So what really happened with Prometheus?

[nanison]

First it was going to be an alien prequel, then Scott stated that it was something entirely different.
That's what I don't understand, usually a company doesn't want something entirely different in a franchise afraid of people not paying for cinema tickets.
I would think Ridley wanted to do something different from the start and that the company asked for aliens to be included.
But that is not how it went, right? And now we seem to getting that alien prequel after all. So I would say Covenant is going to be the film Ridley would have wanted from the beginning, hence almost no connections to the first part Prometheus except for David.

I'm puzzled, what happened?

[windebieste]

Here's 10 Connections 'PROMETHEUS' has with 'ALIEN':

1).   The slow reveal of the film's title.
2).   The descriptive slide at the very beginning of the movie.
3).   The presence of the Weyland Corporation (aka The Company/Weyland Yutani). 
4).   Interior structural design of the Prometheus and the presence of semiotic graphics on the walls.
5).   LV-223 and LV-426 designations.
6).   The ringed planet, Calpamos.
7).   An android masquerading as Human.
8 ).   Story elements motivated by corporate interests.
9).   Hypersleep.
10). Crew briefing scene.

Shit, man.  we haven't even landed the USCSS* Prometheus yet! 

On these grounds, I'd say it was always intended to be an 'ALIEN' movie regardless of what the Old Fox Scott said. 

-Windebieste

*That's 11 connections, now.

[nanison]

Ok, I've seen that too but it's specifically about what happened before filming started... I believe Prometheus was not entirely how Scott envisioned the alien prequel based on interviews before filming took place.

[windebieste]

You'd be best referring to earlier drafts of the scripts.  Those are the best documentation of changes made - and they were some that were substantial.

-Windebieste.

[DorkiDori]

The movie was a spiritual prequel... It had ELEMENTS of Alien stuff littered all over the film, it just took a keen eye and a mind open to interpretation to pick up on a lot of it.

The thing that almost everyone missed was the fact that as soon as the film came out, during interviews, Scott flat out said "This is the beginning of quite possibly a trilogy if it makes enough money". It is very evident that the film is a far off prequel in the way it presented everything. Scott did this on purpose. Since it debuted, I always looked at the film as the start of somethjng grandiose and a smaller piece to a larger puzzle. But then again, in modern society, unless the news is force fed down peoples eye holes via social media... People tend to not give 2 shite about digging for answers or explanations. Society is so use to taking everything at face value, having answers handed directly to them and no longer engaging their brains that it comes to no surprise to me that most folks couldn't see or understand how Prometheus was an actual Alien prequel... Not enough preconnected dots for most people out there.

If the Deacon didn't tie it all together for you as a prequel though, I dont know what would...

[SM]

It's pretty straight forward.  Spaits was asked to do a treatment for an Alien prequel.  Based on that Riddles wanted to do more with the Engineers rather than the Aliens.

With Covenant Ridley or someone else, had some interesting ideas about bringing Prometheus and Alien closer together (rather than further apart as Ridley originally mooted).

[nanison]

I was not aware he said it during Prometheus release. If that's true then everything is as he intended all along.

[DorkiDori]

I'm actually a bit bummed that Ridley is focusing much more on the Xenos and horror aspect in Covenant than originally planned. I was really looking forward to him distancing the Prometheus saga from the Xenomorphs. I love the aliens, dont get me wrong... But I was really hoping for something that pushed the idea of questioning our creation and religious views even more!!!

Meh. Im still excited for Covenant since Scott seems to be answering questions from Prometheus all the while posing even more questions with Covenant. Heh, that should piss people right off all over again

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

Nanison, rumour has it that it was Tom Rothman (Fox Film Co-Chair and CEO at the time and also a friend of Scott) who requested the removal of the Alien. It's Fox's property after all, not Ridley's as some people seem to think. I think the Spaiths treatment predated Rothman's tenure.

And as SM mentioned, Ridley seemed more interested in pursuing the Space Jockey angle since it was never explored in any of the Alien sequels. I don't think Scott had any issues with binning the Alien.

Of course with Rothman now gone, the new regime at Fox has to do the diametric opposite of what the previous one did, even going so far as to greenlight Blomkamp's (an old enemy of Rothman) film.

[Wobblyboddle77]

Tom Rothman was a thorn in foxes side, he categorically shot down any ideas of having the sentinels in x men the last stand, as he thought they were too tall. He instigated the hiring of Brett Ratner for x men 3 and constantly interfered with the production to reduce the budget. He went onto the x men origins wolverine set when the director was absent and made them re paint the sets, so they were brighter and didn't make the film look so dark hence more family friendly. Yes he instigated in the removal of the alien from Prometheus too, the best thing that happened was him departing Fox. Read up on him, the guy is the Uwe Boll of movie exec decision making

[nanison]

Ok thanks for the replies folks!

I don't think you can forget about the aliens in favor of Engineers only. It always has to have a connection to the alien at one point or another.
It wouldn't make sense business wise.

Do you need to have an insane knowledge of movie characters to become head of a studio? 
I mean how can he demand this or that to happen in a film. I personally don't know a thing about X-men so I wouldn't mess with it it if I was head of Fox

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

Tom Rothman was a thorn in foxes side, he categorically shot down any ideas of having the sentinels in x men the last stand, as he thought they were too tall. He instigated the hiring of Brett Ratner for x men 3 and constantly interfered with the production to reduce the budget. He went onto the x men origins wolverine set when the director was absent and made them re paint the sets, so they were brighter and didn't make the film look so dark hence more family friendly. Yes he instigated in the removal of the alien from Prometheus too, the best thing that happened was him departing Fox. Read up on him, the guy is the Uwe Boll of movie exec decision making

I've heard that he had a nasty habit of interfering with creative decisions on many of the films Fox made. He was also responsible for scuttling Blomkamp's Halo film. He actually said some pretty derogatory stuff about Neill back then. This was of course pre-D9.

He's now at Sony (good luck to them) and probably the reason why Blomkamp cut his ties with them and is now directing, writing and producing for Fox.

[oduodu]

http://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=54406.0

The whole development of Prometheus is explained here.

AC is not a direct prequel but if you mean a change in the sense that it is going back to aliens and eggs and facehuggers then yes that is the case. As long as they explore the engineer mythos I am cool with that as long as big chap features an he retains the original bio mech look.

I guess it boils down to the success  of SW:TFA. Give the fans what they want. Redo old stuff. Etc

[BishopShouldGo]

Tom Rothman wanted the Alien removed and Ridley Scott was principally interested in the engineers. Tom felt like the safe thing to do was to just make a prequel, and that an original sci-fi would be cooler. "This is the man who made Blade Runner". Tom by the way was at Fox for many years. There's even a pic of him on set with Sigourney and Winona. However he was the CEO starting a few years after Resurrection I believe.

When Ridley's producers sent the Spaihts draft to new writers, the only one that told them what they wanted to hear was Damon. "They just needed someone to say that they don't need all this alien stuff."

I'm actually a bit bummed that Ridley is focusing much more on the Xenos and horror aspect in Covenant than originally planned. I was really looking forward to him distancing the Prometheus saga from the Xenomorphs. I love the aliens, dont get me wrong... But I was really hoping for something that pushed the idea of questioning our creation and religious views even more!!!

Meh. Im still excited for Covenant since Scott seems to be answering questions from Prometheus all the while posing even more questions with Covenant. Heh, that should piss people right off all over again

Lol. Xenia and exploring creation and religion aren't mutually exclusive you know.

[DorkiDori]

no but the way Ridley went about doing it is really inline with a theory ive had for a long time about religion that Allah, Jesus, Buddha (Im a buddhist myself) etc were all alien beings that came here to help establish beliefs and basic fundamentals for guiding us thru life. basically they gave us a code of conduct to steer us along the right path in life... even though weve screwed it all up and were STILL killing each over whos god is "right"

point is, Prometheus posed some REALLY big questions like... even if we found our makers and they werent the ones talked about in monotheistic belief systems, would we still be able to accept faith vs fact?