Alien Covenant

[LadyTevar]

One joke I've heard is that Ridley Scott got the plotlines of "Blade Runner" mixed up with Promie and Covenant. David's little beef with his 'dad', his treatment of the humans, etc.

[Shroom Man 777]

But we got the answer and it sucks, same with the answer of who the Space Jockeys were. Not some completely alien creature or eldritch abomination, nah just a bunch of Shaq sized pale Mark Strong looking humans, thats fucking it.

OK you're alright to me now.

[Khaat]

Maybe the reason all the corporate people in the other movies are so willing to participate in get-the-xenomorph plan that gets them killed is they're a product of this negative eugenics programs whereas space haulers and prisoners and space marines are largely outside of it.

Or it's a commentary on the presumption of "safe" exceptionalism in society - they act stupid because their culture has shielded them from consequences of significance. The "truck drivers" on the Nostromo actually live with actual immediate, potentially deadly consequences, Burke and Weyland (& academics) personally never did.

And "blinded by arrogance" is a running theme: Burke thought he'd get off LV426 with alien-impregnated Ripley and Jordan with time to clean it up later, just as Weyland expected "come to me, my child!" from the Engineers.

Hells, in Prometheus, David specifically asked, "How far would you go to get your answers?" before infecting Charlie. Charlie took that for hyperbole, rather than the direct question he should now (after returning from an alien ship, with alien life on board) realistically expect it to be - discounting all the time he spent querying David about androids. At least Charlie was drunk at the time.

I don't think this carries through for AvP or Resurrection, which seemed to be horror movies with the standard tropes, though there were instances of presumption of personal immunity (even among some of the "monsters"). Some of these were rightfully violated, like the love interest in AvPR getting killed - it is a monster movie!

[JI_Joe84]

I finally got to see it last Friday. I kind of liked it, kinda saw where David was going especially at the last just kinda has me wondering cause the guy looked like the other David,what was his name?, How did he have time to make himself look exactly like him? Did he download​ his self into the other David?
I was kind of glad when the captain got a facehugger. The others not so much, except the idiot that saw alien puff balls and decided to fuck with them, I mean I know being on a alien planet with vegetation and breathable air would be incredible but you would expect some common sense. You can't just go romping around will nilly and not expect some kind of microbial infection trouble. Jeezus..

[Q99]

Alien 1 had quarantine procedure, they just broke it after Dallas seemed fine and the alien was dead. It'd be interesting to see an alien movie where quarantine was 100% followed...

[Darth Nostril]

Alien 1 had quarantine procedure, they just broke it after Dallas seemed fine and the alien was dead. It'd be interesting to see an alien movie where quarantine was 100% followed...

You mean Kane (John Hurt) who went into the alien derelict and wound up with the facehugger on him. Dallas was the captain of the ship who went into the air ducts to flush the alien out with a flamethrower.
Also quarantine procedure was not followed at all, the android, Ash, deliberately broke procedure to let the infected crewmember on board. (As per his secret programming - crew expendable.)
After that it lied about Kane's condition, lied about the medi-scan results and did everything it could to keep the crew in the dark about the situation.

If it hadn't been for the reprogrammed android then Ripley would have got her way, quarantine procedures would have been followed and the whole cluster fuck would never have happened.

[Q99]

Been way too long since I watched that, thanks ^^

Anyway, yea- key point, they had a way to short circuit the whole chain of events, it was just circumvented.

[Raesene]

Left the cinema at the time the first alien emerged out of the back of the crewman.

Kept away from spoilers until I watched it, didn't keep me interested in anything the characters were going to do (even after seeing them find Shaw's dogtag and picture) and I wasn't interested in a rehash of aliens ripping humans to pieces.
Reading through the thread now I don't think I missed anything except more stupid potential colonists who an hour or so after landing on a foreign planet start smoking after walking around without any idea about the planets ecosphere or perform similar acts.

At least I got to see the Star Wars trailer again on the big screen.

[Q99]

One thing I'm hearing others note is apparently Alien Covenant has a lot of focus on the violation of women.

Which, of course, contrasts with the original Alien which opens up with the violation of a man, the original facehugging and chestbursting scene.

[Joun_Lord]

One thing I'm hearing others note is apparently Alien Covenant has a lot of focus on the violation of women.

Which, of course, contrasts with the original Alien which opens up with the violation of a man, the original facehugging and chestbursting scene.

In some ways yeah though this is a bit of a carry over from Promi. Women do arguably get it the worse, Shaw being impregnated by the trilobyte, Shaw being used for vaguely sexual experiments and killed off, Daniels apparently going to suffer the same fate, and women seemingly the main focus of the hallway quasi-slasher film chases.

Thats not to say men don't get violated too, Shaw's boyfriend getting black gooed date raped by David being a notable example in Promi, but maybe its just me and being kinda bored as fuck watching Covenant wondering when the purple wort wort aliens were going to show up to fight Jesus allegory Doomguy but it seemed that women were getting it worse. It seemed less equal opportunity violence and violation then other Alien movies.

All and all Covenant seems to follow more normal horror movie cliches then other Alien films. Panicky "female hysteria" that exists only to make the situation worse and show woman as emotional, female wandering off alone to be killed, and the tried and true and only appealing to teenage boys death of a woman after a nudey shower scene. Maybe its nostalgia goggles but I don't really remember the other Alien movies hitting the cliche points so hard. There was stupid characters but both men and women. There was TnA but it wasn't quite so blatant as some people snogging in a shower. There was tits in Alien Resurrection but I doubt anybody was really getting off on that particular scene.

I dunno, Covenant seems so damn lazy. But I'll admit I did not like the movie so perhaps I'm looking for shit to bitch about. Just wasn't a good prequel to Alien and not a good sequel to Prometheus

[NecronLord]

Alien is of course, famous for largely having been written for 'male' protagonists with only surnames, then with each character being read for by both male and female actors.

Though notably, the scene with Ripley undressing before getting in the space-suit locker was a Ridley decision - in the script Roby (later Ripley) darts into the suit locker and pulls the suit on over his/her work-clothes. As was the decision to have Lambert's death be via penetration with the tail - that was even shot with an extra instead of Veronica Cartwright, and she was surprised to see that cut in the premier.

So this isn't really new for Ridley, if you want to make that argument.

[Q99]

There's also the all about Riply surviving vs all about David causing everything angle.

[JLTucker]

I saw it and thought it was good. Prometheus and Alien 3 are far better, though. I enjoyed the religious angle in Covenant quite a bit. I'll post more later.

[Guardsman Bass]

I saw it, and thought it kind of sucked. Visually it looks great, including the ship, the planet from orbit and the ground, and the xenomorphs themselves. But -
Spoiler

1. The plot's straightforward, but the third act aboard the ship feels really weird. The whole sequence where the xenomorph gets out even though the one guy never got successfully implanted with a facehugger and goes through the ship before they vent it into space (Act III) feels completely tacked-on. I can totally imagine a version of that film that doesn't include that, and goes straight from them getting back into space to them going back into hypersleep before the "It's David!" reveal and the ending of the film.

Maybe that's what Ridley Scott was talking about when he admitted that fan complaints influenced this film. The funny thing is that it's a great sequence even thought it does feel tacked on.

2. So, it's definitely got to be alternative continuity, right? David genocided all the Engineers on their own homeworld (which incidentally was also a visually good sequence), and the movie takes place in 2104. There's only 18 years for David's creation to spawn hundreds of eggs, get loaded on a Space Jockey ship, and crash on to LV-426 in time for the Nostromo to show up in 2122.

3. The movie is so David- and Walter-centric that I can't remember much about the other characters besides Daniels despite seeing it only a few hours ago. Ridley Scott seems to think David is really interesting, but I don't. He's just a mad robot creating monsters because he has a god complex and hates humanity.

4. Lots of character-stupid in this one, as others pointed out already. No masks or anything quarantine-related in terms of precautions (contrast that with Alien, where Ripley was going to keep them quarantined until Ash broke it himself), so they could readily suck up the alien spores.

[Burak Gazan]

SO, when the fella I read on twitter was advocating using any and all means to stop Scott from making any more Alien movies, including Murder Inc. , wasn't kidding at all?

Yup

[Q99]

SO, when the fella I read on twitter was advocating using any and all means to stop Scott from making any more Alien movies, including Murder Inc. , wasn't kidding at all?

Yup

That's... dark.

It's not what Alien IMO should be, but they're just movies. Hardly the worst ever either, even if they do suffer from missing-the-point.

[Tribble]

Alien 1 had quarantine procedure, they just broke it after Dallas seemed fine and the alien was dead. It'd be interesting to see an alien movie where quarantine was 100% followed...

You mean Kane (John Hurt) who went into the alien derelict and wound up with the facehugger on him. Dallas was the captain of the ship who went into the air ducts to flush the alien out with a flamethrower.
Also quarantine procedure was not followed at all, the android, Ash, deliberately broke procedure to let the infected crewmember on board. (As per his secret programming - crew expendable.)
After that it lied about Kane's condition, lied about the medi-scan results and did everything it could to keep the crew in the dark about the situation.

If it hadn't been for the reprogrammed android then Ripley would have got her way, quarantine procedures would have been followed and the whole cluster fuck would never have happened.

That's what I really liked about Alien. It's one of the few horror movies where the victims died due incomplete knowledge about the threat they were facing combined with active sabotage rather than their own stupidity. The Nostromo crew acted pretty much as well as could be expected given the circumstances, whereas this crew may as well have had "Too Dumb to Live!" signs stapled to their foreheads.

That goes for the Engineers too; you'd think that the supposed creators of humanity would be smart enough to know that "biological military vessel suddenly appearing over our airspace without explanation after thousands of years without contact" probably = bad? As in "we'd better do whatever it takes to stop the ship from reaching populated areas right now because we could all potentially end up dying" bad? Instead of just letting the damn thing fly right over their cities to drop bombs on them?

[Q99]

That's what I really liked about Alien. It's one of the few horror movies where the victims died due incomplete knowledge about the threat they were facing combined with active sabotage rather than their own stupidity. The Nostromo crew acted pretty much as well as could be expected given the circumstances, whereas this crew may as well have had "Too Dumb to Live!" signs stapled to their foreheads.

Which frankly is so much scarier than normal horror movies.

You can not make any mistake or make only perfectly reasonable minor ones, and still die.

That goes for the Engineers too; you'd think that the supposed creators of humanity would be smart enough to know that "biological military vessel suddenly appearing over our airspace without explanation after thousands of years without contact" probably = bad? As in "we'd better do whatever it takes to stop the ship from reaching populated areas right now because we could all potentially end up dying" bad? Instead of just letting the damn thing fly right over their cities to drop bombs on them?

Or have a response in place to take it down once the attack started?

From Prometheus I got the impression they were paranoid and didn't like humans.

[Q99]

Covenant gets a brutal 71% second-week drop in the box office

(Though I disagree with the article's conclusion that it's problem is being attached to the Aliens brand rather than Promie)

[JI_Joe84]

Covenant gets a brutal 71% second-week drop in the box office

(Though I disagree with the article's conclusion that it's problem is being attached to the Aliens brand rather than Promie)

The new pirates movie is out. It's been a while and people love the pirates of the Caribbean. That's got a lot to do with it.

[Q99]

The new pirates movie is out. It's been a while and people love the pirates of the Caribbean. That's got a lot to do with it.

Yea, that's probably the biggest factor. It has mixed word of mouth but if it wasn't for Pirates it'd not have dropped *so* much.

[Guardsman Bass]

SO, when the fella I read on twitter was advocating using any and all means to stop Scott from making any more Alien movies, including Murder Inc. , wasn't kidding at all?

Yup

That's... dark.

It's not what Alien IMO should be, but they're just movies. Hardly the worst ever either, even if they do suffer from missing-the-point.

They're not bad movies, either. That's why I said in my post that it "kind of sucked" rather than outright sucked. I do think Ridley Scott isn't particularly interested in making Alien movies anymore - he wants to make movies about the android David. He's said out right in an interview that they added the aliens back into the sequel to Prometheus because of fan complaints. Maybe they should just let him make his Prometheus sequels and hand over the Alien franchise to someone else.*

* Although I'm at a loss as to where you could go with the Alien franchise that isn't simply rehashing one of the first three movies (and mainly the first or second one).

[JLTucker]

I just don;t like the idea that
Spoiler

David is the reason why the alien exists in Alien and its sequels. It's fucking stupid.

To me, Prometheus felt like a stellar horror movie with some mystery involved that really didn't have me asking any more questions after it was over. Covenant undoes that by falling prey to what almost every single modern horror movie does: explain everything. This series isn't science fiction. It never has been. The franchise was horror from the start and to succeed, in my opinion, is to continue to make the horror. By explaining things, the horror that existed in the first three is gone. Who cares about the origin of the alien?

[PREDATOR490]

They're not bad movies, either. That's why I said in my post that it "kind of sucked" rather than outright sucked. I do think Ridley Scott isn't particularly interested in making Alien movies anymore - he wants to make movies about the android David. He's said out right in an interview that they added the aliens back into the sequel to Prometheus because of fan complaints. Maybe they should just let him make his Prometheus sequels and hand over the Alien franchise to someone else.*
...

Ridley Scott has hijacked the Alien franchise so he can make his own pet project. If these movies were standalone or set so they do not screw with the lore of the franchise then at least they could be ignored. As is, these new movies are already really poor in story and quality to the point that it literally undermines the franchise.

Prometheus was an atrocious attempt to have the cake and eat it by spinning on being a prequel with the barest intention of doing so. Getting pissy because the fans rightly complained about the bait and switch stunt is horrifically disjointed.

If he wanted to avoid those complaints then the obvious solution was to make this a new franchise: Android
Android Prometheus
Android Covenant

Handing over the alien franchise is kinda pointless at this point since these films are now cemented as being part of it. If this had been done from the start I could have been saved the expense of going to the cinema to watch Prometheus.

[B5B7]

I have just watched this movie. Here is the progression of themes:
1950s/1960s - leading man/men who is/are combined competent scientist/action hero who saves the day.

Alien - a group of ordinary space workers with limited resources faces a hostile alien entity of which they have no knowledge or previous experience, and which has the advantages of already being on their ship and receiving covert assistance from a robot aligned against the crew.
Only one survivor (+ her cat). Considering the odds the crew did the best they could and were not moronic.

Aliens - a group of soldiers investigate a fallen colony. They have been deliberately outfitted with non-mission appropriate weaponry due to a bizarre design feature in the colonial base (a nuclear power plant in the ceiling instead of basement). Three humans plus a synthetic survive (but not for long due to the controversial sequel):

Alien3 - not well liked by fans but compared to the more recent movies is a masterpiece. Both it and Alien Resurrection have plenty of survivors.

AvP movies - not direct sequels/prequels but side movies, so not considered here.

Prometheus - a ship with plenty of resources but a dumb crew is wiped out. One survivor plus a synthetic (who like in Alien was working against them).

Alien Covenant - predictably has a well resourced dumb crew. Is very similar to Prometheus with David again the villain.
Its a toss up between this and Prometheus as to which is worse.

Some issues from Covenant:
Starts with a discussion between David and his creator. There is an implication that the created is superior to the creator, which implies humans superior to engineers. David's creator has belief humans not result of "blind evolution" but was created, but where does that leave the engineers? If they naturally evolved then simply adds one step to the process of humans coming from natural evolution.
A problem typical of these movies - Y2104 yet expedition team tech is not superior to 2017 tech. Should have jet packs or hover bikes. Of course, this doesn't fit in with what these movies need for their drama.

The crew all basically ended dying because of the panicking cowardice of one woman who locks up a brave woman with a xenomorph.
The crew is spread all over the place when on the planet instead of in large groups.
New captain knows David is untrustworthy but obeys David's suggestion to look in an egg and gets facehugged.
Traitorous synthetic David experiments on neomorphs to create xenomorphs.
Woman on a cable on lander is silly. The old ID switch re: David/Walter.

A combined exploration/colonization ship needs (should have) a much larger crew, but of course for purposes of drama (and less actors to pay) has a smallish crew.