Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

Post by drizzle »

they definitely tried to make the space jockeys the selling point but it's funny that you don't really learn much about them in Prometheus aside from them maybe being dicks, and seems like their whole civilization just gets wiped out in this one. apparently Scott originally planned to explicitly suggest that Jesus was a space jockey but then pulled back on that.


thinking about what ric and edm said above, it's kinda lame that the xenomorphs are essentially test tube grown things. they don't really need an explanation either way, but the idea of them as just malignant critters that randomly exist in the universe is more interesting to me. No different from a million other bugs that exist only to eat and procreate, these just happen to be big enough to eat us.
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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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^everything they've done post alien has destroyed the mystique of the creatures. there's a good reason that it should be humanoid in the first movie: it gestated inside a human. who knows what their "natural" form is -- they could even be macroscopic viruses, who rely on other living things to reproduce. the twist with the android not only following order to preserve the specimen, but actually having some kind of emotional appreciation of the 'perfect creatures' just deepens the mystery.

JC turned them to hive insects. having a queen suited the movie's theme of motherhood, but it's pretty bland compared to the first. whole series followed that lead until scott took it back to some origin of man/aryan allstar lovecraft shit. which is a cool idea but didn't really come off imo.
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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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I suspect Ridley Scott himself didn't have any coherent idea of what the xenos and jockeys actually are and what their story is, when he made the first movie. The mythology of Alien has been made up subsequently from what the different directors and Scott himself could build from the original, open-ended template of the first film. Or that's what I assume. There isn't an explanation for anything that happened in the first film, other than the one theyre making up as they go along.

Humans and some aliens visited a planet with an evil insect and died. That's pretty much it, the way I see it. If they want to expand the Alien universe by constructing a complicated mythology around the first film then I'm all for it, as long as the next films have a bit more suspense and monsteraction than Prometheus.

What makes the first film so unsettling isn't just the mystique of not knowing whats going on, its also the heavy bombardment of both subtle and overt psycho-sexual themes and imagery, I'm sure most of us saw the film as kids and still picked up on it to some degree (did you guys know that there is an image of a vagina superimposed on the "mouth" of the facehugger when it jumps out the egg?). Prometheus actually did have a fair bit of that as well but in its own more awkward and flashy way (penis squids and robotic excision).
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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

Post by EMCEE DARTH MALEK »

JC took that psychosexual shit up a notch imo.

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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Comedy Quaddafi wrote:I suspect Ridley Scott himself didn't have any coherent idea of what the xenos and jockeys actually are and what their story is, when he made the first movie. The mythology of Alien has been made up subsequently from what the different directors and Scott himself could build from the original, open-ended template of the first film. Or that's what I assume. There isn't an explanation for anything that happened in the first film, other than the one theyre making up as they go along.

Humans and some aliens visited a planet with an evil insect and died. That's pretty much it, the way I see it. If they want to expand the Alien universe by constructing a complicated mythology around the first film then I'm all for it, as long as the next films have a bit more suspense and monsteraction than Prometheus.

What makes the first film so unsettling isn't just the mystique of not knowing whats going on, its also the heavy bombardment of both subtle and overt psycho-sexual themes and imagery, I'm sure most of us saw the film as kids and still picked up on it to some degree (did you guys know that there is an image of a vagina superimposed on the "mouth" of the facehugger when it jumps out the egg?). Prometheus actually did have a fair bit of that as well but in its own more awkward and flashy way (penis squids and robotic excision).
its crazy to believe that scott didn't have a backstory to the space jockeys in Alien , but I will accept it...

and ya, the neomorph in this new movie literally looks like a penis

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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Vishnevetsky's review is really selling me on it

http://www.avclub.com/review/covenant-r ... ots-255201" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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I think this was more or less the best we could have hoped for under the circumstances. A real improvement from the almost action-free and sterile space-gibberish of Prometheus. The ship in this film ís also a lot closer to the original Alien aesthetic.

I didn't like David in this film at all. Really hammy performance from Fassbender but I'm sure he was just following orders.

A lot of the diehard fans will be pissed off with the vague sort of anwsers about the Alien universe this film supplies. Then again I'm not even sure I fully understood the end and how it ties in to the rest of the films.

My advice would be to go see this in the cinema if you care about watching it all. The film looks great and you'd have to be a real downer to not feel entertained by all the stuff going on on the screen, even if it seems pasted together a bit strangely at times.
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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

Post by ric »

shit was dope. finally a good solid look. it's been a while for the series.

while I understand the cyborg thing is ridleys thing the switch is too obv which mars the film. it would have been better for the ship to just be watched by David and no regurgitating eggs there. just having dude logging in with a different voice and telling the ship to play Wagner would've been enough. I mean really it was obvi that the people had to undertake an experiment to see if Walter was Walter and the lack of white blood is a dead give away.

and that's where ridley failed a bit here. because in the first alien and every alien thereafter except prometheus there is either no presumption of military awareness or there's simply a horrifying overwhelming threat. and in general sans resurrection the characters actually act like they are making good decisions. their decisions are far far more sound in terms of survivability. in this one theyre a group of apparently well trained and in some cases military personnel and for the most part they make awful decisions which goes against their training and sense is totally abandoned etc. it's the gimmick that moves the story forward several times and something that comes in to prometheus that helps drag it down.

in this one too the focus too much on continuity and androids. I just think a more interesting and compelling film would have been made had we tied off this shit cleanly and cheaply. and it seems like now at some point down the road the next movies have to deal with this shit which is disappointing. I mean come on dude. Dude configures the black stuff to explode on the peoples below? shut the fuck up. the imagery is there but the other shit is not. he's one thing in prometheus but a totally different thing in covenant? Im just not with you on this

and then to discuss origins a bit more: while it doesn't close anything up in the future of course to have aliens coming from bug thingies on gigantic dudes home planet... it's still kinda wack to always be revealing/explaining shit to the audience. cthulu is terrifying because we don't fucking know shit. and even a cthulu cult ultimately is without knowledge and these mfs worship dude. what makes cthulu sweet is because it's in my mind. the nameless terror. that's what makes aliens in general (not necessarily movie aliens) scary to begin with because if they do exist and they're around there's just so fucking much that we'll not know. that's partly what makes alien and aliens and 3 and somewhat prometheus have the terror.

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

Post by zombie »

i agree.

and even then, covenant made it very obvious how xenomorph came to be. if you dont get it by now, dont blame the movie, blame your IQ

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

Post by zombie »

also wish people would stop asking for more info on the engineers/ origin of man

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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Watching this funny-ass rant about the movie now.
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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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Oh yeah also. forgot. the being bros with the aliens thing is fucking stupid. and I forgot about that when I was writing the post above. and it takes it down to being less than solid. I don't know why I forgot about that. but the bros thing is fucking retarded for an alien movie. so as whole movie is a little less than solid. I don't know how I forgot that. why does ridley make all these amazing regular movies and then routinely misstep on his alien shit? I just don't get it.

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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You can pick apart the film from a fanboy POV but I tried to refrain from that when watching it, because it was always going to disappoint on that score. I'm not even sure that all of us Alien geeks even want the same thing from an Alien film in 2017.

At the end of the day this is a gorgeous action sci-fi full of all the shit that drew most of us in the first time around. Xenos, faceys, scheming androids, creepy spaceships and Aliens(2)-style shoot em up action. As I think EMD pointed out there is no way to recapture the suspense and mystique of the first one so at the very least we got an attempt to do the right thing with the franchise and this one is way better than Prometheus in every aspect.

TBH Alien 1 is the next-best film of all time, second only to Robocop... you cant just "do it again" 40 or so years later.
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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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Audible audiobooks made a dramatization of the officially sanctioned novel Alien: Out of the Shadows, and the two sequels I think. I haven't listened to a full-cast book before with sound FX but it worked really well. The plot itself takes place between Alien 1 and 2 and Ripley is in it kicking lots of ass... tbh it would have worked really well as a movie too. I would recommend it for anyone needing an extra Alien-fix. Rutger Hauer does the android voice btw.

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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Comedy Quaddafi wrote:You can pick apart the film from a fanboy POV...

At the end of the day this is a gorgeous action sci-fi full of all the shit that drew most of us in the first time around.... at the very least we got an attempt to do the right thing with the franchise and this one is way better than Prometheus in every aspect.
A) I agree the shit feels really sweet looks great for what it is. I mean if nothing else every fucking ridley Scott feels and looks gorgeous which is why he's been my favorite director for so long. and this movie has some either very well or pretty well done key key sequences and in general these help float the movie as well as some of the typical transitional flotsam etc
B) you know though... it's worse than prometheus in some ways. prometheus is so disappointing in my opinion partly because there's some dope potential that was just plain fucked up but this one...
A/B 2)... this one has some unforgivable shit that marrs it. like the bro aliens. there's nothing remotely acceptable about this. and talk about breaking a spell that was - until that communing with aliens moment - fairly well crafted. and I'm not blaming ridley alone necessarily because it's clearly a collaborative thing but it's like dude.... come on... the androids fight each other? I mean for real? that's what the suspense game is made of nowadays?

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

Post by alpha »

let's repackage Alien and call it a new movie.... ok for what it was. 3/5

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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this movie was good.

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

Post by ric »

alpha wrote:let's repackage Alien and call it a new movie.... ok for what it was. 3/5
I feel like they should've called it prometheus covenant

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Re: Alien: Covenant (May 2017)

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I had an almost exactly opposite take but arrived at the same conclusion - this was watchable enough, but the Alien parts were mostly bad, occasionally verging on self-parody; while the David stuff hints at how this could've been a great hammy space opera about a mad robot scientist (Island Dr Moreau comes to mind as a reference point). The onion review I posted above is pretty close to my feelings but Vish. seemed to like this more overall than I did.

I'm pretty sure Scott doesn't give a shit about most of what the first movie was ostensibly about anymore, his heart is just not in it. At least as far as things directly related to the classic xenomorph. Thematically he's way more in Blade Runner space than Alien here, and that was a big part of Prometheus too. It's all about evolution as mythical creationism, creators/parents taking responsibility and suffering the consequences of their creation/children, etc etc. But the public failure of Prometheus and these new entrees being sold as Alien prequels oblige him to throw in the classic xenomorph and attempt to make a direction connection to the original series, and it comes off as perfunctory fan service. And the result isn't particularly satisfying one way or another, it's not good enough to satisfy the hardcore fanboys nor the actual movie that I think Scott wanted to make. It's really dumb that they completely chucked most of the plot elements that could've been carried over from Prometheus to retread the broad strokes of the first movie.... but it's still about shit from Prometheus.

I thought the new white creatures were far more interesting and well realized/used than the classic ones (no :omgracist:) . That scene in the tall grass was my favorite part as far as the action, while the conclusion on the ship just felt like it was tacked on by obligation. I wish they showed more variations created by releasing the pathogen, the kinda creature weirdness indulged in Prometheus would've been a better route for this plot than the dumbass reveal of 'actually David made them.... TADAAAA'. Making a movie about a scientist studying a creature capable of infinite mutation and variation only to arrive at a franchise retcon as a conclusion of his work is a pretty neat snapshot of what's wrong with modern big budget movie making.
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