I've heard all kinds of rumours ever since Covenants release. It's hard to know what's going to happen, but I think the rumours about a retcon of Alien 3 are linked to the Neill Blomkamp scripts for an Alien 5 movie, possibly. Until something actually goes into production, all bets are off. I've also read that he has explicitly stated that his Alien film is dead and he's moved on, so I just have no idea.
I'm a massive Alien/Predator fan, and like you said, even the cheesier films were enjoyable. I loved Prometheus, the story of the Engineers and the mutagenic substance was exactly what I wanted and was expecting. Ever since I first saw the Space Jockey in Alien, I've just wanted to know more about it, what it was and what it was doing on LV-426. The fact that the movies never touched upon it again, other than a brief glimpse of the derelict at the beginning of Aliens, irritated me.
Prometheus wasn't a perfect film, but it's also nothing a better cut of the film wouldn't fix. That's seemed to work for most of the other Alien films in the franchise. Covenant... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by it, but I think for different reasons than most. I'd seen the promo images for the film which showed the engineer planet as David drops the urns over the populace, and in the actual film that was it for engineers really. It seems like after the intense criticism of Prometheus, Scott changed his direction massively which resulted in Covenant, a bit of a train wreck of a film. I've read the original spec script for what was at the time called Alien: Engineers and it is far, far superior to what we ended up getting. I still think Covenant is a perfectly good, almost stand alone film. Especially when compared to the likes of Alien 3 or Resurrection. The neomorphs were cool, I like the emphasis on AI as it's a potentially fascinating concept.
There was a special poster released as part of Alien Day I think, and it shows two skulls which are clearly not engineers, however one looks suspiciously like a space jockey. The other one, to me at least although I'm yet to see anyone else make the connection, looks like the skull of whatever was on the mural in the Head chamber in Prometheus, a kind of bird-headed creature.
Sorry, I went on far too long there about Alien! I could talk about that franchise all day.
I'm struggling to find the right words myself now, but I 100% agree with what you say there. It's such a deep-rooted problem with our society as a whole, I just don't know where you'd start to fix these problems.
Oh my goodness you should delete this comment and make a new post 😀. Really a lot of insight here. I am facinsted by the engineers as well and I think that's one of the many reasons covenant disappointed me... Because they at least seemed to be "killed off" which is a thread that doesn't work well with this franchise imo. I don't know why other movies and shows can get away with it, but aliens can't. It's like they don't let it run its course the kill it before it's time (it being the character or arc). I liked the Android AI part too I agree that was well done. What was awful was the numerous getting killed in the shower bath scenes and was it really necessary to spend 3 minutes of film on a floating head? I mean I get it. She was decapitated... Ok floating head, again. It must've been three times lol. Just really annoyed me.
I probably will do a post on this next week actually, I think I could probably write a thesis on the Alien universe at this point!
Yeah absolutely, and not only were the engineers killed off in it, they had seconds of screen time. Covenant didn't add anything to the mythos or story, I think Ridley Scott kinda choked on this one, letting the intense criticism from Prometheus affect his vision. I'd not really thought about the killing scenes, but you're right. They were just pandering I guess, trying to attract the box office audiences, but we were just left with an inferior film. In retrospect, I've been far too lenient with this one. Films like 3 and resurrection get somewhat of a pass for their cheeseyness because they weren't directed by Ridley Scott (or James Cameron). They were obvious cash grabs, crappy additions that the executives wanted. This was a Ridley Scott film, and in that respect the film completely failed.
"Apparently", the next film will be far more engineers-focused and less xenomorph. Hopefully Scott can redirect this franchise back to his original vision and join the prequels up with Alien in a satisfying way. Why is the Space Jockey so much bigger than the engineers we see? Why did it appear to be fossilised? How did the derelict get to LV-426? Why did it seemingly have a cargo of xeno-eggs? Is David the original creator of all xenomorphs, or just the neomorphs? If the engineers created us, who created the engineers? Sooooooo many questions still need answering.