Scott: We are going to make another Alien movie

[Local Trouble]

OpenMaw speaks for me on this subject as well.

[The Old One]

For me the prequels presented ideas that were perfect for expanding the Alien mythos, some were executed well others were not.

The first scene in Covenant is solid gold, as is the casting for Peter Weyland and his first android.
Landing on a foreign planet without taking the proper precautions is not. For every good idea executed well there is a parallel execution of poor quality.

[Scorpio]

As it was explained in the novelisation, it was not possible to take the proper precautions to what they were up against.  It was a calculated risk type situation. 

[OpenMaw]

Didn't seem like it. Not that it really matters, ha.

If I speak with any level of authority in my words it is only because I feel very strongly about these things. So let me just take this opportunity to extend an olive branch to everyone else in the thread. If you like Prometheus and/or Covenant, the ideas they explore... Hey, i'm truly happy you find something of merit in them, and that they bring you stimulation on both an intellectual and entertainment level.

Heck, I miss the long discussions that were going on in here back in 2011-2014 with people like Cvalda and Deuterium and the others that have since left us. 

As it was explained in the novelisation, it was not possible to take the proper precautions to what they were up against.  It was a calculated risk type situation. 

That doesn't make sense. They have space suits. they should be wearing space suits, or at the very least proper hazmat equipment.

And the argument that if they had behaved intelligently we wouldn't have a movie is stupid on so many levels. You should never write down to your audience and you should never craft scenarios where stupidity is the only way through. Yes, sometimes having a dumb character do dumb things is effective... But it should not be the standard course. They could have just as easily had the alien organisms penetrate the suit.

Hell, one of the few instances of blink-and-you'll-miss-it horror in Prometheus is when the Hammerpede breaks Milburn's arm and get's inside his suit and he's screaming "It's in my suit, it's in my suit, it's in my suit!"

For me the best horror is when our protagonists do everything they can and it's still not enough. A movie like The Thing is a movie that really nails this idea.

Or, in Alien, the mistakes made are very clearly human and there's more going on. IE: Dallas and Lambert wanting back inside, and Ash overriding Ripley. There's a lot going on with each character. Ripley is being super by the book. Dallas is basically disillusioned and is more concerned with immediate loyalty than to the letter of the law, and Ash has ulterior motives. Put em together and you get a very natural conflict.

You don't need to write characters as dum-dums to get horrifying stuff. 

[Scorpio]

What is the point of wearing spacesuits, when it's breathable atmosphere and no pathogens detected?

[The Old One]

To avert or at least attempt to avert exactly what happened to Ledward, as a precaution.

Perhaps you could have a situation where inside the Derelict, the way it's crashed that someone trips and falls cracks their helmet and the spores find a way inside or they get stuck and something is threatening to crush them so there's no choice but to remove their headgear. There's multiple ways you could still have the crew get infected without making them idiots.

The harder question to answer would be how do you get them to take off their spacesuit stuff so that after that initial threat has been established so Ridley can have his haunted house in space aesthetic within the Necropolis and elsewhere.

[SM]

And then people would moan about 'y not the helmets made out of strnger space glass?'

[The Old One]

And then people would moan about 'y not the helmets made out of strnger space glass?'

Ideally it would be made of strong stuff and you wouldn't have to resort to tripping and falling.

It's not an easy question to answer.
But I do think it's possible.

[OpenMaw]

What is the point of wearing spacesuits, when it's breathable atmosphere and no pathogens detected?

You can't detect things that are completely unknown. Taking an air sample might not reveal everything.

You shouldn't take your helmet off in the alien environment. Breathable does not equal safe. It was bad writing.

And then people would moan about 'y not the helmets made out of strnger space glass?'

Take the Ear scene. Guy goes to take a rest. Bumps the pod. The cloud of particles float around his suit. He sits there. Now have the pathogen land on the suit. Very close up FX shot, we can see the weaving of the suit, the organism burns a microscopic hole in it and burrows it's way in.

[SM]

'y not strnger space suit'

[OpenMaw]

No. 

[The Old One]

The iffy bit is getting Ledward infected in a believable way that doesn't make him an idiot and the other sod.

As for having the rest of the crew helmetless to push that gothic horror, naturalist aesthetic; you could have that when the lander was destroyed  it was  also  carrying the supply of oxygen. When they reach the Necropolis they're running out of air in their suits and have no choice but to take them off or suffocate.

[Perfect-Organism]

That would have actually made a great scene.  We'd have the crew surrounded by breathable air, but they're hanging on to the last moment where they can use their own air.  Then they have to have the inevitable discussion and they take off their helmets..

[TC]

...
As for having the rest of the crew helmetless to push that gothic horror, naturalist aesthetic; you could have that when the lander was destroyed  it was  also  carrying the supply of oxygen. When they reach the Necropolis they're running out of air in their suits and have no choice but to take them off or suffocate.

This would have been good.   

Or something like it. We've seen this idea played out in Red Planet. Remember - Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, et al crash land on Mars and set off on a hike to find refuge in a life support habitat before their space suits' oxygen runs out. They're gasping for breath when at the last second one of them cracks open his helmet, because, hell, why not? (Only to discover the air is breathable).

But what if the Covenant lander crew already know there is a mutagen in the atmosphere that will infect anyone that breathes it, but one of them, close to asphyxiation, does so anyway. Luckily David arrives in time and prevents the mutations by giving everyone a last minute inoculation. No one can refuse, but then, they don't really know what exactly was in the drug they were just administered and have to take David's word that there are no harmful side effects. Mwuhahahaha...

TC

[tleilaxu]

What is the point of wearing spacesuits, when it's breathable atmosphere and no pathogens detected?

You can't detect things that are completely unknown. Taking an air sample might not reveal everything.

You shouldn't take your helmet off in the alien environment. Breathable does not equal safe. It was bad writing.

Yeah let's just get what, 10 people to wear big expensive unwieldy suits in a movie that's already on a budget. Also, let's remake Aliens to make everybody wear a hazmat suit in case of an airborne pathogen (very realistic given the sudden silence of the colony). Or even better, why not just send a ship full of androids? Worst writing ever! Travel back in time to 1986 to hand the reins of the franchise over to a director who knows how to handle the it!