Alien: Covenant

Hm... so according to this guy it's not as much of a nostalgia retread as the studio may have been begging for...

"In the same sense, Scott’s Alien: Covenant is a mad scientist film – arguably, one of the maddest. It’s grandiose, exhilarating, vertiginously cynical and symphonically perverse, and around a million miles from the crowd-pleasing Alien retread Twentieth Century Fox have presumably been begging the 79-year-old director to make.

It certainly has its Alien-like moments: this is a series that feeds off our subliminally churning fears of penetration, pregnancy and childbirth, and there are some birth trauma set-pieces here to rival John Hurt’s classic cafeteria-table writhe-and-pop, as well as a new-but-related and sickeningly effective strand of horror that plays on the sanctity of human foetuses.

But it’s also very much a sequel to Scott’s previous 2012 Alien ‘origin story’ Prometheus – and every cryptic, half-explored creation metaphor from that unfairly scorned film comes lurching into focus here, with what feels like a maniacal “this’ll show ’em” glint."

Original Score: 5/5
Robbie Collin
Daily Telegraph (UK)

2 more fucking days!!

Supposedly a spoilerific article...

https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/ridley-scott-spills-spoileriffic-secrets-alien-covenant-140021937.html

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.

"This ... might just be the most nihilistic and disturbing entry in the series yet."

May 17, 2017 | Rating: 3/4
Sara Michelle Fetters
MovieFreak.com

Haha.. yes! 😂

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.

****ing bullshit garbage. Avoid 2/10.

Oh farts.

David.

Spoiler:
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.

Originally posted by jaden101
David.

Spoiler:
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.

If you're telling me the

Spoiler:
Engineers

Originally posted by Robtard
If you're telling me the

Spoiler:
Engineers

are now gone, then ****ing hell.

That's certainly possible.

Spoiler:
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.

Thanks for the spoiler tags.

You're welcome.

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...

🙁

Yeah, the lore really took a hit in the movie, imo.

Originally posted by -Pr-
Yeah, the lore really took a hit in the movie, imo.

A HUGE hit.. crybaby

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:
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:
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:
the fassbender twist, I saw coming really early on

just 6.5/10

Originally posted by Patient_Leech
A HUGE hit.. crybaby

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:
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 [b]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:
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. [/B]

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.

Originally posted by Ridley_Prime
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.

Originally posted by jaden101
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.

Originally posted by jaden101
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.

Originally posted by jaden101
This ended up not really satisfying anyone.

All I want to know about this movie is How much of a "remake/reboot" of the Org Alien Movie is it?

Originally posted by Flyattractor
[b]All I want to know about this movie is How much of a "remake/reboot" of the Org Alien Movie is it? [/B]