Michelle Johnston
MemberChestbursterMay-15-2016 10:23 AMThanks Chris and the "news" is good PR for the larger film going community without really telling you anything.
I have really enjoyed the conversations on your platform. I am sure it is awhile off yet but I do not want to know the film before my first viewing. Stills out of context are exciting, and Ridley's generalised remarks but reveal nothing but I saw the Prom trailer after I went to the movie it really gave the plot away ! I certainly want to avoid that !
MonsterZero
MemberXenomorphMay-15-2016 10:45 AMThis is welcome news! not unexpected...but still welcome!
The last 4 Alien movies really haven't had any 'burster' scenes...Prometheus had one, but it was to a character we didn't care about(well..at least I didn't care about!) and Alien 3 was supposed to be the last burst scene.....(Alien 3 had a full prison to chest burst! Should have been a chamber of horrors with hundreds of inmates chest bursting! (Newt should have been carrying a Queen)
"Are you feeling well Newt?"
"Not really feeling good Ripley...think..i'll lie down...")
Good to see a return to the roots!
*BURST*
Thoughts_Dreams
MemberNeomorphMay-15-2016 2:20 PMIt seems interesting but they must do a lot better as far as the characters go this time. The better the characters are the more you feel sympathy with them and the more tragic it is when they die.
Chris
AdminEngineerMay-15-2016 3:50 PMAgreed, the only character I felt sympathy for in Prometheus was Shaw... And she's not in Covenant. The problem is the cast is larger, so I assume they'll focus primarily on 2-3 characters and the rest will essentially act as "red shirts" or Xenomorph food.
As excited as I am to see more ALIEN, I really hope they keep with the going mysteries that Prometheus introduced. That angle is what I'm most intrigued about.
MonsterZero
MemberXenomorphMay-15-2016 4:11 PMNot sure which character in Prometheus I would have felt sympathy for.
Even in Alien, Kane was kinda 'meh'...not sure I cared at all about his death. "OMG they killed Kane!!..How could they..?!"
Dallas was the one I cared about in Alien....Maybe Lambert? I worried about Dallas in the vents and Lambert getting the oxygen tubes.
Prometheus ...Capt Janek was about the only one I could think of....What if Capt. Janek fell down one of the air shafts and into a nest of pods, was facehugged....and by the time the crew rescued him the facehugger had scuttled off? I doubt David would have told anyone about the thing inside Janek.
Janek "I've been having some nasty nightmares..."
David "Really? Let me give you a sedative....."
Janek "Having some really bad heartburn too..."
David "Something you ate perhaps?"
I think writing a strong character and then killing them off is a tough task.
Chris
AdminEngineerMay-15-2016 9:26 PMI definitely had sympathy for Ripley and Dallas in Alien. I didn't want them to go after the Xenomorph. I even felt scared for Jonesy. Alien and Aliens did a fantastic job of creating characters you felt for and actually cared about. I'm hoping this sense of relatability and proper character development are present in Covenant.
Michelle Johnston
MemberChestbursterMay-15-2016 10:17 PM@ Chris
Agreed, the only character I felt sympathy for in Prometheus was Shaw...
As excited as I am to see more ALIEN, I really hope they keep with the going mysteries that Prometheus introduced. That angle is what I'm most intrigued about.
Chris I think you summarise the twin objectives that I hope Covenant achieves. To put it in the negative
1) I do not want a number of stereotypical characters that we are supposed to care about and then a lot of Zeno carnage.
2) I do not want a pure action movie with no ideas or ideas that are left in the air.
To turn it into a positive.
1) I am hoping that whilst their is clearly mishap and horror which is relatable and marketable for the wider audience I want the characters to be fresh and move in away that neither Ash or Ripley or Shaw did. The company rep in the know needs to move through their views we have done the sleaze ball (Aliens) and compliance (Vickers). This time we need to be unsure how the "in the know" will react and that movement would enrich the philosophical element of the story. Indeed with David pursing an amoral view it needs to be framed against a reaction by someone who understands and feels morality and faced with applying it.
2) We need some ideas and background and depth and it can be big and philosophical, the great strength of Prometheus's addition to the series, but it needs to move from possiblities to some answers.
One interesting quality about modern life is the notion that characters should be bullet proof and the fact that characters did stupid things in Prometheus caused some to question its validity.
I take a quite different view people in life are constantly making and doing stupid things, incautiousness, pursuing our own individual vanities, cynical unsympathetic behaviour, dysfunctional self interest (Fifield), promiscuity (the Botanist) is everywhere and seeing that played out in a small way in Prom not only in some cases reinforced the main theme but made the movie more real for me.
MonsterZero
MemberXenomorphMay-16-2016 6:29 AM@ Michelle
I agree. You need varied personalities and dysfunction to make it interesting.
If Fifield(or all the characters, for that matter) were smart he would have released his 'pups' then returned to the ship....boring! David 8 should have been the only one allowed to leave the ship....Boring!
BigDave
MemberDeaconMay-16-2016 3:21 PMAs far as Stupid Characters go, Lindeloffs Draft was not so silly.... the changes that was made to shooting script made it more silly.
But yes they needed to do better.... there was a Better Prometheus Movie that could have been made and i was going to re-write Prometheus by adding a few elements of Spaights draft, but using most of Lindeloffs but throwing in a few of the actual movie plot too and tidy it all up by adding a few extra parts to tie it together.... and i think i could come up with a Prometheus re-write that would have left most of us thinking WOW!
May have to take this up one day.
BigDave
MemberDeaconMay-16-2016 3:34 PMAs far as how close the action is to the supposed leaks... who knows, the source claimed the movie would have TWO MONSTERS both different but both connected to the Xenomorph .. I guess its like if you saw the Deacon at the end of Prometheus and then saw the Creature in the Fresco... they never looked similar at all, but if you compared them both to the Xeno you could connect them both to the Alien.
But when they said Two Monsters this does not mean Literally Two... it could mean Two kinds... One was from a Event caused by David... This could mean we see Two Monsters... or could mean Two Kinds so we see 4X Monster A and one Monster B. As in Prometheus we actually had if we ignore Fifield... we had 4 Monsters in Total... related to the Xeno... 3 different kinds (2X Hammerpedes, a Trilobite and a Deacon).
But we cant be sure if those leaks are True, or how much of those will play a role in the next movie.
So when Fasbender says Multiple Aliens we have to assume the same kind of Alien and it is related to the Xenomorph.
But for a movie to work we need Survivors and at least two if we are to get a sequel that would follow them... and so we cant have a movie where we have say 4 crew members running off from 4 Xenos..
We have 10 Crew Members or so we can assume so far... 10 cast members not including Fassbender..
If this is the Total Crew and we have no Earth Scene or Rescue Scene so the only cast we see is on the ship like in Alien... or Prometheus after the ship has left Earth...
Then i would doubt we would see more than 3 Chest Busters if they want to give us a movie that would keep us on edge.
But again we dont know the full cast yet..... in Prometheus the Main Cast was only 9 Crew, Plus David Android and a hidden Weyland for 11.
But we had the Mechanic's X4 and Mercenaries X4
And so we dont know if the Covenant has a number of other expendable crew who dont make the main Cast List.
BigDave
MemberDeaconMay-16-2016 4:10 PMAs far as the old meets new, technology wise we cant be sure if this solely means the Covenant ship... i.e we wont see any scenes on Earth/Mars or other Company HQ.
But we have to assume its the ship, and space suits, but then we have to wonder why was Prometheus better... must be that after the failed Prometheus mission the company had no CEO and maybe had money problems?
But we have to remember Prometheus was maybe not the only Prometheus Class Ship that was produced... but we also have to ignore how more advanced Prometheus looked compared to the Nostramo compared to how fast the ships differ (20X FTL vs 47X FTL).
Steve Burg worked on Prometheus Ship Design and he is listed as working with Ridley again for Covenant
Dane Hallett is added to the Production team and a lot of their work is Weapons Designs but they also worked on Props and Creature Design and some of their work could mean they could be used for some Bio-Mechanical Designs we could see in the movie.
Matt Hatton is another Sydney based Concept Artists/Illustrator a lot of his art work seems to fit the storyboard artist work of which he has been credited a few times for. Maybe he is part of the Storyboard team? But he also has done a lot of Blade Runner Style works in the past too.
Geoff Kemmis works mainly on designing sets and models and usually interior and exterior shots.
Julian Scalia is someone who like above mainly does sets and interior designs.
Jeremy Love is someone who has mainly worked on creature and character designs but also vehicles and small craft for movies. It would appear his design style could suit the Rovers (if any), Space Suit designs, but also maybe Look of any Engineers or Statues etc dedicated to the Engineers.
Evan Shipard is mainly a environmental designer i could see him being someone who would design what Paradise would look like after Post Shooting effects and also designs of any ruined Engineer Architecture and he also does a lot of back ground matte art work so the kind of guys who changed the Iceland Shooting Location to how LV-223 looked on screen.
Those are the main credited Artists for Concept Designs and so maybe their work could give us a feel of what we would see.