Unexplained dialogue from John Logan's script

chili

This idea that you judge the film or bracket it according to how much blood or gore is in the movie is to miss the point. I attended a performance of Titus Andronicus yesterday evening and it was a riveting examination of violence driven by feuds and how we loss our humanity the deeper in we go. Death and blood was everywhere but it was driven by a narrative which explained the who what why.

A L I E N only offered the what, in a completely innovative way. You cannot do that again. When Riders said nobody asked the question about the Jockey and more recently the who and why he was, as a man who understands story, stepping outside of a fan base that is pre occupied by the texture and mechanics being repeated endlessly and looking at the why and who.

To answer those questions in a really engaging and interesting way is much more important than how much blood and gore is in. My understanding of the reaction to Prometheus is it wasn't scary enough on that calibration. I thought the high tech smugness and lazy thinking driven by a deluded billionaire felt very on point and to interact with the Alien Pathogen and all it represented was utterly chilling.       

So I am not really interested in what you call it. I do accept anything to do with the ALIEN franchise is dark but unless we get behind Ash's remarks in an authoritative way I am not interested. When I consider the threads started here a handful zoom in on the subtext, on AVP Galaxy 48% polled want Ripley and the Queen back.

Curiously I believe Ridley knows where he wants to go but the fan base and test screenings and feedback drag him back to the tick sci fi blood and gore and leave all that "thinking bullshit" out.

There isn't a big segment of the audience that wants someone to answer Ash's observations and Ridley judged that making the answer character centred (David) rather than philosophically centred (Punishment for Paradise Lost) was more relatable but what he also forgot is that fan bases tend to be very conservative and obsessed by literalness which is kind of funny when probably the real science of space flight and pathogen behaviour is completely out to lunch in these films. I am also sensing that the suspension I witnessed last night is receding with the modern generation who want all their helmet protocols etc (why not just assume these people have done their stuff and follow the story).

Prometheus posed questions and hinted at answers, unless you parse all the Covenant elements very closely those answers are missing from the core story and even when you parse most of it is based on an unreliable narrator. The analogy I would draw is we are taking a journey through fog where we can only just see whats in front of us but have no idea of what we are actually travelling through. The get out is, well we will get our answers next time. We have had two movies over 5 years and this thread was begun with a script which gave us some clear cut answers, John knew what he was doing though he would still have got a reaction on Shaw with that script. Her healing David, what he found and their fall out and her being overcome should have been in the movie as the great revelation and could have been riveting and the popcorn munching on blood and gore without context  audience would have got their third act.  

I have watched the recent Star Wars movies they actually pass off a really neat trick its a very simple space opera with the vestiges of profundity but actually because that profundity is skin deep it never distracts from what it really is, Saturday Morning cinema presented expensively. The franchise never faces the challenges that this prequel sequence has because the latter really has tried to offer something thoughtful in a tentpole context.    

I have read a couple of reviews here which completely contradict each other (we got our answers it was great, I really looked hard at Prometheus and feel I got no answers). That only goes to show it depends what questions you are asking. Many of the debates here are how we calibrate our expectations. Several people who were involved in the discussions here in 2015 and our speculations have concluded the ideas we came up with were a damn sight more interesting than what we got and consider Covenant very poor, thats the polite view. We can try and answer what the audience want until the cows come home but what is clear is if you start reacting to audience and designing a film based on focused groups and who shouts the loudest.....your lost.    

John was clearly given a brief to write an Alien Prequel movie which would use an absolute minimum of the narrative investment of Prometheus. As Wayne Haag said David is the straight line from Prometheus. Once they began tampering with the connectivity and layering in more of Prometheus particularly Shaw they clearly as Pietro alluded could not make their mind what to put in or leave out they shot 12 minutes and then left all of it out in the second test screening and then just the briefest segment the bombing for the next screening. Thats the kind of thing that happens when you lose the original vision. The best example I know of that is the Hobbit Duology shot over 266 days with a two film script and then recast as a Trilogy with a 13 week pick up session to refashion, what happens your key themes and crescendos are subverted and you add elements which subvert the original vision which itself was recast when the original director resigned.  

The only way they have managed to refashion the Prometheus investment into an Alien Prefix movie is give the story to a robot who will do anything say anything be anything. Last night the characters in Titus Andronicus did appalling things but it all meant something there was a progression a reason, with David replacing the Alien as the antagonist he needs to be more than Ash's view of the Biomechanoid horror (unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality).if you want to stop the films simply being generic sci fi blood and gore.  

chili

Forgive but since my attendance at Titus Andronicus it has hit me like a brick what is missing from Covenant that Alien and Prometheus enjoyed, mediation from a character on a journey who had a growing sense of revelation and a desire to survive and who did until the right point when she offered sacrifice. 

As the film is centred around a narrator who is a robot who is unreliable, for both reasons he cannot offer mediation and take us along indeed his behaviour pushes us away (dismantle the bastard). Ripley and Shaw offered mediation with a growing realisation of what was going on. By the time Daniels discovered who the robot was she had not discovered anything or shared it with the audience except a half truth about Elizabeth which as you know is mired in confusion. THAT is why the film for me is an entertaining ride which shares the same broad thematic elements  as Prometheus but has no ascension or build from its predecessor and it is for all the forgoing reasons I have outlined centred around the repositioning of the story and getting the creature on the screen that has lead to this.  

Michelle

Well, I wouldn’t argue with you if you said that Shakespeare was a better writer than our Alien: script writers (or any writer for that matter). As you wrote, it’s not about the amount of blood (Macbeth and Hamlet are very bloody indeed) which makes a film belong to a specific genre - it’s probably the amount of dialog (and monolog). Even if Kenneth Branagh made a very good effort in making Hamlet more attractive to the general public, it wasn’t a blockbuster (it suffered a loss).

Do we want the who, what and why explained? Can they be explained? Prometheus was existential seeking, a philosophical journey. In a way, Shaw got her answers (but she couldn’t take it in). The engineers made us and wanted to destroy us because we had failed to evolve in the right direction. Who created the engineers and who created the ones who created the engineers . . . Why? Because they could . . . Prometheus was good when it comes to story and philosophical depth, but lacked in suspense. If Spaihts’ neomorph from the script had been kept, everybody would have been happy. Instead, they had to bring it back in AC (where they already had another monster - the protomorph).

What makes Ash’s remark so horrifying is that conscience and morality might be nothing but a delusion (Nietzsche - God is dead - existential nihilism). The ones still alive on the Nostromo can’t take that in (They want to believe that there is intrinsic good in the universe, but there is nothing but living or dying (Lambert desperately suggests drawing straws about the remaining places in the lifeboat). The notions of divine salvation, retribution, redemption etc are just projections of our own inner feelings and wishes. The alien creature isn’t evil, it’s amoral, living on the instinct of survival and propagation. Parker was killed because he felt the need to follow standard morals - to save Lambert. In order to survive, Ripley has to become a “monster” - follow the instincts deep inside. David isn’t the amoral creature Ash talks about because he doesn’t work on instinct. He is programmed to have a choice, like humans (He is free to use his will for "evil" purposes).

I’m not sure about having Shaw and David continue in the AC. I don’t see this as a serial, like following the Macahans. I see this more like an epic saga, stretching over time and generations. In Alien: Awakening there should be a new couple (Daniels and Tennessee dead) shouldering the burdens of destroying David and his wolves . . .

Ash's remark and the link with the missing dialogue from John Logan's Love 2015 draft.

'The notions of divine salvation, retribution, redemption etc are just projections of our own inner feelings and wishes".

This quote from you gets to the nub of what makes Covenants decision to use the Engineers as mere texture so disappointing. Your point is precisely what David should have been able to mediate for us, that David and Shaw actually did discover on the crossing that the Engineers are merely Engineers and believed they were creating machines who would fit their design preference and the reason they redacted us or were going to, is we did not confirm to their needs having moved towards a creative creationist view and determined the Engineers were more than Engineers and indeed Gods. How appalling and nihilistic and genuinely dark that view would have been however we know at the time of that script Ridley had a twist above that, based on his remarks in Autumn 2015.

How much more interesting finding out your answer which builds naturally on the narrative set up in Prometheus than -- yawn David created a protomorph which will be evolved in the next film to a xenomorph which will get out of hand and then either he or a retributive Engineer will set off to Earth with Eggs. I really do not see that as an all embracing Saga it is a reduction over about 30 years. Incidentally Trilogy in the modern world suggests three related films indeed in the case of LOTR its one story in three acts. If you call something a trilogy in cinema these days people will think Star Wars where the narrative is continuous across the entire story. It never goes into start again mode with a new set of characters. 

I have made this point elsewhere but Awakening will waste another hour building characters... which will all die how on earth can you keep on repeating this stuff and carry an audience with you or more to the point grow the audience ? If Awakening reveals as little as Covenant we will be shouting Alien Engineers from the roof tops.  

Your post, which is full of well thought out context on the meaning of the Prometheus mythos, which Elizabeth and the audience did not have answers to, but would have been confirmed in a Prometheus sequel. Instead you have reminded me in place of the audacious thinking you display we receive a retread with confusion which actually reminds me what meagre fair this routine entertaining film offers.  

Michelle

I suppose you can call dramatic works (3 films e.g.) which in some way are connected a trilogy (even if there are new characters, the problem which craves a solution is the same)? If you stretch a story over many generations it makes a greater impact, I think. In the alien saga, it’s 28 years but the story begins thousands (or millions) of years earlier with the engineers, and before them . . . It would be interesting to go further back in time to get some more clues about the beginning of it all . . .

I remember seeing Chiefs (long ago) where you get to follow three chiefs of police (replacing each other over a period of 30 or 40 years) trying to solve a problem of missing boys (a serial killer), which was captivating (finally for the crook too :) ). LOTR is a small story within a much greater context stretching over thousands of years (three eras). The story is narrated (written down) first by Bilbo, then Frodo and finally Sam (Red Book of Westmarch).

But if we go with your idea, Michelle, of a tear drop ship majestically emerging at the end and grabs the players by the ear, what would that solve? Who created them and why did they create the engineers (if they did)? It would go on ad infinitum. In what way is it audacious to say that there aren’t any definite answers to be found (agnosticism) and that the ultimate questions are up to each and everyone’s beliefs? I think it’s a humble position?

If Scott settles with a trilogy, it would be enough I think (giving some kind of conclusion, and perhaps also connect it to Bladerunner - making it an even vaster epos?). Then we can move forward again with the story - Blomkamp and Alien 5.

Who was the Jockey and how did his cargo come about. 

First of all we have to restate the purpose of the Prequels, to answer the question who the Jockey was and what did his cargo represent.

Answer 

Our creators the Engineers began sub creating (The Promethean element) and out of retribution and punishment emerged the Alien Pathogen which is essentially super charged over sexualised reproductive energy which is deeply unsympathetic to its target,  reproduction without a moral conscious which turns on its creators.

In Prometheus it should have been laid out very clearly that the Jockey was just another pilot with just another form of a radicalised organic element which was intended not for earth but to return to Paradise and to corrupt the Lambs (the audience would know this through Charlie discovering the truth of the mural, which should act as a decisive pictogram which he (and we) would be able to read together with the evidence of the sacrificed Deacon in the headroom tomb, with a small amount of re organising that mural could instead of representing yet more confusion given a really clear answer which Charlie would half understand and we would completely understand ) but when Elizabeth leaves for Paradise she has no idea ratcheting up the tension between movies). Earth would receive the canister treatment whereas the Eggs were to be introduced into Engineer society as a corruption of their culture of sacrifice and introduce a gradual "upgrade" which ironically is suggested by that fabulous marketing mural which has turned out to be yet another false trail. 

David (the android) and Elizabeth (the believer) set out and David is healed and should have landed to a Paradise Lost - where the "fall" reached Paradise. The audience knowing the Jockey failed in his mission to take Eggs to Paradise would expect Paradise to be Paradise but have a real shock when D & E arrive to devastation (clearly a Juggernaut with Canisters made it to the planet which can be discovered in the movie). This shock could have been very real given that if the Crossing had been included in the film we would have felt Elzabeth's excitement in the prologue David would learn nothing on his journey the emphasis instead on his perceived redemption (or not).   

The critical tension of the story is all around David the mechanical construct who suffered slavery and apartheid and in his resurrection appears to have found grace but we are never quite certain. 

Elizabeth and David discover the truth of Paradise launch the Engineers holograms and recognise the intellectual turmoil set out in John Logan's remarks and the truth of their demise.

Weyland Yutani the large corporate that symbolises the self serving, anonymous functionality of all corporates, arrive with their desire to acquire the Engineer technology connecting the main theme of the sequel sequence and of course both David and Elizabeth who have died by the time of Alien sacrifice themselves to cleanse the planet and stop W-Y.

The appearance of the teardrop ship is allegorical and simply wish fulfilment for Elizabeth it can be left as part of her dreams in death a little like Bowman in 2001. We can then be left to speculate as we do in 2001 on the notion of creation.   

The first movie answers cargo/jockey and the second movie bursts out of the narrow horror and gore protocols and is allegorical, philosophical but full of invention through its examination of the Engineers and we find answers but are left with philosophical questions which is entirely right.

The audacity is in finding out the Engineers were responsible for mankind through a mechanical "gift" within the creation soup and our myths are half right they were lured by their hubris.

Two films for the elderly A L I E N audience and if someone wants  to keep on making Xeno flicks ad infinitum then young directors and young audiences can restart with A5 and Ripley and Queens and smart ass marines.

I am an audience of one here the Xeno has no interest for me its a special effect which was brilliantly executed in 1978 and the only part about it I am interested in is who, why, what where.  

So to answer your question first you have to remind yourself what the purpose of the prequels were check for answers and what we are receiving and then replace tired troped confused movies like A C and almost right but low exposition Prometheus with a ROBUST INTERESTING NARRATIVE which does not take years/decades to make its point.

That David and Elizabeth intrude on Paradise and discover a rich and creative past is like Bilbo's "Translations From the Elvish" written at Imladris and thats my other point Frodo and Bilbo mediated us into the vast mythology created by Mr Tolkien, David and Elizabeth could have done the same which links to my other point we have no mediation we can rely on indeed right now non at all except the unreliable narrator.

I have enjoyed this conversation and your thoughtful responses which without rancour or argument show the difference between two followers of these films but forgive me but my bank holiday resolution is to let this stuff go and wait for what we actually receive.