Empire's ALIEN COVENANT Exclusive Cover, and Image Scans Revealed!!

[skhellter]

..and the hands... and the shoulders....
Overall, this one has better proportions.

[SiL]

They didn't fix the shoulders, they took them out! Same long fingers, just slimmer and better animated now they aren't rubber. This is the fleshiest design we've ever seen; I'm honestly just surprised all of the old, still-valid criticisms seem to have largely disappeared.

[SM]

I think the engineers wanted to wipe humanity out because of our destructive nature.. and the fact the dead engineer in prometheus was dead 2 thousand years it would give good indication that religion might have played a big part in it, the crucifixion of jesus, the romans, genghis khan, all that lead them to decide we were unfit for the life they gave us, also they might have been lead to believe we would eventually come looking for them and cause more destruction to them since we are a hostile race, to them anyway we seem to be. Since prometheus took place in 2093 i figure that 2 thousand year mark is a good reason why.. we were very war hungry and stoning people, taking over countries, we were not worthy of what they done for us.

Didn't Scott allude to the death of Jesus as a catalyst for the Engineers' vendetta against humanity or am I imagining that? Maybe we got too big for our britches? After all, the inhabitants of "Paradise" still seem to revere the Engineer overlords. The evidence of that is all around.

They thought about linking it to JC but ultimately removed any reference.

They kept visiting in the Current Era anyway.

[skhellter]

They didn't fix the shoulders, they took them out!

They did a good job. 

But srsly, now... the lack of biomech details dont bother me a bit (at least as far as Covenant is concerned)
The producers and designers of Covenant mentioned in the set visits that the sequels will "build towards" the biomech aesthetic.

We'll see Big Chap again.. eventually. 

[thecaffeinatedone]

This is the thing, though: I'm pretty sure Ridley Scott doesn't care about that. The studio doesn't care. He's done with all that, they're done. He's going back to what he thinks works - the alien, and what he feels is a strong and relatable new antagonist in David. In their eyes they're scrapping inconvenient material they had to deal with. You're thinking in terms of some long view of the larger franchise decades down the road. Ridley Scott is thinking about this movie and his next one. The fan and critical consensus seems to generally be that the Engineers and Prometheus did not fully land, so they're going back to the alien. That's it. They know people want aliens killing people, they know most of the larger audience does not give a shit about some idea of David fighting big blue dudes they don't know. And I'm saying this as someone who wishes they weren't killing the whole Engineer thread off.

Tell you what: If this movie says or implies anything other than that David killed all the Engineers - if it mentions anything at all about any other surviving members of their civilization - I will owe you a virtual Coke. But if they leave it at that, I hope you'll consider that I'm just calling a cigar a cigar. It's a lazy ending, but I feel very confident that's what is happening.

Even if you turn out to be incorrect, your point is well-stated. It is my sincerest wish and hope that more people and genre-fans in general assess upcoming movies in that way; by analyzing pragmatic choices by the studio and director based on what they think worked. It often turns out to basically be the case for how most movies turn out. Sadly, most people go and say stuff like "But, that can't logically be so because this and this. Hey this color is different! What does it meaaaan?", forgetting that most directors and audiences don't care.

[Evanus]

This one looks much better than those slimy turds from Ressurection.

It looks like an organic Xenomorph, done right.

[SpeedyMaxx]

They didn't fix the shoulders, they took them out! Same long fingers, just slimmer and better animated now they aren't rubber. This is the fleshiest design we've ever seen; I'm honestly just surprised all of the old, still-valid criticisms seem to have largely disappeared.

Maybe people like it looking fleshy because the fleshier, more organic look suits a more primitive xenomorph with what appear to be deliberately less biomechanoid elements.

[SiL]

The fleshy AR look suited mutant hybrids, people still trash on it.

(In case I didn't make it clear earlier I don't actually mind the design as I'm more interested in the head, and this head is pretty rad.)

[SpeedyMaxx]

I don't think it looks much like AR's aliens, and I never thought they looked that bad myself, just different. So both those and this work for me. It's the godawful CG from Alien 3 I still have a problem with.

[Corporal Hicks]

It wasn't CG in Alien 3. It was a beautiful rod puppet that was ruined by the way they composited it into the footage. 

[SiL]

It's the godawful CG from Alien 3 I still have a problem with.

Do you mean the badly composited puppet or the bambi burster in the extended cut?

EDIT

Sniped by Hicks.

That puppet was amazing. Pity about the compositing

[SpeedyMaxx]

It wasn't CG in Alien 3. It was a beautiful rod puppet that was ruined by the way they composited it into the footage. 

Ah, you're absolutely right, my mistake. I haven't seen the film in ages and my box set is still back in storage from my move to the West Coast. I just looked up a clip not long ago out of curiosity and was horrified by what looked like terrible CG in the big scene in the infirmary. It looked like Chromakey, or something akin to the 'paper cutout' of a monster victim in the new Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Reptilicus".

Shame they did so much of A3 on the cheap. Inexcusable. Starting with the mash-up scripts.

[SiL]

It's not like it didn't have money. It just didn't have any left by the time they were starting properly...

[Corporal Hicks]

I'm hopeful that one day we'll get another edition on Alien 3 on home release where they fix (if even possible. I don't know how much of the original footage of the puppet or the background is left) the compositing.

[SpeedyMaxx]

It just felt cheap and rushed to me, both when I saw it in the theater and every time since. And it wasn't just the FX, it was the story and most of the characters - I couldn't tell nearly anyone or anything apart for years. It felt like they'd expended so much effort in the idea of how to follow up one of the biggest action blockbusters in history, got nowhere due to bureaucracy and backbiting, and then finally threw a bunch of (IMO) inferior and bland scripts in a blender and rushed it out to meet a date. By the time they started shooting they'd burned out. And of course Fincher will probably never talk about it or be associated with the franchise again, which is tragic. Imagine if it had been a fraction of the film that his other '90s output was.

I'm not necessarily grieving about Hicks/Newt/Bishop after 30 years, I'm tired of that old wheeze and I'm not for Blomkamp's movie at all, but I do think it was a mistake and poisoned the well. If Sigourney really wanted a break you could always have taken a cue from Dark Horse and set the next film 10-15 years later, cast a young star as the adult Newt and bring Ripley out of seclusion. Or just say they all went their separate ways if it's going to be Ripley solo. Either way this is all wildly OT.