We previously reported that Sir Ridley Scott, Michael Fassbender and Danny McBride would be attending SXSW to show off footage of Alien: Covenant alongside a screening of the original Alien.
Yesterday was the day and they showed three clips of Covenant, including the two that were shown to the press at the various Showcase events at the end of 2016/start of 2017. However, SXSW attendees also got to see a new clip that we have only seen snippets of before (beware spoilers):
“One of the crew somehow meets David (from Prometheus) who has been living on the planet for over a decade, experimenting with the black ooze from Prometheus. He tells the person how he’s been testing it with a variety of genetic techniques, in an attempt to create life. He shows the person all his failed attempts and tells him that he thinks he’s figured out how the create the perfect specimen. He just needs one more thing. He leads the person into another room and shows him some eggs. These eggs, of course, contain facehuggers. And one attaches itself to the man’s face.”
The above comes via Beeslo on /r/LV426. If you think that sounds like a scene from the trailer you’re not wrong. Tracking Board clarifies that the crewmember was Billy Crudup’s Oram whose unfortunate encounter we have seen in both trailers.
Ridley Scott, Katherine Waterston and Danny McBride at SXSW. Credit: Kats Detroit Team.
Scott, McBride and Fassbender were also joined by Katherine Waterston and as well as screening the Alien: Covenant preview, they did a Q&A with the audience, attended a Q&A panel hosted by Entertainment Weekly and did a roundtable with some of the press. Several points of interest across the Q&As are:
- As previously reported, work on Alien: Covenant 2 is underway. (EW)
- Alien: Covenant will run for “roughly two hours and two minutes.” (EW)
- Scott put the Daniels/Ripley rumors to rest and confirmed they aren’t related. Though it sounds like it was considered in the past. (MovieWeb)
- Ridley Scott would happily keep making Alien films. (austin360)
- According to Scott, artificial intelligence could not be “authentically creative.” (austin360)
- Danny McBride’s character’s hat was a tribute to Slim Pickens in ‘Doctor Strangelove. (austin360)
- Now he’s in Alien: Covenant, McBride’s parents “finally think I am making real movies now.” (austin360)
Judging from the Twitter reactions, the reception to the previews were pretty positive! With just over 2 months until Alien: Covenant’s release, we wont have to wait long to find out!
Keep a close eye on Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest on Alien: Covenant! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get the latest on your social media walls. You can also join in with fellow Alien fans on our forums!
Not if the Engineers don't end up actually being the Space Jockeys. I understand that as far as we're concerned now, Space Jockeys = Engineers but we can cling to hope, right?
It's not unreasonable of me to hold onto hope that we'll see an entire Giger-esque landscape or world?
I for one am still very, very excited about A:C and have enjoyed what I've read. Would I have personally, as a writer, come up with a different take on this sequel? Absolutely. As a fan of the series, am I eager to see what's sure to be a lot of fun and scary, if not all that smart or game-changing for the franchise? Absolutely.
I understand your points. But its just a bit of harmless fun. I don't think people, I know I'm certainly not, are really expecting Covenant to match up to some of the more complex fan speculation.
I don't necessarily agree though, that some of these ideas wouldn't be achievable on screen.
Part of good writing and film making is the ability to express complex ideas in easy to follow ways, that even a general audience could understand.
Unless their trying to be deliberately ambiguous to create mystery, its normally just lazy writing why ideas aren't fully fleshed out on screen. Lets hope Covenant doesn't fall into the latter category.
Certainly going to be interesting to see how they pull off bringing the Giger elements back into play in the future films.
It's odd on RS's part. If you think about it. He stuck to most of his original ideas about the Alien in Prometheus: The Alien being a bioweapon, the Derelict being a battle wagon. Yet the idea of the Alien getting it's biomechanical look from the Space Jockey was thrown out, or at least, contradicted, with the Deacon.
Considering the Xenomorph is a descendent of the Deacon and the Deacon shares the Xenomorphs ability to assimilate the characteristics of it's host; as demonstrated by its humanoid appearance. Then to be consistent to the idea of the Xenomorph taking it's biomechanical characteristics from the Space Jockey, the Deacon really should have been a biomechaniod.
All this makes me think RS maybe abandoning the idea of the Xenomorph getting it's biomechanical characteristics from the Space Jockey and heading down a different path instead. But I hope that's not case.
If I recall correctly, Wayne was just hypothesising, just like we do on here!
It's like poetry, it rhymes!
I still think they should leave it a mystery.
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I was just talking about this elsewhere, but I thin RS means to get us thinking about what it means to 'PERFECT' a created lifeform.
I dont think its a mistake that we are simultaneously dealing with WALTER - a 'PERFECTED' version of DAVID, and then we encounter DAVID 'PERFECTING' the NEOMORPHS to become ...
I think that like PROMETHEUS, we're maybe supposed to see this reflection, when you look for answers to these questions.
McBride & Waterston ...
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In my ideal fan-fantasy, yes, I would prefer the Alien to of been created by a Giger-ish Space Jockey or another more advanced Giger-like race.
But as someone who's always liked the idea of the Alien being a created bio-weapon. Which I've always felt is the more logical way of explaining the Alien's biomechanoid aspects. Then providing the story is well told, I really have no problem with it being:
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I'm certainly not going to write off a film that I haven't seen yet, just because a key idea doesn't align to my own personal expectations or fantasies.
So like you, I'm just going to accept things and hope we get a good film. The franchise could certainly do with one.
Hopefully,
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I suppose I'll just have to accept it, then...
Its funny you say that. From when I first saw ALIEN i had been drawing a comparison b/w the FACEHUGGER and the BREATHING APPARATUS on the JOCKEY's FACE, and that never came to pass in any way. For a while, after PROMETHEUS, I was speculating that at some point David or whoever doesnt want that Space Jockey to fly off, would infect the Pilot chair's mechanisms and breathing apparatus with the Goo, thus fusing that pilot in the suit with the chair and causing it to create the Biomech features in not just the Alien but the entire ship.
In general, I find the idea expressed by Scott strange. From a naturalist point of view, we humans are but machines. Once you think there is not an ontological gap between humans, the other animals, and the idea of very advanced AI, the only way to agree with Scott, I think, is to say we will not be able to make AI advanced enough (or self-improving enough) to attain this goal.
About the movie, I think it's plausible to think that there could be another creature (or creatures) as surprises in it. However I'm more interested by the science-fiction stuff and the mysteries not yet revealed in the trailers (and I hope TV spots or other things won't spoil them before the release).
Prometheus shows that their hypersleep devices can let an Engineer live in it for at least 2000 years, or that the modifications the Engineers have made on themselves (the suit, etc.) can produce that effect (or let's say it's a mixture of both).
As for the idea of the "perfect organism", as of now, I still think it's a bit odd idea concerning the Xenomorph. A "perfect killer", I would understand more. If David is truly linked with the creation or return of the classical iteration of the Alien, it's logical and symbolical that Ash be admirative in front of the creature, I guess.
living tech 😉
the dorsal spines on the BIG CHAP perfectly match the exact same exhausts coming from the base of the jockey chair 😊
And I hope we never see it. I would like for some of this to remain "alien". I don't mind the possibility of David
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Which would mean, that somewhere in this mythology, is an even more deadly, scarier, meaner Alien, we have yet to see.
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I always liked the short lifespan Alien. I thought at some point it was said that the Alien crawled into the lifeboat at the end of the first movie to die as it i was nearing the end of the lifespan (which is why it also grows so quickly, super fast metabolism and short lifespan)
Surely the Xenomorph itself isn't evil though? It's just the "perfect organism" a perfect killing machine, an apex predator, top of the galactic food chain so to speak?
It always reminded me of what everyone learned from Jaws about the Great white shark at the time... How the shark was the ultimate predator and how it never sleeps and keeps,on moving and eating! It had hardly changed over millions of years (alligators and crocodiles are much the same) and I think the alien is in a similar vein.
The Xenomorph isn't evil its just an animal.... Which happens to kill everything!
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I was thinking about this today... Does the alien eat and therefore leave waste? And what about its lifespan?
Maybe the alien does have a relatively short lifespan?
Who knows?
But I'm sure after the alien has cleaned a planet if the Engineers leave it for a while it will be ready to seed again? Who knows, maybe a thousand years is nothing to the Engineers.
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https://www.joe.ie/movies-tv/early-footage-alien-covenant-screened-completely-freaked-sxsw-audience-581133
We're still a couple of months out from Alien: Covenant arriving in Irish cinemas, but a lucky few got a sneak peak of early footage of the movie this weekend in the SXSW festival.
While it can be easy to impress fan-boys with well-cut-together footage that might not represent the finished product, the reaction from what folks have seen so far has been nothing short of staggering.
Oh, and terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
Meanwhile, the peeps at The Verge wrote a long (and slightly spoiler-y, so beware) review-of-the-preview, but the choice line has got to be: "If the footage screened was any indication, the tone of Alien: Covenant is full-on, breakneck horror, taking what the original film did and amping it up by a factor of 10."
While we try to calm ourselves down at the thoughts of how great/scary this movie is going to be and how we're not sure we can wait til 12 May for it come out, here's a very unnerving look at how Michael Fassbender's new character is made, with Walter coming with a very different accent to the android David from Prometheus, and what looks like an even glassier, more sinister blank stare.
I know this for a fact because there is a beautifull painting of one on the ceiling of the urn room .
God, that would be awesome if it went into production this year. Doesn't look like we're gonna have to wait half a decade for the next installment.
The report I must have been misleading. Or maybe he was just talking about the scenes that they were shown?
"Cause I'm good."
Classic Ridley.
it makes sense the neomorph attacks early on are CGI, they are small or smallish at this point. But we know there are practical effects, and artists performing movements etc for (presumably) larger later attacks as previously reported here.
To Covenant... He already said that Covenant 2 is being written and will go into production as early as this year or beginning of next year.
I hate to hear that the aliens were totally created in the computer, but in the shots I've seen they look damn good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w4og9Q2JEc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTUZS2ZPRpY
http://movieweb.com/alien-covenant-sxsw-footage-review/
Very encouraging.
Ok, that makes more sense.
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Ha. Well perhaps Ridley and co. (and the marketing folks) know there's nothing terribly unpredictable in this film so they might as well just try to entice people to see what's there.
I'm speaking more of David's conversation with Oram. This clips seems to directly explain what he's doing and how. In some ways it's equivalent of showing a crowd a clip of David tell Shaw she's pregnant and then showing her go to the medpod to remove it. Should be a super exciting moment for the audience and it has been spoiled two months ahead of time.
That's a fair point.