Janty Yates talks Alien: Covenant & Prometheus costume design in a new interview with Collider. Janty Yates is a long time collaborator of Ridley Scott and worked alongside Ridley Scott for his 2012 return to the world of Alien and science-fiction with Prometheus. She also worked with him again in this year’s immensely successful The Martian and will continue in that capacity for Alien: Covenant.
In the interview with Collider she mentions she has designed 2 new spacesuits for Alien: Covenant which Ridley Scott has signed off on. Yates also says that whilst they have designed new spacesuits for the film, Alien: Covenant is “not so much of a spacesuit movie.” She also confirmed that David’s would have the same spacesuit design as he had in Prometheus.
Janty Yates talks Alien: Covenant & Prometheus costume design in a new interview with Collider.
Janty Yates also stated that Alien: Covenant takes place 10 years after Prometheus, placing it around 2103/04. Yates mentions that their first “roundtable meeting” regarding Alien: Covenant was at the end of August but that officially prep work on the Prometheus sequel began a few weeks ago. Yates also said that shooting would commence in April.
The Alien and Prometheus related talk commences at about 13 minutes into the interview. She also talks about her role as a costume designer and her work on her other movies. You can find the whole interview over at Collider.
Sadly, the coffee was the only thing good on the ship.
Personally I've come to the conclusion that canon just doesn't matter. It's what they say it is and it can change at a whim. Just enjoy what you enjoy.
My sentiments exactly.
I can agree with that. In fact, I think if Lindeloff had only made a few of the changes that he did, namely, having made David less villainous and developing the characters (maybe even a bit more), and limiting a great deal of the facehuggers and been-there-done-that stuff, while keeping the ponderous stuff more in the subtext... I think, basically he made the changes he needed to and then didn't know where to stop. I think having the Engineer DO something strange after he had been woken up, strange the way the opening was strange, I think that was key to making that last act feel in step with the rest of it, and neither of them figured that out. Instead, it was just - SURPRISE! He wants to kill us!! Only, that was as predictable as a chestburster scene getting tacked onto the end.
And what's really most head scratching about PROMETHEUS that the entire first 2/3 of the film seems so filled with strange, interesting, head scratching ideas to make us want more, as the intensity ramps up, and then the entire last quarter of the film, is predicable run of the mill crap.
I hope this film opens with someone saying "This will begin to make things right."
I liked that it was better reasoned in Engineers but I wouldn't have minded it Prometheus had it actually been setup. Like with Spaiht's having the upgrading humanity evidence.
That's fair enough and I can really see where you're coming from. I do agree that both versions had some aspects right and others wrong. I just think that Engineer's would have required less work to make it more solid.
I don't agree that either script was better. As much as I think Lindeloff was right in changing the style of the film away from the traditional Alien stuff and I liked the changes to David's character, I felt the Engineers only worked in the opening scene and that was true of both drafts. Their tech was out-of-universe. It doesn't match the world of Alien. The one thing that did work with their tech though, WAS in Spaihts draft. I hated the reason Weyland wanted to be there (eternal life) in Lindelof's draft, and thought the terraforming tech was a better idea... I also agree with the exclusion of LV426 but think the entire second half of Lindeloff's script was a giant mess. Lindelof was right with thinking I did not just want to see aliens killing people but he was wrong in thinking the Engineers were driving the second half of the script. He woke it up and didn't know what to do with it. There was no sense of wonder because the Engineer did nothing of interest. Also of note is that in the Spaihts draft the characters were even more cookie-cutter. But overall I liked his sense of reasoning better. In Lindelof's draft the motivations of characters drive the plot up until Weyland and the Engineer are woken up and then they dropped the ball miserably.
In Spaihts draft the motivations of the characters is ruined by making David so villainous.
I can't come down on one side of the fence because the best draft was somewhere in between. Lindeloff got rid of too much and changed things that worked but he also got rid of a lot of the right things and changed NOTABLY the characters, for the better. Also both scripts got things wrong and didn't follow through on the Engineer stuff correctly. I think Spaihts version made the Engineers feel even more tacked on. Neither script integrated the Engineers well and that is the biggest thing Prometheus gets wrong. I wasn't interested in the middle section of either script and the ending of both sucked. The ending just sucked all around, I think.
Overall, I think the problem is simple and present with both versions: There are too many ideas without enough connective tissue. The entire thing needed to be simplified. I think Lindelof simplified some things rightly, and then introduced more things incorrectly.
Indeed. Even with its weaknesses, Alien: Engineers is still better than Prometheus. All Prometheus' strengths were visual and they'd come across easily enough. Only difference between the 2 that Prometheus has over Engineers is David - and I wonder how much of that was purely Fassbender? I can't remember what Lindelof really did to the character.
I would. Even as it is it's better.
But it wasn't.
Yea not arguing over which script was better as a movie but even tweaking Spaihts script doesn't make it all that more appealing.
Every time anyone says they preferred Spaihts script the instant retort is "but the Aliens were too weak!", when we've said literally every time that the script needed tidying up to address that.
But even in it's unpolished state, it's still leagues better than the mess that we got.
You guys just wanna see those ultramorphs don't yea.
Indeed. It wasn't perfect but it was certainly stronger than Prometheus.
Absolutely. It at least made sense and had characters that weren't total morons.
Also, Prometheus is fine the way it is. Scott and Co are just dropping the charred and admitting that this is an Alien series with the name change. I can already see him saying, you know, what ever happened to that thing that was born out of the engineer from the end of Prometheus. Why hasn't no one told his story yet.
The way I see it, the alien is Prometheus. It hands over an egg to the engineers as depicted in the mural. They're first true piece of ultra advance modern biotechnology, that they then went all Weyland-Yutani over and created bioweapons galore. The engineers are basically the corporations scientist, bioweapons division.
That's also a good point. I think mainly when they go for pests, they bring out some of the more obsolete stuff but in war, they may be given better things.
I'd love to see a film of Marines facing some human colonial insurgency somewhere who has found some "bio weapons" (Aliens) and is experimenting on people, then the Marines arrive and have to face not only Aliens but also well armed rebels. It'd be nice to see some vehicles like futuristic tanks and even some mechs.
I completely agree, I loved Fassbender. I just wish he could've got a better film to play that part in.
I also agree with everything else you're saying, I'm just pointing out that with David in the new movie there's always going to be that niggling knowledge of where he came from. And that'll be worse if they're simply going to throw out everything else from Prometheus, because it seems incredibly petulant to simply discard a story that isn't finished because you did such a half-arsed job of it... yet at the same time make a sequel with a returning character.
David was also the best thing about Prometheus and arguably the most intriguing android in any of the Alien films. The slate doesn't need to be perfectly clean, they just need to really downplay the first film to the extent that it makes absolutely zero difference whether you've seen Prometheus beforehand or not. It must be able to stand on it's own as a self-contained movie like you said.
If Scott really hits a home run with this film you wouldn't really want it to have a strong connection with an inferior prequel would you? Imagine if Alien followed after Alien: Resurrection but with so many narrative ties and plot points that you couldn't just ignore Resurrection in order to understand Alien. It would have tarnished Alien a bit don't you think?
Hah! I don't hate its guts, it just annoys me because its a mess of a film, yet at every step they seemed to have a better movie that they then made worse by fiddling with it - from Spaihts' script to Lindelof's, then with several of the scenes they cut out for seemingly no good reason.
Trouble with that is, David's back. So it can't possibly be a clean slate.
I say start over with a clean slate, wipe the mess that is Prometheus under the carpet and pretend it never happened (mostly). Do a proper job this time around.
This kinda pisses me off. The "shock" Deacon ending in Prometheus felt tacked-on as hell as it was. If they're now going to ditch it entirely, it'll feel even more pointless.
I like this idea! It's makes sense. It could even be a strategic decision. The marines are armed well enough to handle anything they would encounter during their normal operations without revealing the latest, greatest, or most destructive weapons.
That's another question, I think. On the face of it, it would look like Covenant is going to try and distance itself from Prometheus. How much that comes through in the narrative will be interesting to see.
It certainly seems to be that Fox is trying to handle the new EU with more interest and care than they have done before.
I think that may have been true, but that could easily have been stipulated when the comics were still in the initial writer's room phase. The fact that the entire first issue of the comic had to be scrapped after it had already been finished would suggest this was done to keep Fire and Stone canon, as well as elements of Prometheus 2 under wraps. The fact we now know Alien Covenant is set 10 years after Prometheus 2 probably explains why the timeframe of Prometheus Fire and Stone was suddenly put back 100 years. But the better evidence here is Lebbon's forced revision of Predator Incursion. That manuscript was already delivered to the publishers when he made those changes. We don't know what those changes were exactly other than it was something to do with Alien 5.
Normally I would agree with you, but reading the Weyland-Yutani Report has completely changed my thinking on the Alien universe. Such a large effort has been made to weave everything together in such a way that it all makes sense. It's the perfect sourcebook and why I believe strongly that this new canon is all that matters anymore and the likes of AVP, Requiem and the old EU are long gone. All I can do to stress this point is urge people to get their hands on a copy and read it. Of course the films are absolute at the end of the day and stories like Out of the Shadows will not have much bearing on things going forward, but it's nice to know they actually happened.
I really hope the Yutani and Weyland merger doesn't have anything to do with the Alien. Its just unnecessary and convenient to tie things together so much. I hate when they do crap like that in prequels.
I understand why you say what you are saying here, but I think you are reading too much into Fox's motives for making the writers of FIRE AND STONE stay away from any content that would conflict with the Prometheus sequel. It doesn't mean they want the F&S story to remain canonical, per se. It simply means that they don't want any aspects of the P2 script revealed in the comics, ahead of time. It also further reinforces them from legal and payroll disputes over the ideas presented, should different writers come up with the same ideas twice.
The fact that Fox made the writers of the comics change things, so as not to give away aspects of Prometheus 2, doesn't mean they did so so they can keep the EU canonical. I'm sure, in their minds that may be an added bonus, especially and only if fans respond well to the EU materials in question, but the de-facto reason is just a formality. They don't want things, they want the film to reveal, to be revealed before hand. Its really that simple and it is completely driven by the fact that the financial root is still, and is always, the films dictating what is canonical, without complicated cross pollination.
The exception here may be Alien Isolation, but I would almost guarantee that the exception proves the rule in this case, because I wouldn't put it passed FOX to consider adapting that game into a film someday, but only based on how well received it was. In contrast, I'm pretty certain we wont see or hear any mention of a Colonial Marines adaptation based on how poorly that game was received. Heh.
LSS The films are the raw material. Everything else, from the studio's perspective is cross-pollination and is, for better or worse, secondary.
It's alright.
I understand why you made your point though, you are correct, war does drive technological innovations, lots of things were discovered during our past major wars. The Cold War for instance landed a man on the moon due to the competition of world super powers.
So logically, the Marines should have some really powerful gear. I remember reading on the wiki (I know it's not reliable, but this was an interesting point) that the Marines are given outdated equipment by the United Americas, I'm not sure if that was mentioned in the Colonial Marines Technical Manual. But if this is true, it should be incorporated into any future films to explain why the Marines had what they had and other armies back home have better equipment to cut costs etc.
Having said all that, Ridley Scott has always been his own man and I wouldn't put it past him to disregard anything he doesn't like.
I thought I'd share some examples of advancement within the EU regardless as it showed some things I felt were close to what you were describing earlier that you wanted to see on film.
This kind of post treating science is often a pleasure to read. Clear and concise.
It shows the necessity of having cryosleep for such ships. It also indicates a trip from Earth to LV-426 wouldn't even reach the 99,9% of speed of light that it would start to decelerate.
Yes... and that emphasis was made on her being far away from Earth. In Paradise's final script, it's writen "half a billion sodding miles". It doesn't bother me from Vickers.
If Holloway and Shaw announced this figure during their pre-landing presentation in a serious manner, then that would be really disturbing.
Well said. Accuracy can get in the way of telling a good story.
Doesn't matter. The lesson is universal. EU doesn't count. When film makers draw upon it, that's a bonus. But film makers are rarely bound by it. And rights holders can declare it null and void any time they like. Now, if Alien were based on a novel, like the tale of a certain annoying British wizard boy or a certain girl with a bow and arrow, the dynamics between book and movie might be a little different. But these Rage War novels don't matter a hill of beans to what we're ever going to see on the screen. Bitter pill, but that's the way it goes.