Scott: We are going to make another Alien movie

[SM]

How?

[Scorpio]

white bald humans instead of Space Jockeys and poorly desgined creatures like a squid from stomach... :/

The story could go anywhere at this point, Ridley could even throw the fans a bone and make the Jockeys the gods of the Engineers.

You cannot use generic ideas if you want to expand the universe and keep it interesting.

[Huggs]

I think one of the bigger problems the prequels are suffering from is that they destroy everything interesting too quickly.

Deacon's born, gone.
Engineer in Prometheus, kills a few people and gets bodyhugged. Then gone.
Engineer Civilization, immediately executed.
Protomorph, crawls on a ship for a couple of minutes, gets crushed by machinery. gone.
Protomorph 2. Gets locked inside a truck. Escapes and makes one jump. Is killed.
Neomorph 1. Kills a woman, quickly escapes an explosion, then is quickly killed by gunfire.
Neomorph 2. Kills one character quickly, is promptly shot to death by oram.
Branson, who might've been a Dallas level character is killed within seconds.
Shaw is killed offscreen. Her time on paradise and any fantastic buildup to her demise is ignored.
Etc. Etc.

In alien, the creature and it's presence was a constant fright for the entire film.
In aliens, the creatures and their presence were drawn out over the entire film. Even the queen had time.
In alien 3, the creature was a threat for the entire movie.
etc. etc.

Now Prometheus did give the engineer (ignoring the waterfall guy) a few seconds in the cryo pod and when he sat in the chair. The holograms as well. So the engineers in that movie did have some decent time. But this whole "hey check out this cool thing, SPLAT! well what did ya think?" kind of vibe these prequels have going is a bit of a letdown.

Now I'm not saying actual by the second screen time is what's important. But, rather a decent period of mutual existence. The one that personally disappointed me the most was the deacon. I would have loved to see what it looked like full grown or what it's hunting patterns or level of hostility was. On film, we'll never know now. It's like sitting around waiting for an artist to finish a beautiful picture, only he chucks it in the incinerator 2 seconds after you see it. What's the freakin' point?

[SM]

I think you're churching up the original three flicks a little.  In Alien the film is half over by the time the chestburster is born.  Similarly in the Aliens the hive attack comes halfway through and again in Alien3, Clemens and Andrews are killed at the halfway mark.  While Alien and Aliens use the first half to dial up the tension - there's no present threat as such.

However your point about some of the monsters being disposable is fair.  It's similar to the Newborn.

[Huggs]

Valid point  about the first film SM. With Aliens though, I think it starts to hit the fan when Newts dad gets facehugged. At that point, there is a clear and present danger. We might not see it, but we know the entire colony is up the creek, and many xeno's are soon to be born. The same with Alien 3, it picks off Murphy and those other guys Boggs and I cant remember his name in the tunnels. The audience is aware of the existence of this interesting creature, and it becomes an integral part of the film. The same cannot be said for the deacon or the engineer city. I don't mean to nitpick, I merely think it's a shame to waste such wonderful opportunities to see and experience something really cool. And this is a trend within the prequels.

[SiL]

Alien3 is the beginning of the "the Alien is only a threat when it's onscreen" trend in the series (which is a serious issue with so many monster movies in general). Most of the characters aren't even aware it exists some thirty minutes of screentime after it's born, which sucks out a lot of the tension.

A large part of my issues with Covenant is that it's breathless and doesn't let anything sink in. It runs from set piece to set piece and doesn't let the audience anticipate or reflect. "Oh, that character just -- hey, cool necropolis, how about those -- Michael Fassbender is kissing himself, I'm not sure -- is that the Alien? -- it's dead? OK, but then -- oh, there's another one -- oh, it's dead? And it was him all along?"

Fear is anticipation. If you don't let audiences dread the possibility of something happening, there's no fear. At best you manage tension.

[Huggs]

Good point about Alien 3 SiL. I never really thought about it, but aside from some stuff in the corridor chase sequence, the Alien doesn't do much offscreen. And yes, the pace in Covenant was a killer. The final confrontation with the protomorph was ridiculously handled. We got to see it moving the whole way, and it was over before you knew it. And David taking Walter's place was one of the most easily foreseen twists since the boat was gonna sink in Cameron's Titanic.

Tension building is arguably the greatest possible strength of this franchise. Dallas's trek through the vents and subsequent encounter with the Alien is a masterwork in that regard, and in my opinion, the highlight of the series in terms of flat-out terror. I just really wish we'd be able to explore more of the great stuff we've had glimpses of in the prequels.

Following up on that final confrontation. It's just my opinion, but if the creature or David wasn't shown and it was re-written so that David was saying one thing but secretly assisting the Alien in flanking or trapping Daniels and TN it would have been a much better set piece and a better reveal for David. They could have used the little dot tracker animation on the computer as a nod to Alien 1979, where David could fool the audience into thinking the dot moving toward them is the Alien, when it is in fact Daniels and TN being sent directly towards the waiting alien.

There's so much wasted opportunity there. Power outage anyone? That whole section of the film really could've been fantastic.

You'd probably have to take the rifle away though. Maybe give her a flashlight and/or some kind of non-lethal weapon. Having lost TN and being alone working her way through the dark, it would've been horrifying to see her realize it's actually David she's talking to. Daniels asks him "where is it?" Only for David to say something terrible like, "It's coming for you" or "it won't be long now". For an easter egg, since he's already quoting blade runner, throw in a "you have my sympathies" into the mix. Man, that could've been a real intense 15 minutes. But how would she have killed it? Or would she? Maybe she'd actually lose.

[TC]

@Huggs, you've made some good points.

And now you've started to address the final confrontation scene between David and Daniels, which I've also believed to be very unsatisfying. It lasts seconds, when it really should be far more protracted to give the audience a bigger sense of a final showdown between the two main adversaries. Like Ripley vs xeno in the Narcissus in Alien, Ripley in powerloader vs Alien Queen in Aliens, Ripley's suicide in the leadworks in Alien 3, and so on, like so many other action movies. It's really an obligatory part of the genre (Arnold vs Predator, McClane vs Hans Gruber, I could go on and on...),

David and Daniels do have their moment together when they duke it out in the temple in the second act. This scene should have been transposed into the climax of the third act somehow. Instead we get a big action sequence between Daniels and the xeno (which I thought was quite well done btw, even if the xeno's demise was a little bit unimaginative), but the xeno - or any of its variants - are not really the chief antagonist. That honour belongs to David. We need a big scene, a significant scene - David vs Daniels, right there at the end.

Your idea for an Alien '79 motion-tracker-dots-in-the-vents homage would have done this. But I think they really need to be face to face.

Here's an idea: Daniels makes it back to "pretend-Walter" to thank him for his help in expelling the xeno. "Walter" needs to hook himself up to a computer for a maintenance checkup and goes into sleep mode. Daniels, in gratitude for his help, tends to his external injuries and sees the wound under his chin (from her nail attack, earlier) and realises he is really David. David wakes up and finds himself manacled to the bench. Daniels challenges him, she knows his real identity, and now his goose is cooked. David resigns himself to his fate and spills the beans about his deranged motives. Daniels is about to kill him when he regurgitates the little facehuggers onto the manacles, squashes them, and the acid releases the manacles. David is now free to overpower Daniels, turning the tables on her. She wakes up trapped in a cryotube. Or something like that.

TC

[SM]

Alien3 is the beginning of the "the Alien is only a threat when it's onscreen" trend in the series (which is a serious issue with so many monster movies in general). Most of the characters aren't even aware it exists some thirty minutes of screentime after it's born, which sucks out a lot of the tension.

A large part of my issues with Covenant is that it's breathless and doesn't let anything sink in. It runs from set piece to set piece and doesn't let the audience anticipate or reflect. "Oh, that character just -- hey, cool necropolis, how about those -- Michael Fassbender is kissing himself, I'm not sure -- is that the Alien? -- it's dead? OK, but then -- oh, there's another one -- oh, it's dead? And it was him all along?"

Fear is anticipation. If you don't let audiences dread the possibility of something happening, there's no fear. At best you manage tension.

I wonder if that's born out of Ridley's perception of modern audiences; like how he cut Alien down to speed it up a bit for the DC.

[SiL]

I reckon it is. Also that he was never much into horror to begin with, so I don't think he's kept up with the fact that modern horror audiences are eagerly consuming slower -- or at least more deliberately -- paced films.

I think, though, is that a bigger problem is he forgot the one key lesson that arguably makes any good horror film effective: keep it f**king simple. He's trying to scare audiences and pontificate on man's place in the universe and hold a discourse on artificial intelligence and it's just too much at once.

[tleilaxu]

No it's not.

[SiL]

In terms of making the film scary, yeah, it is. He's trying to fit too much into one film and not balancing them well at all. We move from brain sucking monsters to metaphysical musings and back without any real thread connecting them. The brain sucking monsters just show up to wake the audience up long enough to sit through another pretentious diatribe.

Metaphysical musings are all well and good, but Ridley said he wanted to scare people with the film and on that end he largely failed. Miserably.

[Corporal Hicks]

I dunno...Due to Covenant, I'm at that point where I'm pretty scared of any potential future Aliens films from him. 

[Scorpio]

Aliens aren't scary anymore.  The body horror of the Medpod scene and the backburster scene is more effective.

Alien is much more than just monsters and boo scares. 

Ridley Scott knows what is best for Alien.

[reecebomb]

Aliens aren't scary anymore.  The body horror of the Medpod scene and the backburster scene is more effective.

Alien is much more than just monsters and boo scares. 

Ridley Scott knows what is best for Alien.

Nope

Yes

He clearly doesn't. He's all about the AI, even that was more fairy tale fantasy than thinking man's sci-fi.