What We Can Expect To See In Alien: Covenant, According To Ridley Scott

After winding back the clock on the Alien universe with 2012’s Prometheus, Ridley Scott is poised to continue that story with the upcoming Alien: Covenant. As the tale of Prometheus becomes more and more intertwined with that of the Alien franchise, Scott has admitted that he will be brining back versions of the monsters that premiered in the 1979 sci-fi horror classic.

Ridley Scott had a recent interview where he explained the thought process behind bringing his most iconic Alien monsters back into the fold for Alien: Covenant:

There was always this discussion: Is Alien, the character, the beast, played out or not? We’ll have them all: egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, then the big boy.

By "the big boy" he quite obvioulsy means the series' iconic Xenomorphs. Based on his interview with The Wrap, it’s clear that Alien: Covenant will seemingly be the bridge between Prometheus and the true Alien continuity. While Prometheus set the table for the mysterious race of Engineers, who created the Xenomorphs as some sort of bio-weapon; the next film will explore their motivations, methods, and general mentality further.

Many fans of the Alien franchise who went to see Prometheus ultimately found themselves disappointed by the film’s lack of focus and uncertainty regarding how connected it was to the prior Alien films. It spent much of its run time trying to be something separate, but then featured a chest-burster at the very end of the film that felt shoe-horned in to connect it to the popular space horror franchise.

Ridley Scott seems to have come to his senses and realized that people want more concrete connections to the Alien franchise. We’re okay with a plot that deviates from Ellen Ripley and her storyline, but we also want something that feels as though it belongs within the universe.

Even the marketing material behind Prometheus seemed to intentionally harken back to that of the original Alien. Check out a comparison of the trailers for the two films below to see how they match up:

Ridley Scott’s concern now is making sure that bringing these classic monsters back to the big screen does not feel – as he puts it – "played out." We’ve seen so many different scenarios involving these monsters terrorizing space travellers, that the primary goal here is to reintroduce them to modern audiences in a way that feels fresh, exciting and as genuinely terrifying as it was all the way back in the 1970s.

We will find out in due time if Scott can recapture the magic of this universe by introducing classic monsters. They say that in space nobody can hear you scream, but in a crowded movie theater everybody can most certainly hear your annoyed groans. Alien: Covenant is currently slated for an October 6, 2017 release date.

Conner Schwerdtfeger

Originally from Connecticut, Conner grew up in San Diego and graduated from Chapman University in 2014. He now lives in Los Angeles working in and around the entertainment industry and can mostly be found binging horror movies and chugging coffee.