Alien: Covenant is not a film I would have made, says James Cameron

I wish they would team up or something. They both made the best two movies in the franchise and I think they could create an amazing Alien movie together because they would balance each other out. I know it will never happen but one can dream.

@ Chad Ripley

They almost did, but FOX replaced their movie with AVP :(

"I don't see any method at all"- Cameron. The ingredients were there but Ridley has just lost the plot and unlike Cameron I won't support Ridley any further. That honest trailer actually nailed down how stupid the characters' narrative was. Pretty cinematography won't carry the day anymore.

@ Capt Torgo

Agreed.

Well ..Who did make A:C? The writers? Fox?

Aliens isn't a movie I would have made...Nor Alien3...or Alien:R or probably Prometheus...Or A:C....

" I don’t like films where you invest in a character and they get destroyed at the end"

Cameron, you destroyed Jonesy in ALIENS. 

Cameron didn't destroy Jonesy. He was the lucky one and got to live on earth, xenomorph-free.

I love A:C but i agree with Cameron, what they do with Shaw's character is not fair i would have rather a open ending for her to get is spot later in the next movies, what they do was just to please the Phometheus "haters" but them is the same problems. With Prometheus the fans wanna see they alien but they get a enginners story and a lot of fans get mad, and now the most wants to see the following story in shaws travel and enginners , and they get an alien movie.

Maybe if A:C would have relese in 2011 the fans would have like it, but we never could know it. 

How many Hadley's hope kids did Cameron kill in Aliens?

im sure quite a few kids were toast. newt was the only survivor but I don't think there were any specific numbers given to how many of the colonists were kids

Either way horror movies are supposed to horrify you sometimes.

 Some Writer/Directors are far too sensitive. I like the idea of the audience having to route for a character that gets snuffed out in the final 5 minutes. They should have had Daniels bieng fatally experimented on as the credits rolled. Her screams bieng drowned out by John Denver songs

^^^^ spot on

id have the opening scene in awakening being country roads blaring over the loud speakers. Tennessee's pod opening. as hes coming to we hear 'country roooooaaaaads' and just behind the song the chilling screams of a woman. Tennessee looks over and daniels is still there so it leads us to assume the colonists r being woken 1 by 1 and experimented on. chilling

Tennessee had a hidden agenda actually. He wanted the xenomorph hence "created" Shaw's message. Next sequel is a collaboration of David and Tennessee. :D

James Cameron's Aliens is a movie I can't watch. The only sequel I can watch is Alien3. I'm glad that Ridley is giving us a set of prequels that explains where the xenomorph comes from. A creature with acid for blood is genius. A queen with a head that is 5 times bigger than the rest of the body is stupid. Way to go James Cameron. What is your next act of stupidity, more Terminator movies................

I think the first 3 alien movies were the best because they had a coherent plot and kept the Xenomorph scary and mysterious. We found out it takes on the form of its host (alien 3, an Ox/dog) and we still had Ripley and Bishop (sorta). While I didn't like killing off everyone it at least had the right tone and if they were gonna kill Ripley off they picked a great way for her to go. 

I agree Jonsey did get best deal by staying on earth but it also would have been fun to see the cat running around in a movie. The jump scares alone make it worth it. I also agree they need to kill Daniels and Tennessee right off the bat in next movie. I would have liked if Ridley did it at the end of AC too. It is kinda implied that's what's gonna happen but I think literally seeing David experiment on them would have been a darker, scarier, and more satisfying end to an alien movie. 

Back to the where is this going question, I really hope the next one has a clear direction and gets the tone right. Alien = death and fear. 

Well if Cameron is not available to direct the next prequel after 'Covenant' then perhaps Scott should produce and let Fincher take the helm, thereby getting the chance to do what Fox wouldn't let him on 'Alien3'.

Still it's always interesting to hear what a director of one of the sequels thinks of the prequels - thus far.

I also appreciate Cameron giving Ridley praise as he could have easily caved in to the trend and threw shade. His review was spot on but I loved how Ridley handled the ending, it was so dark and you don't get a lot of films nowadays where the villain wins and is the main character. It's a refreshing change and Ridley knocked it out of the park.

The fact that you are so invested in newt and hicks and then they get killed is one of my favorite things about alien 3.

Timmy the ultramorph Yes! I was so broken about Newt but it fit with the darkness of Alien.

Even if I think A:C is pure garbage, since I eared Cameron explaining how Terminator genesis was an amazing movie during its promotional campain, his opinion of what's a good movie became extremely relative...

This is James Cameron doing a pretty good job of diplomatically saying, "Wow, A:C sucked."

"I think he is obviously trying to create a greater universe around it and more backstory with the Engineers and so on."

Is that obvious, really? It looks like he abandoned that almost completely. Fuck A:C for not just being a horrible movie, but mainly for ruining everything else Alien.

I like some of JC's output, he's an intelligent movie maker, no doubt, but what a glib comment about not liking movies where the main character(s) gets 'destroyed' in the end. Some of the most memorable stories of all time see their protagonists die in the end. Such stories take the risk of challenging our desire for wish-fulfillment. The Long Good Friday anyone? Night of the Living Dead, Romeo and Juliet, Oedipus? Like Spielberg, JC pulls his punches and story's end. Who can deny that the end of Spielberg's War of the Worlds is a betrayal of the movie's entire reason for being made, as an allegory for the losses and shock of 9-11? But I digress. . . .

I think its open to debate what Cameron means by its not the movie he would have made, without saying why.  Then it leaves it very open.. maybe he could mean the whole Dr Shaw Character from Prometheus but he could also be on about the investment and marketing into WALTER only to have him killed off (or so we may assume) also the ending does set up that Daniels will not be surviving the next movie.  I hope they find a better way to deal with her than they did with Dr Shaw, by that i mean just have her play as a Corpse or not even appear.

It will be interesting to see where they take the Franchise now for sure, i dont think Cameron will ever be playing a part as he has his own projects to work on.

I enjoy Shaw's fate and Daniels inevitable one, it makes you uncomfortable and sad for these people who struggle against the futility of it all. It's dark and it fits, Alien shouldn't have happy endings imo. I get how people can get invested in these characters but these aren't superhero films.

Cameron commented Ridleys AC in a polite way. When you read between the lines, you can feel he would have done it completely different.

James Cameron is a director who prefers to go on the safe side. Ridley has been experimenting which is good but sadly the results were only so so this time.

Sometimes less is more.

Cameron likes to build a Story/Tale based on some Central Characters, much like the Star Wars Movies do.

And so i think this is why he felt that investing in Characters to then have them killed off is not the kind of direction he likes to take Franchises down.

If Cameron had made Alien 3 i dont think he would have killed Newt and Hicks off, not in the way they did... maybe one would die in the movie but more  Sacrificial Way so their Death is not meaningless.

And so i think Cameron feels the same for how AC was done, its a case of does he mean how Dr Shaw was handled? how Walter was, or it could even also allude to the Fate of Daniels.

I think Cameron likes to build around Human Characters..

But the Prequels are revolving around a Character and this Character is DAVID.

" I don’t like films where you invest in a character and they get destroyed at the end"

Alien 5 Prometheus 2 was a solid 5/10! Alien: Covenant plotholes

 @milotomi

No, even if AC was Released in 2012 instead of Prometheus, it's still a broken movie. The story telling is subpar, almost every character in this movie is flat and completely expandable. The twist by Ridley to say David created the Xenomorph instead of the engineers is a smack in the face of many as it kills any mythology about the Xenomorph. Not a bio weapon based on a deadly protoform but as a result because an android wanted to play god as he was bored on that planet ?

From all 5 alien franchise movies (avps not considered) AC is the worst for me...sadly.

I own and have watched AC and all the special features. The cut scenes and The Crossing and Advent should have been in the movies, including the last supper. With all this it has bcome clear to me that this movie is a superior movie than even Prometheus, and I love Prometheus. Another thing I have noticed is that in 5 years Prometheus doesn't look dated. The same thing cant and couldn't be said 5 years after Aliens. I do think that maybe Ridley is trying not to make a movie about another "Ripley" character, which is why the sequels to Alien were tired.

IMHO - To James Cameron, Thank-You very much for not making AC, or for that matter, screwing up any other movie in the Alien World!  JUST SAY NO TO ANOTHER ALIEN QUEEN!!!!  ;)

Cameron's queen looked RIDULOUS! I am anxious to see what happens with Daniels. 

Seriously, what a guy like Cameron, who directed his last "recognizable" movie back in 2009, has to say about Sir Ridley, who doesn't call it a day by the age of 80?

Of course he wouldn'd have filmed "Covenant" - he hardly ever direct at all!

Translation: it was crap but he's a mate so ill be nice.  :D . But in all fairness Cameron has lost his touch as well all people seem to as they get older...

"I think Cameron likes to build around Human Characters.."

Prometheus and Covenant should have been done that way because that would make the human characters better. I have said this before and I say it again: human characters are number one because if they don't work then the rest will not matter at least not to me. Maybe with this in

mind it would have been better if Cameron would have made Prometheus and Alien Covenant?

Aliens feels a bit old but at least it has better characters than AC and Prometheus.

"Pretty cinematography won't carry the day anymore."

Yes, they got to focus on the human characters. It doesn't matter if the environment looks great if the characters are anonymous or dis-likable.

Thoughts_Dreams

TD your first language isn't english but what you are correctly identifying is whats known as mediation. A character or characters has to mediate the narrative for us to be engaged. Thats why Ripley is so iconic she is all our fears and wishes for survival and for beating the s..t out of Weyland Yutani's nasty agenda and she went all the way in 3 and sacrificed herself. We are on her journey. Right now we are on no ones journey

As to others remarks 

This idea that nixing characters Hicks,Newt and Shaw is great because it makes the films dark is frankly arrant bollocks. The reason they were killed off was to change the direction of the next story and anyone being honest with themselves knows it is merely plot point convenient. That would not be an issue if there had not been excellent creative ways they could be carried over into the next phase to enhance the storytelling. These films are supposed to be symphonic building an over arching arc. We have lost Shaw, who I know you personally do not like, but nevertheless she mediated the revelations of LV223 with Janek's help and ultimately went to Paradise for answers which were set up in Prometheus and just to show how damaging that has been it has killed the natural momentum of the story and we then spend an hour in Covenant building characters who once again are all dead, riffing the first film. Time is precious in a story like this and huge amounts of time have got us to two conclusions.

1) David is dangerous and unreliable both in the narrative and more importantly as the narrator. Ironically if Advent is true you can skip Covenant and move straight to the next point on the board and you will not notice a thing. 

2) He created the particular protomorph we see at the end of the film.

Every other really fascinating element set up in Prometheus remains mere conjecture, thats what happens when you waste time restarting and do not have a character who is mediating for you. David cannot he is a robot who will do anything, say anything.  

Ridley may want to spin this out for financial reasons and he has put us off the scent by completely changing direction but anyone paying attention and giving themselves permission to be honest with themselves may find their attention wandering.

As Ridley has said you need a good script and whether its sci or any other story you need to be engaged with the central characters.. of which we currently have none. Thats not dark its a fog.   

Prometheus was Cameron's idea in early 2000s. So Cameron's involvment in Alien saga goes deeper than Aliens. Is that his way of telling Scott I wanna help you out here? 

...and Avatar is not a movie Ridley Scott would have made ;)