# Alien Covenant



## Gravy Train (May 18, 2017)

I didn't see a thread anywhere for this (or Alien in general), but is anyone excited for Alien Covenant? 

Going to see it tonight in IMAX and couldn't be more excited! Alien is my favorite movie and I quite enjoyed Prometheus (contrary to what everyone else says).

Will come back with updates after seeing it!


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## Lorcan Ward (May 18, 2017)

I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted for in a sequel to Prometheus(which I hated).


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## Rosal76 (May 18, 2017)

Gravy Train said:


> I didn't see a thread anywhere for this (or Alien in general), but is anyone excited for Alien Covenant?


 
I am excited about the movie. If anything, I'm anxious to learn more about the Aliens history than anything else.


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## Gravy Train (May 18, 2017)

Rosal76 said:


> I am excited about the movie. If anything, I'm anxious to learn more about the Aliens history than anything else.



Yeah, I am quite intrigued on how they will handle the "origin" of the Alien. Since seeing the first film years ago, I always wondered how such a creature was created/lived!


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## Lorcan Ward (May 18, 2017)

Its worth noting that there are two more sequels planned after this film. Its going to be a new Alien trilogy that will link up to the original Alien so there is still a lot of story to tell.


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## PunkBillCarson (May 18, 2017)

I'm one of the few who actually liked Prometheus, I guess. Oh well to each their own. I've seen plenty of positive and negative for Alien: Covenant. That said, I'm going in to see it and I'm pretty sure I'll like it. For what it's worth, I also liked Aliens 3 and Resurrection, so maybe I'm just that guy. I like most of what's been done with the universe except for Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.


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## MFB (May 18, 2017)

I'll probably try and catch it this weekend, it looks like it'll be a blend between Prometheus' art style and the actual horror/suspense of Alien (I'm not crazy about where the franchise went after the original)


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## Rosal76 (May 18, 2017)

PunkBillCarson said:


> I'm one of the few who actually liked Prometheus, I guess. Oh well to each their own.


 
I also enjoyed Prometheus. Sometimes going back to discover a movies origins can be a enjoyable watch. When I saw Prometheus for the first time, it was like watching Discovery Channel/National Geographic but for the Alien franchise. I enjoyed it.


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## wankerness (May 18, 2017)

I like Prometheus. Despite idiotic characters (I get really mad at some of the stupid dialogue and actions), I really like other aspects. I think I've watched it three or four times, which is twice as much as I've seen a lot of movies I like with no reservations!!!

I dunno if I'll see this in the theater, but I expect to like it. The only movie I don't like in the Alien franchise (excepting AVP) is Alien Resurrection, which I flat-out hate.


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## mongey (May 18, 2017)

Lorcan Ward said:


> I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted for in a sequel to Prometheus(which I hated).



this makes me hopeful


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## Emperor Guillotine (May 18, 2017)

I just got back from seeing _Alien: Covenant_ in the theater. I wanted to type this out while it is fresh in my mind.

The film is everything that I (personally) could have wanted in a sequel to _Prometheus_. It is an interesting development following the events of _Prometheus_. It is vastly more suspenseful and has a few good attempts to scare the audience interspersed throughout its running time. (No cheesy "jump scares" though. It relies more on savagery and a few sadistic moments.) In summation, it pretty much is more along the lines of the original _Alien_ and _Aliens_ films (closely parallel to the latter) while retaining the art form and modern imagery of _Prometheus_.

With that said, all the big twists in the plot are easily predictable. You know what's coming. You know what's going to happen. (There is a nice payoff in it for the viewer if you're one of those types who enjoys going: "YEP, I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT.")

The concept of


Spoiler



AI going rogue


 is just an incredibly overused cliché in sci-fi at this point. And in all honesty, it feels like Ridley Scott used it as a cop-out in the franchise's story thus far to easily get the viewer from _Prometheus_ to where the story is currently left hanging (meaning closer to where the original _Alien_ picks up). I mean, at this point in cinema history where everything has been made at least once, I am fine with clichés being used. However, the whole cliché in _Covenant_ doesn't feel too blatantly stale and it is artfully executed


Spoiler



with the introduction of Walter and how Scott uses Walter as the antithesis/contrast to David to really draw out certain qualities about David for the viewer.


_Covenant_ is possibly the best film added to the franchise since James Cameron's 1986 _Aliens_. (I'm curious to see how many of you would agree with me.) But it still could have been better as there were quite a few notable shortcomings. As soon as the credits began to roll, one of my friends who was at the theater with me began immediately sharing his hypothesized theories regarding how the story will continue to tie-in to the original part of the franchise because the film got him excited. And I definitely felt his excitement because, again, the film is an interesting development


Spoiler



as the central focus of the story shifts and is now about an android who was created to assist humans in finding their creator, but instead, he himself develops a "god complex" and resorts to exercising his own power of creation by biologically engineering the Xenomorphs through tampering with the black fluid developed by the Engineers and cross-breeding by luring in more humans.


 One personal qualm related to this.


Spoiler



The cross-breeding


 needed to be elaborated on further in _Covenant_ though.


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## chopeth (May 19, 2017)

I found it a piece of S the size of a planet, was wondering why there weren't any threads on this and understood after I saw it the other day. Should have kept expectations even lower...


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## ThomasUV777 (May 19, 2017)

I enjoyed it, but I enjoyed Prometheus too. As stated before, some real obvious plot twists occur, but enjoyable movie nonetheless.


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## fps (May 19, 2017)

I really enjoyed it, except for the last half hour or so which felt very poorly edited and chunked together. The whole end portion failed to build a sense of consistent momentum and excitement, despite lots of things happening, a real sense of there being a lot of footage and the details being worked out later. Just as the adrenaline seemed ready to head into overdrive, a cut away from the action would pull all that excitement back down again. It was a really juddery landing. A couple of moments, such as the saying of a character's name at the end and another thing that could be seen from light years off felt patronising. But it was, at least, better than Prometheus.

Mostly really good!


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## Gravy Train (May 19, 2017)

I saw it last night and very much enjoyed it. I thought it was a wonderful continuation off of Prometheus whilst also setting up for the next film. I'd love to see it again!


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## ThomasUV777 (May 19, 2017)

On a sidenote: Danny McBride really nailed his part. I had never seen him in a serious role, but he pulled it off.


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## Gravy Train (May 19, 2017)

ThomasUV777 said:


> On a sidenote: Danny McBride really nailed his part. I had never seen him in a serious role, but he pulled it off.



I couldn't agree more, I hope he does some more serious roles. He definitely has the chops!


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## A-Branger (May 21, 2017)

I actually loved Prometeus, and pretty surprised about the amount of people here who liked too. And I for one felt happy with that movie, I dont get why people feel the need to have EVERYTHING being explained on a movie, if they do so, then theres no time to make any story as you spend the whole time establishing. Also maybe because Ive watched many docos and videos about ancient civilizations, Sumerians, UFO, the Annunaki, planetX Nibiru, ect ect. So the whole Prometeus story about the engineers fits perfectly into that.

I loved this movie, its a mix of Prometeus and Alien (with more of the first), love the scenery and tho whole story about David and what he does, and all the answers about Prometeus stuff.

The only thing I felt bit disapointed was the "Alien" part of the movie, the ending. I though it was too rushed and not scary enough. Like the characters werent even scared of the thing and had a masterplan already from the start. Like "oh, the thing is here, cool, lets do this and that...simple" Like the movie needed another 20 min of so to develop a proper sense of fear for that part like the Aliens movies did.

Either way Im pretty happy with the movie.

And about whats next I saw in youtube a cool theory about it:


Spoiler



the main thing they talked in the video was that the engineers ship on the Alien film cant be the same as the one David used from Prometeus, as they are on a different planet(it supposed to be the planet they are traveling to colonize, not the one in this movie), location,
and theres no xenomorph eggs. So the theory is that another engineers ship was out there too, comes home after his mission and see the destruction. Figures t out who was and where they went to, and goes to take revenge. Once it arrives there, then gets attacked by the xenomorphs cultivated by David on the ship/new planet. And thats the ship that gets discovered in the Aliens movie witht he space jokey and the one they discover the eggs and facehuggers


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## Emperor Guillotine (May 21, 2017)

An associate to Ridley Scott just let it leak that Michael Fassbender will be playing every character role including the Xenomorph in the franchise's next film installment.


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## chopeth (May 21, 2017)

hopefully


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## JosephAOI (May 25, 2017)

I loved Covenant as well as Prometheus. I've seen a lot of interesting theories and ideas behind some of the scenes and concepts in the movie but something I've not read any of that I'm the most interested in is


Spoiler



the scene where David "communicates" with the Neomorph.



Do you guys have any thoughts on that scene in particular?


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## Emperor Guillotine (May 25, 2017)

JosephAOI said:


> I loved Covenant as well as Prometheus. I've seen a lot of interesting theories and ideas behind some of the scenes and concepts in the movie but something I've not read any of that I'm the most interested in is
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...


There is a point in _Covenant_ where David mentions that the aliens


Spoiler



are out to kill biological life, but not synthetic life just like how the initial pathogen wiped out biological life on the Engineer's home planet.


 This, however, doesn't account for why the Xenomorphs in the original flicks


Spoiler



did not attack Jones the cat and tore apart synthetics like Bishop.


 So in _Covenant_, I think Ridley Scott was trying to say that


Spoiler



since David is a synthetic, the Neomorphs and Xenomorphs wouldn't attack him


 but that obviously doesn't align with anything in the original flicks. I mean, unless Scott was going for


Spoiler



the cheesy as hell "creation meets and worships creator" cliché - but how could the Neomorphs and Xenomorphs have known that David was their creator?


 Just seems like a few tiny, inconsistencies in details.


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## KnightBrolaire (May 26, 2017)

I really enjoyed Alien Covenant though there were some really stupid parts:


Spoiler



the captain following david down to the egg room and looking inside the egg. Another stupid moment was when the pilot broke quarantine to try and kill the xenomorph, then subsequently released it/blew up the ship.





Spoiler



The obvious foreshadowing and subsequent switcharoo of david for walter. I really want to know how nobody figured out that it wasn't david since Walter could regenerate damage to an extent. THE CAMERA EVEN ZOOMED IN ON HIS NECK HEALING FFS. I actually quite liked how David kept tinkering with the DNA of the xenomorphs, that was a neat touch.


Spoiler



The gore was great, the music was good (even if it was a mishmash of previous scores with some new material), I thoroughly enjoyed the cinematography/framing of shots as well. There were some quite beautiful shots, especially in the beginning of the film. Katherine Waterston's haircut is probably the worst haircut in the whole Aliens universe.


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## cult (May 26, 2017)

I watched it last Wednesday.

The movie all around was really entertaining and I enjoyed it. I didn't watch Prometheus before, I just know Alien 1 to 3. 
In the end I got what I expected.


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## MoshJosh (May 26, 2017)

Saw Covenant today, and gotta say I wasn't a huge fan. I can see why some like this film, but wasn't my cup of tea. I had a number of issues with the plot, ineffective tension building, and character development or lack there of. A number of my issues have been addressed in the above comments but I will add that


Spoiler



How did David make the creature/organism better? The neomorph or whatever (the back burster) is able to infect the host through ear or nose (probably other holes too) without the host even being aware. Adding a huge egg (and queen), and face hugger to the equation seems counter intuitive.
Also, the ship can warn you that there is an organism on board, but no problem with a new random android (I guess this can be explained away by Mother being offline for a while, but still)?
How does David face no resistance when landing on the planet? In fact he seems to be warmly welcomed when he arrives on the planet. A highly advanced alien life form has no air traffic control/is not concerned when a lost ship from a planet storing extremely deadly weapons returns unannounced?
Also is there no protocol/sense of preservation of the human species? The sick soldiers should not have been allowed aboard the shuttle (why is there only one shuttle?) similar to the scene with the sick scientist in Prometheus. And can you really rationalize mounting a rescue party and risking bringing aboard whatever organism has been encountered?
I know I'm kind of nit picking here, and some of these issues could possibly be explained, but still I was disappointed with the film overall.



EDIT: Don't want to make it sound like I totally hated it, just not all i hoped for. There were a number of scenes I really enjoyed


Spoiler



the first back burster scene was pretty cool and intense, and I really enjoyed the fight on top of the rescue ship. I also liked McBride as Tennessee, and thought Daniel's made a good, if not short lived protagonist.


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## KnightBrolaire (May 26, 2017)

MoshJosh said:


> Saw Covenant today, and gotta say I wasn't a huge fan. I can see why some like this film, but wasn't my cup of tea. I had a number of issues with the plot, ineffective tension building, and character development or lack there of. A number of my issues have been addressed in the above comments but I will add that
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...





Spoiler



The egg and face huggers were likely an offshoot of the original xenomorphs. David even said that he'd spent time tweaking the infection process, which is part of why they reach maturation faster than a typical xenomorph. It used to take at least a day for chestbursters to appear, though one pops out of the captain within minutes. If David is capable of mimicking Walter to such an extent that the crew members can't distinguish him, then I would assume he harvested Walter's access/override codes or had his own. The crew was distracted by the whole xenomorph incident and likely weren't thinking about why David's face wasn't healing like it should. The protocol for the sick soldiers was to quarantine inside the medical bay, which obviously backfired since Tennessee's wife broke that protocol.


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## A-Branger (May 26, 2017)

JosephAOI said:


> I loved Covenant as well as Prometheus. I've seen a lot of interesting theories and ideas behind some of the scenes and concepts in the movie but something I've not read any of that I'm the most interested in is
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...





Spoiler



well he kinda created them and study them enough to know how they behave. Thats why he was trying to comunicate with the one that killed the chick until the captain shoot him. Like someone trying to approach a bear or a wild animal. He knew how to behave and how to read them. What I did found bit stupid and surprise no-one has mention yet. Is when the new Alien burst out of the Captain's chest and the two look at each others and he mimic David open his arms. Now that was dumb as F. It should have at the least, look at him and start runnign away or something. Its not like "oh hai father, glad to meet you, let's dance..."


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## Dredg (May 27, 2017)

I didn't enjoy Covenant. The plot was forced and I personally can't see how anyone could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Obvious tropes were obvious and the movie wound up being completely predictable.



Spoiler



The new Captain was obviously showcased as incompetent, but there was literally no reason to check out a random alien signal. I refuse to accept that a crew tasked with safely delivering nearly 4,000 colonists and embryos would allow a captain (that they have no problem directly disobeying) to risk the entire mission and everyone's life all because he wants to investigate an unknown planet. I also can't accept that the crew agrees because they don't want to go back into cryosleep. That's just lazy writing at its worst.

Why the hell doesn't anyone wear some form of biosuit to protect them from microscopic threats? Shouldn't this have been SOP? Oh wait, no, because we have to have that EXACT problem occur from Xenomorph spore testicles. This is a slap in the face to the original Alien because it ignores what Ripley stood for. She was the voice of reason in the midst of a lazy and overtly emotional crew. In Covenant, everyone acts like the only training they've ever received was how to use comms and set up a GoPro. Even the fact that they were willing to risk their ONLY recon vessel through a freaking hurricane was jaw-dropping. Didn't even try to plot a course around it. I don't even want to talk about why they thought it was a good idea to try and operate without any safety gear on a sick man who was projectile vomiting black stuff everywhere. That SCREAMS quarantine, which only happened AFTER he started violently convulsing. Even if the door held, congrats, you now have a rapidly growing, highly aggressive alien inside your only way back to the ship, and it is very capable of slaughtering humans. 

The first rule of survival is to work and stick together, yet when they walk past the mountains of charred corpses, the first thing they do is split up and trust the strange man when he says their open air fortress is "safe" from the alien species that is fully capable of climbing. Instead, Captain Underpants decides to follow David down to his creepy lair, and look inside an egg. What he should have done, was call the rest of the crew, keep David at gunpoint (and hopefully crippled), while instructing THEIR synthetic to investigate whatever secrets David has, since the creatures do not attack synthetics

Tennessee was absolutely moronic. As ranking officer, he should have turned the damn ship around and set course to their original destination while sending a debrief to earth. Instead, he insists on overriding Mother's safety protocols in order to save a bunch of contaminated humans being hunted by a highly aggressive alien species. The entire Third Act was utterly predictable - the fight was boring and useless, while the twist ending was disappointingly obvious. David had to survive, because he's the bad guy. Obviously he hid embryos in himself because after all of the blunders of the crew, of course they won't give their most advanced tool a full diagnostic. The fact that the ranking officer HELPED HIM REPAIR HIS FACE should have been enough to throw him out the airlock, unless they never read the manual on the self-repair functions of their synthetic. His stab wound healed both internally and externally... did nobody get briefed on the self-repairing function of their robot?

Also, why do the synthetics move and act like Data from Star Trek? In the earlier movies, they acted like normal people. On that note, the writers ripped off TNG's Crystalline Entity plotline.


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## M3CHK1LLA (May 27, 2017)

A-Branger said:


> The only thing I felt bit disapointed was the "Alien" part of the movie, the ending. I though it was too rushed and not scary enough. Like the characters werent even scared of the thing and had a masterplan already from the start. Like "oh, the thing is here, cool, lets do this and that...simple" Like the movie needed another 20 min of so to develop a proper sense of fear for that part like the Aliens movies did.



there was no... "lets try to study these things" like in the orig movies. it was like "sure, weve never seen an alien before, but lets just kill it".

also, they didn't seem to be as scared as in the orig movies. i do not remember seeing one bead of sweat...in the originals they were sweating like pigs the whole time lol


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## A-Branger (May 27, 2017)

M3CHK1LLA said:


> there was no... "lets try to study these things" like in the orig movies. it was like "sure, weve never seen an alien before, but lets just kill it".
> 
> also, they didn't seem to be as scared as in the orig movies. i do not remember seeing one bead of sweat...in the originals they were sweating like pigs the whole time lol


exactly, there wasnt any mistery, tension, or hunt, or a "wheres the thing hidding now?". It was like like "oh, the Alien is here, cool... open that door, this door, then that door, and press that button.. ready?.GO!..."


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## fps (May 27, 2017)

Dredg said:


> I didn't enjoy Covenant. The plot was forced and I personally can't see how anyone could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Obvious tropes were obvious and the movie wound up being completely predictable.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Absolutely, all of this. And yet I still enjoyed it because at least it made an effort and had some truly worthwhile ideas at some points, which is honestly more than the design-by-committee blockbusters we now get usually serve up.


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## Emperor Guillotine (May 27, 2017)

Can we all agree that James Franco was probably the best part about that whole movie?


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## ThomasUV777 (May 29, 2017)

Dredg said:


> I didn't enjoy Covenant. The plot was forced and I personally can't see how anyone could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Obvious tropes were obvious and the movie wound up being completely predictable.



Movies are a lot more enjoyable without the overanalysing. I don't know if you were a fan of the first Alien movies, but they pull plenty of why-the-hell-would-you-do-that-moves in those as well.


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## M3CHK1LLA (May 29, 2017)

aliens (the second one) was by far the best in the series imho...so i have high expectations


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## KnightBrolaire (May 29, 2017)

ThomasUV777 said:


> Movies are a lot more enjoyable without the overanalysing. I don't know if you were a fan of the first Alien movies, but they pull plenty of why-the-hell-would-you-do-that-moves in those as well.


Exactly. I think Covenant was a good solid Alien movie, definitely better than Alien 3 or Prometheus imo.


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## Lorcan Ward (May 30, 2017)

ThomasUV777 said:


> Movies are a lot more enjoyable without the overanalysing. I don't know if you were a fan of the first Alien movies, but they pull plenty of why-the-hell-would-you-do-that-moves in those as well.





I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.


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## fps (May 30, 2017)

Lorcan Ward said:


> I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.



We are a more sophisticated audience now (we are, in terms of expectations), and we are more advanced scientifically and in our general understanding of the things we are watching. The films should reflect this move from a comparative adolescence to adulthood, especially when the film-maker is at his current level of maturity.


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## wankerness (May 31, 2017)

Lorcan Ward said:


> I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.


I haven't seen this new one, but I know a lot of the complaints in Prometheus were sure to include the fact he was supposed to be some kind of world-class biologist, as opposed to the first movie where they were all just supposed to be not-particularly-intelligent blue collar types.


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## zappatton2 (Jul 8, 2017)

I'm not generally a cynic about movies like this, I tend to love some pretty terrible stuff, but I think my love of the original kinda spoiled my appreciation of all the sequels. I did like Aliens, but I am very much a horror movie fan, and for me, the original Alien was a horror movie, with a genuine mood of dread, suspense, and a creature lurking in the shadows that you never really got a good glimpse at, but could be hiding anywhere.

Aliens and all the other sequels to me were more sci-fi/action movies with a horror element, and though Aliens still captured a bit of that element of dread, I didn't really get that at all from this movie. I like the flicks that either 1. scare me, or are 2. so cheese that they end up being hilarious, and this didn't have enough foreboding or characters I cared much for to fill the first requirement, and took itself too seriously to meet the second. All subjective of course!


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## Sermo Lupi (Jul 9, 2017)

Lorcan Ward said:


> I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.



Loved the first two films, especially the first one. I'm arguably a traditionalist when it comes to the Alien franchise (who isn't), but I was actually quite pleased with Prometheus and Alien Covenant. It's clear they are trying to be very different films than the originals, but I think that's okay; as much as it might be true that they're not masterpieces like their earliest precursors, you should never ask that of any film. Asking the new films to live up to the legacy of the originals is an impossibly high standard to set, especially when the fans doing this are expecting Ridley Scott to use the same hallmarks of the franchise in the new films--many of which, through their novelty in cinema at the time, _created _the legacy we're asking the later films to live up to. As the saying goes, you can't put the proverbial Alien back in the bag. 

There's a common criticism in cinema called the 'idiot plot'. I believe it descends from some remark or other of Roger Ebert's. Basically it's this concept that, if the events of a film could never have happened if the characters didn't continually make obviously poor decisions, then there's a good chance the scriptwriter was lazy or incompetent at advancing his agenda without the crutch of employing idiot characters. What I don't like about this specific criticism is how it is commonly applied on the Internet. In an equally stupid way, a different set of troupes are assumed in refuting its use: all scientists are purely rational and properly trained; all human beings hold the same values in decision-making as the Internet commenter; 'worst case scenarios' are always a sign of a lack of realism and not a series of low-probability events which could conceivably happen that have been chosen for the film because they're simply the most interesting; and so on. Not only is it creatively sterile to reduce human behaviour to a set of predictable inputs/outputs, it willfully ignores the fact that you're sat in a cinema watching a film on a 100 foot screen with a 200 million dollar budget. So yes, maybe only 1 out of every 100 scientists are idiots, but as long as it's a remote possibility, I'm fine with the director cherry picking scenarios for the sake of entertainment.

That in a nutshell is why I don't understand most of the criticisms against Prometheus and Alien Covenant. They're flawed films for sure, and if we want to talk about how the tone or vision for the franchise has changed (because they certainly aren't horror films anymore, nor action films in the same vein as Aliens), that's fine by me. But when people complain about the little stuff--things like scientists taking their helmets off on an alien planet, especially when their atmospheric sensors have told them it was safe to do so and the first 40 minutes of the film were dedicated to showing the recklessness of those same scientists (referring to Prometheus here), what's the substance of the argument? That people can't be unpredictable? Excitable? Stupid in a worldly sense, yet still smart enough to become a credentialed professional? The counter arguments seem as stupid to me as the justifications for why the actions occurred in the first place--at a certain point we just have to accept those things as stuff that could have happened and that _did _happen for the sake of a more entertaining film. Stupid or improbable, maybe, but not impossible, and when there's so much else going on in these films to discuss and understand I don't see the point in getting hung up on the director making an implausible choice here or there for the sake of a good action shot.


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## Sermo Lupi (Jul 9, 2017)

Hit character limited; post continued:

FYI, I wasn't directing that at anyone in particular, but here's a lengthy rebuttal of one of the posts above to address some of those 'idiot plot' accusations against the most recent film:



Spoiler






Dredg said:


> The new Captain was obviously showcased as incompetent, but there was literally no reason to check out a random alien signal. I refuse to accept that a crew tasked with safely delivering nearly 4,000 colonists and embryos would allow a captain (that they have no problem directly disobeying) to risk the entire mission and everyone's life all because he wants to investigate an unknown planet.



Is it that hard to accept? The film established that the they did not have complete faith in Weyland Corp.'s scanning technology used to plan the mission in the first place, and suddenly they discover a transmission from a planet that turns out to be more habitable than the one they were intending to find. At the very least it warrants a scouting mission, right? If you were the Captain of a tallship looking for habitable land and you happened across a landmass that you know isn't the one you're looking for yet it meets all of your criteria for settlement, you're telling me you'd take back to the high seas after you'd just weathered a storm that damaged your ship? That's the responsible thing to do? If you think that's unrealistic, maybe it would have seemed more plausible to you if Ridley Scott had named the Captain 'Christopher Columbus' to state the obvious, because the predicament definitely rings some bells. Also remember that there were few factors to raise any suspicions something might go wrong (like, say, purchasing a cinema ticket to go see a horror film), and it wasn't an alien signal but a human one which they were able to decipher that led them to the planet, providing a further reason to investigate. 



Dredg said:


> Why the hell doesn't anyone wear some form of biosuit to protect them from microscopic threats? Shouldn't this have been SOP? Oh wait, no, because we have to have that EXACT problem occur from Xenomorph spore testicles.



It's your lucky day! Mr. Scott has heard your criticism and has re-shot that scene so the characters wear biosuits that completely shield them from known biohazards. We're talking topshelf stuff--100% protection! You know, because Weyland was never known for cutting corners even at the best of times. Unfortunately, however, the alien spores and plague insects which gestate into this horror of a creature that we've learned (repeatedly) over a series of 6 films to confound every expectation of terrestrial biology also seem to possess some sort of _alien, non-terrestrial _ability to penetrate this biosuit. Poor luck, eh? So now that we've established that the alien species does something unexpected (as it always has in the past films), how does the scene play out any differently? 



Dredg said:


> This is a slap in the face to the original Alien because it ignores what Ripley stood for. She was the voice of reason in the midst of a lazy and overtly emotional crew. In Covenant, everyone acts like the only training they've ever received was how to use comms and set up a GoPro. Even the fact that they were willing to risk their ONLY recon vessel through a freaking hurricane was jaw-dropping.



It's okay for heroes to be exceptional: it's part of the job description. 

As for baseline training, Weyland is just known as 'The Company' in the first film. For those of us who have worked in an industrial setting such as in a mine or on an oil rig, that sort of banter will be immediately familiar. Same with the roughneck attitude and spotty training--not everything gets done by the book in the real world, and Alien is THE premier low-fi sci-fi franchise. The technology often sucks, the workers are disaffected and obviously flawed human beings, and everyone is in it for the paycheck. The opening of Cameron's Aliens is devoted to Ripley exposing this awful state of affairs to Weyland and they willfully ignore her testimony. Half the point of 'The Company' as a narrative device is to establish that both its directors and its employees don't listen to each other because they're bad at cooperating and seeing eye to eye. So no, I'm not really surprised they'd fly an exploratory vessel through a storm which didn't have much of a chance of damaging regardless. Secondly, their ONLY recon vessel? Did you miss the second half of the film? 



Dredg said:


> I don't even want to talk about why they thought it was a good idea to try and operate without any safety gear on a sick man who was projectile vomiting black stuff everywhere. That SCREAMS quarantine, which only happened AFTER he started violently convulsing. Even if the door held, congrats, you now have a rapidly growing, highly aggressive alien inside your only way back to the ship, and it is very capable of slaughtering humans.



Except that: 1) They didn't know it would gestate in a matter of minutes to transform into a child-sized alien...why would they worry about getting it on the ship if they didn't know it even existed? 2) They should have had every intention to use the quarantine bay for it's intended use. Again, these people don't know they're in a horror film in the same way that you do. 3) If you've ever been in an emergency situation, nothing ever goes as planned. Combat medics have pretty barebones training for exactly this reason. You're not always going to have time to don your safety gear and snap your rubber gloves on in comical fashion as you reach for your stethoscope. Also, I think you're underestimating the factor of emotion here: this entire team is full of husband/wife pairs. Even if the medic wasn't caring for her own partner, she knows how important it is to get them the best care ASAP. They're going to cut corners to save friends and loved ones. 



Dredg said:


> The first rule of survival is to work and stick together [...]. Instead, Captain Underpants decides to follow David down to his creepy lair, and look inside an egg. What he should have done, was call the rest of the crew, keep David at gunpoint (and hopefully crippled), while instructing THEIR synthetic to investigate whatever secrets David has, since the creatures do not attack synthetics



They'd just come from a battle in a field where sticking together got them ripped to shreds. Splitting up into pairs isn't a huge disadvantage once they know the nature of the threat they're facing. Not putting your eggs all in one basket is actually probably the advisable thing to do here.

As for David and the captain, he trusts him just as he trusts Walter because he assumes they are exchangeable machines. It's a flaw in his thinking, sure, but he's a faithful man and I'm sure he holds all sorts of crazy beliefs about how special humans are and how coldly intelligent the synths can be. I don't see any reason why (from what we know of his character) he'd assume David would be lying to him and leading him into a trap. And even if he did suspect that, why would he lure his crewmates into it as well so that they can get slaughtered, too? You're faulting him for not having backup, but he HAD backup in his own eyes. Leery as he was of David after the encounter with the neomorph, he still assumed he was on their side at that point. What he disagreed with was David's attempts to communicate with the creatures, because he only wanted to kill them. In my view, the Captain thought David was being unsafe and illogical (in a way that only a human could understand him to be), not that he was being treasonous. 



Dredg said:


> Tennessee was absolutely moronic. As ranking officer, he should have turned the damn ship around and set course to their original destination while sending a debrief to earth. Instead, he insists on overriding Mother's safety protocols in order to save a bunch of contaminated humans being hunted by a highly aggressive alien species.



About as moronic as any helpless human being would be when his friends and loved ones (including his wife) are on the planet in distress. He doesn't immediately override the safety protocols, and edges the ship closer and closer to an unsafe area of operation. Finally, when push does come to shove, he goes down in a second exploratory vessel (or maintenance--whatever, the point is he spared the mothership) to save them. That's is 100% believable behavior for someone in that situation, and especially for someone who is third or fourth in command with no one around to tell him 'No'. What the hell does he know about leadership and risk mitigation anyway? 



Dredg said:


> ... did nobody get briefed on the self-repairing function of their robot?



No, probably not. You're making a lot of assumptions about this--to my knowledge there is no manual that comes with these synthetics. And even if there was, they probably wouldn't have read it. Was an engineer even left alive at that point? 



Dredg said:


> Also, why do the synthetics move and act like Data from Star Trek? In the earlier movies, they acted like normal people. On that note, the writers ripped off TNG's Crystalline Entity plotline.



The knife scene with Bishop in Aliens would like a word. And you found Bishop to be a 'normal human'? 

Can't speak toward Star Trek TNG, but Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) predate it by a good margin. Also, a 'robotic' robot is hardly a new idea...


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## Sermo Lupi (Jul 9, 2017)

Lastly some final thoughts:

I thought it was a good film. It had a coherent cinematic style with Prometheus, and it's one I find attractive even if I prefer the darkness and grittiness of the earlier films. Alien (to me, anyway) was always about the low-fi technology, and it's something I thought suited the themes and visuals of the earlier films really well. Here, things are more sterile and clear--in fitting with all of the franchise's secrets being put on full display, the art critic might remark--but I'll still take it over virtually any other big blockbuster in the last year or two. And that was kind of the crux of it...walking away from the cinema, as much as I was debating the merits of this or that idea in the film, I was mostly just pleased to have seen an Alien film on the big screen again. Flawed as it was, I'll take it over the homogeneity of all that super hero crap we get as a baseline now.

As for the flaws themselves?

1) Lack of suspense. To be fair, it had some mild twists and turns as much as ANY Alien film could have at this point, but we're like 6-9 films into that universe now and the surprises are gone. It is what it is, and I'm not sure we'll ever get it back. The novelty of Giger's designs has been expended, although they're still unbelievably cool. It's just that the alien isn't surprising anymore (its new 'morphs' only marginally so) and the plot structures aren't surprising either. So Ridley's plan for combatting this lack of suspense seems to be making the set pieces bigger and bigger whilst delving more into the mythos of the universe, but many fans are going to feel this is moving further and further away from the original vibe of the earlier films. At this point I feel like Alien has more in common with Beowulf than a film like Alien: Covenant.

2) The troupes. Didn't mean to be too hard on you, Dredg, but at least we can agree on the predictability of the third act. Especially with the final sequence, it played out more like a director ticking off boxes and/or pandering to fans than anything else. It was still pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but come on:


Spoiler



A) after the initial alien threat is expunged from the rescue vehicle, another gets aboard the main ship via an infected crew member. B) the alien rampages about the ship, but the heroine corals it toward the ship's industrial bay. C) The heroine defeats the alien with the help of machinery and by flushing it out into space using an airlock.



3) Interested as I am to see the secrets of the Alien franchise explored in greater depth, it obviously kills the magic of the films a little bit. But with that said, I'll offer two diamonds in the rough: what was the last popular film that had its narrative and world design discussed and debated so much? The fan reception of this film has been refreshing for the reason that it's gotten people talking and interpreting things again. Secondly, it does seem that Ridley Scott is still giving us stuff that's true to his original vision. I won't explain it all here because this post is already long enough, but if you do some digging into details like the jars and the idea of a plague-borne xenomorph (that was apparently weaponized by the engineers), you get some interesting clues pointing back to the first film(s). Some people think Scott is just flying by the seat of his pants and making it all up, but I'm not sure that's the case--at least not as far as the mythos is concerned. And I'm interested to see his vision in full once he's finished making Alien films.

All in all I enjoyed it!


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