Though Ridley Scott’s last two Alien movies have been incredibly divisive, they at least have had one thing in common: the alien. However, in a new interview, Scott suggests that after Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, the iconic creature may have overstayed its welcome.
Speaking in a roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, Scott seems to say that the Alien franchise no longer needs its alien, also known as a xenomorph. Watch the clip.
Here’s the quote:
We went to Covenant to perpetuate the idea and re-evolve the universe of the alien, who—I think the beast has almost run out, personally. You’ve got to come in with something else. You’ve got to replace that.
Now, Scott is no stranger to making off-the-cuff statements that we, the Internet, go batty over. And that statement undoubtedly sounds like he wants to take the alien out of Alien. But, if that’s the case, why were the last two films almost all about the creation of that specific alien? Isn’t that what the character of David was ultimately working toward? And wasn’t the last film called Alien: Covenant to make sure people knew that the creature was a part of it?
Maybe you don’t buy Scott’s line of thinking. Well, in an older interview with Empire, he said the following:
I think the evolution of the Alien himself is nearly over. But what I was trying to do was transcend and move to another story, which would be taken over by A.I.s. The world that the A.I. might create as a leader if he finds himself on a new planet. We have actually quite a big layout for the next one.
If A.I. is really where Scott wants the story to go, if feels like he may have discovered that in the creation, and release, of the last two movies. Maybe he realized that showing David creating the xenomorphs unintentionally demystified the original films a bit, and a tangent could be a better conclusion to that story. Either way though, it all seems odd.
Nevertheless, the most unfortunate thing about this is that it’s highly unlikely we’ll get the answers anyway. Alien: Covenant performed well below expectations at the box office, and most talk of a follow-up has dried up. It may still happen but it’s almost certainly not a priority.