Alien vs. Predator Galaxy can exclusively share with you all one of John Logan’s earlier Alien: Covenant scripts! I believe this may actually be one of, if not the, first drafts that John Logan completed.
Dated November 20th 2015 (it was first reported in early November that Logan would be revising existing scripts), this script follows the same over all structure as what ended up on screen for the finished film but has several differences.
The most notable element is a sub-plot involving a quarantine field around the Engineer homeworld that Tennessee, Ricks and Upworth have to deal with, giving their characters more to do while the expedition team is on the surface of the planet.
Among many smaller differences, the character of Rosenthall is completely missing, there’s a small set piece of an “astronomical model” on the roof of the Citadel (which you can see a concept of below) and Shaw’s distress call is different.
“SHAW’S IMAGE walks through a WALL, and they RUSH TO FOLLOW–
SHAW is in anguish now. She falls to her knees and prays. The words of the Catholic prayer for the dead desperately whispered–“
This draft of the Alien: Covenant script features the “astronomical model.” This is concept art by Gerhard Mozsi portraying that set piece.
Check out the script in its entirety and be sure to let us know how you feel it compares to the finished film!
In addition to this first look at one of the Alien: Covenant scripts, you can also check out scripts for the rest of the Alien and Predator films, including 2 of Jon Spaihts scripts for Prometheus, in our Downloads section. Head on over and give them a read!
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!
There goes my productivity for the day. GAME OVER MAN!
Insane and worth watching 😎
Much more could have been done that sadly was dropped. Though, it would had been great to see Khang-Le's Covenant concept used.
I'm largely with you on this. Little addition, the forcefield around the planet (it's in the concept art).
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/egg-room-telescope-03-on_orig.jpg
Shaw offers to try and shut down the forcefield so the Covenant crew can escape. Walter comes along. They fail.
She ends up on the table (bottom left corner) and Walter is broken.
Daniels finds out about David (bottom right corner). Walter returns.
He battles David for a moment until the Engineers turned xenomorphs arrive.
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/disease-04-c_orig.jpg
David wins, body switch, egg grab,... Stuff remains the same except there are more xenos attacking the ship and David regurgitates a xeno embryo.
Great point!
In my part, I just wanted a better fate for her than being butchered and left in a slab. At least in Alien3, they gave Hicks and Newt a beautiful funeral ceremony.
It all goes back to the producers and writers not doing justice to the character, and just focusing on David and the Aliens that they lost their way in the process and perhaps that led to Covenant's dismal box office results. I like many fans of Prometheus had issues with the film, though Shaw wasn't one them, and when they heard what was done to Shaw, perhaps and that's my speculation, that many didn't even bother watching the film. I had friends who were mad with what was done with her, so its not just me, perhaps more people feel the same, though you don't hear from them in AVP Galaxy or other online sites.
For Awakening, if it ever gets done, I hope someone is there and steers them in the right direction.
So in the script in question we would have a bunch of exposition from both Shaw and David, David being the unreliable narrator to Shaw's reliable probably, that tells the Covenant crew David has lost his milky marbles. I don't know, it just seems like such a weird thing to do with her character, have her introduced midway just to say "WAIT, DAVID'S THE ASSHOLE, FOLLOW ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE". That's just not the way the character was. Admittedly, I'm just working off what I think is in the script, it could be totally different. But "introduced midway to help the Covenant Crew" after being stranded for so long....yeah that's a really weird and simplistic direction to take the character.
Maybe if they got rid of David instead and made this about David killing the Engineers, but David dying and Shaw surviving only to live among the ruins of the people she wanted answers from, living in the necropolis instead trying to piece together the history of the Engineers; but being unable to grasp their motives. Just giving all hope of escape and wanting to get answers in the wake of David's shitty actions that ruined her dreams, trying to find answers like Ahab and the white whale. Then the Covenant crew show up for the same reasons as the film, but they enter an area contaminated by David's bombing, that Shaw carefully sealed herself away from, and becomes somewhat the antagonist for completely justifiable reasons to the audience, while the Covenant are fleshed out couples that are equally relatable to the audience. The question then becomes, at what price does Shaw want her answers, and does it mean sealing off people who are dying, or does she help them. Has she been gone alone for so long that her faith has completely driven her to the edge surrounded by nothing but monolithic reminders of dead Engineers, that she blames herself for even coming here and ending the Engineers? That the Covenant crew's naive attempt of getting the apple somewhat reflects her own naivety she doesn't want to admit exists? David's words ring through her ears, and so does her response: "I deserve to know why." That would be more appropriate as an exploration of Shaw's character.
But you know, that just makes too much character sense. Let's introduce her midpoint in the script as the hardened survivalist.
I get where you guys are coming from, but that really doesn't sound like something I'd want from Shaw's character.
That also could be said of David. David of Prometheus was more ambiguous than what we see in Covenant.
In the end, we got what we got. So we have to live with it.
Having her just help the Covenant crew mid way.....I don't know, it doesn't sound like the Shaw in Prometheus. As much as we all wanted her to return, I don't see a way she could if it was just introduced midway, there probably would have been added exposition etc...Honestly if they wanted to make Alien Covenant they kind of dodged a bullet by not adding Survival Shaw Bear Grills, or at least that's how it sounds to me.
That's what I want to know. Who was the person or group of persons @ Fox who decided to kill her off since 2012 and on I'd always remember press interviews were Noomi would always talked about wanting to do Prometheus 2 or how the script was coming along. Then, everything went quiet.
I could easily imagine what would of happened with Shaw in Covenant. Shaw was experimented on Though survived and escaped David's lab of horrors. At this junction, Shaw would look like a hybrid engineer, bald headed with black eyes. She lives in a distant part of the planet. She notices the Covenant transport and quickly goes towards their location. As we see in the film, the group splits apart, Shaw comes across the crew who takes scientific samples and warns them of the habitat. However, she sees what happens to the soldier and she's the one who rushes to take him to the ship, and keep him quarantined. They lock him in the bay while the pilot and scientist stay outside with Shaw when they see the birth of the neo. Shaw realizes that neo is about to burst out of the bay and orders the two women to grab weapons and run while she torches the ship. They run to safety and Shaw blows the ship. They run towards her hideout when the neo chases after the three and Shaw seeing this with the weapon she kills the neo. In the distance, they see the other half of the crew come back and have their own neo encounter and the appearance of David. The two women want to go with the group though, she stops them.
From there, Shaw tells the women of her mission and what occurred when she arrived and how David lost his mind. She hatches a plan to the rescue the rest of the crew from David. The film continues the same as it is until we see david murder half Of the crew via experiments or luring them into his egg dungeon. Shaw reaches the temple to discover what he did and rescues Danny, Lope, and Walter. we have a boss fight between David and Shaw. Shaw at first takes the upper hand though His strength is too much for her and Walter orders her and Danny to leave and while he finishes David off. The movie remains the same from what we saw with the difference that it's Shaw who gets rid off the xeno in the Covenant. Then, at the end it's Shaw instead of Danny, David reveals himself too.
From writing this, I do see the film being longer though we would spend more time with Shaw and the world she arrived to and how exactly David went mental on her and the engineers.
Please fire the idiot who thought that this was a bad idea.
Maybe Rapace didn't like the direction the script was going that focused less on the plot of Prometheus and something more Alien, and she decided she didn't want to be involved with the project. I mean that's been the reasoning in my head this whole time. She didn't want to be involved in the project in any major way, so they wrote her out because she wouldn't spend that much time in it.
The mass death is similar, yes.
But the weapon used seems different. Instead of pathogen it appears like bugs. Sorta makes sense since after the attack parasites emerge from the Engineers.
There's the "sick" Engineer sitting with others, there's an Engineer becoming a 'morph (but this could be the sick one).
And later on a bunch of those 'morphs. So at some point multiple Engineers drank 'morph goo and changed.
If it happened after David's attack, that could mean there were still Engineers present when the Covenant arrived.
David's lab includes 3 humans stuck in something. What happened there? What was he doing?
Maybe the overal structure of the movie is the same, but the filling seems better.
More Engineers, more creations, more to discuss.
The Aliens were probably the Engineers who drank the goo. I'm guessing the movie would end with them attacking.
We'd might to know more about their race and the xeno.
And they would've made the xeno instead of David.
Shaw survived?! Aw, lawd! Why didn't they keep this in the movie.
Being a fan of Rapace it hurts to read that. That's what I imagined happening. I had the idea that Shaw managed to survive and helped the Covenant crew survive David and the xenos. Though, sadly we got a slap in the face instead.
So even without the shoehorned Alien, the story was almost the same. Well I don't blame them. After all, and despite some nice eye candy, Prometheus plot is so messy.
I don't know, because at Khang's website one can find some familiar stuffs like the mass death of the Engineers and a previous version of David's lab. Mutant Engineers seem to suggest a longer and alternate flashback. But overall I am seeing more aesthetic differences, such as the architecture of the necropolis: more akin with the facilities of LV-223 with some Giger´s references.
Khang-Le's and Carlos Huante's work gave me the impression the differences would be bigger.
I know that out of all the concept art only few things are actually used but they're usually drawn for a reason, no?
In this case, I'm hoping they do. I presume most concept art was based on a one of the drafts and I found most of it quite intriguing. So I'd just love to know more about them. Either in movie or script format. Preferably both
If they're going with a Planet David scenario, it's likely they'll use things from the Prometheus 2/Alien: Paradise scripts.
Sanitise?
Yeah, has to be ok to share. Didn't think about that last night.
Yessss! I've been waiting for this. Thank you.
Oh brother, John. Go rub The Aviator and The Last Samurai DVDs all over your body. Serious movies, serious genres!"
I have no idea what you're on about. Are *you* being serious?
The Last Samurai, The Aviator?
What?
So random.
-There's an artificial forcefield around the planet. Probably why David didn't leave because here he
mentions intact ships.
-The walking part after David rescues the crew seems longer as they describe more of the city.
-David's attack on the city is a little different. He drops urns of goo, they break and then it starts.
The attack is described more in detail. So this scene was also meant to be longer.
-More info about Engineer technology.
They were highly advanced in some ways, but still so limited.
Spacefaring for a billion years -- yet binary logic never occurred to them.
Many things about them were primitive.
-More about how David looks down on mankind.
-The crew is more suspicious of David. Also more mentions about his behaviour.
-Daniels appears less "weak". It reads like she would look different.
-The garden scene is more detailed. The garden itself is described as something beautiful full of trees and flowers.
Appears a lot bigger.
-David talks more about life and creation
-David's rooms are different. No mention of a small study or the flutes.
The lab doesn't have drawings, it contains specimens, some dissected, some in jars,...
The egg room is around a corner.
The drawings are in a seperate gallery that has a secret room dedicated to his work on Shaw.
We also see David drawing.
-The first egg-facehugger scene is better and makes more sense.
And so does the second scene.
I think all this would've improved the final result.
But the fruit tasting scene isn't as strong as the flute teaching moment. A combination might have been the best.
I have to agree pacing is better in the final film. What is good about this script version is that it sheds enough light on some topics, at least it let us in the head of the writers and Ridley in regards of what is happening in planet4.
This was the most interesting part to me, David commenting on the dead facehugger:
The "survivor" part seems to indicate that the eggs were stored somewhere by the engineers, and that the specimen had survived the bombing and whatever happened to planet 4 during the 4 days disaster (mentioned by David earlier in the script), until David found it, had to kill it, then studied how the engineers created it and took it from there.
I don't know how to feel now. Sure, some of these comments by David create more mystery, cause further info is shared but no conclusive answers are given. However, the answers seem to point to rather unsatisfying concepts, like all xxx-morph creatures being just parasites or engineered biological weapons.
No nightmarish conceptions, unknown origins, sex machines deviations, no giger.
Oh brother, John. Go rub The Aviator and The Last Samurai DVDs all over your body. Serious movies, serious genres!