Revenant Script: Man vs Gods

Originally posted on AVP GALAXY Forum For fun reading: [i]Revenant The Alien Prequel The film opens 30 years before the events of the original “Alien”. A team of planetary prospectors has discovered an incredible archaeological find on a distant, barren world: a massive citadel, an expansive city cut out of red cliffs, built by a seemingly omniscient and long-extinct alien race. The team had been sending regular reports back to their superiors at the ICA (Interplanetary Colonization Authority), and their sponsors at Weyland-Yutani. However, at the top of the film, something catastrophic occurs and the entire prospecting team is wiped out. Rather than send rescue, the ICA appears to take measures to cover-up the massacre. Our protagonist is a young woman named Melissa Sumner, an ICA Investigator and very much cut from the same cloth as Ellen Ripley. Sumner ends up digging into the massacre at the alien citadel and finds a conspiracy within rouge elements of the ICA to keep the incident a secret, especially from Weyland-Yutani. Believing herself to be instrumental in uncovering the truth, Sumner heads to the strange world with a hastily assembled team of Soldiers and Scientists to uncover the secrets of what happened in the alien citadel. Some of the members of the team include Silas, a sardonic but heroic pilot who serves as our Male Lead; Kuroux, an older, intellectual, experienced archaeologist; “Stiffy” Kurn, a young and excitable technician; Detts, a wily Kiwi planetologist; Teyhoff, a female science officer; Abeta, a rough-hewn and solitary Solar Ranger Officer; and Zolomon, a Solar Ranger Engineer, (and possible Android). The new team arrives in the barren world, only to find the desecrated remains of their predecessors. Strangely, most of the wounds on the bodies appear to have been inflicted by humans; the team seems to have slaughtered each other. The new team proceeds to establish a base camp, before the scientists head into the alien citadel under armed escort of the Solar Rangers in order to study the prehistoric remains, while Sumner tries to piece together what happened to the original expedition. As the science team studies the ruins, they find they were build by an utterly unknown and frightening species, a race of conquerors who controlled nature itself, turning themselves into a strange mix of bio-mass and mechanics, (fans will recognize these as the Space Jockeys). However, records in the citadel’s lower chambers indicate that conquerors ultimately fell to their own ruthlessness, having created a species of unstoppable destroyers which rose up and drove their masters to extinction. However, the Space Jockeys are not quite as extinct as the ancient city would indicate; three have been kept deep in the citadel in stasis, and are awakened by the humans’ incursion. The Space Jockeys activate the citadel’s defense systems to repel these intruders; a noxious air-borne pathogen is spread through vents into the entire city and surrounding mountains, and the entire team is infected. Unfortunately, the pathogen is a hallucinogen, causing those effected to delve into madness, seeing their worst nightmares come to life. This achieved, the Jockeys release a menagerie of Lovecraftian monstrosities into the city, any number of vicious monsters created by their race long ago: these include Ravagers, spike-covered dark-blue quadrupeds with tentacles coming from their faces; Grutes, monstrous Humanoid hairless Apes which resemble the Morlocks from HG Welles “The Time Machine”; and Silver-Heads, huge Insectoid killers, all curving scythes and grasping jaws. Now, the film descends into a living nightmare, as our heroes are in the grip of madness due to the pathogen, and the audience sees the rest of the narrative through the eyes of these unreliable narrators. The characters continue to hallucinate, seeing their worst monster nightmares come to life, including creatures that resemble the “Old Gods” depicted in the runes of the ancient city. Several members of the team hallucinate that their comrades are turning into monsters, and slaughter each other; the survivors must contend not only with their own hallucinations, but with Ravagers, Grutes, Silver-Heads, and the city’s automated defense systems. Towards the end of the film, our few remaining heroes end up fleeing through the city in an attempt to reach the other side of the mountains, (hopefully beyond the monsters’ range). As they transverse the cavernous ruins, they stumble upon the rest of the story of this horrible place; the race of unstoppable killers that the Jockeys first created, were HUMANS, (the Grutes being the degenerate descendants of the earliest Neanderthals). However, Man proved too violent, too uncontrollable, and the Space Jockeys created the Aliens, (which we only see in a holographic record), as a defense against Man. The Humans were fought back, and the survivors exiled to a remote, primal, blue-green world… As the end of the film, the three Space Jockeys emerge from their control chamber to deal with the humans themselves. Our heroine, Sumner, manages to kill them and escape, the sole survivor. However, the pathogen never fully wears off, and upon her return to civilization, she’s deemed insane and responsible for the death of her comrades by Weyland-Yutani and locked away in an asylum for the rest of her life. However, a few Company Executives find evidence that her story is true, and decide that these ancient “Space Jockeys” hold great technology, and if we ever encounter this race again, they must be investigated at all costs… The Beginning This is a story I’ve been meaning to put to paper for a while, and having just read the God-awful “Alien Harvest”, I decided to plot out MY pitch for an Alien prequel. Basically, I wanted a story which would serve to set up the rest of the franchise, without ruining ANY of the surprises of the original. How does one do this without giving away the lifecycle of the Alien, what it’s capable of, ETC? Simple: exclude the Alien. I wanted “Revenant” to truly act as a stand-alone Space Horror film, as opposed to ruining revelations in the original or delving into similar territory. I felt that how Mankind and the Company became away of the Space Jockeys, as well as exploring how the aliens came to be, a little more of the ancient Lovecraftian horror hinted at in the first film, the theme of man being the real monsters of the franchise, ETC, could more than occupy an entire film by themselves; in addition, we’d get several new varieties of Lovecraftian monsters (hopefully designed by HR Giger), as well as the horrific hallucinations of our protagonists. Anywho, there it is![/i] I would really love somebody in H'wood to develop this into a full feature. Awesome idea!