Carlos Huante Talks Early Prometheus & Alien: Covenant Scripts

Started by Whos_Nick, Feb 26, 2019, 12:41:54 AM

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Carlos Huante Talks Early Prometheus & Alien: Covenant Scripts (Read 28,130 times)

Whos_Nick

Whos_Nick

Here's one part of the interview I did with Carlos, we talk specifically about Prometheus. The Covenant article is coming soon

https://twitter.com/HNEsocial/status/1100188005590073345

Immortan Jonesy

Not All Heroes Wear Capes!!!

Corporal Hicks

QuoteHUANTE: "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."

I wonder if he's talking about an earlier draft by Spaihts. One of the first three. We haven't heard much about those ones.

Kradan

Kradan

#3

Whos_Nick

Here's the part of the interview where Carlos and I talked about Covenant

https://twitter.com/HNEsocial/status/1100426811278848000

Ingwar

Ingwar

#5
QuoteHUANTE: "We're talking in the room and he says to me 'Hey, you know, this whole facehugger, xenomorph thing as they're calling it, this is kind of dead isn't it?...and I'm like looking at him nodding my head 'Yeah man, it's dead they've ruined it actually..the only film I counted was your's, the first one'. The second one was fun, but even then, back in the day, I was rolling my eyes thinking that they turned it into an action adventure and I was a teenager. The poster was Ripley holding a big gun...I rolled my eyes even back then. Then I saw the movie and I liked it, it was good, it was really fun and well done, but it wasn't the first movie. So I told him [Ridley Scott] 'Look, man, they just ruined it'... So Ridley was like 'So yeah, we got to do something else I don't want to really make another Alien movie but I'm going to use it as my canvas to do something else'.

And then we got Covenant ;D

Immortan Jonesy

Immortan Jonesy

#6
Quote from: Whos_Nick on Feb 26, 2019, 06:09:08 PM
Here's the part of the interview where Carlos and I talked about Covenant

https://twitter.com/HNEsocial/status/1100426811278848000

Planet 4 was thought to be the habitat of a whole bestiary of hybrid creatures  :o

I liked the museum / laboratory with everything and taxidermy, but what is the logic of not having both in the film?

Money ???

QuoteHN: Moving on to Alien: Covenant, could talk about what the early discussions on that film were? I know there was artwork where there were other animals and another sort of hybrid experiments that David was doing.

HUANTE: "Yes, well there are two versions of Covenant..the first one had more creatures in it...

And in between all of that, David had been thought to be a fallen angel who would use humans to create his own Nephilim, like the science fiction version of Paradise Lost that we never had. Well, while the essence of that idea lives in Covenant, I would have liked to see that more literal sci-fi take of John Milton's poem.  8)

Also, some interesting details about a greater presence of Shaw in the story:

QuoteHUANTE: "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.

QuoteHUANTE: "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."


Ingwar

Huante about Prometheus:

QuoteThere were too many hands in the pie after it left me. It was likely that everyone was trying to stick their hands in. Ridley was surrounded by everybody's opinions and the rules he and I created together got drowned out so they get lost. There was no more connection between anything, everything got thrown out and it was a free-for-all for the design.

Immortan Jonesy

Immortan Jonesy

#8
Well that explains in great detail why Prometheus is what it is    :P     


Evanus

He mentions the TV show, I suppose he's just talking about the rumors?

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯

"I think they're doing a TV show or something right now."

Probably or else he's referring to Raised by Wolves. It will probably still be a while before the Scott Free Alien TV series gets of the ground. Maybe Who's_Nick could clarify?

Quote from: Ingwar on Feb 26, 2019, 06:45:24 PM
So Ridley was like 'So yeah, we got to do something else I don't want to really make another Alien movie but I'm going to use it as my canvas to do something else'.


Yeah, I pretty much got that impression with the focus on AI rather than the titular creatures.


Ingwar

Ingwar

#11
Focusing on AI and moving away from Alien was refreshing and brave movement but Covenant changed a lot (not everything). And this is where I find Covenant incoherent to Prometheus. That incoherence is the titular creature in the title. Alien. If you're setting up new line of product (Prometheus) you cannot change its sequel tile just like that. Studio sent a message: we're moving away from Prometheus series (killing Shaw off the screen and neglecting Engineers) and bringing back the beast - which wasn't Scott's intention in the first place ("The beast is cooked" he said) - but our main villain will be David, the last survivor of Prometheus. You cannot stand one leg on the boat and another one on the quay. Be consistent to the end. Studio wanted to fix some issues and they made it even worse. Irony.

Alien (1979) success was collaboration in the same way as Prometheus/Covenant are joint failure. People blame Scott but it's all politics which is killing (again) our beloved franchise. That pisses me off. There is so much potential (Isolation proved that big time) in this universe and somehow they cannot deliver. Are they incompetent or what?

Kradan

Quote from: Ingwar on Feb 26, 2019, 10:04:31 PM
Are they incompetent or what?

They just confident that they're always know what's better. Always.

Also Isolation was to noticable degree repeat of elements of first movie. I'm not saying it's bad thing though. But studios thinks that there's constant demand for "new and fresh and innovative" ideas.

KiramidHead

I kept wondering why the Sevastopol had so many individual items that were exactly the same as on the Nostromo while I was playing Isolation.

Kradan

Quote from: KiramidHead on Feb 26, 2019, 10:43:18 PM
I kept wondering why the Sevastopol had so many individual items that were exactly the same as on the Nostromo while I was playing Isolation.

To recreate that magic of first movie, i guess?

Also, what's weird i think that for last several years we got decent stuff in terms of games, books and comics but movies were... not so good.

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