Wow, what could have been. I feel like that's what the franchise has devolved to at this point. A "what could have been, but never going to happen franchise." Fans have held out for so long for just one of these movies to get it right and they come so close only to have the rug ripped out from under them. So who do we blame?
I think most of it falls on fox as a studio. They've let this franchise get to where it is. I wonder if scott was "forced" to re edit covenant to be the mish mash of ideas that it became.
I think fox took the negative fan reaction of Prometheus to assume that we have to have the Black xenomorph. But that's not the case, the problem with Prometheus was it didn't make any damn sense and that it was pitched as Alien prequel with out aliens except a snake, a jellyfish, an angry bald dude and a 1 second glimpse of what everyone came to see.
They didn't need to kill off all the engineers offscreen and force the xenomorph life cycle into a film it was obviously not intended for. Had they went ahead and made this fans would have been thrilled.
It looks unique, it has creatures, it has horror, and had it answered some of the lingering questions from Prometheus it probably would have been a hit and retroactively made Prometheus a serviceable film in its own right.
I blame fox for not wanting to take a chance. Wanting to play it safe and getting the dud that we did. Unfortunately it's the fans that have to pay the price, fox are laughing all the way to the bank no thanks to disny.