Alien Covenant and Beyond: The Three Film Story Arc

It's hard to say before the movie is out but I think he'll make one after this one to join up to alien and I also wonder how soon he will start on it.

i do believe alien covenant will be a box office hit and fox will push for the next installment asap

In the future, I think the series should orient around one (1) character throughout so that it won't get over-complicated. At the moment DAVID looks like the only good contestant for this role. 

But earlier today, I heard news on Facebook that COVENANT would actually bridge PROMETHEUS with ALIEN.... So maybe there won't be 2 more sequels???

Why it needs to take four films in order to explain Alien perplexes me -- the others haven't even been thought of yet (let alone written), they're just placeholders.

And thus far, we've gotten more impertinent questions rather than the answers to the pertinent ones posed in Alien. This is a Ponzi scheme if ever I saw one I tells ya. If I were a cynic (which I am), then I'd say Fox is working this golden goose hard for every ounce.

Listen, if the next three films have a tight story arc and builds momentum into Alien then fantabulastic. But if we end up meandering around religion, philosophy, and yet more poorly named spaceships containing under-developed alien-fodder, then Sir Ridders will have screwed the thing from "the back-end" (as he calls it), as much as others have screwed it from the front-end.

I really really want RS to get to work on the third part ASAP. He's not getting any younger, and as we saw with so many people (e.g., Carrie Fischer, Debbie Reynolds) recently, you just never know when your time is up. I know that's a macabre outlook, but, it IS part of reality. I don't trust the Alien story to anyone else, quite frankly. 

So, Please Sir Ridley---Get started on part III, howabouttit? Please???

Well, Starlogger, Titan books have released along with a preorder and synopsis of the movie novelization, a movie sequel novelization. This, combined with the fact that the film was moved up 3 months, leads me to believe that we will be getting a sequel sooner than we all expect 

Poorly named spaceships lol

 I'm interested in learning how he will tie these films into the derelict being it has been marooned for 2000 yes

@Xenowarrior1,

If all else fails, there is always the time portal/parallel universe ploy to tie everything together nicely, neatly and easily.  

I think the potential is for many movies..

But if the ultimate aim is to connect the Xeno to the Space Jockey and AC gives us Aliens in it... i dont think we need more than two movies... 

As far as exploring the Space Jockey/Engineers, who are they what do they do... and where else are they and what else have they done... then this aspect is huge and can spawn many movies.... its if Fans want it..

Prometheus has created Prometheus Fans..

We have Alien fans who care not for that movie or where it was going and would be quite happy to see AC show a 12 year old Ripley as the new/old newt and see Xenos and Xenos then Alien 5 with Ripley and a older/new Newt.

Then you have those stuck in the middle... i think AC is aimed at these guys... trying to please both.... unless the 4chan leaks are 100% correct and any details left out otherwise are because they ant happening..

Thankfully Ridley Scott and Wayne Haag give me some comfort thats not the case..

I'd like to see one, maybe 2, more films after AC.

If AC makes the tie in to ALIEN (which I think you can already infer a little into from the events in Prom - they just aren't 100% clear) then the next film(s) could explore the Engineers and their agenda, culture and link to humanity and the xeno in more detail. (the door is also open for spin offs but I hope RS is the one who deal with this and I share your sense of urgency in this regard).

As it stands here's my mini take on the whole saga:  (although it changes daily lol ;) 

2 factions of engineers exist(ed).  One who 'creates' and one who 'destroys'.  We saw the former at the start of Prom and the latter on LV223.  I believe they were/are working for an as yet unseen party; possibly the 'original' engineers/Elders

I believe the 'creators' began operating out of their mandate so to speak and started to meddle in their creations.  This was against the 'Covenant' with their masters and they unwittingly unleashed hell/xeno onto their race.  They also began idolising themselves and their work . . .

The 'destroyers' set out to clear up the other groups mistakes and some kind of war or sabotage happened leading to LV223 and LV426.  I believe the 'Elders' may have then intervened and contributed to the destruction scenes we find on Paradise.

Humans survived (on Earth) and in time we went to the stars, got one hell of a shock and met our makers.

I feel we may need to meet the engineers to help get rid of the xeno but we may find it is too late.

It looks to me as if the fate of the engineers is going to be somewhat repeated with humans - their abomination/creation.

i.e. Our own self-serving creation may turn on us and potentially lead to the destruction of our race and civilisation . . .

There you go.  Bit simple really and why I don't write scripts lol ;)  I think that is a fair guess but the one bit I'm not happy with is the 2 types of engineers.  Perhaps some went rogue or they changed as a whole from good to bad . . .

@Deep Space great post! Very well thought out.

The existence of at least two factions is clear, but what their beliefs, points of contention, and full purpose stays a little fuzzy. I don't know how much RS is even going to cover that portion of the story.

Sowers and Reapers feels more correct to me than creators and destroyers, but that's just semantics. They are mad enough to shoot at each other. That's gotta be important. The million dollar question is "Is Paradise a ghost town before or after David and Shaw get there?" Once again great post

Thanks Myrddin :)  Sowers and Reapers - I like it! 

My feeling re Paradise is that it was a ghost town (for the most part) when D&S arrived.  My feeling is something may have been on the ship that caused what appears to be a crash landing or perhaps David/Shaw simply couldn't land the thing with the finesse of an engineer . . .

That's the general consensus. It's clear that the engineers on Paradise died from a goo outbreak, when is the unknown variable, but most seem to think long before Shaw and David arrive.

@Stan Winston

Good one. ...under-developed alien-fodder... HEHE XD

For the people who think the black chemical killed off the engineers, how would have done it by charring there bodies? When it has totally different effects on other living things.

im just trying to expand your theories

@Deep Space

Somewhere in that ball park makes sense.... indeed i have similar views... actually very close.. some views the same but then i also look at it and its all a Fork in the Road or Spiders Web... where like your theory..   we can ask...

This part could be This.. or That...

But certainly what you say is possible and it has to be at least i would say as far as being at least 30-40% on the Money... maybe even as much as 80% +  certainly loosely.

This is the beauty with the ambiguity we cant really find a solid connecting theory where we can go... THATS IT.. no IF's and BUT's  But the clues and comments point us in a direction that indeed has to touch upon a lot of what you have said which is what a number share on here too...

I think its these Elements that was the cause of so many re-writes and writers.

@Shasta cyclone

Who knows... its a very very interesting Set Shot for sure... very puzzling..... Here are the Facts as we see from that shot to try and Gauge it..

1) The Shot is definitely 100% Props, they have more detail than Pompeii victims... they look like as if they have been in a Flood and have got Muddy Silt on them...

If its the Black Goo why not cast in Many Actors in small extra roles... cover them in Mud and Play out a Scene that can be altered with CGI after?  Or even Cast less but then CGI replicate them?

2) The Props are normal human size... if these are Engineers why not attempt to create Larger Props like the Engineer Bodies in Prometheus... unless this Scene we wont be getting interaction with Humans or David... not as far as Face to Face.

3) The Props lack some detail... some have no hands or feet as though they have become Statues.... but this is maybe because its a distance Shot with lots off after effects so we wont notice some have no hands or feet etc.

4) If its a Live Shot... i.e they are going to drop some Black Goo or Burn these Props... that will be practical effects then CGI over.... it would look odd as to not see no movement...  If the scene is short... like few seconds.. then they can get away with that....

Here is what i am drawn too.

A) It cant be a Black Goo aftermath shot.... i.e they will have these bodies like Pompeii if its from the Black Goo as the Goo would break down the Engineers or Mutate them...  maybe this can happen but Props are for a basis... but then if they have to CGI some action... would it not make sense to CGI the whole sequence?

And would Black Goo break down the statues, and Big Head etc? 

We see not Urns but we do see, in other leaked Shots.. Black Plastic Pouches.. similar to Special Effects Blood ones.. so they will explode to create Blood Splatter... or Black Goo... but then surely there are other means to Spray Black Goo... so it could be for Blood.. as Engineers had Black Blood.

The No Urns can be explained if the Urns are loaded into a device that they break down or only use the Black Goo from them in some sort of Giant Super Soaker Gun.

B) It would be a lot of hard work to use the Props as pointers to set up how they want the scene to look first, then replace them in next shot with real Actors... surely using a Painting and Story board and then place far less detailed things on the set as pointers..

So it will be interesting to see what this actually is...

There are some very good clues...

*We have Female Engineers.

*The other photo of Daniels/Male in-front of a similar set in the dark shows no Bodies... no Urns... but is the same scale ish compared to Daniels and those Engineer Props... which points to maybe these Engineers being smaller than the LV-223 ones.

*Walter/David has a Engineer cloak in the one shot.. which fits perfectly...

Maybe these are not Engineers well the Sacrificial Scene Guys are more Human in Size?

This fits with the Source saying about P2 Spring 2015 about how Mankind has been to the System before, that Mankind now is like 4th or 5th Generation of our kind and we dont evolve from Apes.. but similar to that theory only Engineer DNA is linked and not Ape..

That the Biblical accounts of Punishment against Mankind are connected but not quite the same and the events not connected to current Mankind..  Which means Biblical God Disasters and Punishments happened in context but not to our current Generation...  Finally Mankind plays the greater role in the Xenomorph..

I think the Source hinted at maybe seeing previous Generations of Mankind, being Punished..

This was way before AC never mind those Sets..

Looking at the size of those beings, and Temple and then size of Daniels to the Temple.. and the Cloak Fassbender wears...

I am now thinking we are seeing these beings as being our Ancestors... not creators... we are a Evolution... are we a Evolution in the attempt to save them.. or as a experiment that their creators know nothing of.

Are the LV-223 Engineers just evolutionary descendants also created a Bio-logical Terminators or are they the result of Genesis 6:4?

Interesting topic David007, thanks really.

This probably depends on how much they are interested in explaining. Let me start by dividing this into two groups:

• Alien fans
• Prometheus (space jockey) fans

By alien fans I think about those that want the answers to the Xeno. Where it came from, who created it. What was the purpose of it if there was any at all?

Fans of Prometheus are those that I can imagine care about

• The engineer and its home planet and
• Shaw and what happened to her idea of going to the Engineer home planet; basically, what happens to Shaw

If I must strictly separate those into two parts (P and A) I would consider myself of an A guy (= those who are mostly interested in the Alien connection) rather than the Prometheus connection and what follows from it (mankind’s connection, Engineers, what ever).

I care about Prometheus because it is a part of the Alien universe, I would be less interested if it wasn’t. Despite all its flaws it is still somewhat interesting since it is a part of the Alien universe but I doubt that I would care if it wouldn’t be. As a standalone movie, it simply doesn’t hold.

They seem to tie AC closer to the Xeno which I think is a good thing (at least that gets my attention). Let’s hope that the movie is at least as good as the information suggests that it is. It seems that they have listened to some of the criticism that Prometheus got so we will get better characters this time and not too much vague things. Some mystery is fine but when it becomes too much it just gets confusing (Lindelof and Prometheus). My hopes are getting somewhat higher for this movie that it will be a decent one at least Lindelof is gone. I don’t want to bash Lindelof but from reading Spaight’s draft and from reading what became of Lost and how Prometheus was done and from reading Lindelof’s Prometheus draft I simply think that it would have been better if he would have been left out. He probably wasn’t the only one to blame but he didn’t help things. I simply don’t believe that a failure of a team effort can be blamed on one person. The editing of Prometheus was also a disaster (leaving of the Fifield Zombie, cut out the scene when they found a larva which I think that either Fifield or Millburn found) so that didn’t help.

Hopefully Shaw is dead so we don’t need to see her at least not in the way that she was in Prometheus. Maybe David has evolved her or something, even though I don’t really want David to be another Ash. If David is a new Ash in AC then they need to have good human characters and some of them need to survive AC since I assume that there will be many deaths so I hope that the main character is well developed and will survive so they can use her in the next one. A good main character is a plus and if he or she survives then they don’t need to come up with a new one for the next movie if there will be one. Perhaps better written characters could get the answers that Shaw was searching for so we might get a better Xeno connection and that they might be able to make the Engineers more interesting by making their connection to the Xeno clearer.

As far as the Space Jockey, I hope that they won’t give us all the answers about it. I prefer to have some mystery left surrounding it, which makes it more interesting.

I think that they should focus on what made this interesting in the first place:

• The monster
• The crashed space ship

Keep the focus on these two. I am less interested in the question if Jesus was an Engineer or Weyland’s immortality, in fact I don’t care about either of them.

If the AC script is good, then they could maybe keep the script writers but if it is another 2 out of 5 movie then they should get new ones if AC sucks. My patience is probably high enough to get another alien prequel making it three in total but after that they should be done IMO. Hopefully Alien Covenant will be worth the five years of waiting but they don’t need to wait this many years until the next one.

@BD  Well it's thanks in part to you and others on this site that have really helped me put the pieces together :)

As you say, I think the broad strokes are fairly obvious it's how the little details tie together that will be interesting to see.

Still, you never know, RS could really throw us a curve ball in AC and the next film(s) . . .

Holloway's skin was grey before they torched him. He was dying from goo ingestion. Engineers don't have hair in the first place. He wasn't going Fifield, he was just dying. Had he gotten a bigger dose he might have completely disintegrated, or just given more time, but it looks like he might have just vomited black goo and fell over dead.

Maybe I'm just seeing things but:

1) In the top left corner, the 2nd engineer. What's that between his legs (no pun intended)? Another one?

2) The dark stuff on the ground seems to amass around those who were dead before the "petrifying". But not underneath them like i would expect from a dissolving process.

3) Lower left, bit upward. An engineer, lying on his back. Is that a hole in his chest/belly?

@tiwaz

1. Another one in front of him... Or a tail...

2:vomit fits the patterns in some cases, maybe "bleeding" black goo.

3: It looks like an emaciation indentation more than a whole.  

Another odd fact about this pic: there is a noticeable change in skin coloration between the heads and bodies. Most noticeable at the top of the frame in partial shadow. Whatever happened completely dessicated (removed all liquid from) the bodies they haven't been burned.

@Thoughts_Dreams

Nice summary and indeed we get different sets of fans... i think this movie is going to try and please those more like you and those like me (not that having different favored outcomes is important).

its going to i think give us more a Planned Prometheus 2 meets Spaights Alien: Engineers....

The outcome maybe then leave them to look at the aftermath (what fans reception is) and then Gauge things like.

*Right thats done.. can we now steer away from Alien in the next movie and back to the Engineers, then use a 3rd movie to Tie it all together...

*Crikey seems like Engineers are not going down to well with the Fans, and our Xeno coverage could have been more.

so they can then tailor the next movie to suit, what they think ultimately would SELL..

Ridley could maybe give us a bit of both but then not enough to please both sets of Fans and want to cover the Engineers more... if AC Bombs as far as critics...  and Fox feels they need to give more Xenos... and bring in the Space Jockey as a more Alien Race and forget the Engineers....  If this is not Ridleys Vision but a direction FOX would want to go if AC again did not do as well as planned..

Then Ridley would have to give into what ever FOX wanted or they would bring in someone else...

Unless Ridley has fleshed out his Story and Nailed down some things he has REQUESTED to be covered in order to have him on board and then Signed a Contract to allow him to have certain things his way?

"What's that between his legs"

This is why there are females... its a fight over who gets that biggest prize lol

We really cant be sure whats going on.... they appear to be as if they have had a Mud Bath and then left the Mud to dry on them.... the Floor has like Dried Mud effect too.

What ever has happened has left them all dead well some and at least in a very ill state,  so it would appear the effects of something that has deadly outcome as far as a Disease, Pathogen or some other Poisoning..

its hard to say if this is a Black Goo outbreak... it would fit with the Franchise and Black Goo or similar... but its hard to say if this is the case or indeed if its a event from thousands of years ago or a event more recent.  i.e after Davids arrival.

We need to look at the Theme of Prometheus for Answers...

The movie was about these Beings who we was Genetically Related too... the Engineers on LV-223 and the Sacrificial Scene (include Elders too) are Genetically connected with Mankind...  

The movie shows a seeding of DNA via a Mutagen Goo..... then also a attempt to destroy Mankind with another type o Goo.... which failed due to a Outbreak...

The other theme was about Creator, Creates and Creation then starts to behave or turn out in ways the Creator never intended or feared.....  and so Creator attempts to Punish their wayward or failed creation..

We see hints that David is showing signs of functioning in ways not intended and to act for his own desires and not his creators.....  Its hinted.. but more so in Ridleys comments that the Engineers may have done the same with their Creators. Or at least Hierarchy

Paradise Lost was a theme they was touching on... this is a theme that can still connect....

*We have God... who could be replaced by Gods (or the Top of the Hierarchy).

*We have Chosen Creations of the God/s who some Rebel against the rule and we have a War and the rebellious being Punished and Evicted from Paradise/Heaven

*Mankind is created, as a replacement and then Mankind is corrupted and then also Evicted and will Face numerous Punishments over the years for going against Gods Rule.

I think these themes are Loosely at Play.

This Disaster Scene would then be some kind of Punishment, its a case of is this Scene Punishment via...

*Gods/Hierarchy on the rebellious sub-creations.. be that rebellious Engineers.. or similar?

*As above but on some related Race who connect to Mankind and Engineers.. a earlier Ancestor of Mankind?

*Punishment against the Hierarchy/Gods... by their creations or rebellious Faction?

*Punishment to the Gods/Hierarchy new favored creation by those who  were against the Gods/Hierarchy.

OR.....

Punishment brought by David... which without good reason, and not allowing David to find out some of the answers Shaw and the viewers wanted... to relay them to us.. via maybe David being able to interpret before or after this Disaster what the Agenda was... of those beings and Engineers.

A Flash Back from a more Ancient Event could serve as a Narrative to explain those Big Questions more than David just unleashing Hell on them.... unless there is a event prior to this that we would get some information on WHY.

I hope they dont go the Whole...

Mankind created David because they Could..

Engineers created David because they Could..

So David destroys Engineers and creates something to use on the Covenant Crew and Mankind... because he COULD..

That would be a COP-OUT

It looks like these Engineers were bathing and then (in my best Woody drawl) Somebody POISNED the Water hole!