Alien: Covenant will take place ten years after Prometheus

Started by 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯, Dec 30, 2015, 06:23:53 PM

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Alien: Covenant will take place ten years after Prometheus (Read 34,921 times)

Mustangjeff

Quote from: whiterabbit on Dec 31, 2015, 12:48:40 AM
Time dilation people. Who's time is it? Ours or theirs?

Time dilation affects those who are traveling at relativistic speeds.  In fact traveling at 90% the speed of light only yields a ratio of 0.436 : 1

So for every year that passes to the stationary observer, the crew of the ship experiences about 159 days.  Time is definitely slowed down, but not by that much.  Things start getting interesting if you can approach 99.9% the speed of light. 

If Covenant takes place 10 years after Prometheus, we are looking at a date of 2103?

Assuming (for fun) the ship was launched in 2030 with sub FTL, but could travel at 99.9% of the speed of light.  The time dilation ratio is 0.045 to 1

1) The planet they land on is about 80LY from earth

2) 80yr x 365 days = 29,200 days as observed from earth

3) It would take 3.7 years accelerating at 1g to hit 99.9% the speed of light, and the same in amount of time to decelerate to a stop.  The ship would travel 20.7LY during the acceleration, and 20.7LY during the deceleration.  38.6LY would be spent traveling at the .045 time dilation.

3) 38.6 years = 14,089 days x .045 = 634 days (or 1.7 yrs) pass to the people on the Covenant.

4) 3.7 + 1.7 +3.7 = 9.1 years pass to the crew members of the Covenant on flight of 80LY, traveling at 99.9% the speed of light, and accelerating/decelerating at 1g.

:)  Watch my math be totally wrong




windebieste

Nice.  More importantly, though, no one in Hollywood gives a shit if you're math was right or not.  Remember... the Narcissus took 57 years to 'float through the core systems' and you can bet Cameron wasn't too interested in whether the shuttle had FTL or not to tell his story.  Presumably, it lacks that function. 

After all, it took Voyager 36 years to enter interstellar space... it's a long haul between the Solar System's outer edge and the next stop without the luxury of FTL no matter how you add the figures up. 

Either way, 'ALIEN' depicts a fair fictional representation of space travel.  It is hard, awkward, uncomfortable, costly, dangerous and lonely.   I think that's more important in terms of telling a story than getting the math right. 

Unless it's non-fiction, accuracy be damned, I say.   Never let the facts get in the way of telling a good story.  ;)

-Windebieste.

Mustangjeff

Quote from: windebieste on Dec 31, 2015, 02:19:10 AM
Nice.  More importantly, though, no one in Hollywood gives a shit if you're math was right or not.  Remember... the Narcissus took 57 years to 'float through the core systems' and you can bet Cameron wasn't too interested in whether the shuttle had FTL or not to tell his story.  Presumably, it lacks that function. 

After all, it took Voyager 36 years to enter interstellar space... it's a long haul between the Solar System's outer edge and the next stop without the luxury of FTL no matter how you add the figures up. 

Either way, 'ALIEN' depicts a fair fictional representation of space travel.  It is hard, awkward, uncomfortable, costly, dangerous and lonely.   I think that's more important in terms of telling a story than getting the math right. 

Unless it's non-fiction, accuracy be damned, I say.   Never let the facts get in the way of telling a good story.  ;)

-Windebieste.

I agree with you completely. 

I just hate it when things are so obviously wrong that it stinks out loud.  I do a little bit of amateur astronomy at the house so I do have some concept how far away objects are.  I don't expect everyone watching hard sci-fi to know specifics such as light travels around 6 trillion miles in one year. But... When Vickers used her infamous "half a billion miles from every man on earth" line I thought my head was going to explode.  That's around the distance from Earth to Jupiter.

Obviously "half a billion" rolls off the tongue better than 2.0574749335x10^14th

windebieste

For sure.  Unfortunately, it's not Hollywood's responsibility to educate anyone.  Entertainment is their game - and all the caveats that come with it have to be taken on face value. 

So 'ALIEN: Covenant' takes place 10 years after 'Prometheus'?  I can live with that.  What has me curious is why is this necessary?  How is it critical to the narrative?  At least they aren't divorcing it from the series to the same degree that 'ALIEN: Resurrection' was.  Setting it 200 years further into the future only removed that movie entirely from the rest of the series, cementing the trilogy +1.

Maybe we are going to see the inverse of that situation.  'Prometheus' becomes the 1 + a trilogy. 

I'm hoping this all works out and I have my reservations just like anyone else; but I'm not prepared to pass too much judgment on it just yet, either.   I totally get that science in these movies is adjusted to suit the story.  That sometimes the facts are bent to accommodate the narrative.  I get that.  What I don't support is poor characters - of which 'Prometheus' was overburdened with.  I'm hoping this trilogy lifts its game in this department. 

I can tolerate almost any hokey science if the story, characters and cinematic style are well executed.   After all, look at 'Star Wars'... it's a fun movie, but watching those movies to rely on an education in science is like relying on McDonalds to be the voice of good food nutrition. 

It's all good fun but you'd be a fool to do so in any serious capacity.

-Windebieste.
 


whiterabbit

It's just an arbitrary time frame. Although I'm not even sure if this(these) movies have to all take place before Alien. I know that the 3rd movie is supposed to run into Alien as a prequel. However just how many of us really want or need that to happen? To be honest I'd rather have this run parallel to Alien. I understand that Ridley wants to tell the space jockey's story but he could do that just as well by alluding to it through the Trilogy. Actually it would be neat if he retained the "fossilized" space jockey and made it a true GOD or hero. Basically anything. Then from what ever knowledge the Covenant and subsequent travelers learn, would lead them to the holy grail. Which is what the Nostromo eventually runs into. Yea I prefer some round about way of telling his story, rather than having the ship crash land in modern times. Although Shaw being the corpse inside of the suit does tickle my fancy, if just a little.

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯

In another interview with Collider, Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski briefly touches upon Alien: Covenant and how he will push for 65mm.

65 and 70mm film is a wide high-resolution format that has almost double the resolution of standard 35mm motion picture film. It also gives a much grander and epic feel to the film. Examples of films shot in this format are, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia, The Hateful Eight, Ben-Hur, Alien 3 (effects work only) The Empire Strikes Back (effects work only) and Blade Runner (effects work only)

http://collider.com/cinematographer-dariusz-wolski-the-martian-alien-covenant-dark-city-interview/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=collidersocial

T Dog

Quote from: The Eighth Passenger on Dec 31, 2015, 05:30:10 PM
In another interview with Collider, Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski briefly touches upon Alien: Covenant and how he will push for 65mm.

65 and 70mm film is a wide high-resolution format that has almost double the resolution of standard 35mm motion picture film. It also gives a much grander and epic feel to the film. Examples of films shot in this format are, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia, The Hateful Eight, Ben-Hur, Alien 3 (effects work only) The Empire Strikes Back (effects work only) and Blade Runner (effects work only)

http://collider.com/cinematographer-dariusz-wolski-the-martian-alien-covenant-dark-city-interview/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=collidersocial
It would be great if Covenant was shot on film. I didn't like the modern digital-ness of some of Prometheus.

XenoHunter99

XenoHunter99

#22
I think the stock sci fi answer to relativity is, FTL drive bypasses the speed of light. Basically, the ship moves into an alternate dimension bypassing normal time and space using some sort of wormhole, spatial tunnel, or shadow dimension (hyperspace). The ship never even approaches the speed of light, but traverses great distances at what seems to be superluminal speeds without any of the messy side effects. I wouldn't think any of that would be a big problem in the Alien universe - All those ships seem to have easy, excellent artificial gravity, even the tiny little shuttlecraft. With that in mind, it surprises me their weapons and overall technology seem so primitive and pedestrian.

windebieste

Quote from: XenoHunter99 on Dec 31, 2015, 08:33:28 PMthat in mind, it surprises me their weapons and overall technology seem so primitive and pedestrian.

Most commercial and industrial hardware is built like that.  It's not built to be sexy or appealing to a mass market.  It's built to be functional.  Compare the interiors of the International Space Station to the interiors of the Enterprise and the Nostromo.  The Nostromo is a functional environment not made for it's good looks but how it operates.


The international space station.   Notice all the surface mounted equipment.  You don't want extra penetrations in surfaces if you can avoid it aboard a spacecraft.


Enterprise Corridor.  Wow! So clean and devoid of any equipment.  This has to be good, Right?  Wrong.


Nostromo Corridor.  It looks more like a submarine.  But a spacecraft shares more with a submarine than you may realise.  Think about it.

I'd say with all of its exposed conduits and surface mounted equipment for ease of access, the Nostromo is more like the real deal than The Enterprise.  Why conceal all the equipment behind wall paneling?  In an emergency situation, you want fast access to that equipment.  You don't want to pull off wall panels and look for it - you want immediate access to it. 

So yes.  It should look primitive and pedestrian when compared to sleek consumer goods that are made to look sexy because that's what sells mass market product.  These vehicles aren't part of any consumer industry.   Presuming, of course, that the crews of these vessels are trained professionals on board to perform specific tasks and not just tourists on a holiday cruise.

So I give the Nostromo a Pass; and The Enterprise a Fail in attempting to portray a functional environment in space.

-Windebieste

XenoHunter99

Windebieste, you completely missed my point. War drives technological innovation. We have every reason to think humans continued to make war. These people have artificial gravity and FTL drive. They have robot surgery machines. So why are their soldiers armed with slug throwers, grenades, flame throwers and sometimes nukes? Their computers and screen displays look pitifully primitive, but they have AI smart enough to make androids that pass for human. It makes no sense. Why don't they have Predator stealth fields and plasma weapons? Intelligent targeting rail guns? Orbital mass drivers? Phasers? Photon torpedoes? force fields? You name it, they apparently don't have it. They don't even seem to have it 200 years later for Resurrection. They have more dolts with slug throwers. We know the Prometheus crew had those nifty mapping drones. Why were they not in evidence in Aliens? Would have simplified a lot of problems the marines encountered at Hadley's Hope.

I'm not talking about Alien. The freighter crew doesn't need anything fancy to haul freight, and one can simply say the Nostromo was old. It's like a steam engine or ocean vessel that soldiers on because it's cheap, reliable and profitable. But it's insufficiently maintained, so it has problems when taken off its normal track or sailed into a storm.

We know the real answer. The movies were made out of order and the ideas about that universe did not filter evenly or logically across the timeline. Cameron made specific decisions about what happened and why in Aliens. But all that leaves a sort of technological paradox. If you have the means to control gravity and the AI to make artificial brains, you have the means to do lots of other interesting things. And most of those interesting things are curiously missing from this vision of the future.

The Alien Predator

Same reason why we have such advanced smart phones and laptops and yet still burn fossil fuels for our cars.

Maybe the Alien universe humans developed slightly differently, perhaps these things you're pointing out aren't that easy to make or the universe isn't compatible with such things (such as photon torpedos) because it's a more "hard sci fi" setting.

But humans do show a sense of progress, the Rage War novel has a humanity that is so advanced that it'd almost make Star Trek blush.

Here are some examples of their weaponry and other technology (contains some minor spoilers).

Spoiler
Nano-Rifles that shoot a swarm of programmable nanobots which can be ordered to either slice an opponent apart, or encase them and explode in microscopic explosions (billions of them at once.)

Laser pistol that can blow apart a Predator's hand in two shots. (And that's just a sidearm)

Plasma hand grenades.

Cloaking technology, one is invisibility while other one makes the ship look like an asteroid to an outside observer. (Predators still use better stealth because each time humans reverse engineer their stuff, Yautja innovate further within a week.)

Compact Rifle that can be programmed to shoot nano swarms, lasers and micro-dot bullets which also explode, and that's basically a "full stop sized" bullet, billions of them.

Shoulder drones that the marines have on each shoulder, can be deployed to survey an area and feed back to the marine tactically. It also fights back by firing lasers so it's a combat drone as well.

The Marine combat suit is skin tight, no more uncomfortable heavy armour for your infantry, you now wear a suit that functions similarly to the Crysis Nanosuit, it protects you from Xenomorph blood (a marine is shielded from an exploding Xeno, completely drenched in acid and on the molecular level, the suit shed parts of itself while neutralizing the acid to save the marine, this protection only works to an extent.)

The suit also has an inbuilt computer that reacts specifically to your thoughts, so no control panel really needed. It has various vision modes, injects you with drugs to certain areas in case of injury, it boosts your strength to insane levels (a marine ripped the remains of his own arm off with ease after an injury) and keeps you alive and prevents shock for a considerable amount of time so you can stay combat ready. Also slightly shields you from really deadly radiation and also it's a space suit too.

It deflects Predator plasma caster and other forms of ranged attack by despite being a skin tight soft suit, it physically hardens at affected areas.

Humans also use "Drop Holes", huge anti-matter fuelled space structures that literally bend time and space to make FTL travel a bit easier, this is incredibly difficult to build as one in fifty of these fails to work and one in three explodes once activated. However, when successful, it allows instant travel from one area to the next (but it's a one way travel, so you'd have to find another Drop Hole that goes back, and they can't be built next to eachother) - also, these Drop Holes are code protected, so only humans can use them.

Our fastest ships can go fifteen times the speed of light without the use of Drop Holes. The Human Sphere of Influence is huge, it'd take you 200 years on a fast ship to fully circumnavigate.

Our space ship combat is advanced, we use particle weapons, lasers, and combat drones to snip enemy ships with various weaponry and "micro nukes" which are superbly effective even against alien ships. Also, when a human ship gets damaged, the crew is immediately doused in a hardening gel that protects them from the vacuum while the ship's hull immediately closes itself and then the gel proceeds to melt away.

Also for the very fast ships, a simple cryo-pod won't protect you from such a velocity, so there's this special kind of pod that encases you in a protective gel to keep you physically shielded from the speed of travelling fifteen times faster than light. This gel once exposed to oxygen immediately evaporates.

Also, ship computers can now be spoken to anywhere, you don't need a specific console to speak to such as with "MOTHER", in the book, "FRODO" can be spoken to anywhere and has a nice personality as well. Also, you can turn on artificial gravity on or off at will.

So year, by 2692, humans are superbly advanced, having colonized and built cities on many worlds, building huge space habitats as cities on their own.

Also holographic technology is very advanced, there are huge holo-rooms that a guy walks into which is of a beach, he can literally feel the sand on his feet, that's how good it's become. Also there are a lot of holographic screens on ships as well as a couple of monitors.

Also, some alien ships are discovered by some humans that literally grow themselves, humans then incorporate such tech.
[close]

This is what I like about the franchise, it shows a huge sense of progress. Sure, some things seem a bit retro futuristic, but that can be chalked up to Weyland-Yutani being cheap (Nostromo) or humans going through some economically hard times. Remember in Resurrection there was a plague that apparently ravaged humanity.

And I think Winde is right, emergency equipment does need to be available and visible at all times especially on a ship.

XenoHunter99

@Guan Thwei 1992:
If Star Wars taught us nothing else, It taught us this: If it didn't happen on screen, it didn't happen. Novels don't count.

The Alien Predator

The Alien Predator

#27
Quote from: XenoHunter99 on Jan 01, 2016, 03:43:12 PM
@Guan Thwei 1992:
If Star Wars taught us nothing else, It taught us this: If it didn't happen on screen, it didn't happen. Novels don't count.

This isn't Star Wars.

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯

#28
Quote from: tmjhur on Dec 31, 2015, 07:09:42 PM
It would be great if Covenant was shot on film. I didn't like the modern digital-ness of some of Prometheus.

I also prefer film myself. But Scott would probably have to ditch the 3D then. It will likely be a bit of a nightmare filming 3D with those bulky 65/70mm film cameras if it can even be done. Or otherwise post convert it into 3D which is not really ideal either. Not that I care for 3D myself but the studio might see things differently.


XenoHunter99

Quote from: Guan Thwei 1992 on Jan 01, 2016, 04:16:20 PM
Quote from: XenoHunter99 on Jan 01, 2016, 03:43:12 PM
@Guan Thwei 1992:
If Star Wars taught us nothing else, It taught us this: If it didn't happen on screen, it didn't happen. Novels don't count.

This isn't Star Wars.

Doesn't matter. The lesson is universal. EU doesn't count. When film makers draw upon it, that's a bonus. But film makers are rarely bound by it. And rights holders can declare it null and void any time they like. Now, if Alien were based on a novel, like the tale of a certain annoying British wizard boy or a certain girl with a bow and arrow, the dynamics between book and movie might be a little different. But these Rage War novels don't matter a hill of beans to what we're ever going to see on the screen. Bitter pill, but that's the way it goes.

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