I'm re-reading some of the Fire and Stone / Life and Death comics and for those who haven't read them, the Prometheus: Fire and Stone one is pretty freakin' awesome and there's a little tidbit: most people are under the impression that Weyland died and was buried on earth. That's the "official story," I suppose.
For me it was stuck between two stories. They've obviously taken on board the criticisms of Prometheus and tried to leave the cringey religious aspects of it behind and move closer to Alien and ends up halfway between them in tone. Plenty horrific body horror. Bits of the whole "creator" aspects although from a different perspective. The two biggest problems is that you give absolutely no ****s about any of the 1 dimensional, boring characters. Contrast that with Aliens where some characters like Apone and Drake got hardly any screen time but you still cared when they got killed. With this you'll come out struggling to remember any of their names. Something that could have been somewhat rectified if they bothered to include the scene in the extended trailer with James Franco before they go into cryo sleep. As it happens they didn't and Franco dies without even coming out of his cryo pod. A small mercy given what an annoying **** he is.
The other problem is that they go out of their way to telegram the most obvious of obvious plot twists. There must be at least half a dozen blatant hints before it happens and if you somehow miss them you are officially the dumbest person in the world. Then there's the fact that if you haven't watched the prologue you have no idea why David does what he does in the flashback and even then it's not really explained not to mention that what he does basically destroys one of the most potentially interesting threads the series could have explored. And once again it's only half a story strung out for the sole purpose of making another sequel and making more money.
David. [SPOILER - highlight to read]: an emotionless synthetic humanoid with such monumental daddy issues that he not only wants all of humanity to die but he also genicidally wipes out the entire species that created the species that his "father" evolved from.
I'm not gonna agree that it was THAT terrible, but no, it wasn't very good. Incredibly underwhelming and predictable. You could say it was better than Prometheus, but that wouldn't be saying much.
I am worried for the next movie in the series though.
That's certainly possible. [SPOILER - highlight to read]: As soon as David enters their home world atmosphere he docks with a giant scorpion tail looking thing then releases almost all the bioweapon and kills all the non plant life on the entire planet. It might be safe to assume that it isn't the only planet they live on though but there's nothing hinted at or stated either way. In fairness it's an awesome looking scene.
It just has no explanation other than David hating the way humanoids have treated him. Which is then contradicted by the fact that he had affection for Shaw which is also then contradicted by the fact that he kills her to create the aliens even though they've already been created in Prometheus anyway.
Just got back from this and I'll elaborate more eventually, but overall this felt like a major miss step from what Prometheus (and even the Covenant viral marketing campaign) set up. Bye-bye interesting mythology...
We waited 5 years for the writers to decide to throw out everything interesting that was presented in Prometheus. To me the movie shat on Prometheus. We didn't need to see the xenomorphs in the next film or any of the other fan service. I thought they would do some simple fan service with Covenant and then get on to some elements from Prometheus, but it looks like they threw out the more interesting elements, the grander mythology and are going to pursue some stupid tropes instead. Because of retarded fans bitching about Prometheus Ridley has settled for some stupid tropes for throw-away entertainment like he's trying to make the Fast and the Furious franchise in space because they're not doubt make it more and more ridiculous as they go.
Random thoughts:
First half or so is an awesome little sci-fi horror film. Ridley does excel at horror.
I actually thought the little character development elements were good, humanized the characters very well with some great actors.
Action scenes are not so good and felt thrown in unnecessarily, same with the xenomorph. Action scenes were very dark and not particularly engaging.
CGI wasn't very good.
Why did it take several writers to turn what could have been a fascinating mythology into a stupid trope of [SPOILER - highlight to read]: an Android mad scientist with Daddy Issues. And the fact that David killed Shaw when he truly loved her is effing stupid and not even consistent. And he can control the creatures?? That's fucking stupid!
The Engineers and the "black goo" are what was set up from Prometheus and their origins and uses would have been fascinating, but apparently "fans" want to see xenomorphs again and again instead of something more interesting. Fuck!
And I've read the comics that they did recently and it's obvious that they completely changed what they wanted to do because in the comics the xenos are all over LV-223. So if [SPOILER - highlight to read]: David created the xenos then they are going to have to explain how they got on to LV-223 and other planets
Goddamnit, the series is an even bigger mess now. The Alien films have always been sort of flawed (especially Resurrection, haha), but this is just getting to be too much.
So, should I still consider seeing this? I kinda enjoyed Prometheus for what it was although was mixed on it, but from the reactions here and from some others, I'm not so sure... Even with generic tropes I can enjoy some things to a certain degree, but for this IDK.
saw this already.. t'was disappointed in this.. the story I felt could've ben better... the violence was not enough to satiate my appetite.... the cgi was ok
[SPOILER - highlight to read]: the fassbender twist, I saw coming really early on
Expanding the mythology in the way Prometheus was pointing would have been more ridiculous than the whole Necromonger/Furyan nonsense in the Riddick expanded mythology.
Saying that, I do think that if you have a vision you should have the courage to carry it out and so ignoring the whole origins of humanity and why the engineers wanted to destroy humanity was stupid. This ended up not really satisfying anyone.
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Last edited by jaden101 on May 19th, 2017 at 10:45 PM
Go off the trailers. If you like the way it looks go for it. The first hour or so I thought was really, really good. If Ridley had done a movie like this before Prometheus it probably would have been really, really good as fan service, but of course then it would have just been a remake of Alien basically.
Of course I disagree with you.
Yeah, I think Ridley has been bullied by fans/studio to compromise what he wanted to do. And everyone bitching about Damon Lindelof just caused a bunch more cooks to join in in the kitchen, so it's a big fucking mess now.
Exactly.
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Last edited by Patient_Leech on May 19th, 2017 at 11:33 PM
Technically it's a sequel to Prometheus, but it's written in such a way as to rehash some major elements of Alien and ignore all the questions raised in Prometheus. It's a brilliant strategy: piss off everyone.
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