Ask any Alien fan to identify the ‘mascot’ of Ridley Scott’s illustrious sci-fi series and they’ll like choose between Ellen Ripley, Sigourney Weaver’s undisputed badass, and the Xenomorph.
H.R. Giger’s serpentine nightmare machine first slithered into our dreams back in 1979, and has been a constant fixture of the Alien franchise ever since – with the exception of Prometheus, which sought to explain the origins of that onyx-colored beast to mixed results.
That admittedly divisive prequel spawned a follow-up, Alien: Covenant, though Ridley Scott has been coy about what the future holds beyond 2017. Rumor has it that Fox pumped the brakes on the director’s franchise plans soon after Covenant failed to leave much of an impression on critics, but according to the filmmaker himself, a sequel is still very much on the cards…only with fewer aliens.
We are [going to make another], we are. I think what we have to do is gradually drift away from the alien stuff. People say, ‘You need more alien, you need more face pulling, need more chest bursting,’ so I put a lot of that in Covenant and it fitted nicely. But I think if you go again you need to start finding another solution that’s more interesting.
Should Scott stick to his word and “drift away” from the Xenomorph, the Alien franchise may break course and double down on artificial intelligence.
Via EW:
I think AI is becoming much more dangerous and therefore more interesting. Fassbender was an AI. Ian Holm [from Alien] was an AI; Roy Batty [from Blade Runner] was an AI; so was Rachael [from Blade Runner].
So perhaps the beast is cooked, after all? Ridley Scott is just now coming off his high-wire job on All The Money in the World, the Oscar-tipped drama that underwent last-minute reshoots to replace Kevin Spacey with Christoper Plummer. That means the Alien franchise will likely remain in stasis for the majority of 2018, but those hoping for a direct follow-up to Covenant can at least take solace in this latest status report.
