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Alien: Covenant


AncalagonTheBlack

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8 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

Yeah, now I just don't understand.  "None of it adds up at this exact moment partially through a planned series of movies, so I give up, the guy who gave us Alien must be doing a stupid."   

At least let him finish before you decide that his incomplete story has holes in it, especially when you mostly seem to be upset that what he is telling doesn't line up with what you imagined the story would be.  And if stories only went exactly where we imagined they would, well, Ned would have been pardoned and ended up at the Wall with Jon to fight off the Others.  And that'd be boring.  

I gave Scott the benefit of the doubt when it came to Covenant, I thought at the end of Promethus that the next movie might be able to fix that mess if it meant that it was all leading into something grander, if the stupidity was explained and wiped away. Covenant didn't do that, in fact it made things worse. There is only so much faith that I can put into the hope that another movie is going to solve fundamental errors. I made that mistake before, with the SW prequels, the Hobbit movies, the Matrix sequels.. I can't think of a single situation where a sequel has managed to put such a new light on the previous movie that it fixed it. 

The problem is there are simply too many outright bad decisions here, which are on screen for anyone to see. It might be too late for this franchise.

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On May 30, 2017 at 1:00 PM, dbunting said:

I saw the movie on Saturday and enjoyed it. I am a casual "Alien" fan and I think that allows me more freedom than others who are more invested in it.

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Can someone explain why David didn't have a hole in the underside of his chin when he was back on board the ship? She stabbed her nail up his chin while fighting, I thought as for shadowing so when you saw it on him in the ship you would be like, oh no it's him! But then it strangely is gone, yet he has scratches on his face?

Other than the normal acting stupid and wandering off alone it was an enjoyable enough movie. Worth my $5 and couple hours, have seen far worse movies than this!

I have a question for you, you say you hated it...then why did you pay to go back and see it again? I have only paid to see a couple movies in the theater more than once, and I loved them the first time. Why on earth pay to see something you hate twice?

I had agreed to see it with my family but went to see it with a friend before the family thing happened. I was really worried my family would hate it. I was surprised by how much fun we all had. I admit it is odd to have such a change of heart, I went from hating it to loving it in the space of a week. 

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I was reading the Aliens article on Wikpedia and it mentioned this: 

Quote

...the android Bishop, toward whom Ripley is initially hostile following her experience with the traitorous android Ash aboard the Nostromo and the Marion.[8]

I had no idea what the Marion was, so I clicked it and wow I can't believe this is a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Shadows_(Alien)

I can't stop laughing at the whole concept of Ripley being woken up between Alien and Aliens, encountering an unrelated group of Xenomorphs and having her memory erased before being put back into stasis prior to the events of Aliens. 

Also weird that Wikipedia treats it as being canon. Are we going to get a movie where David leaves some Xenomorph eggs on yet another barren planet? 

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Hey that ship had a complicated plopdown, in like 3 stages.   So it's a bit okay to say their brains exploded (first) from having to recalculate where to run twice.   And then a deer in headlights type thing maybe took hold, where all they had left was a panicky feeling of "just keep running".     Also, when i'm running i can't  keep looking behind me all that often or i fall down (from not looking forward).     Vickers was an okay character so that was kinda a shame when she got her karma back.   Chalk it up to how she hadn't spent much time in the field.  

 

I wonder if a xenomorph would hunt a big butted human before an equally scared skinny human.  

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The running in a straight line away from something tall and straight falling on you is actually this weird phenomenon that happens in real life. Not that that moment in Prometheus wasn't stupid but for some reason its a pet peeve of mine that people think other people behave like Spock when giant things are falling on them

On 6/2/2017 at 4:17 PM, RumHam said:

I was reading the Aliens article on Wikpedia and it mentioned this: 

I had no idea what the Marion was, so I clicked it and wow I can't believe this is a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Shadows_(Alien)

I can't stop laughing at the whole concept of Ripley being woken up between Alien and Aliens, encountering an unrelated group of Xenomorphs and having her memory erased before being put back into stasis prior to the events of Aliens. 

Also weird that Wikipedia treats it as being canon. Are we going to get a movie where David leaves some Xenomorph eggs on yet another barren planet? 

Oh God, Alien canon is possibly the most fucked up thing ever.

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Wow, David has problems. And I'm not talking about his willingness to murder people in order to achieve his goal, which as I understand is to create the 'Perfect Organism'. It's him believing that he can create a 'Perfect Organism' from a bio-weapon. The Xenomorphs he's created can never be his 'Perfect Organism' for a simple reason. They can not sustain themselves. First off, in order to reproduce they require a host. OK fine. Many species need hosts in order to reproduce, and yet are still able to thrive. The problem with the Xenomorphs is that from the moment they are born they try to kill all creatures they see, including host species. Not only do they hamper their own ability to reproduce, they cull their own food sources for no reason whatsoever. I mean, the Xenomorphs don't even bother eating most of the people they take down. They just leave the corpse and go find something else to kill. Left to themselves these creatures will always drive themselves to extinction.

Poor David. But what should you expect from a cyborg that believes Byron wrote Ozymandias? 

Walter now. That cyborg would've created one helluva species had his programming allowed it.

Edit: Also, were Walter and David the same height? At times it seemed like one was taller than the other, but I'm not sure if that was only because one of them was standing on higher ground.

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  • 1 month later...

watched Alien:Covenant. The film's fine as a b-movie sci-fi horror movie, I guess. It has all the standard tropes of people behaving like utter fucking idiots so that you don't ultimately mind too much when the alien gets them. Hey, there's some blood to slip in! Whoa, can I do that to - looks fun. Let's all do it. While we're at it why don't we snort some alien spores - what could possibly go wrong?

But seriously, in the future is it a pre-requisite to be a moron in order to get into outer space? With this crew and the entire cast of interstellar it seems to be the case. Let's risk thousands of lives when the computer is clearly stating you'll fuck the ship up if you fly any closer to that storm. Because your wife is there. I understand people feeling and reacting this way but it's a pretty good argument for why those type of people shouldn't be on a crew - especially with their loved ones.

The other weird thing is that, despite really disliking everything about Prometheus besides it being unintentionally funny, I felt like this film shat on it and somehow managed to make Prometheus even more worse in hindsight. Was that the original plan of the Prometheus sequel, in which case we were spared having to watch it. Or was it just Ridley Scott throwing a pissy fit? Either way I guess I just have to hope David suffered a malfunction from having his head torn off in Prometheus as his behaviour here didn't gel with my memory of the character from Prometheus. Maybe it's a tradition in the alien franchise to shit on characters from the previous film and kill them off-screen? Usually not by the same director though.

I still don't get why the bio-weapon bothers with face huggers when clearly infecting people via flying spores is far, far more effective. That didn't make sense in Prometheus and it still doesn't here.

The other thing with David is that it was pretty obvious it was him who came back to space with them. He must have a flare for the dramatic though as i don't really understand why he bothered helping the other two corner and kill the alien. I thought he loved the aliens so why didn't he just not herd it but rather herd the humans into an easier kill zone for the alien? I guess he was mad though so whatever.

On 04/06/2017 at 7:38 AM, A True Kaniggit said:

Edit: Also, were Walter and David the same height? At times it seemed like one was taller than the other, but I'm not sure if that was only because one of them was standing on higher ground.

Walter was the one impersonating a hobbit all the time, so David's boots may have made him taller than Walter. I'm at a loss if you thought David was taller.

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45 minutes ago, red snow said:

But seriously, in the future is it a pre-requisite to be a moron in order to get into outer space? With this crew and the entire cast of interstellar it seems to be the case.

I suggest you don't watch Life.

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I can understand that criticism but then, you wouldn't have a movie. 

 

And as a fan of Prometheus, I hated Covenant. I was bored throughout. I think David pretended to be Walter and helped the crew so he could get on the ship and use the ship for his experiments. If he hadn't pretended to be Walter and helped them, maybe the pilot wouldn't have picked them up or something ? My memory is a bit fuzzy here (but then again, I was bored)

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I watched this a couple of days back when the digital release came out.Yeah,i knew it wasn't going to be great,hence i didn't waste money watching it in the cinema.But my god,it was beyond shitty.I found nothing redeeming about it.The least i expected was that CGI would be top of the line.....and it was wonky in places.of course ,i won't mention the flat characters and nonsense plot.

I would agree in this case with Tarantino,that for some directors,it really would be the right thing to do and hang up the hat and retire gracefully.Maybe just produce stuff and leave the directing/writing to younger and ambitious people.

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5 hours ago, The Unborn said:

I can understand that criticism but then, you wouldn't have a movie. 

No, you can. You just have to be clever.

Alien and Aliens both had very intelligent people doing pretty good things and losing, because their enemy was just that much better. You didn't rely on anyone doing incredibly stupid things; at best, you had betrayal (like Ash and Burke) but they did it not out of stupidity or even compassion, but out of self-interest or orders. 

Having people be stupid in order to generate tension is lazy. 

 

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9 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

There are too many new posts in the Alien thread right now.

I think I'll head off into a deserted area of the board.

Preferably somewhere that no one can hear me scream, even if I'm attacked by a Xenother. 

I think you're mostly safe. They mostly come out at night. Mostly.

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2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

No, you can. You just have to be clever.

Alien and Aliens both had very intelligent people doing pretty good things and losing, because their enemy was just that much better. You didn't rely on anyone doing incredibly stupid things; at best, you had betrayal (like Ash and Burke) but they did it not out of stupidity or even compassion, but out of self-interest or orders. 

Having people be stupid in order to generate tension is lazy. 

 

Exactly. People can be rational and competent and you can still have tension and drama from them reacting to it. It shows how Ridley doesn't have much of a guage for scripts. It's 2 years since he made the Martian (which featured intelligent people dealing with problems - not creating them) and he follows it up with this.

I'd also much rather have a character struggle with the choice between duty and love. That'd be really interesting but in this film character's faced with such a choice don't even pause to consider they just recklessly try and save someone even if there's maybe a better option if they stopped to think for a minute.

7 hours ago, The Unborn said:

 

 

And as a fan of Prometheus, I hated Covenant. I was bored throughout. I think David pretended to be Walter and helped the crew so he could get on the ship and use the ship for his experiments. If he hadn't pretended to be Walter and helped them, maybe the pilot wouldn't have picked them up or something ? My memory is a bit fuzzy here (but then again, I was bored)

I didn't like Promotheus but felt bad for the film given its treatment here.

Oh, that bit made sense. I'm just not so sure why he carried up the pretense once he was onboard the main ship. I thought they were going to rescue that plot by having the new captain catch onto him in the med-bay but sadly she didn't realise until far too late.

Pretty impressive how the film made Prometheus pointless and essential itself pointless by the end.

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I think you're mostly safe. They mostly come out at night. Mostly.

Nicely done. My brothers watch the film whenever it happens to be on TV and I'm sure they watch it just so they can say that line at the right time.

I wonder what's left for the franchise? I'm pretty sure someone could make another good alien film. But it's looking like it's not Ridley Scott. It's tricky as Prometheus was trying to do something different while Covenant was trying to go back to the standard formula. Although both films maybe concentrate too much on androids/engineers rather than the humans and the alien.

There must be some directors out there who could do something different or at least deliver a war/claustrophobic film that delivers. Neil Blomkamp's version still seemed interesting.

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8 minutes ago, red snow said:

I wonder what's left for the franchise? I'm pretty sure someone could make another good alien film. But it's looking like it's not Ridley Scott. It's tricky as Prometheus was trying to do something different while Covenant was trying to go back to the standard formula. Although both films maybe concentrate too much on androids/engineers rather than the humans and the alien.

There must be some directors out there who could do something different or at least deliver a war/claustrophobic film that delivers. Neil Blomkamp's version still seemed interesting.

 I thought the Aliens: Hive comic from Dark Horse was a solid idea. Seems there might be a good film in there somewhere.

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8 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 I thought the Aliens: Hive comic from Dark Horse was a solid idea. Seems there might be a good film in there somewhere.

My brother used to read a lot of the Dark Horse comics and said there were plenty of good ideas in there - including the evolution of weyland-yutani developing the aliens as weapons. I just have no idea whether they were wel executed. Then again, as long as the ideas are good the movies can use them.

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I know how to make a great Alien movie...

A bunch of peeps land on a planet for basically any reason, over the course of a short exploration of what is not Washington terrain absent animal noises somebody gets sick.

People panic, quarantine procedures are broken due to accidents or emotional responses. A dudes chest (or back, that was cool) explodes and an alien is loose on the ship/compound/lander.

Somebody or somebodies survive by outwitting outlasting and outplaying the xenomorph, but what really seperates them from the pack is an intangible survival instinct that matches the creature's murderous sophistication.

We just saved the franchise folks.

 

 

In other words, the first 45 minutes of covenant minus the stupid religious stuff and New Zealand mountainscape taken to a conclusion that isn't fucking moronic.

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