What would make a "perfect" Alien movie prequel to you---ignoring A:C?

I would keep Prometheus as is but instead of going more alien in the sequel id stick to the engineer story line and their connection to the goo and xeno. maybe see davids struggle to gain their knowledge so he can create what he perceives as his perfect creation. I also love the poster in the back ground of the xenos and engineers and was so hoping for something like this in AC so would like to see something along these lines in a future prequel 

That's kind of a tough one for a movie I thought needed no prequel. I think it would be interesting to see what the Company was doing with its research and also of how the Ash model came about.

Ha ha.... ill get back to you on this ;)

I could try to in a nutshell post my Plot for my in work Prometheus 2, which i abandoned as i could not really Nail down One route to explore the Whole Engineer Agenda...

My Plot did revolve around 20-25% David and Shaw, 10-15% Engineers History/Flash Backs.... 60% the Corporate goings on behind the Scenes in the Fall-out of Weyland losing its CEO and next in Line CEO...  and the Weyland-Yutani Merger... The Rest Set up a few Scenes to link to a Sequel.. where a Mission to LV-223 is Set... and David and Shaw's turn of event takes a turn when David throws Shaw under the Bus. So to speak

The whole Engineer one was tricky... which the next draft would have covered more... One of 3-4 versions of how to cover this.. i may indeed highlight in this post...

It would be a Sumerian Gods/Mythos... Meets HR Gigers Original Ideas but then my other ideas are also quite cool but just wont really match or connect with the other so i just Gave Up  in December 2013

i like dk's idea of the origin of ash. 

I will say covering my plans would be MASSIVE Post.... some Scenes i had fully written out lol....

The opening Scene was like Prometheus in reverse.. we see a Juggernaught type ship leaving a World, we get the Camera view of the Ship flying over a Landscape like Prometheus beginning, as it pans over the lake we see animals down bellow, and then we see a Shadow and then see the Juggernaught shaped craft leaving... it enters Space...  We go inside and see a Engineer and he makes a Destination to what looks like LV-223 on the Navigation System,  then he starts walking over to a Cryo-Pod  he peers inside.

And inside is a Early Primate Female, we look into her Brown Eyes... This Scene then changes to a Human Females Brown Eyes.... Dr Shaw....  we then flash to Davids Face..  he is looking at Dr Shaw... wondering what she is dreaming..

He cant read her Dreams no more, as he lacks that Technology... so he is pondering....  We then Flash to David Day Dreaming about Peter Weyland and a Few Scenes of Davids past.. that was similar but different to Alien Covenants.. I wont go into detail as it take a lot of space lol

Then David comes out of his dream, and looks at Dr Shaw.. and we then Flash to Dr Shaw having a Dream. 

Next Scene is in the Company Board Room... 

The Purpose of the Primate Scene, was to show the Engineers came back to Earth and took Primates to LV-223 to Evolve and then return to seed them back and so they continue to do this over and over, using LV-223 as a Greenhouse/Nursery where they Evolved and Experiment on created life and then when pleased they send the results back to Earth.

Hence why the Place was Terra-formed for Mankind to breath on.

Just give me believable characters that aren't space chimps. Like they actually behave like professionals wether a soldier or scientists. Combine those two and you have an astronaut, basically. Someone able to function at a high level without having major character flaws like the 'doubting fool Christian ' and NO lazy writing like Covvy.  Don't use tropes like the radios don't work or not wearing space suits as protection. Make the moment scary with working radios and clear terror filled communication or the virus cleverly still manages to get through the space suit somehow. Unfortunately if Ridley is at the helm he will just force his scattered impromptu ideals into making another mess. Tired of pretentious cràp but it does make Prometheus shine brightest of the two stars. And less androids, jeepers. 

Pan camera across ship showing David eviscerated by wild xenos then show some awakened colonists hiding and preparing for a fight before automated landing. Then bring in the enginneers and Wetland Yutani into the mix and everybody chases back to LV223 for more survival and terror. Get back to Aliens roots or go balls deep with Prometheus. Cheap budget with no Fassbinder and no big name actors and I'd have 'Get Out' director make it or 'It Comes at Night '

I would keep prometheous pretty much how it is exept having the deacon come out of the engineer earlyer so it could chase shaw and davids head around and give us some lagit horror.

for covenant i would keep the general plot the same but change the xenomorphs creation. instead of david killing and dissecting shaw, after bombing the engineers, shaw escapes from him and hides out in the destroyed engineer temple. then when the covenant gets attacked by the neomorphs, shaw resques them instead of david. from there, the neomorphs hunt them down while shaw gives the crew explanations. meanwhile david is experimenting on the neomorphs and ceates the xenomorph by weaponizing the neomorph. ( i am thinking is somehow a newborn neomorph is like dipped in black goo or something) the group finally bumps into david who would eventually fight waltr but instead of having david live and walter die, david would convince walter to carrie on his work right as david is killed somehow. very flimsy plot that I sort of just thought up now. dont judge

agree to put Ash in the prequel, linking his relationship with the Company and see how he's connected to David. Also we need put Jonesy in the prequel, he is badass. 

I'd probably go down the Ash route also.

Have him or her played by a well known actor.

Start by setting up the premise: Ash can upload or download his program(soul)into any synthetic body it desires.   The ultimate spy!

Have a scene where Ash walks by storage cylinder loaded with different synthetic bodies...one of the bodies is the Ash(Ian Holm) from A L I E N. He(or she) can chose any synth body that enhances the mission. Small boy/girl, old man/woman, etc......

Maybe CGI a scene where it uses the Ash body from A L I E N.....then back to another body(the actor playing the new Ash)

Tell the story.

 ...

...

..

at the end of the movie, Ash is ripped in two and destroyed.  The protagonist celebrates Ash's death!

The End.......

But then a drone, sent by Mother, recovers the Ash body and returns it to the lab.

Ash is uploaded in the Ian Holm body and given new mission orders

Then have the final scene: Ian Holm boarding the Nostromo.

No Space Jockey backstory...that remains mysterious. (Future Alien movies can explore the origins of the Space Jockey race.)

All very good and interesting ideas.

BD, I'd love to see your ideas as a bona fide novel or movie...!

From where we are now at the end of A:C i would go with....

Walter is on Planet 4 a few months

Teardrop Ship turns up..... With 2 Jugganauts

Walter & The Elders speak

The Elders want David alive to see who could do such a thing to their sacred place and trial him for his sins

David is on The Covenant building his army, trying to perfect his final design. with the help of MUTHUR and WY are in contact

By the time The Elders get to David he is at LV 223 collecting the bio weapons to destroy Earth and The Elders legacy

David has an army of Xeno by now although not bio-mech

Action ensues.

David has a Jugganaut ready as a last gasp escape plan with Eggs on board

Jugganaut takes off with David flying to Earth with his god plan failing he has one shot at the Earth

Last scene - One of the Embryos from the end of covenant which has been inside David all this time finally bonds with his synthetic DNA and just before he plots course for Earth, his chest opens and a 1979 Xeno is born. David loses control and lands on LV426

I would say that the 1979 Xeno that bursts from his chest layed the eggs which spawn the Xeno but i dont know if that would be acceptable.

EDIT: Maybe what bursts out of David ISNT a 1979 Xeno, they are in the eggs. This is what becomes Camerons QUEEN ??

Maybe David somehow connected Shaws reproductive system into his own body. Maybe he didnt swallow the Embryos, he is making them, he is an incubator to this and the spawn of one of these which somehow went wrong inside through a fight or a crash ends up hatching inside him instead of coming out as an Egg for use on the Covenant ? This fusion of Shaws reproductive system and Davids synthetics spawns an Alien "Queen"  

Engineers take a lot of eggs from the original Alien world, one engineer get infected and die but before launch the signal that the Nostromo recive thousands of years after. 

Look Scott, It wasnt that hard

David infects the colonists.W Y sends a ship to Origia 6 with Colonial Marines and synthetic Marines.

The Engineers find out what David did and send ships also.

A war breaks out.

Several synthetics encounter David and are "enlightened" escape after the war and Deckard must now hunt them down.

There's so many ways, better ways in my opinion that the story could've gone, post Prometheus.

But we also have to assume a few things, for instance, that David was taking the ship where Shaw wanted him to take it, their home world/planet.

If so, then they should've arrived in a technologically advanced society/system, not some primitive back water planet with a bunch of monks as in AC.

The ship would've docked with a spacestation or something similiar, Shaw would've met her makers and got her answers

But then the story could go anywhere

If the Engineers who were planning to bomb Earth were working on orders from the home planet engineers, then the home planet engineers might try to kill shaw and to commandeer the stolen Juggernaut and have it go to earth and bomb it

But David manages to unleash the cargo on the engineers homeworld instead, turning it into a barren wasteland of monsters.

The Engineers then declare war on humanity, but Shaw and/or David are able to send a message to Earth using Engineer tech to warn them of the coming war

Cue the next film

lol

Honestly if I would make an Alien prequel I would also erase Prometheus.

Since Prometheus was less Alien in feeling I would make it clear that it was an Alien prequel. Not that “it isn’t an Alien prequel” “or it is like a long distant cousin” kind of crap. Call it what it is, what is wrong with a little honesty?

I would have the space alien civilization life forms (what were called Engineers)  that are not that connected to humans and that above all look different compared to Prometheus, they would be more monster like. The one in the middle is what they probably would look like.

http://img3.178.com/dota/201012/87520494668/87520526801.jpg

Notice that it doesn’t look like an Engineer and not a human so it would not be linked to our DNA at all. This would help to make it more mysterious.

Humans could have existed without the space specie but that the they or some space race discovered that mankind messed up so they decided to destroy us (they simply compared our world to their world and to what they preferred so they decided to get rid of mankind because of how we treated our planet compared to how they did with their home planet). No religious motifs, it could be simpler than that but still be interesting. The space people would be like a Mayan sort of society with a warrior cult that are about to conquer other civilizations. Xenos should be seen in this kind of context, like a bio-weapon. Perhaps I should show what it was used for in the beginning but I am not sure if I would show how it was created. Maybe it could be that it was something that they found and that they experimented on until they got perfection but that it came with a price.

My focus would not be on AI because that isn’t what the purpose of the first Alien movies was about. Terror, humans, and monsters is what I would focus on. Corporate greed, human weakness, war, and making of empires is what my story would be about in a nut-shell.

Relatable human characters that aren’t like archetypes is very important to me. They must be written as relatable everyday people, this is something that Alien managed to get right. I agree with Capt Torgo on this one.

There has to be some mystery also but it shouldn’t be too vague like in Prometheus when they miss parts but at the same time there got to be something that is left up to the imagination that people can speculate about. For example, we didn’t know when we saw Alien what the Space Jockey was and exactly what the Xeno was.

Prometheus 

Hierarchy 

Teardrop ship, the Gods take Engineers and enhance them to catalyse planets, we do not see the Gods -mystery. 

Paradise is the Gift of the Gods to the species from which the acolytes are taken Woton, Valhalla and the Einherjar. They rebel against sacrifice and begin their own sub creation away from Paradise on LV223. They visited mankind and returned with specimens to LV 223 and out of this created the Deacon who they sacrificed to create the new catalytic strain. The misuse of the Catalyser lead to retribution, it was booby trapped, and the deadly Alien Pathogen was created which wiped them out. This amounted to a theft Promethean like and they suffered endless repetitious punishment both on LV 223 and Paradise until they became extinct.

Stored in the holographic libraries are the final moments of LV 223 which see two sets of pilots fully suited and protected (so they think) leave one for earth the other for Paradise. Their cargos are the final evolution of the mutagen the Alien Life Cycle created in secret by an inner circle of Engineers. Behind the mural is a room which only the camera sees and there is a raised Dias with an Ovemorph on it. 

One juggernaut is overcome and sets down on LV426 and the warning signal is discovered centuries later by Peter Weyland who withholds this knowledge and which only David is aware of.

One juggernaut arrives at Paradise and leads to its devastation and this is immortalised in the mural which is used for Covenants promotion.  

This is the back story which will emerge over the two films the Jockey can be assumed and explained in tie in material.

Sir Peter wakes David and after years of planning the Prometheus mission sets off. The crew chosen are bought mercenaries and the science officer the naive and damaged Elizabeth Shaw is cover for Sir Peters real intent. 

The Prometheus lands discovers its truth that mankind has been brought before to help with the LV223 experiments and the invitation was a trap to future space faring generations, one of the crew is lost in a hidden oubliette leaving the audience wondering what has happened through out. The visit to the temple is longer and happens just once and they find evidence of mankind being experimented on the exposition is much stronger.  

As planned Sir Peter is woken when David discovers a live Engineer and David, fully aware of what will happen leads him down to his death. Janek, who was in on Sir Peter, has a furious exchange with Elizabeth, who after the death of Charlie and caesarian survival knows the truth of the place and now the mission, pursues the party intending to stop the waking of the Engineer. Janek is contrite and realises he is working for a madman they agree to do anything they can together to stop the "shit" leaving LV 223. This exchange between Elizabeth and Janek gives both of them real dramatic power and in their different ways shows the audience the sham nature of the mission and who was in on it. Janek is more the avuncular leader than the stiff Vickers and that makes him that much trickier and more interesting for the audience.  

On the way to the Orrery a creature emerges and there is an appalling fire fight with flame throwers we only see the hints of the creature but it could be a Xenomorph and having seen an Egg in the room behind the mural the audience can make their own deductions, and the creature is is blown to peices. Sir Peter and David survive and so does Shaw, arriving afterwards.

The waking of the Engineer is much fuller as are the holo scenes and when Elizabeth arrives she confronts the Engineer who picks her up and hurls her away and then dislodges Davids head and Weyland dies.

The outcome of the film is the same and we finally see very clearly a xeno related creature from the mural born at the end. There is no Vickers in the movie (Janek is more complex and is in on Weyland and undergoes a change which makes his heroism at the end more powerful) Fifield and Milburn do not exist and outside of Sir Peter, David Janek the two co pilots everyone else is an extra with the exception of the female doctor who sedates Shaw and looks after a better conditioned Weyland. The audience are in on the sham nature of the mission from the moment that Charlie is incinerated by Janek. this puts the odds heavily against Elizabeth and makes her survival even more of a heroic arc.

Pandemonium

Act 1 David and Elizabeth form their co dependent relationship. The crossing is extended and a relief period after the appalling events they have been through. There is a real chance to invest in the combination of the barren woman and the robot. She goes into Cryo for five years. David lands the Juggernaut to scenes of devastation. The final moment of the first act is David looking around at the devastation.

Act 2 They fire up the Engineers holographic libraries and discover the back story what they were trying to achieve and why it went wrong and they are never, and neither are the audience clear, on whether there is any kind of survivor Engineer or Morph. This act is riven with tension and creative input about the Engineers. They discover the huge mural of the Xenomorph and the Engineers. The surprise at the end of the act is the arrival of a Weyland Yutani Scout ship with marines onboard. The newly merged organisation (5 years prior D & S have been away 8 years) has picked up Shaw's signal and followed them knowing there is the potential for acquisition of Engineer technology. The synthetic on board is corporate and called Edward. 

David and Edward exchange and David discovers the nefarious nature of the mission and warns Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth discovers the solution is to find the original untainted catalyser the source of the Engineers power and ingest it and set of a recreation spark putting matters right. 

There are some powerful adversarial scenes between Elizabeth and the head of the marines and the hammerpede scene could be included to echo the lifecycle without taking the story any further.

David and Shaw after several days decide to act.

David holds off the marines in a firefight allowing Elizabeth to escape. He however is overcome and disconnected. The final scene for him is Edward transmitting David's knowledge which includes the details of LV 426 and the Beacon to muther.

Elizabeth high above the city re enacts the opening Prometheus scene which has a devastating effect on a mature environment. All non botanical life is destroyed in what amounts to a biblical like reverse plague. The final scene is the appearance of the Teardrop ship which triggers a re terraforming of the planet over the end credits bringing the story full circle.     

The Jockey is explained.

The origin of the XXX121 is LV 223 and the Engineers and is placed in the context of Paradise Lost. 

The intel on LV 426 is returned to Weyland Yutani. 

The appearance of the marines and their overt aggression adds a distinct and different flavour to the now very developed co dependent relationship of Elizabeth and David, almost a riff on Ripley and Hicks. 

We see two very contrasting worlds like the actual films but get far more of the mythos in our hands. The appearance of the creature in film 1 gives consistency and by using it sparingly it does not suffer being cooked. The hammerpede transferred to Pandemonium can remind everyone of the stakes of the marines carrying off Engineer technology. It would work well if one of the marines was a smart arse who the audience do not take to almost wanting the audience to see the mutagen survive. 

By ending the first film with the Deacon we have had our chest bust and connection with the mural. The sacrificial cup appears on the alter confirming the sacrifice of the deacon to create the new catalyser.   

One could go on and I have probably forgotten something for logic. 

MonsterZero That Ash idea sounds pretty great.

Thanks dk !

I'd also like to see a 'Tales from the Nostromo' series. Odd ball crews and the horrors they encounter in deep space. (Not just space monsters...the human kind too!) 

 Haunted vessel stuff.

Maybe a thousand year history of the Nostromo, Nostromo II and iii, iv....and all who sailed her.

I've often thought the Alienverse could make a great miniseries if done well. That way things could get fleshed out and we wouldn't have to wait five years to see what happens next.