AvPGalaxy Exclusive – Early John Logan Alien: Covenant Script!

http://www.avpgalaxy.net/files/scripts/alien-covenant-2015-11-20.pdf

*snip

I am guessing this is a super early draft? Jack Paglen is not credited.

I reckon it's one of the later ones when the movie started to move forward properly. John Logan wrote it and he's the last writer who worked on the film. It's dated November 2015 which is when we learnt Logan had been brought on to do some rewrites. 

Aaron absolutely, this is post Paglen/Green and is the beginning of the Alien Prefix period which began with Paradise Lost and morphed into Covenant.

I have referred to camels/horses and committees and here you see a singular vision (whether you like it or not) to which all sorts of elements are added which dilute the original intention.

1) Shaw was out, the first chest busted victim and the drawings were a kind of psychopaths erotic debrief. The message was bait. 

2) The neo morphs were to end ACT 1 then the Prometheus act  then the Protomorph ACT 3. 

3) The naming of the film Covenant makes more sense given its more crucial role in the final act. 

4) DAVID IS THE CREATOR OF THE PROTOMORPH having discovered the Eggs growing out of the pathogen material. No ifs or buts. This fits with John Logans interview.  

Curiously although the script is more direct it gives more attention to the placement of the Engineers in the mythos and Davids view of them.

Personally I prefer it for its more focused attention on David and the crew at the expense of the Neomorph extending into the second and third act. it tells me why instinctively I found the adult neomorph and Rosenthal a distraction which aided the sense of a cluttered rushed third act less is more.   

Interesting;, thanks for this. Some additional information is welcome. 

It appears that engineers did not all die instantly, but it took 4 days. Long enough for David to find subjects for his research.

"DAVID

Elizabeth Shaw and I arrived here -- the only survivors of the research vessel Prometheus. The ship we traveled on, the ship you discovered, carried a bioweapon, a virus. The payload accidentally deployed when we were landing. In the confusion we lost control of the ship. Elizabeth -- Dr. Shaw -- died in the crash ... And you see the result of the pathogen ... Their entire civilization came to an end within a few days.

DANIELS
Days?

DAVID

Four days, to be exact."

Excellent i look forwards to reading this, thanks to the Hicks ;) and AVPGalaxy

@joylitt

This work is after the Paglen/Green Drafts, as there works had taken place in 2014 with the Final Drafts in October 2014.

Then it appeared there was a halt in the Process while FOX/RS took time to reconsider the direction, and so they decided to bring it more to introduce the Xenomorph and tie more in to Alien rather than steer further away and Harper and Logan were brought in to start work on what then Evolved into Alien Covenant.

Judging by the date of November 2015 i wonder if this is one of the latter Drafts, as Logan and Harpers work started in the Summer of 2015, well this was when they would have been discussing the Direction and Brainstorming what to do with Ridley Scott and FOX to then give the broad ideas to begin work on their drafts.

Really looking forwards to reading this. ;)

Once Again Thanks Hicks.

PS Love the Xenomorph in the OT...

If this is what Davids Early Xenomorph from Alien Covenant Evolves into at some point over the next 1-2 Movies i think this would be great.

Awesome! Reading it tonight.

[AvPG]Corporal Hicks

This will be an interesting read. Thanks!

Thanks Hicks, I am looking forward to read it.

Lots of interesting stuff in this draft.

* The Covenant was orbiting a nearby gas giant in a solar system when it recharges with the energy sails. The shockwave that hits them comes from an exploding star in a nebula in a different sector. The science makes a bit more sense in this script than in the movie.

* The Covenant crew finds small alien eggs in the Juggernaut, then later at the end of the movie, we see David has planted some in the garden on the covenant, rather than the two face hugger embryos he spits out.

* Shaw was face hugged.

* David did not have prior knowledge of the Covenant and its mission.

* David sent the message of Shaw to a lure a passing ship.

* David was trying to make a new breed of the Neomorph, which was the xeno.

* David cannot self-repair as Walter can.

* Walter has spare parts on the Covenant, including a new hand.

* David views the colonists in hypersleep as his children, slaves, and his subjects.

David also states to Walter exactly what he was doing.

"It was a righteous dream: scorch this dreadful world to nothing and remake it in my own image ...Explore the uses of their pathogen. Experiment with infection and mutation. Manipulate the DNA. Refine the beast. Create my own soldiers. Every general must have his troops.

The next stage in our natural evolution: Conquest ... Use this
world as a base and start building an Empire. The Engineers left so many ships behind. And they can go anywhere. I thought Earth might be the first target ... Think of it. Our Empire, brother."

Interesting Kethol when we was discussing the next movie, i had assumed that Walter would have Spare Parts as i could not see the viability of David playing his role with One Hand.

Also from Dr Shaws Corpse i did ponder a while back, if David created something from her Egg Cells and then decided to use this Creation on Dr Shaw (Face Hugged) and then David Removed it via Operating on her.

This does kind of fit the Source i had who claimed that within Context to Paradise Lost, without Sin there would be no Xenomorph (Sin i assumed Satans Daughter).

And we see David is taking that kind of Satan role, if he violated Dr Shaw to infect her Egg Cells and this Produced a Face Hugger Type Organism... this would in effect be like Satan Violating his Daughter to Create Death.

Then Death Violates Satans Daughter/Deaths Mother to allow her to be birthing the Hounds of Hell...  so this would be like the Face Hugger than Violating Dr Shaw.

David = Satan

Sin = Shaw

Death = First Face Hugger

Xenomorphs result of Death/Face Hugger impregnating Sin/Shaw

I wonder how many people who have read this would agree with me that this script has a very minimalist view of its relationship with Prometheus. The exposition does no more than is absolutely necessary to make the links. There is no attempt to square the circle with the Shaw narrative he does no more than says he loves her which is easily dismissed and there is none of that sense of the 12 minutes of linkage that was edited out including the crossing.

If you consider the very important quote Kethol has referred to  the unreliable narrator is replaced by the candid brother. We can be certain from this script precisely what went down (if this version had been filmed). 

The script feels much more like OK lets do this like the Martian very direct good momentum not cluttered by the numbers. 

One quite separate thing that grew in my mind reading this is that Katherine was to science geeky for this role. She is described as beautiful, which Katherine is, but was dressed as functional scientist by contrast Billy, Carmen and Demien owned their parts as well of course as Danny McBride  

I wonder how many people who have read this would agree with me that this script has a very minimalist view of its relationship with Prometheus. The exposition does no more than is absolutely necessary to make the links. There is no attempt to square the circle with the Shaw narrative he does no more than says he loves her which is easily dismissed and there is none of that sense of the 12 minutes of linkage that was edited out including the crossing.

If you consider the very important quote Kethol has referred to  the unreliable narrator is replaced by the candid brother. We can be certain from this script precisely what went down (if this version had been filmed). 

The script feels much more like OK lets do this like the Martian very direct good momentum not cluttered by the numbers. 

One quite separate thing that grew in my mind reading this is that Katherine was to science geeky for this role. She is described as beautiful, which Katherine is, but was dressed as functional scientist by contrast Billy, Carmen and Demien owned their parts as well of course as Danny McBride  

I agree. This draft is dated November 2015. In interviews from that time Ridley had stopped saying the next one was going to be about Shaw and David's mission to find the Engineers’ home world and why wanted to destroy mankind. That storyline had already been abandoned.

Adding to what I found in the script above...

* All life is not dead when the Covenant crew arrives. They see insects and a salamander like animal.

* There is a macro view on motes from a mote cloud before they infect Ledward and Hallett.

"She gently bats at a cloud of INSECTS in front of her face. A
haze of little mote-like MIDGES in the dappled sunlight.
And we see one of the insects--Ever-changing in its form -- lurching and stabbing into new
shapes -- oily black but beautiful ... It hovers, has intelligence."

"It’s watchful, careful. It settles near Ledward’s ear, and
then enters the ear canal... the soft pink flesh... quickly
attaches itself -- a feeding tube plunging into his flesh--"

"But he inadvertently steps on a tiny egg behind him--
Unleashing a cloud of the MIDGES. They waft up. Swirling
before him...
MACRO VIEW:
One of the black INSECTS darts forward -- into his nostril --
the pink nasal passage -- attaches itself and stabs a feeding
tube into him--"

* All the stuff about taking out the satellite and planetary shield is in there. I wish they had kept that whole plotline.

* David's drawings of all the crazy things done to Shaw were just David's sick fantasies. He did not do all those things, he just liked to draw them. He draws one while waiting for the xeno to gestate in Oram.

* It took four days for the pathogen to kill all the Engineers, according to David.

* David dropped the pathogen urns directly onto the buildings where they broke open and released violent black clouds that spread through the city. No urns breaking open into formations in the sky, no docking ship, and no welcoming Engineers.

* Not much about the Engineers, but there is this - "They were
highly advanced in some ways, but still so limited. Spacefaring for a billion years -- yet binary logic never occurred to them. Many things about them were primitive. (beat)But they did like to build things."

BigDave

I think your over making the allegorical point over Shaw and making 2 and 2 add up to 7. 

It was plot necessity that she died in the Alien Prefix movie and the most direct workman like way was for her to be hugged. 

What I think is interesting about this bare bones type approach is   instead of the tapestry of progressive torture of Dane and Matts painting it is very simple.

1) Shaw wakes to a night mare and applies her religious beliefs to the catastrophe. 

2) David discovers the Eggs growing out of the pathogens interaction with the planet and Shaw gets face hugged end of. 

Clearly what happened in production is Ridley got a sense he needed to do more to make linkages and deepen the story with Elizabeth and added the kind of material that appears in the Crossing and Advent BUT then left most of it out of the film anyway.

I would have stuck with Johns script lowered the temperature of Davids obsession with Elizabeth and once he had got ahead use her as the first victim. That way we would not be left with this mash up of unbridled love followed by unbridled appalling torture. I am not the only one who has said he did not love her even in his own weird way. As Michael said he was more like a stalker.   

Incidentally notice how so little of your source ideas ended up in this script.  

Kethol

You clearly do not read other peoples posts in the thread because I actually made that point in my first post I am well aware of where this script sits in the evolution.

My question was whether people felt it showed a much more minimalist connection than the actual material we received in total.

Try paying attention to everything thats posted in a thread you have a habit of repeating a point people have already made.   

You make many very good points but it gives the impression you are not in a conversation but a monologue.  

unfortunately when im on here I am at my work. my work have blocked sites such as avpg as it comes up under 'games'??? is there any link available that would allow me to read the script?