Alien: Covenant (formerly known as Prometheus 2)

[kajnrig]

We've all seen Transformers and The Room. We know what it means for a movie to truly suck.

[Kanedas Bike]

12 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Reading through everyone's reactions I've come to realize something. We are so desperate for anything sci-fi that's not a superhero film we end up accepting anything bad or mediocre as decent and worth watching to fill that void.

When the common critic is "It was decently good except for this, this, this, and this, and I don't know why they did that." It means the movie sucked. I know it, you know it, hell everybody knows andn we should stop accepting this mediocre sucky bullcrap. We should expect and demand better.

That, or for me it's all about caring about the property. If this was just random sci-fi/horror movie then I might have left one post about it and never looked back.

For most if not all of us we care about the Alien universe because it's what we grew up on, or we hold the older movies in high regard.

I love that Scott wants to expand on the mythology, I just think he's sh!tting the bed in doing so.

 

10 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

we should all just be bitter and angry and have no fun and yell out our window at children for making too much noise as they walk down the street.

Lol - I'm usually the one that feels like we (fans) are too critical and need to lighten up.

But yeah, the kids need to shut up too. 

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

We've all seen Transformers and The Room. We know what it means for a movie to truly suck.

Quoted for truth. The biggest difference is that I expect the Transformers movies to suck, I do/did not expect that from Prometheus and Covenant. And no, neither is on the level of suckatude of those flicks, they're just not as good as the talent surrounding them would dictate. Plus they don't live up to the legacy of Alien and Aliens, which is the real shame because they could/should have.

-b.

[TangledThorns]

ALIEN and ALIENS gave us champagne tastes when it comes to sequels. Star Wars, Dark Knight and Terminator films suffers from this after their second films too.

[seti88]

15 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Saw it on a whim earlier today. I don't really care about the Alien franchise; the only one I've seen was Alien, and that about a year ago or so. I thought it was fine, and I can see why it became a hit, but I wasn't struck by it as maybe I would have been ten, twenty years ago. So going into this, I wasn't looking for a good horror/sci-fi/action movie so much as just a good movie.

I was completely okay with it, could chalk this and that up to suspension of disbelief, until

 

  Reveal hidden contents

the first proto-Xenomorph bit. Hoooooly crap, could you panic any more? This is supposed to be a colonizing force and they panic at the SMALLEST sign of something wrong? Come on. And I don't mean when the thing finally bursts out of the dude's back or even when its back spikes first poke through, but just seeing a sick person coming to the ship sends her into an unintelligible panic? Boo. How are you NOT trained for a medical/biohazard emergency? Heck, how is the expedition team not trained to WEAR SOME FRICKIN' HELMETS ON AN ALIEN PLANET!?!?!?!? Apparently this is a thing in Prometheus, too? Like how are you NOT going to be suspicious as frakk about a habitable planet with FLORA ALREADY ON IT!?!?!?!?

And the crew's stupidity just continues and continues and continues and I just care less and less and less. Why would you, acting captain, follow a super shady android whom you ACTIVELY SUSPECT AFTER SEEING HIM BE CHUMMY WITH AN ALIEN into an isolated basement room ALONE!?!?!?!?!?

AAAAAARGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

But actually, turn your brain off and it's fine, I guess. Feels like it wants to be two separate movies, though, and from what I've heard about the making of it, it WAS kind of two separate movies that got forced together.

 

You haven't seen aliens? If so, get some popcorn stat and be prepared for a ride down the pipe 5by5!

I hope there will be a marines vs aliens again in the future!! That's all it ever needed really..hahaha...

[sh9000]

I enjoyed Alien Covenant.  Damn David is psycho.

Edited May 25, 2017 by sh9000

[TangledThorns]

Did anybody else get the Blade Runner references? They were subtle but I noticed one where...

Spoiler

David slams Daniels and after she fights back he says, 'That's the spirit!.'

There was another one but dammit I can't remember what it was, ugh.

Edited May 25, 2017 by TangledThorns

[sh9000]

Will the Blade Runner and Aliens franchises be connected?  A while back I read that they were being planned or possibly a rumor.

Edited May 25, 2017 by sh9000

[TangledThorns]

44 minutes ago, sh9000 said:

Will the two franchises be connected?

I keep reading it is but doesn't go beyond Easter Eggs.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Will the Blade Runner and Aliens franchises be connected?  A while back I read that they were being planned or possibly a rumor.

From what I've read, they've pitched the idea of merging the Alien and Blade Runner universes several times and backed down from it almost immediately after on each occasion.  Seems like a no-go.

 

Well, I'm headed out to see Covenant tonight.  Tried to get myself in the right mindset for it by rewatching Alien, Aliens, and Prometheus over the last couple days.  My expectations are quite low now, given the number of my friends here in the US and abroad who've described the film in such colorful terms as "a dumpster fire", "shark-jumping bullshit", and the F-word repeated about five hundred times.  The bar, for me, is set low enough that the Morlocks had to put up signs warning of a trip hazard.

[kajnrig]

I keep thinking back to Life (which was also described as a successor - spiritually - to Alien) and why I enjoyed it more than Covenant. Spoiler just for the sake of discussing plot details.

My biggest complaint with Covenant is how stupid the characters are, not as an overall descriptor, but as a character trait. They were written to be dumb, and there's a certain allowance for that in these types of movies. People making mistakes is a given. But these characters don't just make mistakes, they make amateur mistakes. They make the kind of mistakes that make you question

their superiors' decision to put them on the mission, that's how stupid their mistakes are. The expedition team choosing to swing by the new planet, that's fine. Enough fuel, the trip would only be delayed a few days, a few weeks maybe, and it's implied that they have the proper equipment to scope out this new planet. But instead of using said equipment and sending probes down to check the terrain and flora/fauna, they send down an entire team WITHOUT any sort of insulation from the environment. They leave an easily-panicked crew member behind, ostensibly to act as a medic but who literally blows up the ship by way of sheer ineptitude.

Life has its share of downright stupidity, too - again, there's a certain amount of room for that - but aside from petting the dang alien are you CRAZY, the crew of the ISS had more wherewithal and competence in dealing with their extraterrestrial menace than the crew of the Covenant did. They knew and (mostly) stuck to good rules and protocols, they enacted well-thought-out plans with contingencies in place, and so on. It wasn't just a panicked flight from one locale to another.

I mean the half-baked philosophizing didn't help, either. An android's preoccupation with creation and yet to him the idea only extends as far as manipulating DNA? Rather than, say, building a particle accelerator to create, actually create, entirely new elements or indeed questioning the very idea and process of creation. I just saw Arrival last night after caving and buying a digital stream off Amazon, and it does an insanely good job at taking one concept - language - and building an entire movie around dissecting it.

[peter]

Spoiler

The characters were beyond dumb.  

 

About the only positive things I can say are great visuals, and Michael Fassbender was brilliant in both roles.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Well... that was awful.

I mean, what was Ridley Scott thinking?  This isn't so much an all-new feature as it is Alien as interpreted by Mr. Bean and The Benny Hill Show.

 

Spoiler

Seriously... where does Weyland-Yutani find these idiots?  I gotta ask the same question Ellen Ripley asked at the start of Aliens: "Did IQs drop sharply while I was away?"

Taking the detour to investigate the signal from the mysteriously uncharted human-habitable planet that just happened to be nearby?  Fine.  

Landing on it to have a look around?  Also fine, given that the atmosphere of Paradise isn't the toxic primordial soup that was present on LV-426 or the simply lethal air on LV-223.  

Sending out a search party to explore said uncharted and unsurveyed planet with no protective gear whatsoever besides maybe a heavy parka and a gun?  That's officially into "too dumb to live" territory.  Putting aside the obvious problem of not knowing what the local microbiome might do to a human, they also risked the integrity of the planet's biosphere by introducing microorganisms from the human microbiome into the environment.  They could've inadvertently caused a mass-extinction event and destroyed the biosphere, or caught some horrible lethal disease and killed the entire crew of their ship because everyone in Alien is too goddamn dumb or corrupt to observer quarantine protocol.

I'll admit the medic's reaction to the Neomorph was probably realistic, but the way it played out was basically a pratfall in a horror movie.  It was flat-out worthy of Yakity Sax in the way it led to several deaths, destroyed the lander, and failed to do more than annoy her attacker.

The fact that virtually everyone on the landing party ended up as lunch and everyone else on the main ship is probably going to be killed almost feels like Weyland-Yutani is either gunning for a Guinness record for "Most Darwin Awards" or that some executive got a bonus for reinventing suicide as a group activity.

 

They had a great B-plot going with David's experiments in artificial evolution vis a vis the black goo and his gleefully hopping off the slippery slope, even if it did pose continuity issues, and ruined it by stapling it to a B-movie grade splatter flick.  Say it with me, Ridley... THE ALIEN ISN'T SCARY IF YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS ALL THE TIME.

 

[505thAirborne]

Just came back from seeing Covenant.......... Well it's a movie alright. Like Prometheus, the sets are amazing, CGI and music were wonderful (great homage to the score from ALIEN). 

Story wise & characters were so-so. In ALIEN & ALIENS there is a sense of danger, suspense and fear from the cast, very minimal in this one. 

On a plus side Danny McBride proved to me he can be a serious actor vs. how you usually see him Judd Apatow films. 

Overall the beginning of the movie is enjoyable, the last half is formula and the ending, well you can draw your own conclusion with that one. If there are anymore of these movies to be made, I'l be hesitant to see it in a theater. 

[sh9000]

 

[myk]

Finally saw the movie.

Well, some tried to say that this is the "Alien" movie for the new millenium.  If that's the case, then I feel sorry for the new millenium.  

Covenant just doesn't carry the horror or the suspense of the original Alien.  Covenant just feels like a standard monster movie with everyone doing stupid things and scrambling for cover.  I think, like someone before me mentioned, that if the Alien was more shadow than actually visible then that would bring back a lot of the fear and the thrill of the original movie. Instead, they fully show the creature to bolster the gore effect, which is what this movie was clearly more concerned with.  Overall I enjoyed it, but at this point they really should consider shelving the idea of trying to add on to the series, for good...

[Mazinger]

Just saw it.  It is an improvement over Prometheus.  Still doesn't feel like Alien/s, but it's not a bad story on its own.

I appreciated the sets and especially the depiction of the various space craft.

As expected, Fassbender was quite good.

I'll probably go see the 'next' one.

[myk]

The sets and designs of Prometheus and Covenant put Alien to shame, but somehow Alien has the superior story and experience for the viewer.  Will someone please tell Hollywood it's not just about CG...

 

[Kanedas Bike]

Honestly if Prometheus and Covenant were better written and had engaging characters (beyond David) then I'd be almost (not a fan of how he's de-mystified the Alien's origins) perfectly fine with direction that Scott is taking the franchise.

And we all know that if either movie "felt" like Alien this thread would be 9 pages of people saying how derivative the movies are. Let Alien and Aliens stand on their own for what they are, genre creating classics that people have tried to emulate for darn near 40 years.

I don't want Alien 2017, I just want a good movie, with more than one intelligent character that is well written and engaging. Things that neither Prometheus or Covenant are.

-b.

[kajnrig]

It's weird. When I saw the movie, I was fine with it. Mildly disappointed, maybe, but then monster movies aren't necessarily my thing anyway, so eh. It's only in discussing the movie that I've generated feelings of more than mild distaste.

Random thought: I would have liked it more if they had just played the ending straight. Walter kills David, the ship gets away, happy ending. I remember being particularly irritated when the camera cut to the knife on the floor during their battle.

[captain america]

I just saw it tonight, and I don't share the negative sentiment toward the film that many here do; quite the contrary. I think that Covenant and Prometheus are both fantastic films with deep and meaningful allegorical symbolism. Prometheus was easier to decipher, but Covenant wasn't as obvious at first sight. I'll definitely have to see it again.

I do think that David is absolutely chilling and diabolical; more sinister and complex than any villain I've encountered on celluloid before. In many respects it's a shame that so many of the other characters were so weakly written and unrealistic for their respective roles, but it didn't detract from the overall experience.

 

Edited May 27, 2017 by captain america

[Negotiator]

Spoiler

First wow bad decisions all over the place.  I think. If Danny McBride was on the landing party he would have killed David the moment he found out he was creating all this crap.

I feel like this was a slap in the face to anyone that wanted to see where Shaw was going. Instead she's killed off screen and her body is mutilated.  She fought so hard to survive and find answers. Now David is in control of everything.  What's the point of being vested into any new characters being a bad ass and out smarting the alien if they are just going to be dead the next movie.  I've always questioned if Ridley even considered aliens as part of the lore and it doesn't seem so.  I would have been fine if the destroyers where the main menace and no xenos at all but instead it's a crazy robot.  At this point just call it David covenant. And next David awakening.

 

Edited May 27, 2017 by Negotiator

[TangledThorns]

This movie is such a pariah that it's already a cult classic. Seriously though, I think this film will be more appreciated over time just like The Thing was.

[myk]

4 hours ago, Negotiator said:

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First wow bad decisions all over the place.  I think. If Danny McBride was on the landing party he would have killed David the moment he found out he was creating all this crap.

I feel like this was a slap in the face to anyone that wanted to see where Shaw was going. Instead she's killed off screen and her body is mutilated.  She fought so hard to survive and find answers. Now David is in control of everything.  What's the point of being vested into any new characters being a bad ass and out smarting the alien if they are just going to be dead the next movie.  I've always questioned if Ridley even considered aliens as part of the lore and it doesn't seem so.  I would have been fine if the destroyers where the main menace and no xenos at all but instead it's a crazy robot.  At this point just call it David covenant. And next David awakening.

 

Spoiler

Yeah I was looking forward to Noomi's reprisal of her role in Prometheus, and she does so as a corpse?  Good Lord lol.  Oh, and you gotta love one of the final battles against the xenomorph: you have a ship taking flight and your solution to deal with it is to GO OUTSIDE OF YOUR AIRBORNE CRAFT TO FIGHT IT?  Back to the beginning of the movie, I can't believe the Lander pilot came apart that easily.  I mean, she was supposed to be some sort of cool-hands, insterstellar pilot but completely loses it at the sight of blood?  I wish we could review Weiland Yutani's employee selection processes...

 

[505thAirborne]

2 hours ago, myk said:

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Yeah I was looking forward to Noomi's reprisal of her role in Prometheus, and she does so as a corpse?  Good Lord lol.  Oh, and you gotta love one of the final battles against the xenomorph: you have a ship taking flight and your solution to deal with it is to GO OUTSIDE OF YOUR AIRBORNE CRAFT TO FIGHT IT?  Back to the beginning of the movie, I can't believe the Lander pilot came apart that easily.  I mean, she was supposed to be some sort of cool-hands, insterstellar pilot but completely loses it at the sight of blood?  I wish we could review Weiland Yutani's employee selection processes...

 

Spoiler

That scene drove me nuts right away, not that she got scared I mean I get it, seeing that would frighten anyone. But why on earth would you lock your friend in the Med-lab with someone who's back is shaking violently while bleeding and breaking open, let them out for heavens sake and as you said get off the damn ship ship with your rifle, then shoot it. If was a poor way to set up the Lander being destroyed. 

 

[anime52k8]

1 hour ago, 505thAirborne said:

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That scene drove me nuts right away, not that she got scared I mean I get it, seeing that would frighten anyone. But why on earth would you lock your friend in the Med-lab with someone who's back is shaking violently while bleeding and breaking open, let them out for heavens sake and as you said get off the damn ship ship with your rifle, then shoot it. If was a poor way to set up the Lander being destroyed. 

 

Spoiler

I mean, I would have left them locked in there to die. Of course I would have just locked them OUTSIDE of the shuttle to die because screw that noise.

 

Edited May 27, 2017 by anime52k8

[505thAirborne]

14 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

I mean, I would have left them locked in there to die.

The guy I would have left, but the woman was clearly ok. 

[technoblue]

Spoiler

I can understand the medic wanting to help the sick guy, and I can understand her being surprised by the initial blood burst. I don't understand all the panic that came afterwards. That seemed too Hollywood, too dramatic and it broke my suspension of disbelief. We were asked to believe that this woman was a medical professional and not some trainee earning her degree back on earth with hohum knowledge of the human anatomy. The bit with the little monster popping out didn't matter to me as much because of all the overacting beforehand.

Kajnrig mentioned being disappointed by the end, by how the Walter/David fight wasn't played straight. I agree to feeling disappointed in that, myself. And I think there were other opportunities where the movie didn't play things straight like the original films. For me, I think the medbay scene was one where a straight character would have really enhanced the mood. Imagine how that scene would have played out if the medic just went to work trying to help the sick guy, and the pilot shut the door to give them privacy--no quarantine shenanigans at this point. However, since the pilot had nothing else to do, she starts to watch the operation through the door...

Things start to go wrong and the medic is confused...

The pilot gets notified that the landing team is on its way back with another sick person, and things get more confused...

At this point, the tension for the audience would rise naturally without any boring Hollywood tricks. We kind of expect what's coming too. The medic, if she is really a professional medic, could then ask the pilot to quarantine the med bay, avoiding all that crap drama we got, but creating real drama. Also, the pilot now knows that the sick guys are a danger to the lander. Even if it all ended the way it did, with a trashed lander, I think it would have ended up better if all the characters had been well defined to their actual roles. 

 

[M'Kyuun]

Spoiler

Just saw it. It was going well until they go to the planet, at which point I have to concur with others' impressions that there are numerous egregious mistakes made by an inept crew in response to situations that it should be hardened and trained for. As soon as they ventured off the ship without protective gear, I was thinking what a monumental disregard for protocol. Even here on Earth, scientists take precautions when entering caves, volcanic areas, and such where gases or unknown biological agents may exist. Unknown planet resplendent with biology(spores, bacterium, allergens, toxins, possible insect life, wildlife, etc) -yeah, let's leave our hands and heads exposed- what could possibly happen? Leaving the safety of the lander's interior to fight the Alien was pure Hollywood bravado BS, especially when they're heading towards the mothership to rendezvous. Instead, why not call the mothership and have them head to orbit, and proceed with due haste into space with your Alien stowaway where it most likely will die. I recognize that the Alien is a hardier lifeform than that within the continuity, but this crew isn't aware of that, so a quick trip into space would, logically, be a death sentence to it. And of course, there were numerous other foolish or over-the-top actions and responses as mentioned.

The strong point of the movie is the further development of David's character, and Walter's by extension, as there's a purposeful juxtaposition in play. It's a shame that the rest of the crew are basically throwaways that aren't really given any real substance, aside from a little history for Daniels and Crudup's self doubt inheriting the Captain's chair. Furthering the Alien's story does kinda remove much of the mystique it once held, although part of me also likes how the thing came about- it's just enjoyable sci-fi irony. However, I think the movie would have worked better if it had carried over some of the original trapped-with-a-creature plot with a path to discovery of David's shenanigans over the years slowly revealed. As it is, it's just an action flick devoid of any of the intensity or thrill of the original, and further marred by crew actions that defy good sense.

But, I have to say, Fassbender really carries the film as David and Walter, two sides of a similar coin, and watching him bring those characters to life was very enjoyable. Additionally, hat's off to Weta and all the other special effects folks for making it so pretty and giving it an 'Alien/s' look and feel. Loved all those big chains- kinda figured they'd play a part later in the film.

 

 

 

[kajnrig]

7 hours ago, anime52k8 said:

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I mean, I would have left them locked in there to die. Of course I would have just locked them OUTSIDE of the shuttle to die because screw that noise.

 

7 hours ago, 505thAirborne said:

The guy I would have left, but the woman was clearly ok. 

If they had been following some form of proper quarantine protocol, both Sick Guy and... was the girl with him the medic? or was the one left inside the lander the medic? or was she the pilot? I'll assume the girl with him is the medic, and the one in the lander is the pilot. Anyway, both Sick Guy and Medic should have been isolated from the environment prior to stepping on the ship, especially since bodily fluids have been ejected. Perhaps by way of a special entrance direct to the medbay. This ensures that the rest of the ship is not contaminated by... whatever, they don't know yet. Once in the medbay, both of them should preferably be sealed off from each other as well, and proper tests done. Medic therefore can probably get away with stripping down and undergoing a deep cleaning plus monitoring in quarantine for however long it took for symptoms to appear in Sick Guy + an hour or two. Sick Guy would be left to die.

What Pilot should NOT do is step into a contaminated area to help Medic. (And Medic should know this instead of yelling at Pilot.) But since she does, the moment she gets blood on her, she's compromised as well, and she cannot be allowed out of the medbay quarantine either. All three die, but this way whatever killed them does not leave the room to compromise the rest of the crew.

All of this must, of course, be communicated to the landing party so that they know what to expect. They might even be able to preemptively defeat the proto-Xenomorph (what are people calling it? Neomorph? Is that a Prometheus thing?) that's gestating within one of their own. Once they get to the lander, depending on the state of affairs on the lander, they undergo emergency quarantine in shifts so that some number of people are always on guard. If they have to, they defeat whatever's in the medbay and/or incinerate it completely, and then they leave the frickin' planet.

I can buy that they just plop down without any sort of protection whatsoever, maybe you assume that they ran a whole suite of high-tech scans beforehand and found everything A-OK and nothing suspicious and the black goo and accompanying fungal bodies just happen to slip by undetected; these scans are incredibly accurate and there's no reason not to trust them, etc. But once the biology/physiology of the crew members start to change after being down there for just a brief amount of time, they really should have known better.

Gah. Talking about this movie just winds me up too much.

[kajnrig]

Since the post editor likes to fight me at every turn, here's a double post for:

 

Edited May 28, 2017 by kajnrig

[sh9000]

https://www.target.com/p/alien-covenant-target-exclusive-blu-ray-dvd-digital/-/A-52521415

[Graham]

As much as I disliked so much of this movie, I'll probably still go and see 'Idiots in Space 3', if or when it gets made by Ridley, just for the pretty cinematography and cool spaceship designs.

[Negotiator]

am watching alienS extended edition to wash out covenant from brain

Edited May 29, 2017 by Negotiator

[TangledThorns]

4 hours ago, Negotiator said:

am watching alienS extended edition to wash out covenant from brain

Kinda doing the same by playing AVP 2010 and may play ALIEN: Isolation again for the second time this year. Not to wash out Covenant but just for the ALIEN thrills though AVP 2010 has not aged well for a DirectX 11 game.

[myk]

Love my AvP 2010.  And you guys are cruel; Covenant wasn't THAT bad.  It failed to capture the spirit or the effect of "Alien," but other than that Covenenat stands as its own uh...monster movie...