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

BigDave I very much agree, it was like a roller coaster and things were happening so quickly. A longer run-time was needed. I understand shorter run-times are more audience friendly but if it helps a film flesh itself out better its only to it's detriment to cut it down.

Where did you read this Critters5? Even if this is the case, Ridley is notorious for getting great products out of small budgets and is rather proud of that. Fox seems to fully back him though if you take Snider's comments into account.

“Alien: Covenant” stumbled at the box office. Is that franchise over?
It was a disappointment, but I trust Ridley [Scott] and Emma [Watts] to know the right story when they find it. When universes are as rich as “Alien,” they can stay in a too familiar groove — in which case you’re in trouble — but they can also find a planet or a storyline or a villain that also lives in that universe that can be groundbreaking." -Stacey Snider, Fox CEO

@ BigDave

Like you I believe when they were struggling with the script in 2014 thy decided to solve two problems :-

1) Bring back the ALIEN life cycle.

2) Make David responsible for it. 

The collateral impact was to slaughter the Engineers and kill off Elizabeth.

There are two difficulties with this approach.

David does not mediate at all in the movie he is a ruthless son of a bitch.

The Xenomorph is not a species its a weapon.

In the next movie David needs real challenges Walter and the Engineers would be a good place to look. The Xenomorph's are treated merely as weapons, the difficulty is they get out of control has been done in two previous movies.

If Weyland Yutani are incoming with A I that could set up the final hybridising of the Xeno as Bio Mechanical and collect all the A I elements together.    

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

It sounds like a brilliant idea, I think, since it would be the perfect Alien movie: the monster is in the darkness from the beginning to the end, and we have to use our creative imagination - and that sounds very scary.

Ati I would like to see something like that too. I'll probably get ripped a new one for suggesting this, but perhaps they could do a Rogue One on the Alien Universe. Take a step away from the main elements of the franchise and explore some of the mythos in the universe.

Perhaps a group of deep space salvage explorers find a derelict ship in space. Board it to find the dead crew, and the husk of a dead xeno... Perhaps W-Y or a competitor of them find out and hunt them down to silence the discovery. And it goes from there. The xeno would be in it, but not a central threat to the film.

Explore more about the human dominion in space. The central habitats and world, the political climate, space exploration and colonisation endeavours. But have the looming threat of the Xeno's. Where are they? Could they invade? etc

IRaptus This is the problem I see with your suggestion: all evidence suggests that Ridley Scott's vision is pretty anthropocentric. His mythos will probably just include different versions of ourselves: creators, creation and sub-creations. I am wondering if he does not believe there are aliens out there anymore. He seems to be interested in things that represent a more imminent danger to humanity (which in my opinion is probably even more far fetched than an encounter with aliens). Unfortunately, I think this new direction is at odds with what most of us expect from the Alien franchise. Not to mention Ridley Scott has teased us to death with a wider alien universe in Prometheus: all for nothing. Unfortunately, now it seems that the worse movie in the franchise is going to be, the way he sees it, a turning point for the franchise so it will become something it was never meant to be.

From the source shared by joylitt, Thanks joylitt.

Scott brings up a Facebook experiment from last summer to prove his point. “They put two AIs together and they were communing. It already invented a f—ing language! And they couldn’t decipher what the language was so they had to switch them off. What was said and where’s it gone? They could have already implemented something we don’t know.”

There is one possible direction I can see Ridley moving in, but how it will translate into a movie is something else, but here is my take on it.

In most Sci-fi movies when alien life is discovered it is usually by humans encountering something, and then discovering whether what they have met is hostile. With Prometheus we have humans and AI ( in the form of David) meeting an aliens. What we have not seen is any alien AI yet. So what would happen if human produced AI was to meet up with alien AI? Would humans know that had happened, and what if both AI’s came up with their own agenda.

Suppose that the Engineers came up with an AI that turned on them in the same way that David has become morally bankrupt, and produced their version of the xenomorph. Along comes David and develops their work into what we have seen in AC. What we could get is David developing his version of the xeno and at some point, human AI at WY ends up communicating with engineer AI. This could gives us a possible scenario that David ends up battling engineers in some far flung part of the universe, whilst human AI wants to produce what David has created and discovers that there is a derelict ship on LV426.

The reason I am bringing this up as a possible scenario, is because we could get a movie where communication between human AI and alien AI is awakened. How this could be represented on screen is any ones guess. Where would the focus of such a movie be ? I think this would open the door for something different and possibly more psychological, with more inference to AI activity than action, horror or xenos. But in some way they could all play a part, just not a big one which could keep the budget down.

joylitt you are right yes. To me the Alien franchise always represented the fear or of what is lurking out in space. It is about encountering a species that is a dark perverted mirror of ourselves, something we don't want to acknowledge in ourselves - that we are a chaotic, violent pest species that consumes worlds.

The Derelict on LV426 gave us that first hint of the threats humanity could expect to encounter exploring and colonising beyond our local system. What else is out there? How large-scale a threat is the xenomorph species throughout the universe? Do they any natural predators or they an apex predator? That is what I would like to see explored...like you said something Prometheus teased us with.

The AI and creator/creation circle is at best an interesting sub-plot, but should not be the main focus of this franchise. Let Bladerunner tackle those questions if Ridley so chooses to pursue that theme.

The Alien-less Alien plot I refer to (re: Ati's suggestion) could be in the form of a film or tv series, and serves to widen the universe without necessary focussing on the xenomorph.

Much like Rogue One has done to the compliment the main Star Wars Episodes - fill in some loose ends, tell some backstory, widen the universe, add a different perspective to things.

It may be a way to appease certain elements of the fractured fan-base so that the main body of the franchise doesn't get sidetracked or derailed....or do what AC did and try to please absolutely everyone in a too-short a run time.

Ridley Scott need not have anything to so with it, give it to an up-and-coming or visionary director, someone like Saman Kesh or vincenzo natali 

didn't ridley scott also say at one point that covenant wasn't going to have aliens eather?

Timmy the ultramorph pretty much. Fox made him add them

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….

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….

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.