Quote from: Protozoid on Jun 30, 2017, 08:41:50 PM
That's true, it did make more money than AvP. But AvP had a bigger opening weekend and made back almost triple its budget. Covenant will not be able to do that.
At least one pundit believes the Alien label was a liability. I think they should have made a straight Prometheus sequel called Covenant, kept Shaw, and pushed the sci-fi angle. Original sci-fi is huge right now, and Scott is the king of original sci-fi. Trying to make Alien into Star Wars was always going to end in disappointment. There is no universe where Covenant made Star Wars money. They missed their chance to create a new, vital franchise by reboarding a ship they've known was sinking for 25 years. Sci-fi has to continually push boundaries or it doesn't work. Same with horror. Looking back at how audiences, and even James Cameron, reacted to the first teaser, the public could tell immediately that Covenant wasn't going to break any new ground and had retreated from the high-concept approach of Prometheus. Nobody finds a total lack of confidence appealing. To have a successful movie like Prometheus receive such a safe sequel is retreating after victory. It's so cowardly it's kind of pitiful.
Not sure how "safe" I'd consider the Shaw elements to be, but I see what you're saying.
As much as it pains me to say, I do think a large part of Prometheus's success was that people didn't even know it was an Alien film. They thought it was a new, original thing. (This can be hard for us AVP dorks to even fathom.) I imagine there are a lot of people who don't even know Covenant was a sequel to Prometheus.
Maybe if the next film features engineers, the trailer can showcase them and normies will get that it's a sequel to Prometheus and go see it.