[SPOILERS] So Covenant confirms that AvP and AvPR are not canon films.

[Huggs]

With Covenant Ridley reached chaotic mad lad tier. He is an unpredictable force.

He not crazy, he's just...spontaneous.

Whatever happens to be on his mind is what goes in the movie.

Eccentric.

Eclectic.

"We have a new creature. It's white instead of black and there's a hole where the d*ck used to be. Plus Goblin Sharks. They'll love it.".

[kwisatz]

But he jumped all over the opportunity to take Alien in his own direction without sitting down and taking the time to work out a script that did the franchise justice.  Or even his own movie justice if he considers Alien a standalone.   To make matters worse it appears that the studio has given him full control over the series which gives him even more time to develop a ball of f**k to throw on screen. 

The point for me is, i think in a way Ridley can't ultimately distinguish between a good and a mediocre screen play and therefore was sorta lucky with Alien/BR/Gladiator etc. Hes throwing out ideas and expects the writers to implement them into a cohesive form of story telling. But thats not so different from what he did back in the days when they hired David Peoples to meddle with Fanchers screen play. I don't know how much actual influence he had on the final Alien screen play.

I mean is Prometheus a visually appealing movie or not? Fassbenders performance is more than good so Ridley can't have completely lost his touch (or as you already mentioned, look at The Martian; American Gangster is a satisfying movie in my eyes).

When it comes to the blame game i really tend to look more in the direction of Spaiths (Ok hes a beginner, but so was Fancher), Lindelof, Logan, Green, Paglen etc. Did they really deliver a basic narrative meeting the high standards of the franchise? More than debatable in my eyes.

[Kimarhi]

But I think that is where the control aspect does come into play.  If you a a writer for an alien movie that is forced to write in 20 years of bad takes, vs just a writer for an alien movie ok to come up with ideas to further the story of the franchise then one is going to have a much easier go than the other.


He definitely has some influence on the new Alien movie in terms of story because all those shorts pre covenant were supposedly from his thought noodle. 

[kwisatz]

Sure but ultimately Ridley and the writers have the same goal: to deliver a sound product. I'm not saying Ridley isn't interfering more than in the past but i doubt hes throwing rocks or even Ridleygrams at them while they are trying to type their stuff.

Fancher and Green probably faced the most ungrateful task in the history of Hollywod screen play writing with the Blade Runner sequel and they had to go through Ridley himself with a lot of their core ideas. It seems they were able to win him over for a more ambiguous approach regarding the nature of Deckard. They delivered, quality writing, you don't see Ridley running around these days like Lucas whining that this is not what he had in mind for his "baby" or something.

I just doubt Ridleys on a mission choking off good ideas for the Alien franchise to force through his own fragmented vision. The guy knows hes no PT Anderson by now, he even knew that from the start and learned to cope with it, he just wants to transform written stuff into cool pictures but if the written stuff is mediocre so is the final film, albeit nice to look at. May i present: Prometheus.

[The Old One]

I couldn't say it any more precisely myself.

[Kradan]

With Covenant Ridley reached chaotic mad lad tier. He is an unpredictable force.

He not crazy, he's just...spontaneous.

Whatever happens to be on his mind is what goes in the movie.

Eccentric.

Eclectic.

"We have a new creature. It's white instead of black and there's a hole where the d*ck used to be. Plus Goblin Sharks. They'll love it.".

Well, it worked for me, The same applies to Covenant as whole,

[The Old One]

What do you mean?

[Kradan]

I like Neomorphs. And I like Covenant. So Ridley being spontaneous about things is fine with me.

[The Old One]

I agree that the Neomorph is a great spin on the original Alien, as a beastial, undeveloped, basic version but I see Covenant as totally it's own beast. As I've said before, a Gothic Romantic Horror in space.

[TurokSwe]

With Covenant taking place in 2104, and David having created the first Xeno via the facehugger that attacked Oram, I guess Covenant confirms once and for all that AvP and AvPR are not canon. AvP taking place in 2004 and AvPR not long after that. Even in AvP they reference 1904 in the film as being a date that the Alien Queen in that film was still in deep freeze.

Good.

Except Covenant doesn't make AVP and AVPR non-canon at all, they're still very much canon, and David didn't create the Xenomorphs, he merely created his own variant of it based upon a Xenomorph created by the Engineers as revealed by the novelization.

[The Old One]

The Xenomorph XX121 being
Alien to life itself
> The Perfect A.I creating the Alien
> The Alien being a natural creation
> "Engineer" or "Humanity"
creating the Alien

[Huggs]

Except Covenant doesn't make AVP and AVPR non-canon at all, they're still very much canon.

Yes, to each other and slightly to The Predator. Although The Predator was so ridiculous that it's possible that it may be completely ignored going forward.

[Xenomorphine]

Except Covenant doesn't make AVP and AVPR non-canon at all, they're still very much canon, and David didn't create the Xenomorphs, he merely created his own variant of it based upon a Xenomorph created by the Engineers as revealed by the novelization.

That was just Alan Dean Foster trying to correct things in the script. He already clarified that much in our interview. It wasn't requested by the studio or anything and, as it contradicts the primary source material (what ended up on screen), that part's just a 'what if'.

With that said, there were important differences between what we saw in that film and the creatures of LV-426. Particularly the facehugger's capabilities. With David 8 not yet having any reason to go there (and that engraved mural of the traditional four-petalled egg in exoskeletal hands), it's completely valid to believe the classic Alien had nothing to do with the droid's experiment. The onus is really on any future story-tellers (if any) of David 8's story to show otherwise.

And it wouldn't make sense for further refinements in the creature to make it less efficient than a facehugger able to implant without even needing an ovipositor and in mere moments.

[Voodoo Magic]

I'm clearly understanding why the delete function was taken away from you and probably should again. Third time I'll just report this nonsense.

Except Covenant doesn't make AVP and AVPR non-canon at all, they're still very much canon, and David didn't create the Xenomorphs, he merely created his own variant of it based upon a Xenomorph created by the Engineers as revealed by the novelization.

[The Old One]

Until the fortunate day something definitively says otherwise, by "perfecting" the Pathogen, "David" created the Alien. As for any differences between the Alien in Covenant and the Aliens featured in the first three films, it's so easily reconcilable, from Alien The RPG's idea of three types of Egg and Facehugger and so on Praetomorph/Stalker, Soldier/Sentry (Praetorian Guard/Praetorian Charger), Queen/Empress. To the idea it's a prototype. To the idea simply all Aliens share it's features retroactively.