SPOILER WARNING
– in BIG BOLD LETTERS –
Straight off the bat I want to make very clear that this article is giving away possible key plot points for the Alien franchise as it stands today… and possibly into the future!
But I like to make predictions, and this one is the most shot-in-the-dark prediction yet, but if I am right I want a time stamp (more like a date stamp) proving how quickly I called it.
So, director Ridley Scott intends on making several (read: a fluctuating number) of Alien prequels and regardless of how you feel about Prometheus, this weekend’s Alien: Covenant (you know how I feel about them, at least) I think he fancies himself a bit of a sneaky storyteller. I think we will see plenty of twists down the road.
Down the long road to a film tying into his 1979 classic, Alien. At some point, an Engineer “derelict” ship will crash on LV-426 with a butt ton of xenomorph eggs on board, with a singular (we can only assume just one) “space jockey” or “engineer” piloting.
Of course, we can only speculate, but with Prometheus revealing (unfortunately) that the “space jockey” was a exo-suit that an Engineer or human can enter… I am reminded of that specific, haunting shot in 1979’s Alien.
Not the best picture, but that eerie, silent close up on the space jockey’s petrified eye socket, where we are treated to something almost like a glint. It is all we get from that rotten, mysterious corpse.
My prediction is, this is David’s last moment in the Alien franchise. Inside that space jockey suit, is Michael Fassbender’s mentally unhinged robot, David.
Say whaaaat?
At some point in these prequels, we need to establish The Company (Weylan Industries) hearing about the xenomorph so they can override the Nostromo’s course to “investigate” the derelict and have Ash reclaim the specimen. What if David was on course to deliver his payload of alien eggs via the derelict, but something went wrong and he crashed on LV-426?
Of course, the one piece of evidence that makes my theory fall down, is the “space jockey” has evidence of a chestbuster attack. David is synthetic and immune to the parasite. However, since this is an exo-suit and no longer a living thing (RIP Alien mystery), it stands to reason that the damage was caused by someone else infected at an earlier time.
Someone David wanted dealt with.
It is unlikely to be an Engineer in the suit, considering what happens in Covenant looks a lot like mass genocide…
Of course, it is possible some survived, somewhere… maybe.
(If you have seen Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, you know Ridley Scott can have anything “make sense”.)
It is either David, or the sorry soul inside that suit is whichever lead actor/actress is in the final prequel. The one person who bests David, finally ending his insane creationism, tries to dispose of the derelict and its foul cargo only to succumb to one more of David’s children… a parasite surely implanted earlier… and then crashes on LV-426. The Company tracks the last known coordinates, and the fallen hero is left to stare out with dead eyes from a cold exo-skeletal husk as the cycle of horror continues.
Yeah, the second theory makes more sense, huh? But, it is clear that Scott adores his creation in David, and that suggestive zoom into the eye of the jockey could easily be turned into the final appearance of the robot who has so far dominated all of Ridley Scott’s prequel movies. Plus David has proven himself capable of flying the derelict.
After all, to Scott, it wouldn’t be an Alien film without David.
With my attempts to predict Ridley Scott’s motives, it seems far too tantalising a prospect to make his original film feature his newest character. For better or worse…
Something to think about…
This is Cinema Cocoa, signing off.