Quote from: SM on Mar 08, 2018, 10:50:58 PM
QuoteAt no point in any promotional material, or in the film, does the Covenant catch fire. And yet they filmed it for a promotion, and made the set up, and never used it.
If you're referring to the above picture are you sure it's not just a light?
It could be a publicity shot, I mean they lead a lot of misleading publicity material about what the film might be about, which I could see why, they didn't want people to figure things out but.
In this script, we have confirmation from Hicks they filmed, via the script the roof of the Juggernaut's Pilot Chair Observatory filters in all sorts of star light. Like an ambient blue light.
That...looks about as close to that description than any. Maybe the publicity shot was motivated? Really I'm not sure. A lot of this makes some sense, and some of it makes no sense.
I'm definitely leaning towards it's a publicity shot of the introduction we never got that was cleansed however.
QuoteThat's just how it looks like to me. I know I keep harping on this but if they really built a shower set for two scenes, one that establishes there even being a shower, and they omitted that from filming, so it just looks like they wanted a random shower scene. That's not only a waste of production, but a bit of an insult to the audience you'd get rid of one but keep the other that suddenly appears and doesn't quite make much sense. I'm not being a prude, I'm just considering that, how many sets did they build that they wanted to shoot longer on. But didn't.
QuoteThis argument seems a little silly. In Alien they shot one scene in the hypersleep vault. In Aliens they shot the Derelict exterior with the tractor and cut the whole scene. Ditto the abbatoir in Alien 3. Ditto the gunpod intro for Resurrection. It's not insulting the audience - it's just part of making a movie.
That's not really my point. My point is they rushed into production by building sets meant for an earlier draft, and then the cutting of the drafts between start getting screwy. See the introduction from this draft that was filmed, but ultimately cut from the next script and out of the movie. It seems like we're missing drafts between time. It feels like they kept adding in ideas and then taking them out, adding then taking them out. Sure that's movie making, but this late in production? They should have planned everything out step by step, beat by beat. There's room for change, but there was so much change on the cutting room floor amidst this seeming rush that they ended up cutting too much, or making unwise pacing decisions.
Every Alien film needs not be a replication of its previous. It's why I adore Alien 3's Assembly Cut. However, I understand the flaws of that picture as well.
To me, it seems less of a fault of the production and more of a fault of the heads at Fox trying their best to ship a sequel before the gains they could make from a sequel to Prometheus went out. Which is understandable. But it's clear that they didn't have enough time, and a lot of these scripts are VERY conceptual. More about ideas for scenes and how they may play out. Add to that the confusion of why they filmed a scene from an older draft...it just seems like they were rushed too hard and that effected a lot of the decisions made in the film.
I like the film. I just think it should not have aimed to play as safe as it did. There's not a lot of memorable shots in Alien Covenant besides the blood bursters and the necropolis.
QuoteIf Fox REALLY, REALLY, didn't want the introduction in there, they should have realized that before they spent the money on sets and digital effects that they had to cram in there some appropriate way.
QuoteAgain, do you know "Fox REALLY, REALLY didn't want the introduction"?
Yeah, they wanted it cut and fought for even the bombing to be excised from the film itself as a flash back. The placing makes...not a whole lot of sense. It went from introduction to recollection and flashback, to heavily cut down version of it. And it was probably a large chunk of money they spent on building the Juggernaut set practical that we just barely see aside from the remnants they released in "Prologue: The Crossing".
I agree with Fox, but they should have stepped in sooner and said "No, we can't spend that much on this set, it doesn't make much narrative sense, is somewhat gratuitous, and does not connect to the protagonists at all". You can establish this by showing, not telling through flashback, of David's actions. Show the ramifications, we don't need to see the way it happened.
Quote from: SM on Mar 08, 2018, 11:57:24 PM
I'm 70 pages into the new draft and I've not encountered anything yet that I've thought 'I really wish they didn't cut this'. David's musings about the Engineers and their relationship with humans and synthetics was interesting but not really vital.
Don't get me wrong I think the final shooting script, in whatever form it was, was superior then this one.
However there are definitely scenes that they omitted they should have kept.
The introductory talking about the disaster remains mostly intact, however, the shower scene and extra padding would have been valuable to keep the audience attached to the characters. You can say the dialogue is corny, but the point is moot because a lot of the dialogue from this, seemingly rough-around-the-edges draft was improved later. Add to filming things from this version, but omitting it out later, it's just kind of a mess to be honest. It would have been a great way to introduce some of the side characters we barely see before things go to shit fairly quickly. It was needed time. The characters felt rushed through to the point the poor back burster bloke's entire personality is "I smoked and stepped on the spore"
Another crucial example that would have been a great set piece, Engineer bodies in whatever "jockey suits", in the hundreds surrounding the port side of the crashed Juggernaut that have been ripped open, with these people having no clue what the f**k they are and getting frightened by it.
That should have been in the film, there's no real reason why they would set down, see an alien space ship, and not freak out. I mean it was a mild reaction in Alien, but the depth was still there in the "Yes....I've never seen anything like it" by Ash. Here it just seems like "Welp, first time I've seen something like this, a person was in it, what a spoof and a goof, alright folks let's leave the set piece, that sure was weird". Now to be fair, you do get a milder version of that "Just what the hell happened here" reaction in the Necropolis, but even that was cut down. A lot of needed time with the characters was cut down, and that makes the audience lose the ability to sympathize with their deaths. You needed, on top of the derelict's reaction to the crew, thematically, them realizing the magnitude of just how much they f**ked up by seeing a hillside covered in black urns and "seemingly" alien bodies (suits) ripped to shreds from the inside out. Add that together with the Necropolis...the whole Paradise Lost angle becomes a lot more visually representative. And it gives the audience time to be in the character's shoes of suddenly being put in the worst imaginable situation.
Next, they were floating around the idea of Karine getting a neomorph burster in her....which makes sense. One of the things that perplexed me the most is that for such an easy way to contaminate yourself, with these pods all over the place, that more people didn't get infected, when one guy just managed the mistake of stepping on one, nearly exactly where Karine was. It seems like they either wanted to elaborate on this later, or this is remnants from a previous draft. Admittedly, the infection is far more muddled in this draft, later they did refine it by adding pods. The fact there were only two Neomorphs (not three) while Karine was within the area to accidentally disrupt a spore, while she was probing the environment. That just kind of screwed with my suspension of disbelief. The fact is they spent so long designing the damn things, and we only get a real good scene of two in the final cut. Add two to the mix in the lander, you could understand why Faris blew up the ship easier. Trying to shoot both at the same time. ]Even more tense with the moth burster occurring not too long after. But this script still only mentions one, when Karine was also infected. I don't know.
So with that in mind, the audience, with a refined idea to the draft, would have seen a hillside covered in dead engineers in their suits, with a crew freaking out about it. Suddenly, three people in the crew get violently ill. They realize, what have we done, a bit more than in the final. One is even carrying the other violently ill person into the lander, both puking blood. They both start hatching and there's nothing Faris can do. It follows as the film does, only she has to deal with two blood bursters, as hinted in the script. She f**ks up trying to shoot both and accidentally hits a gas tank (this makes more sense). One more blood burster erupts. They have three neomorphs now. With the characters realizing, shit any of us could get infected, where did they go. Enter David, they get into the Necropolis, and it's just charred black bodies everywhere they needed to focus on more to get an extra dose of gravity to the situation.
Think of it this way. The whole, "Do you hear that, nothing. No birds, no animals, nothing" would have a lot more weight in the subsequent discovery of hundreds of Jockey bodies everywhere around the derelict with Urns surrounding them.
That just seems like a better way to introduce things. They should have refined these ideas
The introduction with David and Shaw, flash back or beginning, shouldn't have been filmed, in all honesty, and was a waste of man hours and money in my opinion. They could have spent it anywhere else. I'm not saying the pacing is rushed, but the production itself. How they handled it, how Noomi didn't want to talk about it. How it wasn't in the later draft we have, but in this earlier version they filmed. It smells fishy. There was a lot cut they should have left in, and a lot left in they should have left out. It seems just from the cutting process, that they made wild snips that were detrimental to the overall project. You need a nice equal balance to get the audience to understand the situation and the plot. Alien Covenant, for as much as I like it in many respects, did not do that.
I don't like a majority of this draft, it is very rough. But off the top of my head, these additions should have survived the cut. Keeping things at a rapid pace might endanger the overall integrity of what the emotions the narrative wants to give the audience.
I'll say that as an ardent defender of where Ridley is going with the series, I enjoy it. I think it's fascinating, if misguided in film and editing, way of making the setting closer to home
as long as I'm watching the fan edits. I like the film, I do not hate it. I'm just saying, with this new information, my opinion is they should have kept some of the scenes and improved the dialogue like they did later, they should have refined it. These seem like nitpicks but, I don't know, it felt like with Covenant I got what they were going for, but they were missing crucial bits to hammer home the horror of the situation they're in. Let the audience accumulate to it. If they really wanted Aliens, they should have shown the consequences in all their brutality. Without it, you feel what they were trying to convey to the audience, but without more, it feels like they cut short