Ridley Scott Is Finally Fixing His Biggest Alien Mistakes

Published Sep 1, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT Sky Blanton is a Movie Contributor at ScreenRant with professional experience covering movies, television, and pop culture. Her published work spans news, interviews, features, and opinion pieces, with a focus on film, franchise storytelling, and the entertainment industry. She earned her bachelor's degree in Communications with a concentration in Professional Writing and a minor in Business Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Ridley Scott's new Alien movie could finally give his prequel story - Prometheus - the missing chapter it needs. Scott has confirmed that another movie following Alien: Covenant is in development, nearly a decade after the film ended with David taking control of the Covenant. That is definitely worth getting excited about because there is still plenty of story sitting inside that ending. Scott now has the chance to make better use of the ideas he introduced in his two previous movies. Scott took the franchise in a different direction with Prometheus. Instead of another fight for survival against a Xenomorph, the movie asked where humanity came from and introduced the Engineers as our possible creators. It also introduced the black pathogen, which became an important part of the series' biology. Alien: Covenant moved away from those questions and instead put David at the center. That change is probably the biggest reason the prequels feel disconnected. Prometheus leaves the Engineers' plans for humanity unclear, while Covenant kills most of the Engineers and has David use their world to continue his experiments. Then the movie ends before we see what he plans to do with the Covenant and its colonists. Scott's new movie could pick up from that exact point and let those ideas develop instead of leaving another set of questions behind. Ridley Scott's Alien Prequels Didn't Fully Work Prometheus has never been an easy movie to dismiss. There are some genuinely great ideas buried in it, particularly the Engineers and the suggestion that humanity's creators may have had a very different relationship with us than we imagined. The black pathogen is another great piece of the franchise's backstory. It gives Scott a way to connect creation and destruction with something that creates new forms of life while also wiping out entire populations. The issue is that Prometheus leaves its most interesting ideas hanging. The Engineer wakes up, kills most of the crew, and dies before explaining why his people created humanity or why they later wanted us dead. Shaw escapes with David's head and heads off to find those answers, which feels like the beginning of a larger story. Then Alien: Covenant largely leaves that story behind. Instead, Covenant makes David the driving force. He wipes out the Engineers on their home world, studies the pathogen, and spends years experimenting with organisms until he arrives at the Xenomorph. That is a great detail in David's development, especially since he has always been fascinated by creation. But it also means one of Prometheus' biggest mysteries is just pushed aside as it starts to become interesting. And then Covenant ends. David has taken Walter's identity, Daniels and Tennessee are in cryo sleep, and thousands of colonists are trapped aboard the ship with him. He even has embryos that can help him continue his work. It is an obvious set-up for another movie, but after Covenant underperformed, the movie never happened. For almost a decade, David's story has essentially been stuck on that ship. Ridley Scott's New Alien Movie Can Fix Prometheus & Covenant Via MovieStillsDB The ending of Covenant gives Scott a really strong starting point. David controls the Covenant, though thousands of colonists are still asleep in cryo, and the ship carries embryos for his experiments. Scott has said the new movie will follow David as he creates a "brave new world for himself," finally showing what he does with that power. This could also bring the Engineers back into the main story. Prometheus spends most of its runtime building them up, while Covenant kills them before their role in everything is fully explored. David now carries their knowledge and the pathogen he used in his experiments. The new movie could connect that material to David's creation of the Xenomorph and explain how his work fits into the overall creature history. After nearly a decade, Scott finally has a chance to give David's unfinished story an ending. Release Date June 22, 1979 Runtime 117 Minutes Director Ridley Scott Writers Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett