What do you guys think of the original script for Prometheus (called Alien: Engineers)...

What do you guys think of the original script for Prometheus (called Alien: Engineers)? This was before Damon Lindelof came in and rewrote it. Do you think it's better or worse than what we got?

>Three Engineers land on a lush planet. One of the individuals eats a piece of ceremonial cake, which boils into a swarm of small scarab-like insects that dissolve him. On a nearby mountain, a primitive human woman watches the remaining Engineers depart aboard their ship, as one of the scarabs bites her on the back of the neck, infusing her with the DNA of the dead Engineer.

>An indeterminate amount of time later, Doctor Jocelyn Watts and Professor Martin Holloway are excavating underwater using a pair of submersibles. They uncover a large obelisk covered in alien text. Upon returning to their parent vessel on the surface, they study scans of the obelisk and discover a set of stellar coordinates among the text covering it. They take this information to a large Weyland Industries space station in Earth orbit, where they meet with Peter Weyland. Weyland agrees to fund a scientific expedition to follow the star map, on one condition — while Watts and Holloway will get the scientific credit for any discoveries they make, any alien technology they find will go straight to Weyland Industries. Having been turned down by every other backer, Watts and Holloway agree. Weyland's director of operations, Lydia Vickers, and a highly advanced prototype android named David, also accompany the trip.

>The team travels to the system indicated by the obelisk aboard the Magellan, commanded by Captain Janek. Janek, along with most of his crew, are skeptical and anxious about the mission, but have agreed to take part on the promise of triple pay. The Magellan reaches its destination, Zeta II Reticuli, and soon finds evidence of potentially non-natural structures on a moon designated LV-426. The team discovers several pyramids on the surface, including a large complex inside a series of regular craters linked by deep trenches, suggesting artificial construction. Janek sets down and the science team move out in vehicles to investigate further. They enter the largest, central pyramid and begin mapping the structure with remote drones. When they are startled by a holographic recording, two of the team, Fifield and Millburn, elect to return to the ship. The rest of the team discovers terraforming equipment at the center of the pyramid, as well as a pile of ancient, eviscerated Engineer corpses.

>A satellite the Magellan left in orbit detects a large storm front moving with the moon's sunset, and Janek orders everyone back to the ship. They barely make it; Watts is almost blown away by the savage winds but David rescues her. Once on board, they realize that both Fifield and Millburn are missing. They contact the men by radio, and find they have become lost inside the pyramid. They have plenty of supplies, and Janek tells them to hold out until they can return after the storm has passed in the morning. The team on the Magellan celebrate their discovery. Afterwards, Watts and Holloway autopsy an Engineer's decaying head that they recovered from the pyramid.

>That night, Millburn is attacked by a centipede-like creature and killed, whilst Fifield is subdued by a swarm of the scarab-like insects. The following morning, Vickers awakens a team of mercenaries secretly stowed away aboard the Magellan and places them in charge of the expedition. The team returns to the pyramid to try and locate the missing men and continue their exploration. Under Vickers' orders, several of the scientists begin disassembling the terraforming equipment so it can be returned to Earth for study. Watts and Holloway discover more dead Engineers, each with their chest burst outwards, but Holloway falls down a shaft and gets separated from the rest of the team.

>Janek discovers Millburn's corpse and orders his crew back to the ship, although Vickers' mercenaries and several scientists remain to deconstruct the terraforming machine. Watts and David also stay behind to find Holloway. They eventually find him wandering aimlessly with no real memory of what happened to him; they take him back to the ship. Once there, Watts and Holloway engage in sexual intercourse, but a creature suddenly bursts from Holloway's chest, killing him. The white, boneless alien creature quickly escapes into the Magellan's ventilation system. The crew begin searching the ship, while Watts returns to the pyramid, following the location data recorded by Holloway's spacesuit, hoping to find out what happened to him. She finds that he was attacked by an octopoid creature that latched onto his face. As she moves on, she encounters David aboard a large Engineer spacecraft hidden underground. David reveals that the ship was headed to Earth with plans to wipe out humanity using genetically-modified, weaponized versions of the creature that attacked Holloway. However, the creatures got loose and wiped out the crew before they could carry out their mission. In a large chamber filled with leathery eggs,

>David attacks Watts and allows one of the weaponized creatures — a Facehugger — to subdue her.

>When she regains consciousness, Watts just barely makes it back to the Magellan and climbs into a Med Pod. The Chestburster within her bursts from her chest in the middle of surgery to remove it, and Watts dies. However, the Med Pod's systems manage to save her life and repair the damage. When she wakes, she sees the now fully grown Xenomorph attack and kill one of the crewmembers as he enters the room, but she manages to shoot the creature before it can turn on her.

>Watts discovers that several of the crew have been gruesomely killed by the creature that came from Holloway in her absence, which is now fully grown and hiding on the lower decks. She informs the survivors of the Engineer ship and its mission to wipe out humanity, a mission that David is now attempting to resume. With no alternative, the survivors elect to try and stop him while Janek stays behind to try and fix the Magellan, which David has sabotaged. Aboard the Engineer vessel, the remaining crew and mercenaries confront David as he revives a final Engineer from hypersleep. The Engineer decapitates David and slaughters most of the team, but Watts survives while Vickers escapes with the leader of the mercenaries, Shepherd; Vickers and Shepherd encounter the now mutated Fifield as they flee through the pyramid and are killed.

Is it the one with forced gay sex?

>Watts returns to the Magellan and kills the creature that emerged from Holloway just as it prepares to attack Janek. They see the Engineer ship leave and set off in pursuit, but are unable to catch up with the much faster Engineer vessel. However, when the Engineer pilot is killed by a Chestburster that erupts from his chest, his ship falters, allowing Janek to crash the Magellan into it, destroying the Magellan, killing Janek and fatally crippling the Engineer vessel. Watts jettisons from the Magellan's wreckage in an escape pod. Back on the surface, she is attacked by the huge Ultramorph that emerged from the Pilot, but she eventually kills it with a circular saw.

>In the aftermath, Watts is contacted by David, who tells her that it is likely the Engineers will come to investigate. As she considers this, the pyramids on the moon transmit a distress signal into space.

>Three Engineers land on a lush planet. One of the individuals eats a piece of ceremonial cake

Stopped reading here

All I managed to read from the wikia was that the last engineer was actually the Alien 1979 space jockey all along, really makes you think

Might read the actual script sometime

Literally the same movie, what the fuck did Lindelof do? It's literally the same thing.

Would have been kino desu

Still would have been shit. Ridley Scott is a hack.

George Lucas 2.0

sounds dumber than Lindelof's rewrite, amazingly

This was perfect. May have been too expensive

What happened was that Scott and the studio liked Spaihts script, but there were some issues that needed to be fixed in it (This was Spaihts first script too iirc). So FOX and Scott got in touch with Lindelof to do some rewriting and he in turn told Scott that they should drop everything in it that pertains to it bein a straightforward prequel to Alien and create a whole new Sci-fi film set in the same universe and Scott bought it.

The problem with this script and the one we got in the movie is that it gets too specific about how the Engineers created us and how they use their bioweapons.

Leave that part undefined so it adds to the alien-ness and mystery of the whole thing which augments the horror aspect.

All really that needs to be known is that Engineers visited Earth in ancient times and apparently created us. It's not defined how or shown.

Then when the expedition reaches their planet the crew gets affected by something that they are exposed to but they never get to find out what. They just start to mutate or die off so it is up to the viewer's imagination to work out what's going on.

The actual answer (delivered by David) is that their facility was compromised and that some kind of bio-weapon got released. It is never specificed how or why and all the human crew can do is get their asses out of there.
Inadvertently they wake up an Engineer who attacks them and activates an alarm beacon, the result of which again the humans or the audience are unaware of.

Essentially the same effect should be achieved as in Alien, that we're dealing with things we can't figure out and which are best left alone.

>Leave that part undefined so it adds to the alien-ness and mystery of the whole thing which augments the horror aspect.

I believe that's what Lindelof was actually trying to do with his rewrites tho
Unfortunately
a) he's a hack
b) they asked him to rewrite it to not be an actual alien movie

lmao

>engage in sexual intercourse, but a creature suddenly bursts from Holloway's chest, killing him

THAT CARD

I feel like it reads better than the one we got, but the two fags still got lost inside the pyramid despite having mapped it out. Makes no sense.

This version makes a lot more sense. The black goo and shit is retarded and confusing. This is just to the point and doesn't need a million sequels.

Worst thing about it is that there's no particular need for that subplot to happen at all.

They could've easily been infected in front of everyone and mutated afterwards or left for dead in a panic and then show up later as freaks.

>told Scott that they should drop everything in it that pertains to it bein a straightforward prequel to Alien and create a whole new Sci-fi film set in the same universe and Scott bought it.

and then he decided to try and relate it back anyways

what a fucking moron

jon spaihts' solo writing work includes trash like passengers and the darkest hour. Anyone that thinks lindlelof's contributions made prometheus worse is a literal retard

>Holloway penetrating Watts while a chestburster penetrates Holloway

Masculinity BTFO

I prefer it, apart from the cake bit it doesn't waste time explaining how the aliens are made, they just already exist as weapons.

The original script is better. I like to think Ridley will go back for reshoots so he can edit the Prometheus material into the original script and have it packaged into the boxset as Alien: Prometheus.
Of course Ridley was the idiot that thought the original script gave away too much and brought in Lindelof with the specific task of making it vaguer, so I'm not holding my breath.

>frogposter can't endure reading a little bit

Who would have guessed

Fucking awful. It's a goddamn shame that whatever was implied by the Space Jockey on Alien was ever revisited. Should've been left alone forever

The idea of using xenos as weapons to wipe out humanity is retarded. Any society advanced enough to create or tame xenos would also be advanced enough to create more effective weapons.

That was the main idea of the space jockey an alien pilot petrified for thousands of years with his death cargo at his feet.

>wiping out humans with a bunch of big cockroaches
The US Military alone would demolish them in 10 minutes

>the pyramids on the moon transmit a distress signal into space.

Stopped reading here

>One of the individuals eats a piece of ceremonial cake


Heeeyyyyyyy that was in SG1

I only like the idea of the beluga. If they replaced the deacon with the beluga and made it the main threat for the last half of the movie it would've been great. Just make it kill with it's bare hands instead of a tongue.

The 1st part was shown in the deleted scenes in the bluray besides other stuff like the space jockey talking to David and co

>Circular saw
If we had this from the get go there wouldn't be axe shitpostin in every alien thread

No it's not, read it

kek

So it was originally going to be only one film branching into the original Alien?
Tbh I did enjoy Prometheus but:
>it's just so fucking obvious from watching it that it was originally meant to be just one film, and they altered a few things here and there to allow for sequels
>Lindeloff is a fucking hack for adding a billion unneeded biblical references
Honestly that script looks better than what we got. It doesn't sacrifice the visceral horror, and it's less on-the-nose about it's larger scale stakes with the whole Engineers destroying humanity and whatnot.

>Reddit spacing
You have to go back.

I read this a while ago, I remember thinking that it wasn't entirely Lindelof's fault for such bad writing. The original draft had far too many events happening that the pacing would have been disastrous, and frankly the script should have been rewritten from scratch.

I cringed at David saying he had learned to think in trinary, as if this was some massively intelligent reveal.

Yes, walls of text are truly the patrician choice

what's the use of this?

Not really. Presumably earth like planets are valuable. You could nuke the surface, but destroy its hability. Better to tailor make a weapon that only kills the lifeforms that are causing you issues.

I will never understand who asked for this shit

Scott knows his time is almost up so he're revisiting and shitting on all his franchises.

I bet Gladiator is next.

>Tfw the 2000 year old murder that pissed the Engineers off enough to destroy the human race was actually killing Commodus in the arena.

>Damon Lindelof
Is this guy ever gonna stip ruinning things