Alien: Covenant |SPOILER THREAD| With more Christian subtext than BvS

Mr. Sam said:
This is what many people forget about Alien - Kane's wearing the space equivalent of a diving suit with thick glass on the front of his helmet. Even if there's something in one of those eggs, why would anyone expect it to be able to break clean through his suit?
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Which is then in turn what makes the facehugger/acid for blood combo so cool and terrifying -- 'holy shit! -- it just ate through his helmet? wtf is that thing...'
 
Astral said:
So is the next movie really a prequel to this? It'd be really lame if so. We already know what happens and have a good idea of how it happens too.
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I bet it isn't. I bet the money comes in and it's not enough for them to bite on two more of these things, so they toss Ridley $75 mil and say "wrap it up."
 
ezekial45 said:
I always felt that there was an element of stupidity throughout the series. More so out of sheer panic and the fact that these characters, despite their qualifications, are in over their heads.

- Kain approaching the eggs, and Dallas bringing back Kain back to the shit. Disregarding quarantine.
- Gorman disarming the marines and sending them into the hive on their rescue mission. Also, Burk trying to sabotage the mission in order to bring back samples to the company.
- The prisoners generally fucking up and 85 giving in to WY's orders to land on Fury 161.
- Prometheus, which mostly goes without saying.

In this one, I felt like there wasn't too much out of the ordinary. Tennessee's order to lower ship initially bugged me, as he was risking the entire colony, but it ended up working to get a signal through regardless. For me, complaining too much about how stupid the characters are in this series sorta goes against one of the main motivators for the plot of all of them.
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It's about how believable in context the action is. Alien and Aliens both take great care to establish why decisions that seem dumb are made: in terms but f the character and the context.

From Alien 3 onwards this has been increasingly skipped as the films struggle to differentiate while offering up the expected scares and creature action.

Take Alien.

They actually bicker about investigating at all and it's made clear they have to according to their contract.
Kane is established as the eager one always searching ahead and a bit too nosy for his own good: of course he - nervously - takes a peek in the egg.
Dallas is established as weary Captain of a beat up tug and Kane as a friend as well as second in command: of course he chooses to break quarantine and not sit in the airlock with a strange creature while Kane dies particularly with panicky Lambert backing him up. Ripley sticking to rules actually helps this make sense and makes clear Dallas is already out of his depth handling this kind of emergency.
Brett goes looking for the cat because Parker told him to. Brett is Parkers right hand guy and will clearly do whatever he asks. He's embarrassed he messed up and the creatures only a small snake at this point. He doesn't look too happy about it but of course he can't lose further face with Parker and he dutifully follows orders.

And so on. Every action in Alien makes sense in context for the characters and even plays into how events unfold. For example of course Ripley survives she's been the most competent and adaptive from the beginning.

Covenant (and Promethous before it) are simply not as well crafted in this regard. Little to no justification is provided and characters feel mostly like cyphers doing what the plot demands. They're sub par next to Alien by a wide margin in this area (others too but I'd digress).

Cameron also did a good job in Aliens making decisions believable in context and as with Alien often used Ripley, Hicks or Vasquez (Bishop too) to counterpoint the others losing their cool and making questionable decisions or suggesting questionable ideas.
 
Toa TAK said:
I dunno

I want a buddy cop movie with Shaw and David
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It would be like lethal weapon if danny glover went all hr giger on mel gibson at the end

This might be the first thing ive seen of a franhise i enjoy where i just said fuck it and reject it as canon in my head, no im sorry, the fucking xenomorphs were not created by some ass hat rapist robot with a god complex. In my head cannon they still have a cool un discovered fucked up homeworld and we only vaguely know their origins. I liked prometheus too, but this feels like george lucas's starwars prequels
 
Sucks so many people are shitting on the blood splitting scene.

I really liked how damn messy that whole thing was. I especially liked when Kenny Power's wife came back and the whole floor was just covered in blood and not in the fancy blood plaster way but in the "this person slipped and tumbled on this blood while fighting for her life" kinda way.

That whole set piece was full of wonderful panic.
 
Hystzen said:
They also didn't find this super amazing planet that is more perfect for terraforming even though they been scanning this sector of Space for YEARS. But the story needed be told so it has be stupid
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Someone please explain this. I'm just in utter disbelief at how Scott completely fucked up Alien with his plot holes and retconning I thought midichlorians were bad.

Fake Edit: Yes, yes I know it's his to massacre as he sees fit but still. Oh well it is what it is.
 
directors coming back to their franchises years later to try explain things making prequels is it a good idea. I think this cements this further.
 
Days like these... said:
Someone please explain this. I'm just in utter disbelief at how Scott completely fucked up Alien with his plot holes and retconning I thought midichlorians were bad.

Fake Edit: Yes, yes I know it's his to massacre as he sees fit but still. Oh well it is what it is.
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That was strange. Especially as the fact that it was strange was pointed out on screen by Daniels IIRC.
 
Days like these... said:
Good one maybe Scott can hire you?
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No, hire me. Ripley was engineered by David. She was designed after Shaw and Daniels, the two women he loved/admired. The embryo was sent through space using his engineer technology. The embryo takes the form of those airborne spores which infect a male human so he can inseminate a female. Ripley has Bioshock style orders hard coded into her DNA that will compel her to go to space, much like how cordyceps compel ants to seek higher ground to spread their spores. She will in instinctually seek out LV426 because she is compelled to find her home and meet her maker. She just doesn't know it.
 
hoping the poor reception to this causes fox to go back and re-greenlight blomkamp's sequel to aliens

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Neill Blomkamp is still in director jail due to Chappie. And with the way Ridley Scott talks about everyone else's work with the franchise, I'm kind of stunned the project was ever seriously considered.
 
Hahaha, I feel bad coming in here and saying this, but I actually had a really good time with Covenant.

I liked Prometheus enough, but Covenant was more of what I wanted out of that film, with a bonus of fun slasher/monster on the loose sequences that were rad. It's not at all without issues (a lot of the early stuff after they arrive at the necropolis), but it's an easy number 3 spot after the first two films for me.
 
SuperStiltzkin said:
No, hire me. Ripley was engineered by David. She was designed after Shaw and Daniels, the two women he loved/admired. The embryo was sent through space using his engineer technology. The embryo takes the form of those airborne spores which infect a male human so he can inseminate a female. Ripley has Bioshock style orders hard coded into her DNA that will compel her to go to space, much like how cordyceps compel ants to seek higher ground to spread their spores. She will in instinctually seek out LV426 because she is compelled to find her home and meet her maker. She just doesn't know it.
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I'll take this over the concept of the NB's Alien 5.

I mean, what else is there to ruin at this point?
 
kai3345 said:
hoping the poor reception to this causes fox to go back and re-greenlight blomkamp's sequel to aliens
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It currently has a 67 on Metacritic which they describe as "generally favorable reviews."

If it makes money, that's all Fox cares about.

Plus Blomkamp's movie would have been trash, let's not kid ourselves.
 
Bobby Roberts said:
this doesn't make any fuckin sense tho

why would computer effects look worse in 10 years.
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As time passes, newer things look more dated. CGI tends to suffer the most from this phenomenon because it gets continuously better so older cgi stands out. On the other hand, props, sets, and costumes tend to set a more grounded look to it that the audience can latch onto to more easily suspend their disbelief. This is why the creature effects in Alien look better today than Alien vs Predator, despite the latter not looking particularly bad for the time it came out. Its not just a case of the alien in the first movie tending to be in the dark or at close up angles either, as you get some pretty decent full body looks at it at the end.

Attack of the Clones is prolly the best example in my opinion. That movie looks terrible now.
 
moltonasty said:
It currently has a 67 on Metacritic which they describe as "generally favorable reviews."

If it makes money, that's all Fox cares about.

Plus Blomkamp's movie would have been trash, let's not kid ourselves.
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Why would of Blomkamps movie been trash even if he didn't write it?

Ridley is a stale old fart sundowning his way to the destruction of the alien legacy.

I'd take anything alien directed by Blomkamp as it'd be exciting to see where it goes.
 
kiguel182 said:
I still take Scott's madness over Bloomkamps fan fiction.
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Yeah, at least his return has been thematically interesting, if the execution lacking.


Again, what's the purpose of calling the film Covenant? The dude came off of Exodus not that long ago so I'm guessing there's a reason he called this that.
SuperStiltzkin said:
I don't know why people were excited for that Xenomorph power armor concept art.
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That shit looks like some kinda post game armor you unlock after beating the game on the highest difficulty. I don't want that silliness.
 
Sub_Level said:
As time passes, newer things look more dated. CGI tends to suffer the most from this
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Oh shit. I misunderstood you, sorry. I thought you were saying that the effects being done 10 years from now would look shittier than they do now.

Edit: why even bother to reboot or make more Ripley sequels? Just... Make more Alien movies.

They don't need overarching storylines and mythology. Gluing one onto it is kinda one of the series's biggest fuckin problems
 
kind of wish this series would ditch the aliens completely and just focus on the androids. they've consistently been the most interesting characters in this series for a minute now
 
Toa TAK said:
It wasn't even good as that, though.
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Yeah it was, it hit it's marks. Felt like an 80s action movie for the modern man. Never saw Chappie. Will re-watch Elysium just to remind myself. I know it wasn't great but I thought there was some cool looking themes in there too. Plus if ya playing The Surge, you know that's got some cues from elysium
 
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