WARNING: If you haven't seen “Prometheus,” there are some plot spoilers below…
The official title for Ridley Scott's second “Alien” prequel has finally been revealed, and it is…not “Alien: Paradise Lost,” as the director previously claimed. Instead, prepare yourself for…
In addition to the title announcement, the film's official release date (October 6, 2017) and synopsis have been revealed — the latter of which raises questions about the fate of Noomi Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw, who survived the first installment but is nowhere to be found in the plot description:
Ridley Scott returns to the universe he created in ALIEN with ALIEN: COVENANT, the second chapter in a prequel trilogy that began with PROMETHEUS – and connects directly to Scott”s 1979 seminal work of science fiction. Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world – whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
That's not to say that Shaw won't appear in the prequel-sequel — indeed, Rapace has spoken openly about her presumed involvement in the film — but the character's absence in the synopsis is curious.
So what's behind the title? “Covenant” establishes a “trend” of naming these films after their ships, but if you look at Scott's previously proposed title — which he copped from John Milton's epic poem about Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden — “Covenant” could perhaps refer to the Edenic covenant between God and Adam, broken when Eve ate an apple from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” In the Bible, God later offers an unconditional covenant of redemption to mankind, later manifested in the form of Jesus Christ the redeemer.
What do you think the title refers to? Speculate away…