PROMETHEUS 2 aka. ALIEN COVENANT going ahead without Noomi Rapace

The crew in Prometheus didn’t bother me, not even the infamous ‘rolling ship’ scene. Nor did the re-appropriation of Alien’s set designs – in fact, that was pretty cool. Even the insta-surgery bit was all fine by me. This is the far future, after all, where cool things can be done and any idiot can get a job on a space mission – providing they bring their own spherical navigation aids.

Instead, what I didn’t like was the sloppy attempt to shoehorn this into the Alien canon, as if the producers decided at the last minute to make the connection. In my opinion Alien vs. Predator has more of a place in the world of those acid-bleeding monsters (I mean that too: AvP was not as bad as we remember it). This relationship has been unclear for a while after the movie, then Ridley Scott decided there should be a Prometheus sequel. Then he decided it should instead be a prequel to Alien (thanks Nick) and renamed it Alien: Covenant.

The film takes place ten years after Prometheus, when a colony ship lands on some bit of rock and meet the android from Prometheus (and no doubt those giant space engineers). Now Scott has confirmed that Noomi Rapace, who played the lead in Prometheus, won’t be in the movie:

I asked if Noomi Rapace, who was in his film Prometheus (from which Covenant follows), would be working with him in Australia and he said no. ‘We’re still casting the main roles,’ he said.

This is a step down from previous plans to give her a minor role. The inclusion of David the android does give a means to draw some threads between the two films, but I’m still a little disappointment. One part I really enjoyed of Prometheus was the ending, when the two characters fly off to go find the engineers. None of it had anything to do with finding the origins of the notorious Aliens, which don’t even appear in Prometheus (unless you count that thing from the birth scene).

It feels to me as if Scott lost his appetite for the Prometheus trajectory and is running back to safer material. Perhaps he read too much of Internet fans wailing for a tie-in with Alien.

This is a pity: Prometheus had its flaws, but it laid the groundwork for some interesting new sci-fi. But now we’re just going back to fan-service a series of films that doesn’t need it.

Last Updated: February 2, 2016