Ridley Scott says he will do another Alien movie with no horror and no alien

Adding the aliens was fine but they shouldn't have shown them in the trailers and teasers. In hindsight, it gave us nothing to look forward to or be surprised with.

dk agreed, and on top of the promo material that in no way reflected the film, didn't help either.

Ie. a certain poster

Sounds great to me, The Alien  franchise needs to be kept fresh. To be honest how many chestbursting scenes do we need to see?

Scrib Fair point- I think we have had enough. Although it would be interesting to see a David mouth burst scene. It would tie in with his swallowing and regurgitating the embryos at the end of AC.

I would like to see that movie with no horror and no alien. Honestly speaking the birth of the Deacon in Prometheus did not fit in the film unless there was a plan with the Deacon for the future. Apparently there was no plan, just Fox trying to keep the AVP fans closer, thus keeping the film smaller than it could have been. 

I think we had enough aliens bursting out of people bodies. Time to move on.

I think Ridley Scott at 80 is more open minded than the most of us.

daliens So what is the reason to keep the "Alien" name according to you, other than cashing in on the brand name at the expense of the suckers in the audience? Covenant pulled the bait and switch trick on the audience already: it didn't turn out so well. Ridley Scott's pitch for the sequel is exactly the same as Covenant minus the aliens. I would love to see the marketing campaign around this travesty.

Let's remember that when Ridley Scott makes a bad movies, he makes them really bad, and actually he repeats himself a lot. Robin Hood, Exodus, Kingdom of Heaven have scenes that could be exchangeable with those from Gladiator. Same for his action thrillers from this century. I had the hopes the sci-fi genre was something special for him, but it seems it is not. If he stays on this path he will make the same movie again. A real waste of talent.

The reason is Fox trying to lure in the monster loving people, like it was with the poster for Alien Covenant or with the chestbursting queen from Alien 3. The same reason of the marketing campaign around Covenant. 

Ridley Scott's pitch for Covenant was around the xenomorph, how and by whom it was created. Now that we know this, it is time to move on.

Do you think that Prometheus, without Alien in the title and without the Deacon does not belong to the Alien universe? 

I think most of the audience cared more for Ripley than for the son of a bitch. Like they cared for Shaw. Like they should have cared for Daniels. And as the xenomorph opposed Ripley, there is David now who took its place. The xenomorph was there as part of the setting, the symbol of an alien universe.

Ridley Scott made bad movies when his heart was not in those movies. Exodus was by far the worst. But Prometheus and Alien Covenant are not bad movies, he is one of the best of the sci fi directors. At least this is what I believe. Try to imagine how disgusting Covenant would have been if directed by Tarantino. 

daliens  You cannot blame the studios for how the characters have been depicted in Prometheus and AC. This is all on Ridley Scott. All the stupid whimsy, so pervasive in both movies and in all the virals, which he seems to think is so cool. That is one of the worse things in the prequels, an absurd postmodern touch that has overstayed its welcome.

I only blame the studios when they force some aliens into a story that was thought without aliens. I believe the aliens in Covenant are a result of fanboys crying out loud after the lack of xenomorphs in Prometheus. And Ridley Scott gave us again the beast, although he said and believed the beast is cooked. He continued to present it as a weapon and showed us how it was created. But did he intend to follow this path for a Prometheus sequel or he gave up to pressure from Fox and fanboys? As we saw recently with All the money in the world, Ridley Scott accepts the challenges from the studios, he replaced Spacey, the engineers.

If he wants to continue the David story why not let him do it. After Ripley, David is the most fascinating character of the franchise. I want to know what's he up to next. Ridley Scott can give us this story. A xeno populated film can be made by anybody later.

Why not have a smaller cast with attention payed to them ala the Quadrilogy? We all know about the xeno now, so why not have it but more in the background? That would allow for a good movie whether it be focusing on either the Engineers or David- or perhaps both. I love the Xeno but am ready to see the focus shift.

double post sorry

daliens So what do you think the story was supposed to be about if it didn't feature the full cycle of the xenomorph? Remember that Ridley Scott said he wanted to get to the back door of the original Alien. So in the film they needed to make a point that this is the same type of creature that later on was on board of the Nostromo. All the studio interference narrative is just an excuse for making a bad movie, based on a poor script.

One thing I do know: there has never been a harder time to produce an original movie, what with money men breathing down the neck of writers and directors on one side, and the voices of a million over-invested fans screaming at them from the other side.

Face it, people: we will never get another Alien. What we might get, though, if RS and his writers can find a moment’s peace in the maelstrom, is an interesting movie that might take us in directions we did not think we wanted to go, but now that we’ve gone there, we realise it’s been worth the journey.

Don’t assume that forcing film-makers and storytellers to do what you want as an audience member is going to give you what you want. You might want to eat fish fingers every day, and watch the first Alien movie over and over, but maybe a different meal and a different experience is going to take your mind into a new place.

New places are scary. Because they are different and new. Give writers and directors a chance, and they just might bring something brilliant and new into the world. But they won’t they can’t hear themselves think, and if all they feel capable of is meeting the competing needs of angry, entitled fans.

Alien: Covenant is a lesson to us all. It is a dog’s dinner of ‘you asked for it, you’ve got it’ images and themes, and underneath it is part of a good movie that was gradually strangled by the obligation to put more monsters in it.

Give Ridley space. And expect the unexpected. New things are good things, and might scare you more, and in a different way, than a made-to-order wander through the shadowy castle in space again….

murnau If as a director you want to have that type of independence, you just don't do a franchise film. Just do an original. Why try to cash in on the name alone? When you are in a franchise you have a responsibility, you either abide by the rules or get fired (Kathleen Kennedy knows something about that)

Awesome points Joylitt

Franchise film? So 'Alien' series is just another 'Friday the 13th' or 'Nightmare on Elm street'?!?

Why would any director want to direct this shlock?! Forced to show Jason, Freddy and the Xeno.

I frankly believe that what he wants to do in the next movie is shit.

“He honestly seems to believe that he has made a brilliant horror film and that the audience just happened to reject that.”

It seems to me that he hasn't learned his lesson. Why can't he understand that he made an error with Alien Covenant? It is like you ride a train at full speed against a huge mountain (making a movie and releasing it but many consider the movie to be shitty) but you avoid to turn left or right (don't change even though many say that it is crap) because you believe that you can smash it anyways (make movies that you find intelligent and believe that you are ahead of everyone else), that is just mad. Not only was AC underwhelming but Prometheus was too, and they have the same director. Coincidence?

The alien was badly handled in AR and AVP but it wasn't made a lot better in AC. I understand the idea of not wanting to do 100 Xeno movies but you got to replace it with something more interesting but they have not done so with the AI part because of mostly bad characters and too much focus on AI. You got to have a balance, they did this fine with Alien 1-3 when the AI was a part of it but not 70% of the total story, there is no balance right now but Scott doesn't seem to understand that nor have I seen any mention of it in any interviews with Scott what so ever. Why can't any interviewer simply mention to Scott that the human characters in the prequels have been paper thin? Are they not aware about this or is it just another ass-kissing contest? Sure it can be interesting but you got to have interesting human characters and that has been lacking since AR.

Who made the Xeno could be hinted at but I don't want it to be made by a mad AI because it is boring and it is too close to the humans if it is a result of human action. Monsters are usually more interesting when they are from far away (they are you know, alien), which is in part what made Alien 1-3 work.

Prometheus was not successful (Scott claims so in about 3:05 into the clip). It made money so it was successful in that way but it made the Engineers look worse than they could have and the human characters were thin as I don't know what. If he thinks that the only thing that people disliked about Prometheus was the lack of Xenos then he is totally wrong, a lot of what I have read at the Internet at least is that the characters were lame, again and again you read something like “Idiots go where no one have gone before (something like that)” and still he thinks that the reason why people complained was the lack of Xenos? He seems to have totally misunderstood what the criticism of Prometheus was about. In a way AC was worse since it messed with the alien lore and made the Android a part of it, screw that.

Scott talks about reintroducing the Xeno (about 3:20) as if peoples complaints were that there were not enough Xenos in it. He doesn't understand that the characters were mostly lame (Prometheus), that to me was a lot worse than simply not having any Xenos in it.

http://www.gavinrothery.com/my-blog/2012/6/11/so-what-was-wrong-with-prometheus.html

Here is a quote which sums up my biggest problem with Prometheus:

“So pat yourself on the back if you said the biggest problem with Prometheus was the fact it didnt have the alien in it.
Then kick yourself in the balls for missing the biggest problems.“

https://io9.gizmodo.com/ridley-scott-admits-fan-backlash-over-prometheus-influe-1795126523

“This is the moment when I abruptly lost all sympathy or empathy with the characters, because they were all clearly idiots. “

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17385/reviews/prometheus-a-litany-of-stupid

“most of the characters literally serve no purpose and are defined by one character trait that they remind the audience of every ten seconds they are on screen. “

http://whatculture.com/film/5-reasons-why-prometheus-is-a-god-awful-film

The same could be said about Alien Covenant by the way, so they didn't learn their lesson. This is not empty rhetoric, watch the two movies and think about how the characters are made. Do they have some different character traits or just a few? Can you sympathize with them when it goes bad? Why or why not?

“The characters act so stupidly. I mean, even by blockbusters' standards. “

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3xmgui/why_is_prometheus_a_bad_film/#bottom-comments

“There are also some bad sci-fi plot holes and the characters were not realistic in any sense. “

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3xmgui/why_is_prometheus_a_bad_film/#bottom-comments

Do you see what I am getting at? A lot of people seem to have less problem that there was no Xeno but rather it seems that far more had a problem with stupid or uninteresting characters but no, Scott etcetera learned nothing from it and we almost get the same problem in AC. *sigh* At least they characters in AC were not as goofy and stupid as Fifield and Milburn but you got to aim a lot higher than that. Just because some things were better in AC compared to Prometheus doesn't mean that it is good.

Having David as the creator of the Xeno is lame. Scott might like it (3:32 into the clip) but I don't, it is really bad and ruins a lot of what is interesting about it. That could have been a lot better given another explanation I bet a lot of people could have made it more interesting. “At the idle hands of the Devil's workshop.” So now the Xenos is not only a result of a mad robot but the explanation is that he had nothing better to do than to mess with some biology? What a crappy explanation, a thirteen year old could probably come up with something better. Even if the Xeno would have been given an explanation that the Engineers did it at least that is better because then it has less to do with human action (we seem to get the explanation that humans invented AI and the AI invented the Xeno, bleh).
“Cooked it” well, ironically they made it worse by having it being killed in a lame way in AC (that crane thing). If this is the way that the prequels are supposed to be when they are all finished then I guess that they will make AR look good in retrospect.

"I think AI is becoming much more dangerous and therefore more interesting.”

To you (Scott) maybe, not to me. I do not watch alien movies to get a robot story.

". . . i think RS could explore a connection between David and the LV-223 Engineers..."

I hope that the Engineers do us a favor and kill David in the most gruesome way possible. I am tired of the robot story.

“Where is your passion about the genre, Ridley?”

It is with that robot crap. Where is my pillow? *Falls asleep from boredom* ;)

"And Ultimately i am waiting for the reveal that the Company is being ruled by Machines while Mankind are oblivious so much like a MATRIX kind of Plot."

Boring, keep that to movies like Terminator.

"After this movie I pray they give the series to a new director who does not hate it so much."

Yep, Scott is one of the reasons why it has gotten worse.

"The FRANCHISE does not have a massive base, and none Alien Fans have not Flocked to take interest in a Story about a Rogue Robot."

Exactly this, the android tale is not interesting at least not in the context of the Alien franchise. Please get rid of it because it is boring the way that it is now and it doesn't include enough of the Human story (notice the capital H).

I would also think that it could be interesting if they show us more about the black goo and the Engineers, that could be good if it id done right. The major problem with Prometheus and Covenant was not the lack of Xenos but more about the lack of characters. Letting us know a bit more about the goo at least what it can be used for could be interesting. Some people might not find that to be interesting but it could be if it is being done right, which means that it has got to be base o more than some random ideas. It got to make sense

"Xenomorph says he will do another Alien movie with no AI and no Ridley."

Ha ha ha! :D

"David 3"

Ha ha ha! Thanks Critters5

Well said. 

Ooops, I forgot about this part. ;)

"They were essential to the plot."

It does not matter since the majority of a movie is about a mad android. You can say that the emperor was important with his plans in Star Wars 4 since he gave orders to the empire but we didn't see him, he was in the background. In AC everything else was put in the background to push the David story so the rest became secondary to that.

"philosophical mumbo jumbo"

Another phrase for "some boring shit", which unfortunately sums up a lot of Alien Covenant. Yes there were some good things but the movie in general was a failure because they did not learn the lesson from Prometheus (namely that you need interesting characters for a movie to work). Philosophical parts can be interesting if they are done right and have humans as the focus but AC didn't.

Well Thoughts_Dreams this is the BIG problem, there are many fans with different likes/dislikes in the Franchise and its hard to make a movie that EVERY Fan will enjoy and have no flaws or problems with.

It appeared Prometheus 2 was going to touch upon some interesting things, but the back lash at Prometheus had given FOX the impression that a movie that covers Dr Shaw and David arriving at Paradise and interacting with some beings was something Fans would not be interesting in... IN GENERAL so we ended up with the After Math of David and Shaw Shenanigans.  FOX also took on board how Fans was disappointed that Prometheus did not have any real Action Scenes as far as Monsters... we only really had Milburn being attacked by the Hammerpede, Toxic Avenger Fifield attack some crew, Angry Engineer killing some crew and then Trilobite killing the Engineer and these scenes were far from the kind of Xenomorph vs Humans we have seen in the Franchise...   It was not quite not having Xenomorphs, it was just we never got any related encounters...  if the Black Goo Produced Neomorphs from Milburn and Fifield and they went around killing the crew then i feel that would have appeased fans more.

some fans wanted actual Xenomorphs.... but a lot of fans was expecting Prometheus to show us how the Xenomorph came to be, which it did not cover enough....

And so this is maybe the reason why it was introduced into Alien Covenant, i also think FOX saw Blomkamps Alien 5 was getting a lot of interest and so they felt actually it was a mistake to leave the ALIENS out.

But indeed Thoughts_Dreams both movies had other problems too, such as lack of Character Depth, some Questionable Scenes that all seemed to only serve ONE purpose and thats to push the Plot along.

They need to FIX this with the Next movie, we need Characters to Care about and sense their Jeopardy

ALIEN COVENANT introduced a slower burner start to the movie to try and introduce us to Characters, the Prologue the Last Supper was supposed to get us to feel more for the Characters and maybe it could have been added to the movie?   The Pacing and Build up was fine right until David arrived and took the crew to his HIDE OUT

Then this is where they had to try and FIT the Prometheus parts (what happened to Shaw and Engineers) while introduce us to the Xenomorph and how/why it was created and these parts had been and felt very rushed.

The Movie Ultimately tried to do a bit of everything to please everybody but also had to have that FIRST ACT to introduce us to the Characters... Sadly with a 2 hour run time they could not do every element any justice.

The case now is RS can suggest to FOX that look, he changed things to Fan Pressure and the movie simply did not do as well as Prometheus... and so its a Question does FOX look at Fan Reaction again, or stick with Ridley Scotts Vision?

FOX will want to make $$$$$$ so they Face a Very Tough Decision Process, Stick with Ridley Scott or try and figure out what Problems the Largest % of fans had with AC and the Future of the Franchise... and its a case of you CANT please them all.

For RS he wants to make the kind of Movie he wants and he wont give TWO HOOTS what fans like/dislike, he wont change David being the Creator if he feels Fans Hate it, if RS likes this idea then RS will just do what he pleases.

The only way things will change would be if FOX again decide to get RS to change things that they feel had disappointed the fans.

I think FOX need to either Back RS and the Fans have to give him a chance.

Or Replace RS and do a sequel that they can use his ideas but change things that have disappointed fans, but the problem lies again with NO TWO fans having the Same likes/dislikes

"Didn't Fox say they were going greatly shrink the funding for David 3? How do you see that playing out Bigdave? "

I am not aware of them giving a smaller budget... who knows what will happen behind the scenes, some reports had been earlier on in the project that RS wanted a Larger Budget than Prometheus, Prometheus was $130M and Alien Covenant was $111M but with inflation, Prometheus would have been about $140M

And indeed you can see where a extra $25M could have helped.

With the disappointment with AC we have FOX now having to make some tough decisions, and a lot depends on RS... he may ask FOX for a higher Budget and more Free Reign to do what he wants.... 

Ideally a movie with a $150M Budget would help, but i really cant see FOX cutting the Budget for something really low like sub $75M and so the Budget for the next movie is anyone's guess.

Lower Budget means more cuts....

A Movie that is set a few years after David and the Colonist arrive on Origae-6 and set up a basic colony would require less of a budget than a movie set in Space on a Ship or a Alien looking World.   A movie that does not feature Xenomorphs much, apart from maybe a few Eggs or a Face Hugger and a Chest Buster at the end, again would require less of a Budget.

Engineers like they appeared in Alien Covenant would again require a smaller budget.

But i dont know if such decisions as far as Plot and where its based and which races are involved etc have impacted the Budget or the Budget impacts such decisions.    A Very GIGER world with lots of Engineer Ships, lots of Human Ships and lots of Xenomorphs would require a much HIGHER budget.

I think Ridley Scott should just give up making these films - I'm afraid to watch any more as I feel its an insult to the original films.

Both Prometheus and Alien Covenant were terrible because of the where and how.   In Alien and Aliens (IMO the two best movies) it was the strangeness and the lack of knowledge of where and how these creatures developed that made them so interesting to me.

I remember many years ago thinking about the planet they evolved on and the ecosystem that would support them as well as their natural prey and habitat.     

The idea that they were created by some sort of nonsensical magic dust created by super human gods who didn't seem to have the forethought and intelligence to properly contain it is very sloppy storytelling.  

The original aliens from movies one and two had an amazing and very scary reproductive cycle and a social hierarchy / behaviour that was much more complex then something that just 'appeared' out of nowhere because of this nonsense dust. 

The way I saw it, it became kind-of a Frankenstein between Gremlins and the original Aliens.  Not cool at all.

The only way I think this series could be saved now would be, assuming the dust is a collection of dna from lots of creatures and causes host cells to morph into the creature the dna came from, for humankind to find the planet where the dna and the aliens came from originally.  Perhaps the Engineers also discovered that world, or were originally from that world and make the movie based around that.

Humans don't have to be and shouldn't be the centrepin of the whole movie, that's why it worked originally, because humans stumbled upon something Alien and were very ill prepared for that they found.

Big Dave:

Sure but I totally understand that about the backlash. Lack of action scenes was understandable but they still did not get enough well characters. There could maybe have been more action scenes, at least they could have cut down the David Walter dialogue because it was too long and too slow.

It should have had better clues to how the Xeno came to be but there were other things that I found bigger problems with than that. I think that the black goo cold have been expanded on but I think that it worked alright the way it was.

Yeah I also thought that it became slower when they got to the David cave. The pacing was alright p until then. I understand that there is room needed between the action scenes but the slow parts were too many.

The first act and introducing us to the characters failed because we never got to know who they were and what they were about. If the first act was about that it was a failure.

If Scotts vision is more robot movies then no thanks. I want better human characters and interesting monsters. Less AI, I am not very interested in that aspect.

"what Problems the Largest % of fans had with AC and the Future of the Franchise."

They still didn't get the characters right despite people complaining about that. I am afraid that the next movie might be a miss also, although I wish that they would learn from their mistakes.

"The only way things will change would be if FOX again decide to get RS to change things that they feel had disappointed the fans."

I want a good alien movie and if Scott's ideas make it worse then I will sure let people know about that.

"I think FOX need to either Back RS and the Fans have to give him a chance."

The problem with that is that he has made two alien movies in a row that have not been that good and judging from his plans the third movie will be a boring movie also.

"Or Replace RS and do a sequel that they can use his ideas but change things that have disappointed fans, but the problem lies again with NO TWO fans having the Same likes/dislikes."

At least listen to what the majority of fans have had problems with, not give Scott freedom to totally do what he wants and give us another underwhelming movie.