Ridley Scott: "Alien: Covenant" First Of Three Films, Will Link Into Original "Alien"

I believe the launch of ships from the bio-weapons lab planet that look just like the crashed ancient ship on LV-426 adequately explain how the aliens got to LV-426--aboard one of the ships used by their creators.

But I have other questions. Was the seeding of earth by the DNA of the dropped-off creator voluntary, or was he tricked, or was it a penal sentencing kind of thing? Did the seeding go as planned? If so, why are the awakened aliens so pissed off that humans should dare to show up, following the directions planted into our collective subconscious or whatever?

We've got canisters of the evil goo. Is that the same goo that disassembled the creator in the precious scene? What exactly is this stuff supposed to do?

Likewise, our crew of idiots is messing around with the canisters, then the worm things show up. Are they stored in the goo that's in the canisters? Do they grow from the goo? What's the deal with the goo?!?!

Then we go from tiny worm things to proto-aliens. Did the worm things turn into aliens? How?

There's just this morass of suggestive but vacant links between things. The life cycle in the first 3 movies was fairly simple, if weird. Face-hugger plants larval form, which grows to adult form, one of which will be a queen, that will lay eggs with more face-huggers.

It's a bad tendency for prequels--the people making them want to play, to be cool, so they graft in all this random stuff that they came up with when they were really, really stoned that is supposed to explain the world and origin of the original stories, but due to lack of discipline, just stretches everything out of shape and creates dead ends all over the place.
 
SeymourGore said:
I wonder how (or if) Ridley will answer the Alien elements Cameron introduced - namely the Queen and hive structure of the Alien.

Seems to me, Ridley had a different idea of the Alien's lifecycle than what Cameron introduced. There was that scene in the Director's Cut of Dallas being transformed into an egg (after being caught by the Alien). I always thought that premise was much more terrifying than a Queen laying chestburster eggs.

I'm not totally up on my Alien lore, but I believe the Queen and insect-like hive structure were elements Cameron introduced.
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I agree that that is certainly more terrifying. Though I think that process is very inefficient in the perpetuation of a species. But maybe that was the point. The xenomorph in the first movie is presented as an invincible interloper that is ultimately only "defeated" by blowing it out into the vast expanse of space. Maybe the species is kept in check by giving the victim species a small chance of survival with the convoluted reproduction process. Aliens ruins that perception when every soldier drone can be killed with conventional ballistic weaponry.
 
Am I the only one that HATED what Prometheus did with the "Space Jockey?" (Spoilers for the movie below)



It's like Ridley is incapable of letting things be a "mystery" and remain that way.

The Space Jockey was such a great part of Alien, seeing this huge very Alien looking species and knowing that the alien had came from it. Your mind wandered about it,w here it came from, what it was like.

The idea was very alien and it was a mystery that was left open and it made it all the more meaningful.

Then along comes Prometheus and ruins the entire PREMISE of the space jockey, making them from this very weird "alien" looking race (and no that was NOT a freaking suit in the first Alien movie, it was bloody fossilized! There was no "engineer" inside of that).

I absolutely loathed that whole change, making it from a very weird and strange alien being into a freaking GENERIC as all hell "oversized" human with pale skin, about as generic and mindless as you can get.

The only redeeming part of the movie for me was the ending and the setup for the next one.

I just wish the "Engineers" would have been their own thing and had 0 to do with the Space Jockey in Alien, let it remain as some ancient alien being with mystery surrounding it and how it got there/what it was doing.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
Then we go from tiny worm things to proto-aliens. Did the worm things turn into aliens? How?
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There are worms that are present before the urns begin to ooz, there is a very brief shop of the small worms wriggling around in a footprint. The ooze turned those worms into "Hammerpedes" which is what kills Millburn and Fifield.

Originally Prometheus had a scene were Millburn discovered the small worms, but that scene was cut.
 
Draax said:
There are worms that are present before the urns begin to ooze, there is a very brief shot of the small worms wriggling around in a footprint. The ooze turned those worms into "Hammerpedes" which is what kills Millburn and Fifield.

Originally Prometheus had a scene were Millburn discovered the small worms, but that scene was cut.
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Fix'd
 
Semantics said:
Prometheus was meh really everything after the 1st alien was meh.
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Well, Alien was a straight up monster flick and did a great job of it, it's still one of the highest rated scary movies of all time.

None of the others were the same kind of movie. But I liked Alien 3, the one on the prison planet. It had some funny dialog and some of the actors made for a good show. The same with Aliens, the second one. That last one not so much. It holds my attention until the end when they start finding the weirdo mom and kid alien shit.

Prometheus wasn't a good movie at all to me, but I didn't know it was linked to the Alien movies before I watched it so going in blind it was an interesting turn, just not enough to make it a good movie to me.
 
Prometheus was horrific. All these people up in space and no one seems to give a damn that everyone is dying and they're likely not going to be able to make it out of there. Movie made no sense.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Prometheus was horrific. All these people up in space and no one seems to give a damn that everyone is dying and they're likely not going to be able to make it out of there. Movie made no sense.
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The biggest problem for me was mah daddy issues. Who cares when you obviously have bigger problems to deal with.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Prometheus was horrific. All these people up in space and no one seems to give a damn that everyone is dying and they're likely not going to be able to make it out of there. Movie made no sense.
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Blame this guy. He also butchered a few other TV shows and movies that had a good cast/plot/concept but fell short in writing.
 
SolidBladez said:
Blame this guy. He also butchered a few other TV shows and movies that had a good cast/plot/concept but fell short in writing.
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I want to blame him but he's behind probably the best tv show on right now, The Leftovers, which has had some amazing writing/acting.


I think Ridely just had one idea of what "he" wanted to do and then Lindelof had another idea and it just kind of got all convoluted into a mix-match of ideas.
 
SeymourGore said:
I wonder how (or if) Ridley will answer the Alien elements Cameron introduced - namely the Queen and hive structure of the Alien.

Seems to me, Ridley had a different idea of the Alien's lifecycle than what Cameron introduced. There was that scene in the Director's Cut of Dallas being transformed into an egg (after being caught by the Alien). I always thought that premise was much more terrifying than a Queen laying chestburster eggs.

I'm not totally up on my Alien lore, but I believe the Queen and insect-like hive structure were elements Cameron introduced.
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Someone did, throughout all those Alien movies they mostly only give Giger credit for the beasts themselves.
 
I just want to pause for a moment and meditate on the awesomesauce that was the alien itself. Moves like a spider-monkey on crack, looks like a cross between an alligator and a demon, has a giant brain that looks sorta like a bent dick wrapped in a condom. No eyes, because what real monster needs eyes to find you? And then, as it stands there hissing at you, one foot from your face, as you stand there knowing you are about to die in some way more painful and horrific than you can even imagine, its mouthful of crooked razor-sharp fangs opens, dripping acid everywhere, "lips" grimacing at you with pure hatred or blood-lust or both, and the second mouth that is somehow even more horrific than the first jumps out and eats your soul.

What bad acid trip conjured up such an unholy thing?
 
Commander Suzdal said:
I just want to pause for a moment and meditate on the awesomesauce that was the alien itself. Moves like a spider-monkey on crack, looks like a cross between an alligator and a demon, has a giant brain that looks sorta like a bent dick wrapped in a condom. No eyes, because what real monster needs eyes to find you? And then, as it stands there hissing at you, one foot from your face, as you stand there knowing you are about to die in some way more painful and horrific than you can even imagine, its mouthful of crooked razor-sharp fangs opens, dripping acid everywhere, "lips" grimacing at you with pure hatred or blood-lust or both, and the second mouth that is somehow even more horrific than the first jumps out and eats your soul.

What bad acid trip conjured up such an unholy thing?
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The birth of the Alien creature actually owes quite a bit to Dune.

No not the book, and no not the David Lynch movie, but actually the Dune movie by Alejandro Jodorowsky that never actually got made.

I watched a documentary this past year on it ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935156/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ) which is great in of itself.

For this movie Alejandro brought in people like Dan O'Bannon (who would become the writer of Alien), Moebius (famous French artist) and H.R. Giger.

The movie fell apart but during this time H.R. Giger had showed O'Bannon some of artwork and when he was writing for Alien O'Bannon remembered his art and thought it would be a great fit and brought it up to Ridley, they ended up using H.R. Gigers "Necronom IV" artwork as the basis and then H.R. further designed it more. He also helped design the chestburster, Space Jockey (no they weren't freaking humans either!) and he even designed LV 246.

The reason he didn't want the Alien to have eyes was that he said it felt more scary and terrifying because you wouldn't know when or if it was looking at you.

If Alejandro had never attempted to make Dune and O'Bannon never met H.R. Giger it's very likely the Alien design would have been completely different.
 
Promethius was awful. Not just the characters/acting, things like the engineers and humans ending up with basically the same DNA or the cave drawing that happens to be an accurate star map in their particular moment in time...

If you're making a blockbuster scifi film you really ought to have a scientist or two read through it to make sure you aren't doing anything that crosses over from being scifi to being nonsensical.
 
This franchise was killed for me by Prometheus. All that money and talent and the script was total nonsense. The Damon Lindelof effect was in full effect. How that guy gets work I do not know. No one ever sanity checks his work for plotholes or bad character motivations.

I think part of the problem is Ridley Scott. He knows he's getting on and he's just throwing himself and signing himself up to as much as possible to rake in the cash. The quality has dropped considerably as a result.

I don't think this film will help matters at all.
 
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Commander Suzdal said:
We've got canisters of the evil goo. Is that the same goo that disassembled the creator in the precious scene? What exactly is this stuff supposed to do?

Likewise, our crew of idiots is messing around with the canisters, then the worm things show up. Are they stored in the goo that's in the canisters? Do they grow from the goo? What's the deal with the goo?!?!
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The going theory is the engineers stopped at a Taco Bell and that's how we get the alien creating goo.
 
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I hope I don't have 'plot blue balls' again like I did after Prometheus...
 
daglesj said:
This franchise was killed for me by Prometheus. All that money and talent and the script was total nonsense. The Damon Lindelof effect was in full effect. How that guy gets work I do not know. No one ever sanity checks his work for plotholes or bad character motivations.

I think part of the problem is Ridley Scott. He knows he's getting on and he's just throwing himself and signing himself up to as much as possible to rake in the cash. The quality has dropped considerably as a result.

I don't think this film will help matters at all.
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No one sanity checks his work because they dont need to . The movies he ruins make money anyways. The vast majority of movie goers either a) dont care if the plot sucks or b) wont wait for reviews to come out before seeing it. Kind of like all these AMD Ryzen nut swingers. Wait until its out and fully reviewed before spending your cash.
 
The CG aliens in the new trailer looks horrible. What ever happen to practical effects =(. The aliens in the first one looks so much better then this.
 
Basically we saw the entire movie in the trailer. Good sign that it's going to be Prometheus all over again.
 
Wow. I completely disagree with the Prometheus and covenant hate. I'm looking forward to the new movie.

As much as I enjoy the first 3 aliens movies (resurrections weird alien human hybrid was not my favourite) it's not like the acting was anything special, aliens (my favourite) had some terrible acting. Gorman, Hicks and Hudson were terribly acted (RIP Bill Paxton). Sigourney Weaver carried the majority of the first 2 movies, with scene stealers like Henrikson helping some.
 
Draax said:
Wow. I completely disagree with the Prometheus and covenant hate. I'm looking forward to the new movie.

As much as I enjoy the first 3 aliens movies (resurrections weird alien human hybrid was not my favourite) it's not like the acting was anything special, aliens (my favourite) had some terrible acting. Gorman, Hicks and Hudson were terribly acted (RIP Bill Paxton). Sigourney Weaver carried the majority of the first 2 movies, with scene stealers like Henrikson helping some.
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Couldn't disagree more. The original Alien and Aliens were both very well scripted and acted. Aliens had a lot more actors with minimal screen time, but Hicks and Hudson specifically were great characters.

Prometheus was fucking terrible. Who spends a trillion dollars on an expedition in space and hires retarded college frat boys as experts?
 
Yeah the whole team was laughable. They acted like they just pulled in a dozen random strangers off the street and gave them jobs.

"Hey idiot, would you like to go on the most furthest and expensive inter-galactic mission in mankinds' history? No experience necessary!"

Just terrible and unforgivable. The fact there are so many videos on YouTube ripping apart all the plot, script and character errors for this film backs this.
 
daglesj said:
Yeah the whole team was laughable. They acted like they just pulled in a dozen random strangers off the street and gave them jobs.

"Hey idiot, would you like to go on the most furthest and expensive inter-galactic mission in mankinds' history? No experience necessary!"

Just terrible and unforgivable. The fact there are so many videos on YouTube ripping apart all the plot, script and character errors for this film backs this.
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The movie suffered from Armageddon Complex.
 
I'm more interested in seeing what Neill Blomkamp can pull off if they actually let him make an Alien movie.

It may not be epic but it will definitely be 'different'. ;)
 
Prometheus had more issues than just the Armageddon complex, but yeah, that would be one. The abortion segment should have just left her in the pod, to get repaired or whatever over say 24 hours, and while she is being repaired, the alien runs around and kills all of the red shirts. You could have went on a 40 minute movie segment of just different deaths of red shirts man...
 
Monkey God said:
Couldn't disagree more. The original Alien and Aliens were both very well scripted and acted. Aliens had a lot more actors with minimal screen time, but Hicks and Hudson specifically were great characters.

Prometheus was fucking terrible. Who spends a trillion dollars on an expedition in space and hires retarded college frat boys as experts?
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Prometheus did have plot problems, that much is for sure. One major fix, would have been to use the alternate Fifield xenomorph mutation scene linked:



Aliens, which I absolutely love had some major plot problems which simply cannot be overlooked. So Ripley is floating in space for 57 years and when she is finally found, coincidentally only a few days later contact is lost with LV-426. To add to this Van Leuwen states that the colonist living FOR YEARS on LV-426 have never encountered xenomorphs or located the derelict ship. Then you have Newt, apparently the universes ultimate hide and seek champion who is 6 years old and hides out from Xenomorphs, for ~3 weeks, largely using ventilation ducts which all other aliens movies indicate are a favorite mode of transportation for xenomorphs. I could get into the weird instant family dynamic between Ripley, Hicks, and Newt ... but I feel I have made my point.
 
Draax said:
So Ripley is floating in space for 57 years and when she is finally found, coincidentally only a few days later contact is lost with LV-426. To add to this Van Leuwen states that the colonist living FOR YEARS on LV-426 have never encountered xenomorphs or located the derelict ship. Then you have Newt, apparently the universes ultimate hide and seek champion who is 6 years old and hides out from Xenomorphs, for ~3 weeks, largely using ventilation ducts which all other aliens movies indicate are a favorite mode of transportation for xenomorphs. I could get into the weird instant family dynamic between Ripley, Hicks, and Newt ... but I feel I have made my point.
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Remember the company was trying to keep it all under wraps from the get go. They were aware of what it could have been since the distress signal was picked up 57 years previously. They got to the logs on the lifeboat and then sent out a exploration to the derelicts location. They knew all along what was going on to a pretty high degree. Remember Burke sent the request for the location to be checked out soon after Ripley was found. Plus we have no actual clue how long passed from Ripley being found to Burke knocking on her door. I would guess several months.Remember it's the weapons division...it maybe that a lot of the high exec were not in the loop. Plausible denial.

As for newt...sometimes going after one prey animal isn't worth the bother. Maybe the aliens just felt they had all they needed as they dont appear to eat flesh. Remember the Xeno's are holed up in a different building too. The eggs can stay waiting in stasis for centuries so the Queen is in no hurry to make sure her eggs do not go to waste.

As plotholes go...nowhere near as bad as Prometheus.
 
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Sigh, CGI aliens? Really? REALLY? Did they learn absolutely nothing from Alien 4?

Practical effects>CGI.

The best "effect" is any effect that makes your audience not realize it's an effect.

Take a movie like An American Werewolf in London, Jurassic Park, Alien & Aliens, Terminator 1 and 2, compare them to the later movies in the same series, which ones hold up better? Hint - the ones that relied on practical effects land only used CGI when absolutely needed.

CGI for characters, especially ones you see up close simply doesn't hold up well, especially when you see it and can immediately tell it's cgi because of the uncanny valley effect.
 
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vegeta535 said:
The CG aliens in the new trailer looks horrible. What ever happen to practical effects =(. The aliens in the first one looks so much better then this.
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agree...the CGI alien (especially at the end of the trailer) looks really plastic and fake...the use of practical effects in the earlier movies helped to make it more realistic and scary...

Draax said:
Wow. I completely disagree with the Prometheus and covenant hate. I'm looking forward to the new movie
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I also liked Prometheus...the visuals alone were amazing...yes the story was not on par with the first 2 movies but as a starting point for the xenomorphs and the alien mythology it wasn't bad...the biggest problem was that it was disconnected from the original movies too much and it should have acted as more of a bridge...sort of like what Covenant is attempting to do...I also thought the Alien 3 Assembly Cut was a good movie
 
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So, in Covenant they go to colonize another planet. Why did they take a gay couple with them? Is there some new science that let's men have babies?
 
wizzi01 said:
So, in Covenant they go to colonize another planet. Why did they take a gay couple with them? Is there some new science that let's men have babies?
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Maybe that's the big plot twist, the Space Jockeys weren't trying to make a biological weapon, but trying to find a way for homosexual males to impregnate each other.
 
as far as the CGI aliens in Covenant and the different look of them I can sort of understand where Ridley Scott is coming from...you have to remember that these movies are prequels to the original movies so the xenomorphs are expected to look and act a bit different...they evolved over time and became the aliens we know and love from the originals...as far as the new trailer, I loved the scene where the guy steps on the spore and you see it evaporate into the air...and who doesn't love seeing an alien egg open up and a facehugger jump out
 
I really hope this is good. I'm not a huge fan of Prometheus or the whole spores / weapon thing. I don't think it needed to be explained.

I'll be sad if it isn't, I was looking forward to the neill blomkamp version with bill paxton :( May his stardust find purpose!
 
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