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5 Things We NEED to See in ‘Alien: Covenant’

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Scified2015-11-24 12:43:43https://www.scified.com/sites_pics/4823261589054834.png
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Written by Chris3,206 Reads8 Comments2015-11-24 12:43:43

The sequel to Ridley Scott's 2012 sci-fi epic Prometheus finally has a title and its being dubbed Alien: Covenant. Along with the film's official title came a rough plot synopsis and official logo, suggesting homage to Scott's original 1979 Alien. Fans of the franchise have so far been fairly receptive of the new title, though some of us wonder - why stray from Prometheus? This decision likely came from Fox, not Ridley himself, given Prometheus' polarized reviews upon its release - gearing the sequel towards a wider audience more familiar with the Alien films is a safe bet that the film will generate more income. Not only this, going with an Alien structured title suggests that fans will get more of what they're familiar with and less of the unknown - which Prometheus was littered with.

Since Damon Lindelof came on to revise the Alien: Engineers script by Jon Spaihts, it was always the plan to explore two parallel storylines - one leading off into an expanded universe of Engineers, black goo and whatever else may lie beyond. The other would round out the Alien franchise and circle back to the first film, explaining how the Space Jockey arrived at his destination on LV-426. It would seem, given Alien: Covenant's current plot synopsis that Ridley and 20th Century Fox are going with the latter storyline for the first sequel. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it will likely generate more revenue as mentioned previously, which would secure a safety net for Scott, letting him pursue his full story and expand the franchise's cinematic universe without limits.

With that in mind, below are 5 key elements Alien: Covenant requires if it is to succeed.

1. Suspense

Unlike gore and horror, what made 1979's Alien so terrifying was the SUSPENSE! Not knowing if Jonesy or a Xenomorph was going to come at you was part of what kept you on the edge of your seat. You didn't know what the Xenomorph looked like, how big it was, what sounds it made until nearly half way into the film. This suspenseful filmmaking is what made Alien so iconic. The chest burst scene was scary, sure, but audiences have become so desensitized over the decades with an abundance of gore, that having something burst from your chest just doesn't scare you anymore (just watch Alien vs. Predator). Even when the Xenomorph was revealed, you lost track of it, it could be anywhere. Alien was about not knowing what was going to happen and that created an insecurity in all of us who watched it; it kept the heart racing and the eyes peeled. Alien: Covenant needs to ensure it has enough suspense to keep us guessing, never should we feel safe.

2. Open Concepts

People who complain about religion in Prometheus are the same people who complain about religion in Star Wars. Like it or not, religion has played a massive role in society and storytelling. Before politics, before government, religion is what we based our civilization around. Prometheus did an amazing job at incorporating BOTH the scientific and religious aspects of life into one, believable story.  do away with the religious concepts and only focus on science, will result in the same problems science faces today - eventually you won't be able to "explain" past a certain point. By incorporating religion and the essence of unexplainable phenomenon, you have more potential to expand the mind and expand the story. Alien: Covenant needs to continue the incorporation of both science and religion in its plot as not doing so will only reach dead-ends. No more spoon-feeding, we want to use our minds and think, not drool over popcorn and admire the pretty lights.

3. Xenomorph...like creatures

Just another bug hunt? No thank you. We know what the Xenomorph looks like, we know how it acts, we've seen it look the same in 7 films. Why do you think Scott recently said "It's cooked, the beast is dead"Because it is. The Deacon alien shown at the end of Prometheus was close enough to the Xenomorph to please fans, but different enough to keep our imagination wondering what it might look like. We even ran a Design the Adult Deacon contest back in 2012 - the entries were phenomenal and just went to show how one slight design change could elicit such a creative response from fans. Ask anyone what a Xenomorph looks like and BAM, a thousand drawings of the same thing. We want something fresh, something new, while still being distinct enough that we can make connections, but again - don't spoon feed us!

Prometheus 2 Officially Titled Alien: Paradise Lost!

4. Clues to Alien’s Mysteries, Not Answers

Who is the Space Jockey? How did his ship crash on LV-426? Where did his chest-bursted spawn run off to? Honestly, I don’t want to know exactly how all those circumstances came to be. However, I’ll gladly take a million clues that let me put the puzzle pieces together myself. Prometheus opened many doors and didn’t really close any of them. Sure, Alien: Covenant can answer or hint to some of the answers to questions posed in Prometheus and even Alien but to blatantly answer why the Derelict was carrying eggs versus why the Juggernaut was carrying urns? That will be one short-lived pleasure for many of us. Another reason why Alien became so iconic was its immense mystery. It, like Prometheus posed so many open-ended questions that to this day, 36 years later, we’re still pondering the answers to. If Alien: Covenant is to succeed, it needs to keep some questions open-ended, make the audience think. Prometheus may be criticized right now, but expect it to be revered in the same light at Alien 36 years down the road, when recycled plots and ideas are all you see and originality is scarce. We know how Alien ends, we’ve seen the movie. Suggest how Alien began and let us fill in the gaps with our own imagination.

Alien: Paradise Lost eyeing Rebecca Ferguson for a role in the Prometheus sequel!

5. Elizabeth Shaw

After reading the plot synopsis for Alien: Covenant you were probably thinking… “Where the hell is Shaw?!”. There’s reason for that and the simplest answer is likely that Alien: Covenant is NOT a direct sequel to Prometheus. Rather, it’s a sequel to the sequel to Prometheus which will come later on. Shaw and David set off to discover Paradise, the Engineer home world in search for answers to mankind’s creation and purpose. Something definitely happens between then and where Alien: Covenant begins and we likely won’t know what exactly that is, until later on. Sure, we might see references or a few clues to what happened to Shaw, but don’t expect a blatant explanation.

Like Star Wars, Ridley Scott seems to be separating his story into non-chronological segments and like Star Wars, this will leave many questions unanswered but that’s okay because true Alien fans will know, this is how the first film was designed as well. Unfortunately, not everyone has the pleasure of seeing Alien before they see James Cameron’s Aliens or dare I even say… Alien vs. Predator. So, the expectations put on Scott and his ‘Alien’ film may be skewed a bit, but for those of us who grew up watching Alien before the sequels and spin-offs, having a number of unanswered questions and mysterious plot elements is okay – and better yet, welcomed!

If Alien: Covenant is to succeed, it needs to keep to its roots and not settle to please the masses. It needs to push for new territory, open more doors and expand a brilliant franchise. Ridley Scott has the same brain in his head today that he did back in 1979, so don’t worry, he knows what he’s doing.

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8 Comments

tecofilms

MemberOvomorphNov-24-2015 1:20 PM

Any date to the first trailer?

BigDave

MemberDeaconNov-24-2015 3:46 PM

Yes its going to be hard to touch upon 1) something that was Original is hard to do again.. apart from cheap shot scenes that make you jump, i think these elements can always be used but for the suspense.. who knows... but i guess having the opening of the movie with a Ship of Travelers looking for Worlds ideal to Colonize and then only finding David would leave us with what happened here... and we all know well Prometheus fans would, that Shaw was with David and they wanted to find the Engineers for Answers...  so a Mystrey of where and what happened to those would maybe provide a chance for some tense suprises...  I think they would be going for a movie that while has 3 Plot Points it would also have 3 genres.... it would touch upon some thought provolking ideas like Prometheus... and 2001 Space Odyssey, i think it would try to give us more shock horror elements than Prometheus... but also some more Action than Prometheus aswell.

I think they would have to answer some Questions of give clues in a less ambigious fasion than Prometheus... with Prometheus just a few more things added to all those puzzles etc would have given more answers... a lot of Prometheus Clues they was trying to cover was in the dialog in the movie than visual clues...

Eventually they will give us enough so we can figure what happened to the Space Jockey... but we dont need to hear that story...  once connections of how the Goo and Xeno or Xeno related Biology and Bio-Mechanical Aspect comes into play come to light, then we should get enough clues....  Prometheus already gave us enough clues... people just had to look and the clues was never 100% answers so was left open to interpretation...  going the route of On Screen and ignoring Star Beast, Spaights Draft and Even Lindloffs and extra Scenes.... there still is enough Clues....

1) There was a outbreak, contamination or something went down with the supposed experiments and Bio-Weapon connection on LV-223 some 2 thousand or so years ago...... THE DERELICT seemed to had been on LV-426 for thousands of years!

2) Our Engineers are revealed to be similar to the Space Jockey (Suits) the Engineers Ships on LV-223 where very similar to the Derelict in Alien.... The Engineers seemed to be experimenting on something that could be used as a Bio-Weapon and thus the Juggernaughts had a Cargo on them that could be used as a kind of Biological Warefare... (even though the outcome could have more to it than purely to destroy).

3) The Engineers had been working on experiments with a Black Substance stored in Urns, then taken into Cargo Hold onboard the Engineers Ships.... the results of contamination with the stuff in those Urns lead to Organisms in contact with it, changing and somehow taking on Xeno DNA to a degree (earlier drafts and concept work was more of a Xeno DNA connection) so those experiments do somehow have some connection genetically to the Xenomorph.

4) The Mural seemed to show a Organism that was related to the Xenomorph, the Frescos had another Organism that had mild traits of the Xeno and the other showed a Xeno Egg open being held by something that had Xeno Hands.. but also the creature in the Fresco had Xeno Hands... this is another connection that what ever was in those Frescos, the Mural, the Urns all had some connection to the Xenomorph as far as DNA.

5) LV-223 is located close to LV-426 is this by just Coinsidence....?

All these are enough clues to sugest that there is some connection... just we dont and never got a full on explanation of what happened.. what came first? Xeno.. Goo.. Organism related to Both? was it created on LV-223?  On LV-426... did it end up on LV-426 or salvaged from LV 426 and taken to LV-223... its these details we never had on screen... that off screen we had more clues to it... i think somehow they have to cover clues to this more by the time they finish with the Franchise... but doubt we shall see the Eggs on that exact Derelict and the exact moment of how the Engineer/Space Jockey was infected...... THERE IS MANY ways this event could have happened and i will do a Topic in Depth on this at some point.

BigDave

MemberDeaconNov-24-2015 3:47 PM

As far as a Trailer?  I would say to expect them to start in the Summer 2017... maybe teasers around the 5 year Anniversary of Prometheus.

MonsterZero

MemberXenomorphNov-24-2015 4:10 PM

Excellent article! Yes, hopefully Ridley keeps the suspense on high.....One of the keys(for me)of Alien was not knowing who would survive, I just assumed Dallas would defeat the xeno...I was SHOCKED to see Dallas be one of the first to die(captured). I love Prometheus, but I knew Miss Shaw was going to survive.

BigDave

MemberDeaconNov-24-2015 4:25 PM

Think that was the Charm of the Movie, same with The Thing Movie aswell.... although you kind of knew Kurt Russle would Survive....  the new Movie you knew 100% that Kate would survive even though the movie led to the 1982 movie, where they found no Survivors... apart from the Dog...

 

sp_jockey

MemberOvomorphNov-24-2015 7:00 PM

Unless Chris Picard has access to more information than he lets on, its presumptuous to say that "..we might see references or a few clues to what happened to Shaw, but don't expect a blatent explaination". 

So we wait 5 years to see what happens to Shaw in her search for answers, and the storyline for Alien Covenant just shrugs and brushes her aside? Ridley did make reference to a "third act" in a Prometheus sequel where we link up again with Shaw. So this might be the last 20-30 minutes of the movie. I would hope that would be Alien Covenant, and not some other hypothetical future installment of the franchise. Anything else would be a waste of a great character, a waste of great talent, and would piss-off this Noomi Rapace fan. 

djamelameziane

MemberFacehuggerNov-25-2015 3:47 AM

I would add : 

6 Needs to make sense lol the characters need to all seem real not some kind of wierd huanted house of horrors in space were everyone appears to be dumb but are supposed to be intelligent people well at least most of them...

And you could have xenos in it but you need to expand on what they are show new things almost like a wild life do***antary :P .

Also I thought just about everyone loved the religious part to it all as well as the scientific I mean it is essential to this story after all anyway! Do people really complain about starwars and religion wow did not know that ! I love tha force and being mindful much like meditation but then again meditation is not strictly a religious thing. Always though of starwars as avoiding direct religious links.

 

ps did you know this link is dead : http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/community/ just mentioning it.

 

oduodu

MemberXenomorphNov-25-2015 10:54 AM

Chris

Agree with you virtually
To the letter. You said
Basically exactly how
I feel about P1.

Keep the passion. I felt
That and that's why I
Joined this forum.  Its the
Passion for P1 that
Made it so great to be
Here and I believe that
There is many others 
Who feel the same way.

Nowadays its hard find
Passion for something.
This is one of the few 
Places you can find it.

P1 has its flaws logic 
gaps plot flaws etc. And
Yet I can rewatch even
If it can be frustrating.

I have looked at P1 from
A "prometheus only"
perspective here and 
from
An "alien only"
Perspective elsewhere
and still I find the 
Movie appealing.

What other franchise
Has the possibillities
That is on offer here ??

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