Bavari's Metachaos Inspired the Covenant Bombing Sequence

'the story of David and Shaw's journey and coming to Paradise'

That would have been a fairly boring chapter in my op. :) It's good that he jumped forward in the story, BUT I think Scott should made a series of profound shorts about important events to answer some questions concerning Shaw, the Engineers, etc. Six episodes would be enough.

I would have much preferred to see Shaw and David's story rather than jumping ahead. There was a fantastic movie to be made there.

We could have seen David gaining Shaw's trust early in the movie, her re-assembling David and him teaching her how the ship operates, and her trusting him to put her in cryo sleep. Then the tale would have turned dark when we find that was all a ruse, David arrives at Paradise and bombs that city.

That could have been just the first quarter of the movie. The rest would have made an interesting story of Shaw being awakened, David lying to her about the "accidental" bombing, and him beginning his experiments in secret. There must have been uninfected Engineers hidden somewhere for David to experiment on and use as hosts. He had one posed in his lab and the head of another on a table in the lab. How David or Shaw finds those engineers and David captures/subdues them could have been a whole sub plot. That could be the point where Shaw would learn all about the Engineers and get some of her answers.

Then at some point Shaw finds David's secret lab and what he has been doing, realizes she was all wrong about him, then sends that message out that the Covenant intercepted. There could have been a whole plot line where she tries to escape and crashes the juggernaut. Then David captures her and the story really goes dark when he decides to experiment on her.

I can see a dozen variations on a story like that. It could have even ended in the same way, with David discovering the ovomorph egg, or him using Shaw to breed the xeno version of the Neomorph.

I loved Covenant, but I think that story would have been much more interesting than what we got.

I don't agree with you, but that's not a problem. :)

I don't like the skip ahead in time from *edit duh* Prometheus to Covenant. That gap of 10 years deserves its own movie. The rush to explain what happened as shown in AC was not satisfying and left me wanting the whole story.

If the sequel would have explored Shaw and David's journey, it would have to be some great writing.  I liked the way it turned out though.  After watching Covenant, I am glad that Ridley went that way.  It wasn't scary enough though.  I am especially critical of this because the Xeno is in there, so it should have scared the $h!t out of me like Ridley said it would.  The big thing with the A:C is we see it from a colonization mission's point of view.  This gives us from fresh eyes and does some major character development for the sequel to Alien: Covenant.  This was played very smart by the writers.  The movie that takes place after Covenant should be full throttle.

That is a pretty cool reference :0 Even better that Ridley brought him on board as a consultant. 

I do agree that Shaw and David's journey should have been expanded on but the chapter we got was more about re-introducing the Xenomorphs and how those ten years affected David. I hope we get a flashback sequence like in Covenant between Weyland and David but with David and Shaw to elaborate more on that relationship because it was just alluded in this chapter. I quite liked the mystery of it though, the entire time watching I was wanting to know more and what happened and the reveal was delightfully dark.

I'd like them to keep the Engineers mysterious, nameless.....

If you give them a name('Toryth? Eldijnoeut?, Muid 8 yut 6, ect...)We start down the fantasy path and it opens a massive world building exercise and everyone starts asking all the hard questions.

Better to keep it simple: Humans getting devoured by space monsters.

The real question is: Why are the Engineers fossilized in A:C?!? I know it looks cool...But is there another logical reason?

Edit:

Was it written originally that: Shaw/David arrived to find a long dead city? ? makes sense to me. Avoid a lot of world building backstory stuff.

Later script's they added/changed David killing them? 

Kethol a Couple of things:Wow! Metachaos  is bizarrely beautiful! I see what you mean. Thanks for sharing that! I can also see shades of Jacob's Ladder, Silent Hill and Eraserhead in there too.

You made me think of another idea and that is- what if David and Shaw's journey was its own movie? It would be on that ship with two main actors and flashbacks to flesh it out. The concept worked pretty well with the movie from 2002- Phone Booth.

I agree Kethol but.....it might have been more difficult and the beginning of the film would have to be cut way down. Heck, we hardly got to see the sets of the dead engineers. I had hoped for a slow walk through the bodies with dialogue debating what happened to them. How are the corpses not rotten if it rains all the time there. Cool video but disturbing. Maybe we'll get a comic or book to give us these answers. After seeing that xenomorph attack David's face on that screen I have high hopes one of his experiments will kill him as soon as it grows to full size.

@MonsterZero - "The real question is: Why are the Engineers fossilized in A:C?!? I know it looks cool...But is there another logical reason?"

Fossilized? Fossils are embedded in minerals and rock. The dead engineers have been in open air for 10 years. We don't know what the pathogen did to their tissue to make it harden and look like that, but I don't think they were turned to stone.

I imagine the emaciated tissue hardened like a leather husk. Whatever it did, apparently not even bacteria will touch it.

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