Following on from their interview with the legendary Alec Gillis from Amalgamated Dynamics Inc, the good folk over at HN Entertainment have turned their sights on Prometheus and Alien: Covenant creature designer Carlos Huante.
In additional to talking about other aspects of Prometheus’ design process, Carlos revealed some details about an earlier Prometheus script that seems to pre-date the Alien: Engineers and Alien 01: Genesis scripts that we have available in our downloads section.
“When we met, I had a script in my hand and it was not good. It would have been like Aliens, like an Aliens movie it wasn’t Alien it would have been an Aliens film. There was an army group there fighting aliens with all of them getting killed. It was a shoot ’em up bang-bang film with aliens in it. It was really bad but I knew that wasn’t going to be the script and Ridley had just gotten hired, the art department got hired on. I was living up in Northern California at the time. So they flew me down to meet with Ridley for a couple of days. And so I’m in the room with Ridley, I sit down and he starts telling me the story, the new script, and it’s way better. I mean that [previous] script I had read had nothing to do with what he was telling me.”
We know that Jon Spaihts completed at least 5 major drafts of Prometheus with Engineers and 01: Genesis being revisions of the last 2 major drafts but details of the earlier 3 are very scarce. Spaihts has previously mentioned that the Derelict craft played a much larger role earlier on and was eventually replaced with the Pyramid/Temple.
Neomorph
HN Entertainment also asked Carlos about his time working on Alien: Covenant where the artist revealed some details about earlier incarnations of the script in which Elizabeth Shaw was still apart of the story.
“In the first version of what was called Paradise/Prometheus 2, Shaw was alive. They find her and she’s been hiding from David the whole time and she helps them escape. I told Ridley my wife and mother-in-law, who are strong characters themselves, they loved the Shaw character and the actress (Noomi Rapace) more than any other characters in the film and they’re not science fiction people, but they liked the film because of Noomi. I think it was a studio call as to why she didn’t return. What a shame”
“So in the first version of Covenant called Paradise, she was hiding in the catacombs from David under the city and the story was that on her trip to the homeworld she got lonely and she had David hanging outside the ship, she didn’t want anything to do with him. But she still had to talk to him. Eventually, she ends up bringing his body in and reattaching him as they become friends during this trip. He ends up having affection for her in a friendship way.”
“So they end up going to the city and that’s when David looks at her and tells that story ‘Do you trust me, do you trust that I love you and everything I’m going to do from this point on is because of you and that’s all to protect you’…she looks at him and says ‘Okay, yes I do’ so then he turns around and kills all the Engineers on the planet. It’s his own twisted way of vengeance for her, he kills the planet. She is like ‘Hey, I wanted to talk to these people’ but too late the whole planet is polluted now and everyone on the planet dies.”
Elizabeth Shaw
The sequence Carlos describes with Shaw re-assembling David sounds similar to the prologue script we previously released, however rather than David killing Shaw, she is forced to watch on as he kills everything she came on the journey for. You can read the other Alien: Covenant scripts in our downloads section.
Back in 2017 Carlos shared a lot of the concept work he had completed while he was working on Alien: Covenant, including some artwork of strange meerkat and dog-like creatures. He elaborated to HN Entertainment about those creatures:
“But in that version we had this pitbull kind of alien dog named ‘Bug’ that David had running around loose on the Engineer planet and then he had created these Meerkats and that’s why I called the little white things [Covenant’s version of the Neomorphs] Meerkats because that’s what they reminded me of from the old story.. David, in the old script, had an army of Meerkats that were super violent. They were not normal. They would open their mouths to reveal that all their teeth were individually attached to a finger so they had this sort of hand of teeth inside of their mouth. A precursor of things to come. showing the projecting mouth thing already starting to happen in David’s creation there.”
Make sure you head on over to HN Entertainment to read more about what Carlos had to say about his work on Prometheus and Alien: Covenant!
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Didn't she have a room though in the Citadel? Is that what you are talking about. I thought there was a "Shaws Room" , maybe I made that up.
I think that's the exact spot where she died.
He wouldn't really need to set anything up, he could just make up any story he likes.
I see only 4 possibilities.
1. That's where he buried her heart or her cross (though the cross was probably in the movie and I missed it).
2. It was merely a symbolic gesture.
3. That's where he killed her (I could see this for several reasons).
4. He set it up to cover his own @$$ (Which I believe is the most likely).
That's new one.
To you maybe.
Nobody knows.
Resurrection's nonsense's enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_uterus
It would have been better!
Now you're talking!
David is obviously still the baddie.
Prometheus for all its faults at least had a strength in the Deacon. Building on the concept of the Alien and making something new. We'd never seen an Engineer get facehugged on screen, and post-Alien 3 just about anything could hop out of that chest. It's a new breed of Xeno that's also made of the base elements of a Xenomorph so who knows what it can do.
But Covenant just makes a Xenomorph and tries its hardest at justifying itself with religious symbolism, and what it had is also woefully incomplete.
What would've worked better is David's corruption of Shaw and the Engineers on Paradise. If David denies God (Weyland) then David will rule in Hell and if he cannot make life he will twist it to suit him. I'm in agreement that the Alien of this film should've been a mutated Shaw if she had to be here at all. David's influence and work ultimately turning Shaw from God (Engineers, her faith) and to David who'd be this film's Devil analogue. And you could've gotten creative with that in regards to creature FX.
So that's how David realized his impotence. Very relevant to his character arc.
https://i.imgur.com/cnbsBWC.jpg
As usual I prefer my version. Or the one from the script. Then the captured-in-crypod ending would've been an extra gut punch.
In part 3 he'll finally use her for experiments while she's still alive. Maybe she awakens in some contraption. They talk, it ends with Shaw screaming.
Her scream fades as the screen goes black. Title appears. Cut to the new crew on the new ship a decade later approaching Planet David.
As a metaphorical phallus, it was.
Don't think there's a curtain with space suits though...
Shaws death shouldve been accidental, and the final straw that sent David on the path to madness. His quest of creating life possibly being a way to resurrect her in gigerian fashion. Or she's mortally wounded and being kept alive as some horrific mutating thing stuck to the wall. Unable to die. An endless suffering as she is torn apart and mutates into God knows what. A whimpering thing kept in a dark and wet place. Would've been a good throw back to the egg morphing concept.
Maybe Daniels finds her and has to kill her.
Should really watch the film a second time at some point.
I mentioned something similar a while ago.
"Shaw should've survived but as a prisoner of David. Towards the end Daniels sacrifice herself in order to help Shaw escape. Shaw thinks she's finally free after all these years, only to be imprisoned again."
Daniels and Walter find Shaw's room in the film.
Really? I would never see that coming.
http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/features/820159-our-visit-to-the-alien-covenant-set#/slide/1
From what's been posted, nothing mentioned about her being recently being murdered by David. Though, we could speculate it occurred recently due to the state of her body in Covenant.
I sense a pattern.
I agree. I think she would had become the Prequels version of Ripley if its true that at the end she helps the crew get out of Paradise. I could well imagine Noomi being the one battling the Xeno on the lander in Paradise, and it would had been great to see.
Did you watch What Happened to Monday? That was tour de force performance with her.
I suspect after they got rid of Noomi, the writers never recovered on how to properly patch her absence, and hiring Waterson was the wrong choice for lead. Its noticeable on screen since she's bland as f#$%, and in the end, didn't feel the danger she was in when David reveal himself to her. Though, if it was Noomi instead in that cryopod, she would had acted the hell out of that scene, and us as audience members would had felt the horror of the hell she is about to go through. Well Fox screwed the pooch. I hope at least that script is released, and we have some closure.
You really think Prometheus failed Noomi's stardom? It's not like it was critically panned, and it faired better with audiences and critics than Alien Covenant. Plus it was financially successful.
I guess what I'm saying here is it's no Mortal Engines.
God, Noomi Rapace's so hot.The film's authors failed Prometheus' narrative and Noomi Rapace's stardom though.
A great concept and cast wasted.
Hey, even with its faults, I like Prometheus so..
https://media.tenor.com/images/98b55371132aad9c75be9518236c79ea/tenor.gif
Instead Shaw got punked like Hicks and Newt.