Opinion Piece: Why Alien: Covenant has flopped!

[The following is an opinion piece]

It will come as no surprise considering the growing negative opinion that in western markets Alien Covenant has flopped, earning (as of May 31st) only $62,483,189 domestically against its $97 million dollar budget. Although the sequel to 2012's divisive Prometheus has yet to be released in all foreign markets there is little chance that the movie will amass the necessary box office returns to be considered a commercial success. Which, as we have already reported, may have put the future of the franchise in jeopardy, at least in regards to director Ridley Scotts reported plans to begin production on the next installment in his Alien prequel series before the end of the year.

While Michael Fassbender's dual performance as the sociopathic synthetic David and the devoutly dutiful Walter is beyond reproach and while the movie's addition to the prequels series' mythology does offer some small nuggets of interest to fans, the narrative of the movie is as tired as the overused antagonistic creatures, playing much like a greatest hits compilation of scenes from throughout the franchise. The characterization beyond the leading roles is poorer than in its predecessor and the artistic magnificence that was Prometheus' redeeming feature is lost with Covenant playing against possibly the franchise's most mundane locations. Even worse, looking at Prometheus' use of abandoned concepts from Alien, much of Covenant seems to borrow heavily from the abandoned scripts and concepts for Prometheus, as evidenced below with some concept art from the book "The Art of Prometheus", which features characters similar to those of the crew of the Covenant and a creature not dissimilar to Covenant's Neomorphs.

While apparently, some fans will blindly follow Ridley Scott no matter what direction he takes this franchise, a growing number of fans and the general audience are showing that they will not. His recycling of unused ideas from previous installments is cause for concern alone, as is the juxtaposition of his own atheist beliefs into the franchise's mythology. Worse still is the contradictory nature of his comments whereby he has previous stated that the Xenomorph was tired and "cooked" before directing a movie with the creature in question as the antagonist, or his recent comments that David is reportedly the creator of the Xenomorph despite having previously stated that the derelict Juggernaut and its "cargo" of eggs on LV-426 was at least 2000 years old and that Alan Dean Fosters novelization of Alien: Covenant states that David recreated the creature from notes created by the Engineers. Finally, recent comments reveal that Scott and Twentieth Century Fox never considered Neill Blomkamp's desire to add to this franchise, despite previous reports suggesting Scott would act as the sequels executive producer and that the movie's production was pending the release of Covenant.

Blomkamp's proposed addition would ultimately have been little more than a fan service movie, which would have inevitably added little to nothing to the franchise's overarching narrative with the apparent resurrection and then the death of the leading characters Ripley, Hicks, and Newt. Despite Carrie Henn's willingness to reprise her iconic role, it is highly unlikely that both Henn or the studio would have been willing to pin the future of the franchise on an unknown actress whose last role was over thirty years ago. However, Blomkamp's concepts did show the desire for a continuation of the franchise beyond that of Scott's overtly ambiguous series of prequels. A sentiment that has likely increased in audiences following the low reception Alien: Covenant has received.

Ironically the underlying reason why Alien: Covenant has performed so poorly is also why Prometheus received such divisive opinion upon its release. As a result of confused marketing general audiences believed that Prometheus was a direct prequel to Alien, so when the movie did not connect to the original movie as expected and featured a mysterious black slime as its chief antagonist rather than the iconic Xenomorph these audiences were confused. Although they understood that the movie was establishing a new mythology that would run parallel to its mother franchise even fans felt the movie could have been better with poor characterization, poor narrative structure, and even poorer editing choices being the chief critical points against the movie. Both fans and general audiences were led to believe from Prometheus' ending and early press about the movie that this sequel, originally titled Paradise, and then Alien: Paradise Lost was to follow David and Shaw (Noomi Rapace) on their voyage to the Engineer homeworld, which was expected to be a dark yet beautiful visual masterpiece that would realise many of the late H R Giger's nightmarish biomechanical landscape paintings (pictured above). Both fans and general audiences expected Prometheus' sequel to be a science fiction horror interpretation of the Wizard of Oz and Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy. Had this movie been made but suffered from a poor narrative collectively all audiences would at least be praising the movie's visual mastery, but likely due to interference from either the studio or the producers Scott has instead damaged his integrity by giving fans and general audiences what he claimed was responsible for the franchise's fall from grace, and the apparent reason for his return to the franchise - a by-the-numbers monster movie.

It seems Hollywood studios are slow to learn the invaluable lessons a movie's release tries to teach them. 2016's Deadpool showed that when a movie is produced with the necessary due care and attention it will be at the very least a critical success, yet Hollywood studios instead interpreted the movie's success as a demand for R-rated superhero movies. What Fox needs to learn from the underperformance of both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant is that the general audience is as important, if not more so than the fan base - as such the premise for a movie needs to be clear, concise and desirable. Producing a predictable rehash movie rather than a potential visual masterpiece in the attempt to save investment and maximize profits only relates to audiences the studio's apparent lack of faith in their intellectual property; if a studio does not believe in its product why should the audience.

Information and views set out in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scified or Alien-Covenant.com.