Alien: Covenant | 5/19/2017 | Who needs mystery?

[DeeCee]

I deal with freight companies all the time and on a regular basis they get their drivers to monitor rare and endangered animals by the road side.  It's quiet a common practice in the industry.  Only problem is that it can really delay our deliveries.  But, that's the price of science.

[Neo]

Edited March 7, 2013 by Neo

[Ozymandias]

Because one would think scientists have a protocol when seeing new species for the first time.  Space truckers on the other hand probably don't.

 

Yeah, obviously.  But being a space trucker is hardly an excuse for reaching into a giant alien egg that just opened by itself after you already touched it since common sense seems to be the theme of this whole line of discussion.  Its basically the exact same thing, the scene was an obvious wink to Alien.

 

 

Either way, it makes no sense.  All you have to do is think about it for one second.

 

This is a mission that is quite literally vital to the survival of Weyland.  This extremely important, and I say it again because they mentioned it, a TRILLION dollar expedition.  I can certainly understand the secrecy of the mission, but that doens't mean you can't interview and recruit the very best minds in those fields, you just don't tell them what they are doing.

 

He trusted the hiring of these important people to his estranged daughter and didn't tell her how important it was?  That is just asking for your mission to fail.  All of that secrecy mostly just to "surprise" her by later showing up on the ship?  Worst secret ever.

 

?

 

She knew exactly how important the mission was to Weylend, its made very clear in her 1 on 1 dialogue with him right before he goes down to meet the engineer. The problem for Weylend was that he didn't seem to know just how convinced she was that he wasn't gonna find his miracle old age cure far out in space so she carelessly hired a relatively inept crew that wasn't very united.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Shpongle

[zackzack]

Alien crew is shown to have a protocol. Ripley is adamant of not letting Kane onboard after being attacked because of the protocol (and an egg is not a space cobra you're trying to cuddle. Kane didn't try to pet the facehugger). Kane is put in quarantine thanks to the protocol since Ash got his biased agenda, he follows it. Ripley shows much anger against Dallas decision to override the protocol influenced by Ash. So even space truckers are smarter than supposed scientists.

 

In Prometheus, Vickers arbitrarily followed a ghost protocol at the will of the bad script. One time, she wants to burn down every single people suspected of contamination that try to come inside the ship. Then, she let an unarmed crew member open the door when they saw Zombie Fifield who is supposed to have died miles away in the temple and crawled back to the ship like a crab. Holloway should have been put in quarantine protocol as soon as his obvious bad condition is revealed because he could put the whole mission on danger by contaminating the rest of the crew. But every single member of the crew is moronic and egoistic, Holloway first.

 

 

Kane is displaying the same dumb character syndrome by sticking his head into an alien pod. Look at that scene again. Both ALIEN & PROMETHEUS follow the oldest rule in horror genre: smart people doing stupid things. The scientist petting an alien cobra is not as disastrous as you think. However the writer could have both Fifield & Mr Biology share a puff of weed so his lack of caution when dealing with alien organism could be excused. Also, earlier in the film, Milburn is shown to be the trusting, happy-go-lucky type. He is the first one who tries to "pet" hostile-looking Fifield when he extends his hand in friendship.

 

Vickers line "Everyone but Holloway back on the ship!" is repeated again & again in the trailer. She only burnt Holloway who is confirmed infected. She doesn't want to burn down everybody.

 

The ragtag crew is selected because nobody wants to risk themselves on a journey to search for God. Also, evil Weyland wants disposable scientific subjects, not real pHDs. 

 

The weakness of PROMETHEUS lies in the way the film seems to be broken into 2 parts to make for an unofficial quasi-Alien Trilogy so Fox can reboot a franchise. The climax seems rushed. The casual willingness of the pilots to sacrifice themselves is a seriously weak point in the script (the captain may have seen real warfare, but the co-pilots are Beavis & Butthead). The one-to-one struggle between Egr & Shaw is too brief and under-dramatized. David experimenting with unknown material seems to be the biggest silliness in the movie nobody talks about. As a being with an IQ of 300, he doesn't seem to know a thing or two about isolating his experiment subject (he lets Holloway wonders around after infecting him??). What if David accidentally infects other crew while walking around with that drop of alien material on his finger!!

 

And in a film hinting at Xenomorphs, Fox should have introduced some bad-ass alien lifeform instead of segueing into a STAR TREK-like story. That pisses off the fans who contributed to the big $50 million opening but would subsequently bad-mouth the film. If they are going to do Engineer story which I find very intriguing, they shoulda killed the Alien reference from the get-go.  If done properly, this movie coulda earned $200+ million. I think the sequel will have more hardware & action, mirroring Cameron's ALIENS.

 

Ridley wants to do the Engineer story. Fox wants a new ALIEN franchise after AVATAR & APES success. Recipe for disaster when heads & egos collide on multi million dollar project.

[dashrendar44]

Vickers line "Everyone but Holloway back on the ship!" is repeated again & again in the trailer. She only burnt Holloway who is confirmed infected. She doesn't want to burn down everybody.

 

I didn't say otherwise...She has strong suspicion that Holloway is contaminated indeed, she wants to burn him down.

 

But the rest of the crew that have been in contact with him this whole time is not put on quarantine or examinated in case of contamination spreading. Very uneven protocol.

 

Then you have Shaw's case because of David mischievous plead just to further the script and the much fan anticipated caesarian section.(Why the 2 doctors that Shaw knocked out but they go along sing Kumbaya the scene after, are so conniving with David like they know what he did and that contaminated Shaw? Why there is no confrontation between all those characters scheming against each other when shit happens FFS?!)

 

The ragtag crew is selected because nobody wants to risk themselves on a journey to search for God. Also, evil Weyland wants disposable scientific subjects, not real pHDs.

 

So Weyland deliberately recruited incompetent subjects to form a ragtag crew that risk at any moments of crashing a trillion dollars mission because of their lack of professionalism and reckless behaviour in the first place? (What if they crashed on the planet with him on stasis being clueless or bring a monster inside the ship rampaging the whole crew during his cryo-sleep). Where's the logic in there is Weyland's life and purpose depend actually in the competence and the success of those subjects to discover how he could become immortal? If they all die, Weyland and the mission failed.

Edited March 10, 2013 by dashrendar44

[kayumanggi]

Anything positive to talk about?

[zackzack]

What sequel? Ridley is doing a Moses story at Fox called EXODUS with Christina Bale starring.

Edited March 16, 2013 by zackzack

[zackzack]

http://collider.com/christian-bale-moses-exodus/

"..now it appears that Fox is ramping things up on Exodus as Scott is looking to make the pic his next film after he completes post-production on The Counselor..."

 

There goes the plan for PROMETHEUS 2 which is slated for 2014.

[grim22]

Fox is having difficulties cracking the "Prometheus 2" story:

 

http://badassdigest.com/2013/03/27/prometheus-2-a-complete-clusterfrak/

 

The fact that there's going to be a Prometheus 2 is such a shocker that even Fox doesn't have much of a plan for it, according to a Bloody Disgusting report. The site says that the studio is taking meetings with just about every writer in town trying to figure out where the hell to go next, as absolutely nobody has a vision for the thing.

The fault, the report states, is Damon Lindelof's. When he came on to rewrite Jon Spaights' draft of Prometheus he turned the film into the first chapter of a trilogy, but then he left the project. Probably, it seems, because he had no idea where the trilogy should go after the finale of the first one - something any fan of Lost can tell you was in the cards. Lindelof has strong concepts, but bringing them home has never been his strong suit. 

Edited March 27, 2013 by grim22

[Dementeleus]

^^ There's a lot of editorializing in that piece. There's one person -- Ridley Scott -- who clearly had some concepts he wanted to explore with Lindelof... if he's not interested anymore that's one thing, but to lay the entire mess on DL is stupid.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Telemachos

[Neo]

^^ There's a lot of editorializing in that piece. There's one person -- Ridley Scott -- who clearly had some concepts he wanted to explore with Lindelof... if he's not interested anymore that's one thing, but to lay the entire mess on DL is stupid.

It was him that pushed for the trilogy and then left. I see the majority (if not all) of the blame on Lindelof.

 

Who is telling the truth?

Edited March 27, 2013 by Neo

[Michael Gary Scott]

If i was Lindelof i wouldnt come back eithet with all the hate he got last time

[Dementeleus]

It was him that pushed for the trilogy and then left. I see the majority (if not all) of the blame on Lindelof.

 

Who is telling the truth?

 

Scott was the one who brought in Lindelof. As producer/director, Scott was the final arbiter of what the story was going to be. If he wanted to shoot Spaht's draft, he could've. He evidently wanted a more open-ended story with the possibility of a side-franchise expansion. They could easily continue the trilogy concept (as pitched by Lindelof), either by using other writers in that framework, or seeing if Lindelof wanted to return (down the road). If they want to throw out the trilogy concept, that's fine, but that's not Lindelof's fault.

[Dementeleus]

And, courtesy of SlashFilm, here's Lindelof's response:

 

http://www.slashfilm.com/exclusive-damon-lindelof-explains-the-unglamorous-truth-behind-prometheus-2-rumors/

 

While I’m happy to maintain my ongoing role as internets whipping boy (well, not happy, but at least resigned) this is a weird attack piece, even for someone who should be used to it by now.

The unglamorous truth is this:

During the creative process of Prometheus, all involved (that includes Fox and Ridley) had a strong desire for this film to launch off in its own way so that by the end, it would not connect directly to the original ALIEN, but instead run parallel to it. This is something that I talked about many, many times in the press burst around the release of the movie. As you probably remember, there was a lot of interest as to whether Prometheus was a “prequel” — the answer was, “Yes. Sort of. But if there was a sequel to Prometheus, it would not be ALIEN.”

Taking the strong foundation that Jon Spaihts had already written, I worked on the script to this end — and yes, during that process, Ridley did occasionally riff on what he felt might happen next as Shaw and David’s Head ventured off of LV-223 in search of wherever The Engineers had come from.

After the movie came out and discussions began about a possible sequel, I was already neck deep in writing and producing TOMORROWLAND with Brad Bird. I have found, unfortunately, that if I take on too many projects at one time, there is a higher probability of those projects sucking. And contrary to popular belief, I do not want anything I work on to suck. I really don’t. I care about these stories deeply — not just as a writer, but as a fan. It might not always feel that way to the audience, but I swear to God it is true. It also so happens that Ridley was about to embark on directing his next movie, THE COUNSELOR, and had another one, CHILD 44 lined up right behind it. The conclusion was obvious — In the best interest of the franchise, it was best to take myself out of the running before I had to suffer the embarrassment of potentially not even being offered it.

And that it is the complete (if not somewhat boring) truth.

As to whether Ridley and Fox are “freaking out” about me not working on a sequel, well that’s news to me. I retain awesome relationships with both. More importantly, the idea that there aren’t many, MANY writers out there capable of taking the reins is sort of ridiculous. I did not map out a trilogy and then walk when the going got tough. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know me and doesn’t know the truth.

The process of working on Prometheus with Ridley was one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me. Love or hate the result of that work, I don’t regret having done it for a second.

Bloody Disgusting was very clever in tagging their story with the sentiment that denials were going to come. This would seem to throw shade on me denying the veracity of the story simply by anticipating that I would.

But denying the story I am.

As I said, I will take all the abuse in the world for the things I have done, but I refuse to take it for the things I have not.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Telemachos

[Neo]

Scott was the one who brought in Lindelof. As producer/director, Scott was the final arbiter of what the story was going to be. If he wanted to shoot Spaht's draft, he could've. He evidently wanted a more open-ended story with the possibility of a side-franchise expansion. They could easily continue the trilogy concept (as pitched by Lindelof), either by using other writers in that framework, or seeing if Lindelof wanted to return (down the road). If they want to throw out the trilogy concept, that's fine, but that's not Lindelof's fault.

Aren't there contractual agreements, where the director has to use a % of the script turned in. Also deadlines Scott couldn't have thrown the script away, could he. One problem that would have faced is inflated budget + more shooting time and we know how this movies turn out.

[Dementeleus]

Aren't there contractual agreements, where the director has to use a % of the script turned in. Also deadlines Scott couldn't have thrown the script away, could he. One problem that would have faced is inflated budget + more shooting time and we know how this movies turn out.

 

No, I don't think so, especially not in terms of protecting the writer.

[The Stingray]

Get Jon Spaihts.

 

I did have a plan for multiple films and the conversations I had with Ridley was about a new franchise, from the beginning. We talked about a possible trilogy, or a duology, but more often as a trilogy. And I did have pretty broad notions as to how we were going to get from this world to the original Alien - the baton pass, closing the circle, if you will. So yes, I did have plans for two other films. I came up with an even more twisted sequence than the Medpod, but I cannot tell you what happens...

My vision of the trilogy would have involved the arrival of the Yutani Company and a couple of other major plays around the Engineers themselves: the revelation of an additional grand Engineer design, and the possibility of seeking an Engineer homeworld.

Edited March 28, 2013 by The Stingray

[The Stingray]

[Ozymandias]

 

The nerd just wanted some pussy.

[Gazz]

Get Jon Spaihts.

 

Not if the script is anything like his version of the prequel.

 

His draft may have a better first act with an in-movie scientific reasoning to back up the reason for the expedition but it suffers many of the same flaws as Lindelof's and much worse.