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

T.O.P

Banned
However, despite the fact I'm pretty negative on the film, every minute of the movie from the moment one of the crew gets sick, to the quarantine scene, the scenes outside the ship wreckage, right up until the flare were absolutely stellar. I loved how messy it all was, it felt very human the way that clusterfuck went down.

Yup, the whole sequence was fantastic, felt really raw and not overly dramatic as many others attempt to be
 

Hystzen

Member
I was on board with film until the white xenomorph sneaks into temple then just falls apart to me rush and messy. Also instead that 7 week timeskip to get to planet could been used to get us to know the crew with brief snippets.
 
Yeah, the stupidity moments didn't quite reach Prometheus levels and some of the reactions (the ladies in the medbay to be exact) well well acted and spot on, BUT:

-The guy touching the pods (the other one at least stomped on it which was more realistic).

-The chick trusting a clearly disturbed android about being safe in a potentially monster infested necropolis and going to wash herself ALONE (when the most likely scenario is that she should be going through a mental breakdown after seen those creatures).

-The captain willingfully following David, who he just said he doesn't trust, into a dark room full of living eggs after he just explained to him he's been experimenting with the freaking monsters that killed half his crew (!)

Are friggin horrible and take the movie a whole notch down. I'm not professional scriptwriter and yet I could see several ways in which you can reach the same results without making your characters look like real morons. Seriously, is there no one proofreading for this stuff?
 
Did the Engineers produce neomorphs during that scene? I thought they either dissolved or turned to dead statues. My version was heavily censored so they could have deleted that part.

Yes. Lots of them. Initially, I thought the pathogen was just destroying the Engineers, which was fine and made sense. Then Neomorphs started sprouting (which was odd anyway because when the humans were infected the Neomorphs didn't hatch on contact).

I can't get this film out of my head for all of the wrong reasons. The plotholes are driving me a bit crazy, I think I need to go out for some fresh air.
 
Yeah, the stupidity moments didn't quite reach Prometheus levels and some of the reactions (the ladies in the medbay to be exact) well well acted and spot on, BUT:

-The guy touching the pods (the other one at least stomped on it which was more realistic).

-The chick trusting a clearly disturbed android about being safe in a potentially monster infested necropolis and going to wash herself ALONE (when the most likely scenario is that she should be going through a mental breakdown after seen those creatures).

-The captain willingfully following David, who he just said he doesn't trust, into a dark room full of living eggs after he just explained to him he's been experimenting with the freaking monsters that killed half his crew (!)

Are friggin horrible and take the movie a whole notch down. I'm not professional scriptwriter and yet I could see several ways in which you can reach the same results without making your characters look like real morons. Seriously, is there no one proofreading for this stuff?

This bothered me as well, because if you're on a planet and two of your crew mates randomly get infected with an airborne pathogen, why would you trust the water?

Apologies for the double post.
 
Yes. Lots of them. Initially, I thought the pathogen was just destroying the Engineers, which was fine and made sense.

I didn't see any Neomorphs sprouting, just the Engineers vomiting and getting all black. David himself explains in his exposition scene that mutations are just freak incidents, the goo mostly kills.
 

Lagamorph

Member
I think the idea is that the goo has different effects on different species.
At the start of Prometheus we saw that the raw virus would just basically break down an Engineer, but in other life forms it acted differently. In humans in its original/raw form it didn't spawn hybrids, but it did cause human offspring to become a hybrid creature. For less complex life forms like worms it caused them to drastically mutate into larger aggressive creatures. Basically the effects were different for every life form that the original virus came into contact with.

I think.
 

Bishop89

Member
I enjoyed it, mainly because Fassbender just draws your soul in. Also, nice spaceships and stuff. The other humans were passable. Ironic how the one that stood out the most was the comedian guy and I was apprehensive about him when I saw the trailer.

Not a fan of the Aliens franchise, my only exposure to it was the first one when I was too young to remember, and recently the video game.

I enjoyed the first two thirds more than the generic action-y final act. This movie was exactly the change of pace I was looking for as I wasn't in the mood to watch Guardians 2.

watch Aliens NOW
 
I think the idea is that the goo has different effects on different species.
At the start of Prometheus we saw that the raw virus would just basically break down an Engineer, but in other life forms it acted differently. In humans in its original/raw form it didn't spawn hybrids, but it did cause human offspring to become a hybrid creature. For less complex life forms like worms it caused them to drastically mutate into larger aggressive creatures. Basically the effects were different for every life form that the original virus came into contact with.

I think.

I think you're mostly right but there are some considerations. Holloway infected Shaw with the Trilobite but he was decaying like the Engineer at the beginning of the movie, albeit at a significantly slower rate (possibly because he ingested just a drop).

Fifield fell into a pool of the thing and simply became a mutant.

There was a Neomorph/Deacon in the murals of the temple in Prometheus and some shapes looked like the eggs as well so the Engineers must know of the creatures, as a matter of fact there were chestbusted, dead Engineers in the Juggernaut in Prometheus so the goo can also produce hybrids when infecting them.

All in all, it seems that contact with the raw virus results in a random ocurrence between dna decay and mutation, more refined/evolved forms of it like the spores/trilobite/egg seem like a surefire method of producing a hybrid.
 

Truant

Member
Fassbender was barely recognizable in some scenes, especially where he's cutting his hair. I thought he did a great job with both characters. I also thought the flute scene was pretty impressive on a technical level.
 

Bishop89

Member
Fassbender was barely recognizable in some scenes, especially where he's cutting his hair. I thought he did a great job with both characters. I also thought the flute scene was pretty impressive on a technical level.

fassbender is such an amazing talent. Did a fantastic job
 
I think you're mostly right but there are some considerations. Holloway infected Shaw with the Trilobite but he was decaying like the Engineer at the beginning of the movie, albeit at a significantly slower rate (possibly because he ingested just a drop).

Fifield fell into a pool of the thing and simply became a mutant.

There was a Neomorph/Deacon in the murals of the temple in Prometheus and some shapes looked like the eggs as well so the Engineers must know of the creatures, as a matter of fact there were chestbusted, dead Engineers in the Juggernaut in Prometheus so the goo can also produce hybrids when infecting them.

All in all, it seems that contact with the raw virus results in a random ocurrence between dna decay and mutation, more refined/evolved forms of it like the spores/trilobite/egg seem like a surefire method of producing a hybrid.
I think, ultimately, the goo ends up creating bipedal-like creatures once it gets far enough along. The decon. The neo. The xeno. Whatever exactly was in the mural. Regardless of who was tampering or experimenting, that's an eventual result.

While David will be the one who creates what will end up being the biomechanical xeno from Alien, the engineers most certainly had created deacon-like or pre-deacon lifeforms, and to the point where they made a mural out of it on the wall surrounding a room of pods. A kind of a shrine of sorts, of what that stuff was and what it could do.

Something obviously went wrong on this particular planet, and an infection occurred, and whatever was later birthed killed off the Engineers in those facilities.
 

daviyoung

Banned
Is there a OT for this? Just saw it and it's Prometheus 2.

First 2/3 are solid, last 1/3 (everything after Daniels gets woken up by Mother) is shit. Felt like it was stapled on.
 
I'm looking forward to the eventual alien 5 where in alien 1-resurection it's revealed David has been pulling the strings for everything and then lands on earth with thousands of xenos and other fked up shit.
 

Replicant

Member
*sigh* Not what I wanted.

I want to know more about the Engineers and instead I got David, the crazy genocidal robot.

I also don't like how David was the creator of the facehugger. It was a lot more scary when we didn't know how they came about.

Or if they want to do it this way, at least be more consistent. I know David said that the organism is highly mutable but it's so inconsistent. Why when consumed by the engineers it either evaporated them or turn them into ash/burnt figure?

I appreciate the reference to 'Mother', leading up to its eventual appearance in the Nostromo. But the crew once again acted like idiots. Sure, let's chart an unknown planet without helmet or suit. Even Mass Effect does better job at empasizing the danger of pathfinding an unknown planet.
 

N7.Angel

Member
1/3 Great, 2/3 terrible, 3/3 awful.

the flute scene is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life, and I watched glee when I was a kid.
 

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
David isn't the original creator; the mural in Prometheus had facehuggers.

That was just an easter egg. Ridley Scott already confirmed that David created the xenomorphs.
 

Days like these...

Have a Blessed Day
A bit of speculation here. I'm hoping the engineers show up in a future film, probably not the next one because that one is supposedly set between Prometheus and Covenant. I mean think about it David just decimated all those engineers like they aren't shit as fuck so I'm hoping some engineers out in space somewhere find out and they're all "Aww hell nah!" And come back to exact to some justice on David.

However since Scott seems to have soured on the idea of engineers due to the criticism of Prometheus (even though the engineers weren't the problem with Prometheus) I doubt they'll be coming back in any capacity.
 
I actually enjoyed the flute scene with the exception of the phrase "fingering". I like the ideas behind robots becoming sentient and creating art.
 

Raide

Member
Just watched this...did not like it.
Way too hyped up. Disappointed​ overall, just because it felt too weak to have the Alien name.
 

Interview was linked in the Early Reactions thread, I can go dig it up.

edit: here.

But yeah, people using the wall in Prometheus as some sort of embedded storytelling aid probably shouldn't do that—it's apparently not much more than the VFX crew paying homage to the pre-production art that didn't make it into the film, and nothing more than that.

"It looks cool, put it in there" is, if you've seen the behind-the-scenes on Prometheus, a semi-decent sum-up of Ridley's storytelling predilections in this universe.

Re: David, Engineers and the Neomorphs from the pathogen I was apparently the only person to witness - see question two here:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.te...enant-spoilers-davids-plan-big-questions/amp/

Article's weird in that it seems the writer misunderstood some of what he saw.

The goo hitting the air just kills. There's no reason to believe it'd just - make neomorphs. David explained he had to do something to the goo to create the plants that release the spores that create neomorphs.
 
The way I understand it, we should stoip arguing whether David created the Xenomorph or not.

He did and he didn't, the Deacon and Trilobite in Prometheus prove that Xeno-like lifeforms spawned from the goo before he even knew it existed. The mutation/hybridization is a property of the goo which is meant to both destroy and create life (as seen at the beginning of Prometheus) by recombining DNA.

David created the Xenomorph in the sense that he tampered with this bioweapon a race of millions-year old practically god-like beings had created, and refined it, but he didn't truly 'create' them from scratch.

It would be like saying that Beethoven created music because he wrote something as amazing as the ninth symphony.
 
The way I understand it, we should stoip arguing whether David created the Xenomorph or not.

Yeah, it's cut & dry based on what the mov—

He did and he didn't, .

—No, he did. There's no didn't.

He did.

It's not like saying Beethoven created music. It's like saying Beethoven created the 5th.

(people are really going to wrestle with this shit until the next one, huh)
 

Fj0823

Member
https://youtu.be/TnRHBLmCK0o

The movie was worth it just for this marketing.

And yes, David did it. Period, no questions about it.

The real question is, are there anymore engineers or ways to get the eggs to LV-426?

But the canon is that the Alien prototype was created by a crazy robot scientist obsessed with whipping out human-like life.
 
Yeah, it's cut & dry based on what the mov—

—No, he did. There's no didn't.

He did.

Based on the goo. Which he didn't create. It's like creating a statue from clay, you need the clay first. He did create it but not from scratch, instead he basically ended what the Engineers began.

Saying otherwise is pretty much saying that Prometheus, half of Covenant and what David tells us himself is false.

Don't wanna sound confrontational about this but if I do it's because there is a big difference, David creating this organism from scratch sounds preposterous, lame and completely demolishes the mythos. Him hijacking and refining the Engineers' bioweapon is actually a pretty good idea which makes sense and manages to unify the original lore with the conceps and ideas we were presented in Prometheus nicely.
 
I'm looking forward to the eventual alien 5 where in alien 1-resurection it's revealed David has been pulling the strings for everything and then lands on earth with thousands of xenos and other fked up shit.

0533fb595956613fed8cdb1ba9a7d976b59bd07d_hq.jpg
 
Based on the goo. Which he didn't create..

Which doesn't matter.

To use your own analogy:

If the goo is the ability to create music, the existence of music doesn't mean Beethoven didn't write the 5th Symphony because someone else had access to the same notes he had.

He created the Alien. We saw it happen.

David creating this organism from scratch sounds preposterous, lame and completely demolishes the mythos

I'm not saying it doesn't. But that's what has happened.

You can try to retcon away around it for now, but that doesn't change what the movie is.
 
Which doesn't matter.

To use your own analogy:

If the goo is the ability to create music, the existence of music doesn't mean Beethoven didn't write the 5th Symphony because someone else had access to the same notes he had.

He created the Alien. We saw it happen.

I'm not saying it doesn't. But that's what has happened.

You can try to retcon away around it for now, but that doesn't change what the movie is.
But then, answer me this:

Even if you conclude that the mural was just homage props.

Even if you think the Neomorphs and the spores were all David's creations and not mutations from the gazillion ampules he threw at the engineers.

How do you explain the Deacon, Trilobite and Fifield becoming xeno-like? (elongating skull and all) Is Prometheus non-canon now?

He didn't create the creature from scratch, he modified and refined it. I'm not retconing away, all evidence points to this.
 

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
Based on the goo. Which he didn't create. It's like creating a statue from clay, you need the clay first. He did create it but not from scratch, instead he basically ended what the Engineers began.

Saying otherwise is pretty much saying that Prometheus, half of Covenant and what David tells us himself is false.

Don't wanna sound confrontational about this but if I do it's because there is a big difference, David creating this organism from scratch sounds preposterous, lame and completely demolishes the mythos. Him hijacking and refining the Engineers' bioweapon is actually a pretty good idea which makes sense and manages to unify the original lore with the conceps and ideas we were presented in Prometheus nicely.

David is responsible for the xenomorphs. Yes, he used the Engineer's goo but they are his creation. If Shaw had left David behind at the end of Prometheus then the classic xenomorphs would not exist.

But then, answer me this:

Even if you conclude that the mural was just homage props.

Even if you think the Neomorphs and the spores were all David's creations and not mutations from the gazillion ampules he threw at the engineers.

How do you explain the Deacon, Trilobite and Fifield becoming xeno-like? (elongating skull and all) Is Prometheus non-canon now?

He didn't create the creature from scratch, he modified and refined it. I'm not retconing away, all evidence points to this.

You're adding layers that aren't there. When the goo is combined with human DNA you get xeno-looking life forms, there's nothing more to it. David just kept experimenting until he arrived at the classic xenomorphs. Without him they wouldn't exist.
 

mxgt

Banned
I thought this movie sucked. Easily behind Alien 3 in the rankings.

Was not a fan at all of David as basically a comic book tier villain.
 
How do you explain the Deacon, Trilobite and Fifield becoming xeno-like?

Again, to use your analogy: If Beethoven wrote the fifth, why is there a symphony in C-Minor that has similar passages written previously?

I don't have to explain all that other shit. It's not the xenomorph. It's not the facehugger, and it's not the egg.

I get that you dont' like it, and I'm not a huge fan, either. But your argument is basically "well, someone else could have come up with the same shit somewhere else so this thing that David DID come up with doesn't count now."

That's the same thing as using the old gag about the thousand monkeys to argue that Shakespeare didn't really write Macbeth.

You're trying to retcon what you were shown so that it's not as distasteful to you as you found it. That's what you're doing.
 

FunkyMonk

Member
Just got out from seeing it and it was meh. The landing and exploration were visually stunning and I could see where the film was trying to build tension but it never quite pulled it off. Also at various points I was rocking off the 'homages to the trilogy but it just felt of. The david/Walter fight just seemed cheesy, like something I'd expect from a superhero film.

I don't have high hopes for the other films, neither do the folk I saw it with.
 

Jinroh

Member
It's a leftover from when Prometheus was supposed to be a direct Alien prequel. If you pay attention, the engineer's corpses have holes in their chest as well. It makes no sense in the current context of the movie.

All these things are just leftovers from what the movie was really supposed to be: An Alien prequel that was supposed to open a new universe of possibilities with the trip to the engineer's homeworld at the end of the movie (the ending didn't change).

Instead of have an alien prequel and follow up movies expending the engineers lore, we ended up having a first movie that focused neither on the engineers nor the aliens and a sequel that tried to be an alien movie, ditched the engineers and instead focused on David.

The original concept was really good, but Ridley is just fucking things up with each new movie and it's clear he doesn't really have a clue where he wants to go next.

It's interesting to note that in this early script, the engineer furiously killed the crew because waking up from stasis doomed him, since he had an alien in his chest. The engineer was also much bigger than what he ended up being in the movie, thus looking more similar to the pilot in the first alien movie (it was supposed to be him).
 
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