New Replies (Page 638)
3 hours maybe too long for general audience. But yes I prefer an 3 hours extended version in Blu-ray, and it will definitely boost media sales.
Maybe Fox can consider bringing Awakening into a TV series? It will give much more space to explain all the mysteries and develop characters.
Michelle Johnston in my opinion the fact that xenos will get away from the control of AI was present even at the end of Covenant, when the Protomorph attacked the image of David on the surveillance monitor.
It is clear that I want the xenomorph to be more than David can create through cross breeding and the derelict pilot to be an engineer or even an ancient being from engineers' mythology. I don't know why I get this feeling of fake xeno if they want to give all the credit to David. Maybe it's my lack of faith in machines.
John_Tucker That would be outstanding! I don't think that has happened on this forum- you could be a first!
I have written music to this song with a piano accompaniment. I'm a bit busy at the moment but I could probably have some sort of recording in a couple of weeks or so.
Probably, but I stand by what I said and at least a few likely agree.
joylitt I think so. I saw it in a mag called Mental Floss. It was listed among one of the ugliest pets. It was actually a pretty mellow creature.
dk Is that the infamous sumatran rat-monkey?
You can have your Hicks if I can have my Jonesy.
Jonesy is irreplaceable
Blasphemy- no Alien movie gets remade. However, let us go down that road a moment. Can Jonesy be re cast as a long fur black cat or a lanky bald cat?
Sharlto Copley (for all you Blomkamp fans ;-P )
jokes.
Karl Urban?
Tom Hardy is a lovely choice, he reminds me of Logan Marshall-Green.
Michelle Johnston Very thought provoking, and very Blade Runner. I think I get why you say the connection of this draft to Prometheus is very minimalistic. It is in the little details where that connection is made. Unfortunately, these lines didn't make it into the movie.
This idea that Ridley deliberately puts people of the scent is not true I think he speculates (The Beast is cooked) when asked a question. He hypotheses (The Jockey incident is contemporaneous within a few hundred years of LV223 break out) when asked a question given his current thinking.
However when he is promoting a movie he is about to shoot or starts to shoot he does not lay a false trail. In retrospect everything he has said abut Covenant from autumn of 15 to summer 17 is actually in the movie. (the Deacon is the fore runner, Shaw in a way, mortality verse immortality, David created the protomorph).
What I sense is a lot of people do not like the outcomes and do not like where its going and so they believe the next one will put those things right for what they want.
Do I believe the next movie will have a Xeno army, I do not have a view, but I believe when Ridley said they will get away from the control of A I I believed him.
Alien 5 Prometheus 2 was a solid 5/10! Alien: Covenant plotholes
Thank you for highlighting this particular dialogue. This is a perfect example of how the film could have revealed one of the core ideas which underwrote Prometheus and the mythos that Ridley was trying to create. That creationism is mechanistic.
What does an Engineer in our world do, solve mechanical based problems, in a sense its staring us in the face. This dialogue indicates that David has stumbled on a fundamental truth of this creation myth, that we the creations of the Engineers are no more than a mechanical construct in biological form. The notion of soul is a cheat, it is the complete anthesis of what Elizabeth believed. The Paradise we have arrived at is not the Paradise of our belief systems but of a society that Engineered things. THAT is why David referred to us as machines.
This idea places David, a more brutally obvious construct, at the centre of the narrative. It makes his disdain for mankind, in their behaviour and beliefs, poor and deluded and of course it gives him the authority to replace the Engineers and evolve his own creations.
As John Logan is writing Awakening it will be interesting if David is defeated essentially by only seeing part of the story that whoever created the Engineers offers us a different view of the truth of creation.
If this script had been played out in the movie we would have two questions hovering around :-
1) The final reveal of the Biomechanical creature.
2) The reveal of the hierarchy. Once you nail conclusively that the Engineers are just that... Engineers, who created them.
Not that it needs a remake, but I would say Tom Hardy or. Mark Whalberg
Thanks for your reply.
Like you I am interested in Paglen's draft particularly because John does not credit it which indicates he is not building on that version and does not require accreditation, though Paglen is in the film credits.
Just to clarify when we began discussing this two years ago you will recall I was very pleased that the combination of the Martian and John Logan gave me hope that the follow up would be much more character focused and out of character would come answers rather than the more impressionistic symbolic vibe of recent Green and Paglen movies.
I think the beats (two creatures/two Davids) and the philosophical point that the Engineers creationism involved mechanical aspects are all from your source period there is a direct thread.
What I think has been lost is the allegorical elements like (Shaw as Sin) and the emblematic ones (the significance of the naming of the film) and the riffing of Matrix etc etc that you often referred to and of course any sense of the mankinds experiences with the Engineers.
What I think this draft shows is a desire to make a straight forward more generic science fiction movie (the solar sails and protective force field) based around David and David, as is clear from the script, as the one who takes several pathogen evolved elements from the planet (eggs, parasitical insect life) and infect Shaw who was face hugged.
What then clearly happened from Nov 2015 onwards is the script evolved Guy Pierce and Noomi were invited down to Sydney and extensions were included artists like Matt and Dane added sub text and all of those additions were about making more connections with Prometheus whereas someone else has commented on the forum this script comes across as primarily an Alien origins movie ignoring Prometheus other than David brought the Pathogen and Elizabeth with him.
I would have preferred this version I think the final act is more elegant and focused and whilst some elements of the dialogue are better there are some losses. I think this would have played better to the general audience, entertaining in the way the Martian was but not to fan boys who would feel John is not respectful to the franchises past. I would defend this point because as you often remark the franchise as a whole is a mess with people getting bent out of shape by Morphing verses Queens, A verses A's, issues of continuity over sizes of Juggernauts and Jockeys and the basic premise that half the fan base is not interested in prequels at all and want the guy with denture issues to remain a mystery.
@Kethol
This is what I said in my first post about where John Logan's script sits in the continuity.
"Aaron absolutely, this is post Paglen/Green and is the beginning of the Alien Prefix period which began with Paradise Lost and morphed into Covenant".
What could be clearer. Kethol you come across like the patronising school teacher who knows best about everything when in fact you lose the philosophical and over arching points of whats being communicated. Your theory about the four different pathogens is over complicated nonsense and your trying to project your cleverness into the narrative because in the real world you know something about the real science of pathogens.
I am very happy to ignore your posts and please do the same to mine. I come here for relaxation and know the people I can banter with without them getting all self righteous and precious.
All the best to you and enjoy your time here I am sure someone finds you interesting.
@I Moon Girl, Nice to see your speculation. I'm interested in this kind of stuff. The corona (Sun's outer atmosphere) is extremely hot (millions of degrees) but is also wildly tenuous. It's as sparse as sparse can be. Any nuclear interactions taking place in the corona are orders of magnitude less productive than those from the other sources I mention, even in the case of a coronal mass ejection, the strongest type of solar flares we encounter on Earth. A CME involves spurting out billions of tonnes of matter in the form of kinetic energy. However, regular fusion at the Sun's core entails the complete annihilation of millions of tons of matter every second, converted to pure energy.
I do accept that we are dealing with a sci-if movie here, and they may have instruments that work in mysterious and wonderful ways.
As you say, neutrino bursts from the Sun have not been detected – they are very hard to detect – and would cause no damage to a spaceship for related reasons. You would need to be within 1AU of a supernova in order to be fried by neutrino flux, in which case you would have plenty of other things to worry about, like certain destruction from the explosion! This being the case, the damage to the Covenant was most definitely caused by a plasma shockwave.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'gravitational interference', and what bearing that would have on matters.
The Covenant wouldn't need to avoid a supernova for the same reason you don't need to avoid a meteorite when crossing the road: the chances of it happening are vanishingly small.
With reference to the Covenant's ability to predict the flare, Walter said that it was a random local event that cannot be predicted. I do accept that David may have gained access to advanced detector and hacking technology beyond the means of humans. But at the same time I have to square this with David's apparent surprise at learning of the mission's purpose.
Living near a star that David just happens to know will conveniently go pop; having the means to detect and hack a remote craft; going through an elaborate charade to feign ignorance of the colonists. I tend to go with Occam's Razor: all other things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one.
joylitt in that context he is probably referring to humans.
Lawrence of Arabia Is it reasonable to believe the writers would avoid the obvious course of events as set by Covenant? If they will continue on that storyline probably only the members of this forum and few others will go to see the movie.
The fact that David created the Protomorph does not necessarily means that he will create the xenomorph we see in Alien. My idea was that in Covenant we were shown the xenomorph is indeed created by biological and genetic engineering and meant as a weapon. However its own reproductive cycle does seem very ancient and by its biomechanical look the xenomorph was created within a civilization that possess biomechanical technology.
How do you think David may come to the xenomorph with only 2 facehuggers he brought on board the Covenant? It seems he needs more than cross breeding to get past the Protomorph design. Especially now when he doesn't have any pathogen.
I don't believe Ridley Scott would go further into David as the creator of the xenomorph only to justify his experiments from Covenant. I know I would like Covenant even more if not David is the father of the xenomorph. Let's wait for the narrative to be completed to see if it will fall apart or not.
For me it would be a lame idea to find out that David is the Space Jockey. If it will be so the whole alien universe and the franchise will fall apart.
auximenes that's what I recall too. That's why everybody prefers to believe the eggs were cargo sealed by the blue mist after loading. But at the same time the blue mist may be the result of the eggs themselves, as a self preservation method.
daliens yes, I get that. But what about the parts I highlighted . David says the engineers just wanted to create a good machine. What does he mean by that.
I like that the modular computing device is just a Rubik's cube spray painted silver. XD
Regarding the blue mist in/under the Derelict which covered the eggs, I recall reading that they were using lasers next door to the studio they were working on Alien and the Alien team thought they looked cool so they borrowed one for their movie. I don't think there was any plan for that mist originally as far as I know.
That poster is rad!
I like how minimal it is, very ALIEN.
It seems David sees himself as a human, he even signs the drawings as David Weyland. And he thinks humans only created the idea of soul, being actually soulless.
Why?
20th Fox is still contemplative about the future film(s).
Jonesy Sometimes that is exactly what art in general is- you may not like it at first, but it challenges one's sensibilities and provokes thought. Then it can be appreciated hopefully. I liked A3 and AR as well.
If he is referring to the xenomorph, then David is admitting he was not the first to try to create this "machine". Still, there is a lot of contradiction in what he says. I don't think the engineers would have adored David on the sole basis of being "soulless", because his free will would have made him unpredictable to them. That's not mi idea of a "good machine". On the other hand, the xenomorph is also unpredictable and dangerous and as such not a good machine.
IRaptus That's the spirit! Interesting cover.
I never would have guessed that something like we just saw in this video would have been used in the movie for the Xenomorph.
Thanks for the vid!
On the DVD and Blu-ray versions. The 4K ultimate pack has that new cover on it. I don't have a 4K monitor yet :(
IRaptus So in Australia you do get the original poster.
Alien3 is one of the most depressing movie experience I ever had. Back then when I watched Alien3 the first time I didn't know the storyline at all. I just anticipated it so much after ALIENS, wanting to know how Ripley, Newt and Hicks going to be. I didn't have a chance to watch it in the theater back then until it showed on local TV in mid-90s. I was so excited and I bought a brand new VHS to tape it. What I remembered most then, was my anticipation completely shattered. I was angry, felt cheated and depressed. They killed off Newt and Hicks in the first 5 minutes and I was not prepared for it AT ALL. From that moment I've learned how brutal life could be. It was a thought provoking film, it changed my life.
