With all of this talk about Prometheus deviating from the original Alien formula, I can't help buy feel a little more regretful that Vincent Ward wasn't allowed to do what he wanted with his wooden planet story for Alien3. I feel like Scott is really going to develop this universe with both religious and mythological symbolism that, while different from Ward's vision, could've served to compliment each other by expanding our scope of this universe in their own way.
Monks in Alien3 would served as an interesting counterpoint to Ridley's new origin-of-man story.
I think that doing something like is only made possible by FOX because Ridley is behind it and he has a lot of push to do his own thing under the trust of the suits. Ward, on the other hand, was essentially a non-name to them and therefore was both restricted and fired for deviating from the formula too much.
Just a thought.