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Jon Spaights' 'ALIEN: Engineers' script (aka pre-Lindelof Prometheus) now available
- Thread starter SCULLIBUNDO
- Start date
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Jason's Ultimatum
Member
How hard is it to find early movie scripts for movies? I would love to read Gilroy's original Supremacy script.
Zombie James
Banned
Looking forward to reading this.
Auron_Kale
Member
Thanks Sculli.
Saved to my iBooks library. Will read later.
Saved to my iBooks library. Will read later.
8BitsAtATime
Member
I posted it in one of the other pronetheus threads
CF_Fighter
Member
Within the first two pages the opening makes more sense than the version we saw on screen. The Engineer DNA simply intertwining with ours, not replacing completely, and allowing us to retain our primate DNA while sharing Engineer DNA.
See You Next Wednesday
Banned
Yeah anyone have a summary of it?
SCULLIBUNDO
Banned
Don't thank me, friends. Thank yourselves. Without you, your reading of this thread where I link to somebody else's hard work wouldn't be possible.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Ooooh, this ought to be interesting. Thanks for putting it up.
What a weird coincidence. I finally watched Prometheus today, then I read the GAF thread on it and it made me want to read Spaights' script, so I looked it up and started reading through it. Didn't know it became public only recently.
I found what Prometheus presented pretty interesting despite being kind of screwed up, so I plan on reading through this script eventually.
I found what Prometheus presented pretty interesting despite being kind of screwed up, so I plan on reading through this script eventually.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
page 25: LV-426
well, that's that then.
Not a whole lot that actually appears to be in the movie so far. One scene has remained, however (p: 35-36):
The rest of the scene appears to be pretty similar to the eventual movie.
Also, the ship is Magellan, not fucking Prometheus. There is no point in writing a story about a ship of no role. (and then make that movie
:| 
:'( )
well, that's that then.
Not a whole lot that actually appears to be in the movie so far. One scene has remained, however (p: 35-36):
The rest of the scene appears to be pretty similar to the eventual movie.
Also, the ship is Magellan, not fucking Prometheus. There is no point in writing a story about a ship of no role. (and then make that movie
:| :'( )Bobby Roberts
Banned
A rundown of most of the changes:
Spoilers, obviously for both PROMETHEUS and this screenplay:
To be honest - the last 20 pages of this thing venture into serious cardboard action movie territory. There are gritted teeth and sloganeering, people who have no training in weapons all of a sudden racking shotguns and doing some John Woo shit. But the 90 pages that precede it? It's kind of formula, but it's REALLY WELL DONE formula. Spaihts makes sure that everything that happens makes sense, and has a decent explanation behind it. It's not super ambitious, and maybe I'm being a little nicer to it than I would because I already know what it got turned into, but this is definitely a very solid Alien script. It's definitely better than Whedon's 2nd draft for Alien: Resurrection.
Basically - Ridley ruined this thing, and used Lindelof to do it. I'm betting it's a combination of Ridley forcing some dumb ideas on Lindelof, and Lindelof having to rewrite stuff solely to justify his hiring and get a credit on the movie.
Spoilers, obviously for both PROMETHEUS and this screenplay:
There's no black goo. The initial transformation is done by a black cake that transforms into thousands of tiny black scarabs that bite the Engineer, consuming its DNA. Once the Engineer is completely consumed, the scarabs scatter and fly away. one lands on a primitive woman, and bites her. Her DNA begins to shift.
Shaw is named Watts. the Prometheus is named the Magellan. Holloway is actually a character. Their discovery is made underwater, looking at an Obelisk with Engineer glyphs. Research leads to them discovering the star map, as opposed to lining up a bunch of different pictures of five dots in a row.
They approach Weyland with their research to pitch him on paying for the expedition. Weyland never leaves Earth, and does not join their expedition. Vickers is not his daughter. He agrees to fund their expedition on the stipulation that if they find any technology there, Vickers takes over their operation and all technology belongs to him.
The expedition is to Zeta 2 Reticuli. The moon they land on is LV-426. The people who signed on signed on with no idea what they're exploring, but they signed on for Triple Pay.
David isn't altogether human looking - he's an early android model, and he has a very definite disdain for human-kind. He is programmed to follow orders until alien technology is found, and then he's programmed to get rid of Watts and Holloway as a means to protect the technological information Weyland is procuring.
Weyland doesn't want to know how to live forever. Weyland agrees to the expedition because he's been spending trillions trying to terraform Mars and it's not working right, and he believes he can reverse engineer the terraforming pyramids on LV-426. It is explained that the pyramids on Earth are likely human kinds attempt to replicate the Engineer pyramids. The "Jesus was an engineer" theory is brought up, but only as a throwaway joke and never mentioned again.
Fifield & Milburn aren't scared because they found a dead engineer, they're scared because the recording/apparitions are large, and loud, and screaming in a very deep voice. Fifield wants to bug out, Holloway tells him he's gonna have to walk if he wants to bug out because he's not lending them one of the vehicles they drove out there with. (said vehicle is what David uses to open the door, as opposed to pulling a ladder out of his ass as in the movie)
Fifield & Milburn get lost because they forgot to bring a map-reading module with them, and communications are cut off once the silica storm blows in. The Engineers aren't just dead - they've been murdered. some slashed - some chestburst.
Holloway is not sad that the engineers are dead, nor is Watts a practicing Christian. They're both happy that they've made the most significant scientific discovery of mankind's history, at which point Janek toasts Fifield & Milburn to becoming the first humans to freak out, get lost and sleep in their suits on alien ruins.
Milburn is still attacked by the Hammerpede, but it doesn't break his arm to get in the suit, it just bleeds on the suit and crawls in through the hole. Fifield runs away, and is attacked by scarabs, who eat through the visor on his suit and start biting him, transferring xenomorph DNA into his body. He begins to mutate.
David and Vickers initiate their takeover of the mission once technology is discovered. Holloway and Watts are led to the discovery at gunpoint by armed Weyland mercenaries. Watts accidentally falls down a shaft after another Recording/Apparition startles him. He falls into an egg chamber (there are no pedestals in this version, only eggs) and a soft, squidlike facehugger oozes onto his helmet, eats through it, and impregnates him. He comes to shortly afterwards and wanders into the map room/pilot room.
Watts/David find him, bring him back to the ship. Holloway tells Watts he can figure out how to get back to the Engineers home world, as this is just a way-station, not their home planet. He tells her to keep the pilot room secret from the Weyland people. In celebration of this new secret, they have sex. In the middle of sex, an alien bursts out of his chest. It tries to attack Watts. She locks herself in a closet. The chestburster flattens, and begins to ooze/squeeze through the cracks in the door. Weyland employees hear her screaming, the chestburster escapes through a vent.
They go back out to raid more technology, while Janek & his crew want to find Fifield & Milburn. Watts uses the data from Holloway's suit to find the map room/pilot room. David intercepts her, and leads her to a different egg chamber. This chamber is filled with regular xenomorph eggs. A face hugger emerges. David plays with it like a pet while explaining that these eggs were designed by the Engineers as a means to wipe out earth, but the engineers on LV-426 did their jobs too well and were murdered by their creation. He then lets the facehugger go, and it impregnates Watts.
Watts wakes up alone, and wanders back to the ship, sneaking into Vickers room and using her medpod. The medpod scene plays essentially the same, except midway through the cesarean, the chestbuster chews itself out anyway, and escapes through a hatch at the bottom of the medpod. The medpod locks itself down and repairs Vickers over the course of about 3 or 4 hours. She fades in and out of consciousness. The chestburster grows in size. A crewmember enters the room. It kills. It feeds. It grows exponentially, and molts/morphs, shedding skin and growing protrusions. She comes to just as the medpod is about to eject her, while the Alien is still in the room with her. She takes the dead man's gun and shoots the Alien in the head as it lunges for her.
The other chestburster has also grown, and is essentially boneless, pale, translucent xenomorph variant. It can morph between solid/less solid forms, absorbing bullets and folding itself into tiny spaces. It is white/translucent, with a visible skull underneath it's elongated head.
David leads them to the ship, wakes up the last Engineer. they have a discussion. Apparently by waking up the Engineer, the stasis it was in will speed up the incubation of the chestburster residing inside it, but before it pops, he'll set that course for Earth after all. It rips David's head off and starts killing people. Fifield ambushes the Weyland employee trying to escort Vickers to safety, rips him up. Jumps on Vickers. The employee lives just long enough to unload his clip into Fifield, who bleeds acid all over Vickers, killing her.
Pretty much everything from here out plays essentially the same regarding Janek ramming the Alien ship, the ship crashing to LV-426 and rolling after Watts, and settling, except the Magellan can only catch up to it because the chestburster pops through the Engineer piloting the ship before he can leave orbit, causing the ship to momentarily stall out before autopilot takes over.
When Watts wakes up after the ship settles, she still only has a few minutes to get to Vicker's lifeboat, but it's a giant xenomorph (called an Ultramorph) that is now chasing her, instead of the Engineer. She kills it after an extended chase/hide n seek sorta setpiece.
It ends with the other pyramids shooting giant beacons of light out of their tops towards outer space as Watts gets drunk and plays chess with David's head in Vicker's quarters, waiting for either Earth or the Engineers to send a ship after them
Shaw is named Watts. the Prometheus is named the Magellan. Holloway is actually a character. Their discovery is made underwater, looking at an Obelisk with Engineer glyphs. Research leads to them discovering the star map, as opposed to lining up a bunch of different pictures of five dots in a row.
They approach Weyland with their research to pitch him on paying for the expedition. Weyland never leaves Earth, and does not join their expedition. Vickers is not his daughter. He agrees to fund their expedition on the stipulation that if they find any technology there, Vickers takes over their operation and all technology belongs to him.
The expedition is to Zeta 2 Reticuli. The moon they land on is LV-426. The people who signed on signed on with no idea what they're exploring, but they signed on for Triple Pay.
David isn't altogether human looking - he's an early android model, and he has a very definite disdain for human-kind. He is programmed to follow orders until alien technology is found, and then he's programmed to get rid of Watts and Holloway as a means to protect the technological information Weyland is procuring.
Weyland doesn't want to know how to live forever. Weyland agrees to the expedition because he's been spending trillions trying to terraform Mars and it's not working right, and he believes he can reverse engineer the terraforming pyramids on LV-426. It is explained that the pyramids on Earth are likely human kinds attempt to replicate the Engineer pyramids. The "Jesus was an engineer" theory is brought up, but only as a throwaway joke and never mentioned again.
Fifield & Milburn aren't scared because they found a dead engineer, they're scared because the recording/apparitions are large, and loud, and screaming in a very deep voice. Fifield wants to bug out, Holloway tells him he's gonna have to walk if he wants to bug out because he's not lending them one of the vehicles they drove out there with. (said vehicle is what David uses to open the door, as opposed to pulling a ladder out of his ass as in the movie)
Fifield & Milburn get lost because they forgot to bring a map-reading module with them, and communications are cut off once the silica storm blows in. The Engineers aren't just dead - they've been murdered. some slashed - some chestburst.
Holloway is not sad that the engineers are dead, nor is Watts a practicing Christian. They're both happy that they've made the most significant scientific discovery of mankind's history, at which point Janek toasts Fifield & Milburn to becoming the first humans to freak out, get lost and sleep in their suits on alien ruins.
Milburn is still attacked by the Hammerpede, but it doesn't break his arm to get in the suit, it just bleeds on the suit and crawls in through the hole. Fifield runs away, and is attacked by scarabs, who eat through the visor on his suit and start biting him, transferring xenomorph DNA into his body. He begins to mutate.
David and Vickers initiate their takeover of the mission once technology is discovered. Holloway and Watts are led to the discovery at gunpoint by armed Weyland mercenaries. Watts accidentally falls down a shaft after another Recording/Apparition startles him. He falls into an egg chamber (there are no pedestals in this version, only eggs) and a soft, squidlike facehugger oozes onto his helmet, eats through it, and impregnates him. He comes to shortly afterwards and wanders into the map room/pilot room.
Watts/David find him, bring him back to the ship. Holloway tells Watts he can figure out how to get back to the Engineers home world, as this is just a way-station, not their home planet. He tells her to keep the pilot room secret from the Weyland people. In celebration of this new secret, they have sex. In the middle of sex, an alien bursts out of his chest. It tries to attack Watts. She locks herself in a closet. The chestburster flattens, and begins to ooze/squeeze through the cracks in the door. Weyland employees hear her screaming, the chestburster escapes through a vent.
They go back out to raid more technology, while Janek & his crew want to find Fifield & Milburn. Watts uses the data from Holloway's suit to find the map room/pilot room. David intercepts her, and leads her to a different egg chamber. This chamber is filled with regular xenomorph eggs. A face hugger emerges. David plays with it like a pet while explaining that these eggs were designed by the Engineers as a means to wipe out earth, but the engineers on LV-426 did their jobs too well and were murdered by their creation. He then lets the facehugger go, and it impregnates Watts.
Watts wakes up alone, and wanders back to the ship, sneaking into Vickers room and using her medpod. The medpod scene plays essentially the same, except midway through the cesarean, the chestbuster chews itself out anyway, and escapes through a hatch at the bottom of the medpod. The medpod locks itself down and repairs Vickers over the course of about 3 or 4 hours. She fades in and out of consciousness. The chestburster grows in size. A crewmember enters the room. It kills. It feeds. It grows exponentially, and molts/morphs, shedding skin and growing protrusions. She comes to just as the medpod is about to eject her, while the Alien is still in the room with her. She takes the dead man's gun and shoots the Alien in the head as it lunges for her.
The other chestburster has also grown, and is essentially boneless, pale, translucent xenomorph variant. It can morph between solid/less solid forms, absorbing bullets and folding itself into tiny spaces. It is white/translucent, with a visible skull underneath it's elongated head.
David leads them to the ship, wakes up the last Engineer. they have a discussion. Apparently by waking up the Engineer, the stasis it was in will speed up the incubation of the chestburster residing inside it, but before it pops, he'll set that course for Earth after all. It rips David's head off and starts killing people. Fifield ambushes the Weyland employee trying to escort Vickers to safety, rips him up. Jumps on Vickers. The employee lives just long enough to unload his clip into Fifield, who bleeds acid all over Vickers, killing her.
Pretty much everything from here out plays essentially the same regarding Janek ramming the Alien ship, the ship crashing to LV-426 and rolling after Watts, and settling, except the Magellan can only catch up to it because the chestburster pops through the Engineer piloting the ship before he can leave orbit, causing the ship to momentarily stall out before autopilot takes over.
When Watts wakes up after the ship settles, she still only has a few minutes to get to Vicker's lifeboat, but it's a giant xenomorph (called an Ultramorph) that is now chasing her, instead of the Engineer. She kills it after an extended chase/hide n seek sorta setpiece.
It ends with the other pyramids shooting giant beacons of light out of their tops towards outer space as Watts gets drunk and plays chess with David's head in Vicker's quarters, waiting for either Earth or the Engineers to send a ship after them
To be honest - the last 20 pages of this thing venture into serious cardboard action movie territory. There are gritted teeth and sloganeering, people who have no training in weapons all of a sudden racking shotguns and doing some John Woo shit. But the 90 pages that precede it? It's kind of formula, but it's REALLY WELL DONE formula. Spaihts makes sure that everything that happens makes sense, and has a decent explanation behind it. It's not super ambitious, and maybe I'm being a little nicer to it than I would because I already know what it got turned into, but this is definitely a very solid Alien script. It's definitely better than Whedon's 2nd draft for Alien: Resurrection.
Basically - Ridley ruined this thing, and used Lindelof to do it. I'm betting it's a combination of Ridley forcing some dumb ideas on Lindelof, and Lindelof having to rewrite stuff solely to justify his hiring and get a credit on the movie.
distantmantra
Member
Thanks for the summary. I enjoyed Prometheus for what it was, but that sounds better . Much better.
Charles Foster Kane
Rosebud
Speaking of screenplays. Is there a place to read/get real movie script? I mean not like fan transcript or something. Honest question.
WyndhamPrice
Member
I read this earlier today.
The general story beats are fairly similar to the finished film but there's no more unnecessary ambiguity. It probably would've been a better movie.
The general story beats are fairly similar to the finished film but there's no more unnecessary ambiguity. It probably would've been a better movie.
Boards of Canada
Member
Not liking it. I read the ending as well, which is much worse in the Spaights script.
FUBAR McDangles
Member
I think there is an imdb sister site like imsdb or something that has a bunch.
I was in to reading them a while back.
Jack Scofield
Member
Wait, how can that translucent alien fold itself into tiny spaces if it has a visible skull beneath its flesh?
Worst movie ever.
Worst movie ever.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
Sounds good to me, only the end sounds bad but not as bad as what we got.
Otherwise, that would have been much better.
Otherwise, that would have been much better.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Yeah, after speedreading this thing: way different from the movie we got, and makes me think that all the interesting God Shit (that they still managed to butcher) was an afterthought.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I was talking to a friend about this, and he said "I bet when Holloway makes the joke about Jesus maybe being one of them, Ridley circled that part of the script and wrote something like 'I really like this part, why are they laughing about it?'"
People leave a LOT of shit on Lindelof's doorstep regarding this movie, but watching the documentaries on the blu-ray - Lindelof got hired specifically to a) have another name on the poster and b) try and add Ridley's idea to Spaiht's screenplay at the request of both the studio (who wanted to distance themselves from what the Alien movies had become) and Ridley himself.
Lindelof kinda got stuck in a tough place because you can hear, on both the commentary and the documentary, that Ridley's ideas for this movie are largely mediocre at best. He gets sloshed off red wine and just runs his fucking yap for hours on end while everyone around him just nods and gets hammered. Imagine being a screenwriter and having to work that into an already solid screenplay. Something was bound to get broken.
People leave a LOT of shit on Lindelof's doorstep regarding this movie, but watching the documentaries on the blu-ray - Lindelof got hired specifically to a) have another name on the poster and b) try and add Ridley's idea to Spaiht's screenplay at the request of both the studio (who wanted to distance themselves from what the Alien movies had become) and Ridley himself.
Lindelof kinda got stuck in a tough place because you can hear, on both the commentary and the documentary, that Ridley's ideas for this movie are largely mediocre at best. He gets sloshed off red wine and just runs his fucking yap for hours on end while everyone around him just nods and gets hammered. Imagine being a screenwriter and having to work that into an already solid screenplay. Something was bound to get broken.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
The anti-Indiana Jones Crew In-Joke Becomes an Iconic Moment moment.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I dunno, that seems boring. Like - what would happen, really? The US army vs. a bunch of creatures we already know you can just run over with tanks? It'd be World War Xenomorph. PG-13 World War Xenomorph, at that.
ALIENS was probably as full-scale as a "war" with these monsters can get without completely destroying any and all sense of menace - which Fox has pretty much already done by pairing them in two shitty movies with Predators anyway. Which is why they told Ridley to back away from the "alien" aspects, which is why Lindelof was brought on to work in Ridley's shitty, half-baked Blade Runner "I want more life, father" wine-fueled blatherings.
It needs to not be a "Franchise," basically. Stop worrying about sequels. Just tell scary stories with high elements of creepiness and mindfuckery. Treating it like a "franchise" is how we got to Alien Vs. Predator 2 in the first place.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
I would call it trite.
While the original motive makes sense, David doesn't, the location (with the ending) doesn't, the alien doesn't, and well, there being so many of them in one and a half hours is basically Alien 4 but faster.
And Alien Resurrection is rubbish.
Also, those descriptions sound nice, but that's not what a camera sees and it sure as hell isn't what a viewer sees. (and while I'm not sure, I got the notion that there are too many 'characters' aka "ensign extra" for this to even work in two hours. Unless you are Bay and have no problem going manno a manno with Mortal Kombat 2 over the prize of 'actual. worst. movie. ever.' )
It's also way too much fan fiction and trope material for it to be usable as a good script.
(the planet, the skull, the different types, including hybrid, growing - well someone has a fetish...- , the predictable descriptions of both characters and how they respond -including god syndrome david)
I cringed while trying to imagine what this would be like.
It's quite amazing to think the movie even got greenlit and made with so many of this script's scenes fully intact. They really just removed the nonsense (or changed it into other nonsense: fairfield still becomes a creature of sorts). The operation scene is the same in both, for example, only they changed the sentence "[alien] to which [the guy] gave birth" to merge with hers and produce the only facehugger in the movie: the one she 'births'.
As I continued reading, I got increasingly satisfied with the movie that was made. I can now fully understand its existence, even if still didn't make a lick of sense, because the ass that rewrote it did not understand fucking. metaphor. Or theme.
(the whole 'god' in the moral, not engineer, sense that reeks in the movie)
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
Anticitizen One
Banned
Prometheus really upset me. The trailers were incredible, the movie was well directed, had great visuals and charecters but the story was a disaster and had way too many really obvious plotholes. If only they went with this version of the script it would have been far superior.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
It's a screenplay he wrote specifically for Ridley Scott - he knows that what he puts on that page is barebones skeleton, visually, and it will get enhanced/changed completely. There's things to criticize in the screenplay, definitely (it's close gets all sorts of rote/overheated) but criticizing his descriptions is pretty low on the list, as descriptions in a screenplay are often the softest tissue there, often purposefully so.
I dunno - I still think it's a much more solid script than Whedon's early runs at Alien: Resurrection. The basic plotting is still there, and the majority of the finished movie's most memorable scenes are pretty much 80-90% intact in this screenplay. The only real notable scene that's added by Lindelof/Scott is David doing his thing alone on the ship.
But practically? the movie got greenlit because Scott commissioned the script from Spaihts knowing he wanted to make an Alien movie and Fox was going to pay him to make one for them regardless of what the script looked like. Nobody in the business of greenlighting blockbusters really gives a shit about the screenplay - it's why people consistently announce release dates before they hire screenwriters.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
That's disgusting.
And I have no idea about industry practices, to be honest. Just know what I read.
And I kept thinking "this needs work", even before it went into slasher territory. Maybe not tossed in the garbage bin, but heavily edited at the least. I'm going to say that the producers (or whomever) were right about having it rewritten / edited within what I imagine to be tight deadlines and time strains.
I actually prefer the current miss Vickers being an actual character of sorts. Not so much what she is 'used for' in the movie though.
astroturfing
Member
skull is nanomachines.
aliens! the skull isn't bone maybe
Bobby Roberts
Banned
You're right that it could use another pass or two - I think Spaihts himself said he wanted to take another couple runs at it. This is either the 3rd or 4th draft? I think? I'm not sure about that. But I believe after this draft, it goes straight to Lindelof, and I think he gets two more cracks (complete w/ Ridley notes) at it before cameras start rolling. I could be wrong. And to be fair - five passes at the script before shooting isn't bad so far as multimillion tentpole scripts go. A lot of movies get like, 2 or 3 and then they just say "fuck it, rewrite what you need on the set"
There are an amazing amount of super-expensive movies that seriously do not have a solid, finished script in place by the time they start shooting. Sometimes, they make up for it via great actors and solid instincts (Iron Man) sometimes you're stuck with a man who ejaculates explosions trying to carry your story over the finish line (Transformers 2)
Thanks for that.
As a whole with a little pruning of some bits and bobs it sounds generally better than what we got with Prometheus which seemed to enjoy being ambiguous just because and as you said, everything seems better put together. I came out of Prometheus feeling like it was missing half a films worth of content to explain some of the plot holes or just general gaps in common sense for the crew and what everyone was doing, I would have definitely preferred this film even with all action at the end.
And unless they imply or actually show it in a sequel that is or isn't coming, I don't understand why they changed the moon this happened on, they went from LV-426 to LV-223 for seemingly no reason other than to make some people think this was the same place and to not link it to Alien.
I thought maybe it was on purpose which could be followed up but as we know from the script now it was obviously meant to be the same place with an ending that would then lead to the consequences of Alien, I mean they are both one moon of three orbiting a gas giant.
There was some huge flaws, i still like it, it's ambitious as all hell, but yeah just some weird plot holes. Things that aren't even explained at certain points, character motivations aren't really explained.
Looking forward to the sequel but just not what i expected walking out of the theater
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