the latter (our presumed protagonist), but with the synthetic's future now clear is now revealed as possibly the film's important thread:

Shaw: "What happens when Weyland is not around to program you any more?"

David: "I suppose I'll be free."

Shaw: "You want that?"

David: "Not a concept I'm familiar with. That being said, doesn't everyone want their parents dead?"

That's essentially David's mission statement for Covenant; we're seeing our creation who has already shown contempt for man let off the leash and given unknown freedom. If you watch Prometheus with this in mind - and, as David is introduced on the titular ship straight after Shaw, it's a pretty explicit reading - the viewing is a totally different experience. You see the angel's awakening ahead of becoming the devil.

While it's something of a stretch to say, this angle could even be taken to explain Prometheus' totally bizarre character decisions. If David is the main character, then humans are meant to be portrayed as weak and illogical; the scientist getting depressedly drunk when his thesis is proven, or the industrialist thinking he can just ask for more life are the sort of emotive, self-serving ideas the android is above. It could have been so much better presented in the film itself - as is it's too over-the-top - but that concern only highlights how much Covenant aids its predecessor.

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You can't just retroactively fix a flawed movie. If there's something fundamentally wrong in the script or filmmaking approach then that's always going to be there. But because Prometheus was part of a bigger franchise and one where its issues were heavily influenced by context, some of its ambiguities can be smoothed out. That's exactly what Scott's done with Alien: Covenant.

Breaking it down, the prequel enterprise has as much to do with Blade Runner as it does the original Alien, and in marrying horror and the philosophical Scott's reach may be exceeding his grasp. Indeed, both Prometheus and Covenant's weaknesses are a product of overambition. But is also allows the pair to do some pretty big things, the full scope of which may take time to be fully revealed. For sure, two movies in the vision is much clearer.

Next: Alien: Covenant Review

Key Release Dates

  • alien covenant
    Release Date:
    2017-05-19