Covenant's first mistake was in its own title.
Ridley Scott reversed his idea to call the sequel Paradise, which would have had Shaw and David venturing to the Engineer's home world, and would likely have been representative, to some degree, of Heaven, because it was noted by Shaw’s father in her dream sequence in Prometheus.
Fans of the first film had expected to see Shaw’s next move and the continuation of the engineers. Yes, it would have been deeply philosophical and theological, which isn’t a bad thing, especially if it had been merged nicely, which would have required its viewers to think on a subtextual level to understand the story. It would have been worth it, I guess.
Instead, what we got in Covenant was a total abandonment of Prometheus’s themes and main character. (Check out the YouTube video here.) David became the central focus in Covenant, which was a stupid move because Shaw was already being built up as the protagonist in the trilogy. But Shaw was too complex, too emotional a character for a story that now wanted to tell an agenda with its sequels rather than a story about the human experience.
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| Alien: Covenant 2017 |
The switch from the symbolic Prometheus title was reduced to a more literal title that included Alien, as if fans had forgotten. The title card even reverted to the 1979 style, which was nothing more than a pathetic attempt at nostalgia. The Prometheus title card was beautiful and intelligent. The breakdown of the engineer from the black goo and the reformation of the DNA was a visual masterstroke.
Whereas Prometheus was symbolic on many levels for its obvious Greek mythology roots and Peter Weyland’s God complex to create life, Covenant suggests a mutual agreement between parties.
Similar to the story of Noah’s Ark, the Covenant ship brings various couples from Earth to a new planet with hopes of establishing and populating that world. Just as Prometheus borrowed from Greek mythology, Covenant uses Biblical scripture for its themes.
In the Old Testament, God made a promise to Noah, a covenant, that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood. Because of man’s sinful ways, God chose to end most life on earth with the Great Flood and start over. He allowed only Noah, his family, and two of every animal to board the ark, saving them from the deadly waters.
In Alien: Covenant, besides the specifics of the crew, it carries 2,000 other sleeping passengers and multiple embryos in cold storage. I can’t help but view the 2,000 people in cryosleep as a subtextual number dating back to the birth of Christ, which, sadly, if meant to be symbolic, goes nowhere because the Jesus angle was abandoned after Prometheus. And if the Covenant is supposed to mimic the story of Noah’s Ark, then where are the animals? There’s no mention of animals aboard the ship—only drugs, booze, and a Woke agenda that fucking destroyed a franchise. All things that should not be on an interplanetary spaceship looking to populate new worlds.
