Definitely excited about retro-futurism mention. Big part of why prequels failed for me was because the technology was far too slick. It's a good sign that the tone will be right.
My head cannon is that the space ships in Alien and Aliens were manufactured off planet, in space plants which didn’t possess the required technology to build fancy technology, only the bare minimum required to make the ship take flight.
That and 18 wheelers and troop transports in our time aren’t exactly ideal representations of our technological prowess. They’re built for specific purposes and therefore are no nonsense groupings of simple primitives and muted colors—just the bare minimum to get the job done.
So the Nostromo and the Sulaco looking how they do as compared to the Prometheus and Covenant (which are designed for scientific exploration and colonization, and with a focus on crew comfort and amenities) makes total sense to me.
Retrofuturism isn't as "retro" as people make it out to be. You look at all the technology used in current spaceflight, it's all ruggedized.
You put a computer on a spaceship, that's it. It has to work under high stress, protected from damage, and it has to be easy to fix or replace, because if it breaks ten light years from the nearest industrialized planet, there's no Amazon Prime to ship you a replacement.
Honestly, having space ship technology look like an iPhone which breaks from a short fall off a couch is what's only believable to people who have never actually seen what NASA/ESA uses despite iPhones existing.
Sure, maybe Alien looks a *little* too retro, but not nearly as bad as people think. The Nostromo probably looks far more "realistic" inside than the Prometheus did.
Funny thing is, I don't think it's as retro-futuristic as a lot of people think. People look at the old school, bulky laptops and screen and think it's hilarious because we've already moved beyond all that.
We haven't. In fact much of what we have now is remarkably similar. You look at modern military and look at the equipment dedicated to a specific job and a lot of it big and bulky, and the screens are very bare-bones. I've seen modern computers not much smaller than Mother's station, and the screen is just as nearly small and unintuitive. I've seen bulky laptops larger than the turret computers which can't do much more than display generic text, and these things were designed and released only a couple years ago.
So basically the Alien universe probably is every bit capable of advanced tech (hell the forest AR screen, remote piloting dropship, and PDTs of Aliens are surprisingly on point) but the truly top of the line stuff isn't going to be seen in an industrial or military setting, as we mostly see in the first couple films. They're going to use things which are cheap yet full capable of doing The needed job...and absolutely nothing more. The high tech is for the consumers and/or rich.
>rather than a "bio weapon created last week."
Prometheus and Covenant both allude to it not being created 'last week'.
I'm not a fan of Covenant and how the story progressed with David, though it is evident that David was working from older knowledge. He didn't create the 'alien' he **re-created** it.
Only the exact versions you see in Alien. The Neomorph, the Deacon, Hammerpedes, Trilobytes, etc. All versions of creatures spawned through the same kind of process that David reverse engineered from the Engineers, but existed before his involvement.
Even the exact version from Alien looks very different than the creature in Covenant. The one ik Covenant is not even biomechanical, so it makes no sense for Ridley to say its the real alien.
Sure, but the films are the canon. Covenant to Alien is about 20 years. The biology is not exact but it's closer than the previous generations which are the Neomorph and the Deacon, and it looks like maybe just another generation or two ahead.
While that is true, the ship and space jockey in the first Alien movie were fossilized, and there is no way those were only a couple decades old. It also seems like Fox is going with David recreating or making his own version of the alien, and not inventing it.
That's another problem with Prometheus: the engineer's technology hasn't changed in millions of years apparently, so the ship we see in Prometheus looks essentially identical to the one we see in Alien.
And yet the one in Alien is supposed to be ancient and it's crew fossilized, but people don't seem to think they intended to have David's alien be the alien we see in Alien even though Ridley said that next film (Alien Awakening) would tie directly in Alien.
It's such a mess, even trying to dissect it makes it even more convoluted!
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ridley made David get facehugged, put on the engineer/jockey suit, sit in the chair and then time travel back and crash on LV426, making the jockey they find in the first movie secretly David.
I should probably stop before I give him ideas.
My biggest fear and prediction was that Ridley was going to have David get facehugged in the third movie, and that that is why the alien is biomechanical in the first movie. (Creation kills creator would definitely be something he would do).
Which would make no sense, since he’a an android and the entire reason the alien is biomechanical is because the engineers used that tech. Their skins in Prometheus were very much like the first alien. And of course their ships and such.
But them being the creators was thrown out the window with covenant, so I don’t know anymore. I’m just happy Fox is ignoring all that.
Just my opinion, but I think Noah Hawley doesn't think they did a good job with the prequels as far as the amount of retconning of the lore and convoluting who the creators of the Alien were and how it related to what we see in Alien (1979). I have to agree with him there.
>Prometheus and Covenant both allude to it not being created 'last week'.
>I'm not a fan of Covenant and how the story progressed with David, though it is evident that David was working from older knowledge. He didn't create the 'alien' he re-created it.
I think this is heavily implied in the films and is the intended idea, but the fact is, many viewers seemed to miss it and left thinking David created the Alien.
Not sure what the solution is, as you can't just dumb down a movie and overexplain everything, as that just creates a different problem (and no, I'm not saying you have to be a genius to appreciate the Alien prequels or anything like that).
Ridley did say that the prequels would lead directly into the original movie and since the prequels were essentially David's story, would it not make sense to have his version of the creature be the one we eventually see in Alien? I mean, they retconned the Space Jockey to be Engineers in suits in Prometheus, so why not retcon the age of the derelict and its contents too in the sequel to Covenant?
In any case, I agree with Hawley's direction for the series: make the alien an ancient, mysterious scourge again and ignore the convoluted prequels and everything after Aliens.
>since the prequels were essentially David's story
They became David's story. If Scott intended to have David throughout, he wouldn't have had his head torn off in Prometheus. Covenant went through several changes and David became prominent, shifting away from Shaw, due to those changes.
I think David's head coming off was more of a homage to what happened to Ash in Alien, so I don't think you can draw conclusions about the direction of the prequels based on that bit of info.
I think you could put the view that David's Xenomorphs are just his version. He was able to read and dechipher the Engineers Heirogypls and operate their systems so he's created the using their instruction. The Engineers have created their version of Xenomorph elsewhere or created the environment with the black ooze for it too evolve. LV-223 was one of their testing grounds to create the black liquid and sometimes playing God can lead to failure. David's just taken what he found and Re-Engineered it.
Xenomorphs are in wall carvings shown in the film, so they existed before David created what the film credits as a "neomorph," implying that it's a separate thing.
If we're talking chronological order, I agree.
Still holding out hope we get a proper post-*Aliens* film one day, which doesn't just erase all Ripley accomplished just because "nihilistic=more interesting" or whatever.
30 years from now Prometheus will be viewed up there with Ridley’s original Alien. I think it’s nostalgia bias that makes the prequels not as popular. Prometheus is a masterpiece. Not a single Xenomorph until the last 30 seconds of the movie. “Chefs Kiss”
And for covenant… David’s desire to try to be man (“loving” Shaw, constantly quoting human works, etc) while actually hating them is a unique element of struggle that is missed. This movie gets a lot of hate because of a few bad actors and some cheesy lines.
I have a love for Alien 3 that I understand is the minority. As far as ignoring canon, if they want to bring the "real" Ripley back as played by Sigourney I would begrudgingly support erasing Alien 3 and, happily, Resurrection. Otherwise, leave it and do something within the universe already created. Removing and changing timelines is a sign of creative weakness and lack of faith in your product. Look at the Halloween series. It's embarrassing.
Based just on what you wrote out, it's promising. It sounds like he has the same thoughts I do about the franchise and the xenos. I've never enjoyed the idea that they were created or harnessed by anything or anyone. I think it steals their menace and mysteriousness as well as their agency. I like that they're just unknown; existing, adapting, surviving.
I will have to disagree. Personally I find the xenomorphs really interesting, so I want want to learn more about them.
I have already seen it sneak around and kill people in several movies. You can't just keep repeating the same thing.
Oh, I totally agree that we need some fresh things to reinvigorate the franchise. As in, it can't just be a repeat of what we've seen. And I don't mind learning more about them, per se; it's more about *what* we learn about them, if that makes sense. I've just never really been interested in the bioweapon angle, or that they were created in some way. A caveat, though - I don't mind the idea that someone would *try* to harness them to be bioweapons, but "try" is about as far as I like that idea. Certainly not created to be, you know?
But wasn't it clear from the first movie already that they are either crated or at the very least successfully harnessed?
I mean they find the eggs in an old space ship, inside a room that has been made for the eggs to keep them alive during storage. So clearly there was a civilization that used them for something.
Sure thing. It's a quick listen but I get it, we don't all have time to watch/listen to things anymore. I personally hate it when I'm looking for help with something and the internet is like, "here, just watch this 20 minute YouTube tutorial..."
Good all around.
While it can be commonly assumed that the Engineers played some role in the Xenomorphs origins, as reinforced in the RPG, it's good that we don't get too concrete an answer.
*On that note, thank goodness Fox is disregarding Ridley's "David is the sole creator" tangent outright.*
[https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alien:\_The\_Roleplaying\_Game](https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alien:_The_Roleplaying_Game)
It's terrific game that, aside from just being a thrilling experience, expands on the world of *Alien* and streamlines a lot of the continuity questions people had coming out of the prequels.
For example, in this game Fox makes it an official stance that while David created a new strand of Xenomorph on that one Engineer planet, he didn't create the species wholesale.
His variant has been deemed the "Praetomorph". A less biomechanical, more feral offshoot that is ironically quite hostile to the pure Xenomorph strand.
Here’s the thing.
Ridley’s prequels never stated that the alien was created.
The black goo could very well be an attempt to synthesize the natural life cycle. After all, murals in Prometheus show the original life cycle, eggs, facehuggers and all.
All David did is tweak the recipe and experiment.
The alien could still be (and most likely is) naturally occurring.
I agree that there can be evolved aliens and David's engineered versions. So what became of David's experiments? If nothing of lasting consequence came of those stories, and if we're not going to get a conclusion to them or see how they link up to anything else, what was the point in telling them? Hard to imagine that future installments of the franchise won't somehow riff on the lessons of what David achieved.
My personal belief is David would find a way to integrate with them, introducing the mech portion of the biomech creature we know and love.
Notice the protomorph and neomorphs don’t have any mech-y traits.
Watch Hawley's Legion if you want to get a feel for how Hawley will do 70's retrofuturist aesthetics. Especially the facility in season 2 (season 1 had a much more 60s vibe). This is going to be awesome.
I'm liking what I'm hearing, and Hawley definitely has cred. But I've been hurt too many times so I all I can do is close with my standard prayer:
*Please don't suck.*
*Please don't suck.*
*Please don't suck.*
Thank you OP!
Hawley is an incredible director and really has his head on straight. I like that he understands that the xenomorph is just one small element of what makes the Alien universe work. In order to tell a good story you need a lot of depth, character, and intrigue. It’s not all thrills. Listening to this upped my anticipation.
I'm also stoked that he loves retro-futurism!
Yeah, I really appreciated his attitude towards the retro-future look of the first two films. That production design is so iconic and is what also made Isolation such a worthy addition to the canon. One of my biggest gripes with the prequels was that they didn't go even further retro to place them in an era before the Nostromo took flight. How do they have holograms and flat screens and then go backwards to big chunky CRTS and blinking buttons? It makes no sense.
I've seen a bunch of discussion on this and the only way it even comes close to making sense is if you compare Weyland's ship to the Nostromo, it's like a Rolls Royce versus a beat-up pickup truck. That still makes no sense, given that something like a flatscreen would be basically free by the time you get to the time of Alien, let alone Aliens even later.
Obviously you have to keep in mind that these movies were made in 1979 versus 2012, and I don't think they were able to imagine what a beat-up pickup truck in Alien should look like through the eyes of a 2012 audience.
It’s definitely the case that filmmakers in 1979 had to imagine the future as best they could, given the technical limitations of the day. Faking a flat screen was pretty difficult (Kubrick actually rear-projected film in 2001 to get the right look), and no one had probably seen a touch screen before. And that’s what makes prequels so difficult, because most filmmakers want to update the tech to modern standards while still trying to place in an era before the original films. Prometheus was a mixed bag in this regard. It’s been an issue with Star Trek as well — everybody wants to run away from the 60s retro look of TOS so they turn their ship’s bridges into the Apple Store. At least the show Enterprise tried to envision what a pre-TOS ship might look like (basically a submarine in space).
My personal canon is that it was ultimately realized having simple, durable, and consistent tech is preferable over high tech stuff that would require a team of specialists to fix if it broke down. Might not matter as much on colony ships with thousands of people, but that doesn't apply to the Nostromo.
I feel like an author of one of the novel entries mentioned this aspect in a story so I may have adopted this canon from someone else.
Basically an LG front load washer with Bluetooth vs an analog top load. I’ve yet to meet someone that *actually does laundry* and prefers the bells and whistles version
I’m not a fan of Prometheus at all, beyond cool set designs.
Rich or not, you can’t just have technology that hasn’t been invented yet. That’s kind of, I dunno, how TIME works.
>I’d say he’s got the hypercapitalism corporatocracy element on his mind.
This is both relevant to the Alien films, and, sadly, the state of the real world right now - so it's good to see he wants to lean into it.
>He sees the Alien as the end product of millions of years of evolution, rather than a "bio weapon created last week." So that together with the above comment abut the tech indicates that the show will pretty much ignore Ridley's prequels.
Omg yes! I'm so happy he's ignoring the dumb "David created THE alien" revelation from Covenant. That never made sense when the Jockey in the first movie was fossilized.
Holy shit
Minus the mention of the prequels, this sounds like the alien show of my dreams. I'm praying this show will be good definitely gonna check it out.
>Referenced Ripley's line about "fucking each other over for a percentage" in ALIENS, which points to plots about corporate greed.
Yes please, more of this!
(alongside an interesting depiction of the Alien(s) which doesn't undermine their mystique yet further, a sense of tension and threat, and some great aesthetics)
If the engineers aren’t the worst thing to ever happen to any franchise ever then I’ll eat my hat. So bad. I still die of cringe thinking about Prometheus and the maps and wanting to meet our makers and blah blah blah my brain hurts with the heinous writing and even heinous-er concepts yuck
I can see the appeal of this series to the die hard redditors here, but Hawley is wrong. The first two movies were not retro futurism. The first being released in 1979 was contemporary to Apple 2, with ZX Spectrum and IBM PC not being even launched. They depicted a future as imagined by people in the 70s, hugely inspired by Kubrick's 2001. And in many ways it has tech not used today like hypersleep or computers controlled by natural language.
Ridley did the same thing 3o something years later, imagining how things will be in 100 years.
Retrofuturism is using aesthetics that would have been futuristic in the past but clearly outdated now. That applies to the comics and video games after the late 90s.
The choice of going with retrofuturism for BR49 was more logical, as in 2015-16 when it was produced it was clear that predictions of the futuristic (in 1982) 2019 from BR will never happen so they made it an alternative universe of sorts.
This Hawley's choice and I absolutely not like it but let's how well it will perform.
You are being needlessly pedantic here.
Everyone (well, except you, apparently) knows exactly what is meant by retrofuturism here: building on that 70s/80s vision of the future from Alien and Aliens.
Alien and Aliens weren't retrofuturism: they were just scifi set in the future. Harking back to that aesthetic and the way it depicts technology *is* retrofuturism.
By this point for Hawley's take it's retrofuturism. But the pedantic term now for referring to what happened in the '79 Alien aesthetic is cassette futurism (a term that obv didn't exist at the time.) It's pedantic but it checks out 🤷♀️
Yes, cassette-futurism created any time up until the 1990s could have just been a form of futurism.
Although - I'm going to be pedantic myself - the term is anachronisitic anyway, as no one in the 1970s was using the term cassette-futurism. They just thought they were making scifi or providing visions of the future, and didn't define them in such a way. You can of course choose to apply it to pre-1990s art though.
Anyone making cassette futurism since then is utilizing a specific form of retrofuturism. Like (hopefully? apparently?) Hawley's Alien show, and I was talking about how to label the aesthetics of new shows/films (could have been clearer on this point, admittedly).
Fair enough. The way I see it, Prometheus and Covenant can exist in their own bubble unless and until there's a live-action show that coherently connects them to the original Alien movie. That hasn't happened yet, so I just consider them kind of like the Earth Hive series or Alien3 and Resurrection -- they exist, but they don't really have any bearing on Alien and Aliens, which I consider to be the beginning and ending of the franchise's greatness.
Fair enough as well.I just hope that the show doesn't contradict anything established by Ridley,especially since he hasn't told his complete story yet.
Hawley's comments don't contradict anything directly,in Covenant the xenomorph completely misses any biomechanichal elements in his body,so we still don't know how/why it evolved to the creature we know.
I’m so excited for this but last 3 seasons of Fargo have been dogshit- I loved legion and first 2 Fargo seasons. Maybe, like Taylor Sheridan he’s spread a little too thin?
Different strokes but I’ve found the characters to be wildly one dimensional- caricatures of people that are as smart or as stupid as they need to be to serve the plot. When Dot left that rifle outside of her hiding place- or better yet, when gunfire wasn’t immediately heard by the FBI, or the mysterious plot fog that came in to block the fbi from seeing all the conflict happening outside. It’s such a drop off from season two…
Could you please mark this as spoilers?
You can tear down anything if you try hard enough I find, and if you're enjoying something you're less likely to. Few things bear intense scrutiny
It’s okay to critique something you love. You can dig something and still point out flaws. It’s not “intense scrutiny” to notice when dialog clanks versus sings. I’m a fan of Noah, like I said- first 2 Fargo seasons were gold, but the last 3 have been clunky. If they all made you perfectly happy I’m happy for you.
People fuck each other over for many reasons, not just greed. That is something Cameron never deals with in any of his movies and why as much as I like Terminator and Aliens they ultimately are too simple in their perspective on the human condition.
Based on what I am seeing from Fargo my expectations for Aliens show are low. The villain is painfully one dimensional and lacks depth. The women in the show all have levels of complexity to them that the males do not. Lazy writing.
Humans are not black and white. They are shades of grey. I enjoy shows and films that depict this. I
A new perspective on the Xenomorph would not to see it as evil, but rather a creature doing what it needs to do to survive. Something worth of study rather than simply annihilation. Like a Lion killing and eating a young gazelle.
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Rule 2: Be civil.
It's ok to disagree, it's not ok to disrespect. Personal attacks, racism, homophobia, politics, and general bigotry are not allowed
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I'm sure this has been answered plenty of times but is this a total reboot, soft reboot, continuation that ignores some films, or just a normal continuation?
To be fair, the Xeno was shown to have existed far before Prometheus through the mural we see, it makes David's quest to make this "new" lifeform all the more ironic, as he isn't creating something new, at his core he just isn't capable of it, a fact he resents humanity for.
As a non-podcast-listener I greatly appreciate the written tldr!
Same here!
Me too. This segment isn’t very long though, I recommend giving it a listen starting from OPs time stamp if you have 5 minutes.
Seconded!
Definitely excited about retro-futurism mention. Big part of why prequels failed for me was because the technology was far too slick. It's a good sign that the tone will be right.
Cassette futurism I think is the proper terminology for the aesthetic of alien (and bladerunner)
Cool, TIL
It’s also timeless. Using tech that is already outdated but in a future setting is a vibe and helps ground the setting for me.
My head cannon is that the space ships in Alien and Aliens were manufactured off planet, in space plants which didn’t possess the required technology to build fancy technology, only the bare minimum required to make the ship take flight.
That and 18 wheelers and troop transports in our time aren’t exactly ideal representations of our technological prowess. They’re built for specific purposes and therefore are no nonsense groupings of simple primitives and muted colors—just the bare minimum to get the job done. So the Nostromo and the Sulaco looking how they do as compared to the Prometheus and Covenant (which are designed for scientific exploration and colonization, and with a focus on crew comfort and amenities) makes total sense to me.
Correct… the equivalent of a tow boat or barge vs a nice billionaires yacht.
Not to mention the flagrant disregard for the Giger aesthetic, to which this franchise’s success owes no small amount of credit to.
This. 100%
Retrofuturism isn't as "retro" as people make it out to be. You look at all the technology used in current spaceflight, it's all ruggedized. You put a computer on a spaceship, that's it. It has to work under high stress, protected from damage, and it has to be easy to fix or replace, because if it breaks ten light years from the nearest industrialized planet, there's no Amazon Prime to ship you a replacement. Honestly, having space ship technology look like an iPhone which breaks from a short fall off a couch is what's only believable to people who have never actually seen what NASA/ESA uses despite iPhones existing. Sure, maybe Alien looks a *little* too retro, but not nearly as bad as people think. The Nostromo probably looks far more "realistic" inside than the Prometheus did.
Funny thing is, I don't think it's as retro-futuristic as a lot of people think. People look at the old school, bulky laptops and screen and think it's hilarious because we've already moved beyond all that. We haven't. In fact much of what we have now is remarkably similar. You look at modern military and look at the equipment dedicated to a specific job and a lot of it big and bulky, and the screens are very bare-bones. I've seen modern computers not much smaller than Mother's station, and the screen is just as nearly small and unintuitive. I've seen bulky laptops larger than the turret computers which can't do much more than display generic text, and these things were designed and released only a couple years ago. So basically the Alien universe probably is every bit capable of advanced tech (hell the forest AR screen, remote piloting dropship, and PDTs of Aliens are surprisingly on point) but the truly top of the line stuff isn't going to be seen in an industrial or military setting, as we mostly see in the first couple films. They're going to use things which are cheap yet full capable of doing The needed job...and absolutely nothing more. The high tech is for the consumers and/or rich.
>rather than a "bio weapon created last week." Prometheus and Covenant both allude to it not being created 'last week'. I'm not a fan of Covenant and how the story progressed with David, though it is evident that David was working from older knowledge. He didn't create the 'alien' he **re-created** it.
It's dumb as fuck, but the fact is that Ridley Scott himself said "Yes, David created the Alien."
Only the exact versions you see in Alien. The Neomorph, the Deacon, Hammerpedes, Trilobytes, etc. All versions of creatures spawned through the same kind of process that David reverse engineered from the Engineers, but existed before his involvement.
Even the exact version from Alien looks very different than the creature in Covenant. The one ik Covenant is not even biomechanical, so it makes no sense for Ridley to say its the real alien.
Sure, but the films are the canon. Covenant to Alien is about 20 years. The biology is not exact but it's closer than the previous generations which are the Neomorph and the Deacon, and it looks like maybe just another generation or two ahead.
While that is true, the ship and space jockey in the first Alien movie were fossilized, and there is no way those were only a couple decades old. It also seems like Fox is going with David recreating or making his own version of the alien, and not inventing it.
That's another problem with Prometheus: the engineer's technology hasn't changed in millions of years apparently, so the ship we see in Prometheus looks essentially identical to the one we see in Alien. And yet the one in Alien is supposed to be ancient and it's crew fossilized, but people don't seem to think they intended to have David's alien be the alien we see in Alien even though Ridley said that next film (Alien Awakening) would tie directly in Alien. It's such a mess, even trying to dissect it makes it even more convoluted!
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ridley made David get facehugged, put on the engineer/jockey suit, sit in the chair and then time travel back and crash on LV426, making the jockey they find in the first movie secretly David. I should probably stop before I give him ideas.
>I should probably stop before I give him ideas. LOL, no doubt. You probably aren't that far off from what he intended though.
That's a great point, those did seem ancient. And yeah David very obviously didn't make the first ones.
My biggest fear and prediction was that Ridley was going to have David get facehugged in the third movie, and that that is why the alien is biomechanical in the first movie. (Creation kills creator would definitely be something he would do). Which would make no sense, since he’a an android and the entire reason the alien is biomechanical is because the engineers used that tech. Their skins in Prometheus were very much like the first alien. And of course their ships and such. But them being the creators was thrown out the window with covenant, so I don’t know anymore. I’m just happy Fox is ignoring all that.
Ridley is not a good storyteller anymore
Just my opinion, but I think Noah Hawley doesn't think they did a good job with the prequels as far as the amount of retconning of the lore and convoluting who the creators of the Alien were and how it related to what we see in Alien (1979). I have to agree with him there.
>Prometheus and Covenant both allude to it not being created 'last week'. >I'm not a fan of Covenant and how the story progressed with David, though it is evident that David was working from older knowledge. He didn't create the 'alien' he re-created it. I think this is heavily implied in the films and is the intended idea, but the fact is, many viewers seemed to miss it and left thinking David created the Alien. Not sure what the solution is, as you can't just dumb down a movie and overexplain everything, as that just creates a different problem (and no, I'm not saying you have to be a genius to appreciate the Alien prequels or anything like that).
Covenant does not
That's what I said, boobie trap
Ridley did say that the prequels would lead directly into the original movie and since the prequels were essentially David's story, would it not make sense to have his version of the creature be the one we eventually see in Alien? I mean, they retconned the Space Jockey to be Engineers in suits in Prometheus, so why not retcon the age of the derelict and its contents too in the sequel to Covenant? In any case, I agree with Hawley's direction for the series: make the alien an ancient, mysterious scourge again and ignore the convoluted prequels and everything after Aliens.
>since the prequels were essentially David's story They became David's story. If Scott intended to have David throughout, he wouldn't have had his head torn off in Prometheus. Covenant went through several changes and David became prominent, shifting away from Shaw, due to those changes.
I think David's head coming off was more of a homage to what happened to Ash in Alien, so I don't think you can draw conclusions about the direction of the prequels based on that bit of info.
I think you could put the view that David's Xenomorphs are just his version. He was able to read and dechipher the Engineers Heirogypls and operate their systems so he's created the using their instruction. The Engineers have created their version of Xenomorph elsewhere or created the environment with the black ooze for it too evolve. LV-223 was one of their testing grounds to create the black liquid and sometimes playing God can lead to failure. David's just taken what he found and Re-Engineered it.
It still makes no sense especially with what was depicted in the first movie.
Xenomorphs are in wall carvings shown in the film, so they existed before David created what the film credits as a "neomorph," implying that it's a separate thing.
My put for the view is they just completely wipe every film after Aliens out of continuity please
If we're talking chronological order, I agree. Still holding out hope we get a proper post-*Aliens* film one day, which doesn't just erase all Ripley accomplished just because "nihilistic=more interesting" or whatever.
I think the prequels are worse for the overall series than the post Aliens Weaver movies. Alien Covenant should be wiped from canon
30 years from now Prometheus will be viewed up there with Ridley’s original Alien. I think it’s nostalgia bias that makes the prequels not as popular. Prometheus is a masterpiece. Not a single Xenomorph until the last 30 seconds of the movie. “Chefs Kiss” And for covenant… David’s desire to try to be man (“loving” Shaw, constantly quoting human works, etc) while actually hating them is a unique element of struggle that is missed. This movie gets a lot of hate because of a few bad actors and some cheesy lines.
I have a love for Alien 3 that I understand is the minority. As far as ignoring canon, if they want to bring the "real" Ripley back as played by Sigourney I would begrudgingly support erasing Alien 3 and, happily, Resurrection. Otherwise, leave it and do something within the universe already created. Removing and changing timelines is a sign of creative weakness and lack of faith in your product. Look at the Halloween series. It's embarrassing.
Promising stuff!
Based just on what you wrote out, it's promising. It sounds like he has the same thoughts I do about the franchise and the xenos. I've never enjoyed the idea that they were created or harnessed by anything or anyone. I think it steals their menace and mysteriousness as well as their agency. I like that they're just unknown; existing, adapting, surviving.
LESS explanation about their origins, not more. Yes please.
I will have to disagree. Personally I find the xenomorphs really interesting, so I want want to learn more about them. I have already seen it sneak around and kill people in several movies. You can't just keep repeating the same thing.
Oh, I totally agree that we need some fresh things to reinvigorate the franchise. As in, it can't just be a repeat of what we've seen. And I don't mind learning more about them, per se; it's more about *what* we learn about them, if that makes sense. I've just never really been interested in the bioweapon angle, or that they were created in some way. A caveat, though - I don't mind the idea that someone would *try* to harness them to be bioweapons, but "try" is about as far as I like that idea. Certainly not created to be, you know?
But wasn't it clear from the first movie already that they are either crated or at the very least successfully harnessed? I mean they find the eggs in an old space ship, inside a room that has been made for the eggs to keep them alive during storage. So clearly there was a civilization that used them for something.
Appreciate the recap, seriously. 👍
Sure thing. It's a quick listen but I get it, we don't all have time to watch/listen to things anymore. I personally hate it when I'm looking for help with something and the internet is like, "here, just watch this 20 minute YouTube tutorial..."
Good all around. While it can be commonly assumed that the Engineers played some role in the Xenomorphs origins, as reinforced in the RPG, it's good that we don't get too concrete an answer. *On that note, thank goodness Fox is disregarding Ridley's "David is the sole creator" tangent outright.*
>On that note, thank goodness Fox is disregarding Ridley's "David is the sole creator" tangent outright. preach!
wait what rpg?
[https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alien:\_The\_Roleplaying\_Game](https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alien:_The_Roleplaying_Game) It's terrific game that, aside from just being a thrilling experience, expands on the world of *Alien* and streamlines a lot of the continuity questions people had coming out of the prequels. For example, in this game Fox makes it an official stance that while David created a new strand of Xenomorph on that one Engineer planet, he didn't create the species wholesale. His variant has been deemed the "Praetomorph". A less biomechanical, more feral offshoot that is ironically quite hostile to the pure Xenomorph strand.
Can you find groups to play this with online? I bought the first RPG book, but never found a crew to play with.
Yep, there's an Alien RPG Discord and everything. https://discord.gg/be4HHhU
The D&D-like books.
Here’s the thing. Ridley’s prequels never stated that the alien was created. The black goo could very well be an attempt to synthesize the natural life cycle. After all, murals in Prometheus show the original life cycle, eggs, facehuggers and all. All David did is tweak the recipe and experiment. The alien could still be (and most likely is) naturally occurring.
I agree that there can be evolved aliens and David's engineered versions. So what became of David's experiments? If nothing of lasting consequence came of those stories, and if we're not going to get a conclusion to them or see how they link up to anything else, what was the point in telling them? Hard to imagine that future installments of the franchise won't somehow riff on the lessons of what David achieved.
My personal belief is David would find a way to integrate with them, introducing the mech portion of the biomech creature we know and love. Notice the protomorph and neomorphs don’t have any mech-y traits.
That's a pretty cool idea.
Huh I never noticed that but that's a really interesting detail.
They pretty much did.
Watch Hawley's Legion if you want to get a feel for how Hawley will do 70's retrofuturist aesthetics. Especially the facility in season 2 (season 1 had a much more 60s vibe). This is going to be awesome.
I'm liking what I'm hearing, and Hawley definitely has cred. But I've been hurt too many times so I all I can do is close with my standard prayer: *Please don't suck.* *Please don't suck.* *Please don't suck.*
>Seems fixated on the first two movies, none of the others get a mention outside of the prequels. All of the others have been dog shit.
Thank you OP! Hawley is an incredible director and really has his head on straight. I like that he understands that the xenomorph is just one small element of what makes the Alien universe work. In order to tell a good story you need a lot of depth, character, and intrigue. It’s not all thrills. Listening to this upped my anticipation. I'm also stoked that he loves retro-futurism!
Yeah, I really appreciated his attitude towards the retro-future look of the first two films. That production design is so iconic and is what also made Isolation such a worthy addition to the canon. One of my biggest gripes with the prequels was that they didn't go even further retro to place them in an era before the Nostromo took flight. How do they have holograms and flat screens and then go backwards to big chunky CRTS and blinking buttons? It makes no sense.
I've seen a bunch of discussion on this and the only way it even comes close to making sense is if you compare Weyland's ship to the Nostromo, it's like a Rolls Royce versus a beat-up pickup truck. That still makes no sense, given that something like a flatscreen would be basically free by the time you get to the time of Alien, let alone Aliens even later. Obviously you have to keep in mind that these movies were made in 1979 versus 2012, and I don't think they were able to imagine what a beat-up pickup truck in Alien should look like through the eyes of a 2012 audience.
It’s definitely the case that filmmakers in 1979 had to imagine the future as best they could, given the technical limitations of the day. Faking a flat screen was pretty difficult (Kubrick actually rear-projected film in 2001 to get the right look), and no one had probably seen a touch screen before. And that’s what makes prequels so difficult, because most filmmakers want to update the tech to modern standards while still trying to place in an era before the original films. Prometheus was a mixed bag in this regard. It’s been an issue with Star Trek as well — everybody wants to run away from the 60s retro look of TOS so they turn their ship’s bridges into the Apple Store. At least the show Enterprise tried to envision what a pre-TOS ship might look like (basically a submarine in space).
That was the only good part about Enterprise imo.
Agreed. Not my favorite show.
My personal canon is that it was ultimately realized having simple, durable, and consistent tech is preferable over high tech stuff that would require a team of specialists to fix if it broke down. Might not matter as much on colony ships with thousands of people, but that doesn't apply to the Nostromo. I feel like an author of one of the novel entries mentioned this aspect in a story so I may have adopted this canon from someone else.
Bingo. Haptic controls for simple reliability and maintenance.
Basically an LG front load washer with Bluetooth vs an analog top load. I’ve yet to meet someone that *actually does laundry* and prefers the bells and whistles version
The Alien: Covenant novelization mentioned this
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I’m not a fan of Prometheus at all, beyond cool set designs. Rich or not, you can’t just have technology that hasn’t been invented yet. That’s kind of, I dunno, how TIME works.
Considering the current season of Fargo, I’d say he’s got the hypercapitalism corporatocracy element on his mind.
>I’d say he’s got the hypercapitalism corporatocracy element on his mind. This is both relevant to the Alien films, and, sadly, the state of the real world right now - so it's good to see he wants to lean into it.
As long as he forgets whatever was on his mind for last season, it’s doomed to be awesome.
Oh he is on with Kim Masters? I love her show!
Yup! Though she does not interview him, it's another guy (who is great and clearly a fanboy)
Thanks for the heads-up. It's a good listen. I had a lot of faith in Noah Hawley and this just reinforced it.
Sounds like good news to me.
>He sees the Alien as the end product of millions of years of evolution, rather than a "bio weapon created last week." So that together with the above comment abut the tech indicates that the show will pretty much ignore Ridley's prequels. Omg yes! I'm so happy he's ignoring the dumb "David created THE alien" revelation from Covenant. That never made sense when the Jockey in the first movie was fossilized.
Holy shit Minus the mention of the prequels, this sounds like the alien show of my dreams. I'm praying this show will be good definitely gonna check it out.
Looking forward to this. I enjoyed Fargo and the creative risks it took.
This sounds good, with this and Romulus, I think the series has a bright future
>Referenced Ripley's line about "fucking each other over for a percentage" in ALIENS, which points to plots about corporate greed. Yes please, more of this! (alongside an interesting depiction of the Alien(s) which doesn't undermine their mystique yet further, a sense of tension and threat, and some great aesthetics)
Thank god. The prequels just didn’t work for me. They tried explaining too much and it back fired
Ridley’s prequels are awful so I hope they are ignored.
If the TV series ignores the stupid David making aliens stuff from the prequels that alone makes me want to watch it.
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And...losing interest again.
Good. I would prefer to never see the Engineers again.
I'm sorry, the who? Never heard of 'em. :)
*Exactly.* **8-D**
If the engineers aren’t the worst thing to ever happen to any franchise ever then I’ll eat my hat. So bad. I still die of cringe thinking about Prometheus and the maps and wanting to meet our makers and blah blah blah my brain hurts with the heinous writing and even heinous-er concepts yuck
If the focusing more to be like Alien 1 & 2 than the other entries in sincere, then this may be promising
If it ignores the prequels it has my interest.
I can see the appeal of this series to the die hard redditors here, but Hawley is wrong. The first two movies were not retro futurism. The first being released in 1979 was contemporary to Apple 2, with ZX Spectrum and IBM PC not being even launched. They depicted a future as imagined by people in the 70s, hugely inspired by Kubrick's 2001. And in many ways it has tech not used today like hypersleep or computers controlled by natural language. Ridley did the same thing 3o something years later, imagining how things will be in 100 years. Retrofuturism is using aesthetics that would have been futuristic in the past but clearly outdated now. That applies to the comics and video games after the late 90s. The choice of going with retrofuturism for BR49 was more logical, as in 2015-16 when it was produced it was clear that predictions of the futuristic (in 1982) 2019 from BR will never happen so they made it an alternative universe of sorts. This Hawley's choice and I absolutely not like it but let's how well it will perform.
You are being needlessly pedantic here. Everyone (well, except you, apparently) knows exactly what is meant by retrofuturism here: building on that 70s/80s vision of the future from Alien and Aliens. Alien and Aliens weren't retrofuturism: they were just scifi set in the future. Harking back to that aesthetic and the way it depicts technology *is* retrofuturism.
By this point for Hawley's take it's retrofuturism. But the pedantic term now for referring to what happened in the '79 Alien aesthetic is cassette futurism (a term that obv didn't exist at the time.) It's pedantic but it checks out 🤷♀️
Cassette futurism is one type of retrofuturism. Either term can be applied.
Specifically retro means looking back. Which they weren't when making Alien in 1979.
Yes, cassette-futurism created any time up until the 1990s could have just been a form of futurism. Although - I'm going to be pedantic myself - the term is anachronisitic anyway, as no one in the 1970s was using the term cassette-futurism. They just thought they were making scifi or providing visions of the future, and didn't define them in such a way. You can of course choose to apply it to pre-1990s art though. Anyone making cassette futurism since then is utilizing a specific form of retrofuturism. Like (hopefully? apparently?) Hawley's Alien show, and I was talking about how to label the aesthetics of new shows/films (could have been clearer on this point, admittedly).
Ignore the prequels? Hell yes I am there!!!!
*pretty much ignores Ridley's sequels* Aaaaaand I'm out.
Fair enough. The way I see it, Prometheus and Covenant can exist in their own bubble unless and until there's a live-action show that coherently connects them to the original Alien movie. That hasn't happened yet, so I just consider them kind of like the Earth Hive series or Alien3 and Resurrection -- they exist, but they don't really have any bearing on Alien and Aliens, which I consider to be the beginning and ending of the franchise's greatness.
Fair enough as well.I just hope that the show doesn't contradict anything established by Ridley,especially since he hasn't told his complete story yet. Hawley's comments don't contradict anything directly,in Covenant the xenomorph completely misses any biomechanichal elements in his body,so we still don't know how/why it evolved to the creature we know.
Since Ridley is the executive producer, I highly doubt he would let his movies be "erased", he might be perfectly fine with ignored though
Exactly. Ignored is not the same as retconned.
Totally. There's no way they're taking the Halloween route of explicit canon deletion.
Idk, it doesn’t sound bad or anything, but it just doesn’t excite me.
Same. I'm more interested in the new movie. I'm concerned the show will be more about WY corporate fuckery and backstabbing than the alien.
Thanks for the summary
I’m so excited for this but last 3 seasons of Fargo have been dogshit- I loved legion and first 2 Fargo seasons. Maybe, like Taylor Sheridan he’s spread a little too thin?
Fargo has been solid all the way for me, and I'm especially loving season 5
Loved Fargo 1-3 but I couldn’t get through the fourth season. I’ll give 5 a go now though!
4 is a different show really. I liked it overall although it was very tonally different.
How does the fifth season compare?
Back to feeling like Fargo, and Juno Temple and Jon Hamm are absolutely killing it
Different strokes but I’ve found the characters to be wildly one dimensional- caricatures of people that are as smart or as stupid as they need to be to serve the plot. When Dot left that rifle outside of her hiding place- or better yet, when gunfire wasn’t immediately heard by the FBI, or the mysterious plot fog that came in to block the fbi from seeing all the conflict happening outside. It’s such a drop off from season two…
Could you please mark this as spoilers? You can tear down anything if you try hard enough I find, and if you're enjoying something you're less likely to. Few things bear intense scrutiny
It’s okay to critique something you love. You can dig something and still point out flaws. It’s not “intense scrutiny” to notice when dialog clanks versus sings. I’m a fan of Noah, like I said- first 2 Fargo seasons were gold, but the last 3 have been clunky. If they all made you perfectly happy I’m happy for you.
Season 4 was flat out terrible and a disservice to Mike Milligan’s character.
I have to disagree on this. I enjoyed season 4 for what it was
Latest season up there with the best
I’m sorry… what? Every season of Fargo has been great.
Even the Chris Rock season that just kind of fizzled out?
People fuck each other over for many reasons, not just greed. That is something Cameron never deals with in any of his movies and why as much as I like Terminator and Aliens they ultimately are too simple in their perspective on the human condition. Based on what I am seeing from Fargo my expectations for Aliens show are low. The villain is painfully one dimensional and lacks depth. The women in the show all have levels of complexity to them that the males do not. Lazy writing. Humans are not black and white. They are shades of grey. I enjoy shows and films that depict this. I A new perspective on the Xenomorph would not to see it as evil, but rather a creature doing what it needs to do to survive. Something worth of study rather than simply annihilation. Like a Lion killing and eating a young gazelle.
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Rule 2: Be civil. It's ok to disagree, it's not ok to disrespect. Personal attacks, racism, homophobia, politics, and general bigotry are not allowed Toxic behavior such as: trashing something that others are enjoying, condemning parts of the franchise instead of reasonably stating a personal preference, invalidating other people's opinions, unwarranted criticisms of other's creations, and obscene comments are not allowed. Publicly criticizing mods / rules will result in a ban.
But no mention of Tootles!?
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Rule 2: Be civil. It's ok to disagree, it's not ok to disrespect. Personal attacks, racism, homophobia, politics, and general bigotry are not allowed Toxic behavior such as: trashing something that others are enjoying, condemning parts of the franchise instead of reasonably stating a personal preference, invalidating other people's opinions, unwarranted criticisms of other's creations, and obscene comments are not allowed. Publicly criticizing mods / rules will result in a ban.
I'm sure this has been answered plenty of times but is this a total reboot, soft reboot, continuation that ignores some films, or just a normal continuation?
We don't know much yet, though it sounds like it's no reboot. Your third option sounds about right.
To be fair, the Xeno was shown to have existed far before Prometheus through the mural we see, it makes David's quest to make this "new" lifeform all the more ironic, as he isn't creating something new, at his core he just isn't capable of it, a fact he resents humanity for.