'Alien: Covenant' Set Photos Leak, Confirm It's More 'Alien' Than 'Prometheus' Sequel

After an ignominious run of terrible movies — Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counsellor and Exodus: Gods and Kings — it looked like Ridley Scott’s goose was cooked. But 2015’s The Martian proved he could still direct a dynamic sci-fi thriller. But will 2017’s Alien: Covenant give Scott a promising momentum, cementing a late-career winning streak, or snooker us back into theaters for more pseudo-Christian nonsense involving the Engineers and their idiotic plans for humanity? In other words, will Alien: Covenant be an Alien movie or a relabeled Prometheus long con?

New set photos leaked to So Is It Any Good? from Alien: Covenant promise the end of the Prometheus days and a return to the xenomorphic grotesquerie that changed sci-fi forever in Alien and its James Cameron-directed sequel, Aliens.

Most of all, the new, leaked set photos promise the full xenomorph life cycle, complete with eggs, facehuggers and hybridized offspring. It looks like the Engineers have a problem with mutational load, though, possibly resulting in the “neomorphs” expected to debut in Alien: Covenant.

All in all, it’s good to see the return of the classic xenomorph, though it does feel a little like Ridley Scott is frantically retreating from Prometheus and has no other refuge than material derivative of his 1979 original (they even fully recreated the Space Jockey set!). The xenomorph designs on display also bear some similarity to unused H.R. Giger designs. Hopefully, Alien: Covenant will also reveal some new elements to the series when it hits theaters Aug. 4, 2017.