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Alien: Covenant |SPOILER THREAD| With more Christian subtext than BvS
- Thread starter Toa TAK
- Start date
Thinking back about the film, I can't stop laughing at the guy who stuck his head into the alien egg. Especially since he'd literally called David 'satan' in the previous scene and he still went for 'it's perfectly safe to stick your head into giant slime egg in my evil dungeon cave'.
Freewheelin'
Member
Saw this yesterday afternoon.
I'm a huge fan of the first two Aliens and have long hoped for a return to that style of horror and terror, plus somewhat relatable characters and logical situations. So I was kinda excited (but still skeptical) for Covenant, despite the fact that I didn't like Prometheus.
Well, many of the same problems I had from Prometheus also appear here, despite Scott and the cast saying "it's all good, everything's fixed!" (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist). Stupid characters doing stupid things, silly dialogue that's unrelated to the film, that android fight (because lol we need a fight between two 'brothers' to show their dominance), that scene where the chestburster raises its hands to David, slipping in blood, poor CGI...I could go on. The more I think about it, the worse it is. It's like Scott has forgotten what made his original masterpiece..well, a perfect organism, and that's sad and very disappointing.
I desperately wanted it to be good, but in the end, it was extremely poor. The actual ending was pretty horrific in terms of David's character though. That could be cool to see.
I'm a huge fan of the first two Aliens and have long hoped for a return to that style of horror and terror, plus somewhat relatable characters and logical situations. So I was kinda excited (but still skeptical) for Covenant, despite the fact that I didn't like Prometheus.
Well, many of the same problems I had from Prometheus also appear here, despite Scott and the cast saying "it's all good, everything's fixed!" (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist). Stupid characters doing stupid things, silly dialogue that's unrelated to the film, that android fight (because lol we need a fight between two 'brothers' to show their dominance), that scene where the chestburster raises its hands to David, slipping in blood, poor CGI...I could go on. The more I think about it, the worse it is. It's like Scott has forgotten what made his original masterpiece..well, a perfect organism, and that's sad and very disappointing.
I desperately wanted it to be good, but in the end, it was extremely poor. The actual ending was pretty horrific in terms of David's character though. That could be cool to see.
I think I'll have to watch Prometheus again, I recall liking it a lot more than most of ya'll, but I can't mentally track the David from Prometheus becoming what he is in Covenant, I know he did some mean shit, but it just didn't track. Maybe this will change after another viewing, but I certainly liked Prometheus a lot more than Covenant, a few really outstanding sequences aside.
When the robot who just befriended an Alien (who beheaded your crewmate) tells you that going near a suspicious looking slimy egg is safe, I am sure it's alright to trust him.
Also how did he become 12ft tall? I look forward to more inane Ridley Retcons in the coming years.
He had faith
It could be then again that's how I ended Prometheus. 'Bit of a shit show, bit hey the ending...I bet the sequel when they get to the Engineers homeland will make up for it'.
Fool me once...
Tony Redgrave
Member
And fossilized, remember. I'm sure fossilizing in less than 20 years is totally possible!
I think that's clear. It's also kinda verbalized when David confuses Byron with Percy Shelley and Walter tells him 'a single bad note can ruin a symphony', he's gone nuts.
It's Reyn Time!
Member
RE: the acting Captain and the egg. I honestly don't think I'd be beyond peering into a hatching egg if I was armed with a machine gun and thought I was in control of the situation. Outside of the Alien films my life experience says that things which come out of eggs are young, small, vulnerable, weak and dependent, not face-raping certain death. Similarly his experience of synthetics (particularly David's model) up to that point would be 'helpful and faithful robot friend' and not 'bitter, abused, angry mad scientist'.
Sorry but... nope.
Have you seen the Alien eggs? They are not the average egg you see around.
They are huge, sturdy and clearly menacing looking. They certainly look far from harmless.
Not to consider he's on an hostile planet, one that's being considered home for killer beings who murdered his comrades.
As for David, Walter might have been a helpful and faithful robot friend, but David was really a different beast from the beginning. Alone, stranded on a different planet, with a weird aura, living in a creepy mausoleum full of embalmed corpses and empathizing with a creature who had just slain a member of your crew? That's not a being you would logically trust, come on.
Even more in a dark cellar with monsters on the loose.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
Helpful robot friend who yelled NOOOOOOOO when he shot the creature that DECAPITATED his crew.
But never mind the preconceptions of robotic behavior, the goddamn idiot didn't even bother to raise the alarm for the rest of his crew the moment he witnessed that lady's head floating on the pond. WTF???
God the whole thing with how he acted throughout those scenes annoyed me to no end due to the sheer idiocy bring displayed on the screen.
You are on a hostile alien world and just witnessed a crazy android who has been lost in space for a decade try to tame an alien which killed your crewmate. Said crazy android shows you that he's been experimenting for years and leads you into a basement with giant alien eggs.
I'm sorry but if your next action is "follow him down and stare into the opening egg" I don't want you as my captain. Or on my crew. Lol.
My only wish was a Alien film where people are not making the most dumbest decisions ever and still being outsmarted by the Aliens. That would be terrifying. The way things are no it is just a very frustrating affair to watch those films.
-"How far away from the storm is safe, mother?"
-"80 kilometres"
-"okay let's go down to 40 kilometres then".
-"open the door"
-"I can't"
*opens the door*
-"How far away from the storm is safe, mother?"
-"80 kilometres"
-"okay let's go down to 40 kilometres then".
-"open the door"
-"I can't"
*opens the door*
It's Reyn Time!
Member
You have a machine gun and you've just gunned down what you presume is an adult alien single handedly, and as far as you're concerned the threat to your crew just died with it. You're following this dumbass android whose 'life' you just saved because the naive robot tried to make friends with an alien which was about to kill him (from your perspective). At no point in your life have you encountered something which is deadly the instant it hatches from an egg, and even so, you have a machine gun. Also, vitally, you're not a soldier and you haven't seen an Alien film.
I'll buy it if this is an alternate reality where mankind never invented horror movies. Maybe.
Was anyone confused as fuck by the edit when David kills Walter (fake kills him, before he comes back and has a fist fight). I don't know what the fuck David did, his limbs looked all fucked up, and it almost seemed like he did a flip, it was weird, it was so quick, plus there was that one shot where Walter's eyes are all white and he's got this fucked up death grimace. I'm probably making half this shit up, but that was just hard to track.
It was confusing as fuck, I agree.
And honestly I even thought he had somehow injected the Walter with the black goo (maybe by having placed a drop over the tip of the sort of knife he used): at that point I was ready to see the first mech-xeno hatching from an android.
Not that I would have been that surprising, considering the shit-show this movie was to me.
Nah, he just switched him off. I think there's supposed to be some critical exploit on the machines that means they can be disabled so quickly, but Walters unit had an upgrade so he survived/played dead.
Maximus P
Member
This is my main issue too. It really felt like the whole thing could have been 30 minutes shorter. I think it must have been a good 45 minutes before they even landed on the planet.
I'd also like to add to the ridiculous 'Take a look in the egg' scene with the Faris scene in which she sees a guys back bleeding and walks out of the room locking the door behind her leaving her crew mate and friend behind. What got a chuckle out of me was Tennessee afterwards saying 'I've never seen her scared before'
Really disappointing
On the other hand, you just walked through a lab of horrors with the Android telling you he's been experimenting with the stuff that created the alien you just killed and which killed a bunch of your crew and that these eggs are made from the same stuff.
UberTag
Member
When (and if) I choose to watch this film, I'm just going to pretend Billy Crudup is actually not playing Captain Oram but is, in fact, playing his character from Almost Famous, Russell Hammond. I'll justify every stupid thing he does as "oh, it's no big deal, Russell's just on drugs again; he thinks he's a golden god" and all of his questionable judgment will simply be cast away without batting an eyelash.
When he was repairing himself I knew it was David, Walter has some form of auto regenerate.
Does anyone know why they cut Franco in the first minute? Was that planned?
ronaldthump
Member
When he cut his hair. You could see that coming from a mile away.
ronaldthump
Member
oh one thing I realised I didnt like about the loader space/alien sequence is that unlike Aliens 2 that establishes how the loader works when Ripley was using it, I had no idea and the action was so badly shot that Daniels running to the arm and capturing it = ??
Its a lot of action but its not good action as there's no ah ha moment and a lot of it is bad cgi
Its a lot of action but its not good action as there's no ah ha moment and a lot of it is bad cgi
ResidentWeevil13
Member
Humans crucified engineer-Jesus when he came to try to help us out.... yeah, I know
Ridley Scott:
"If you look at it as an 'our children are misbehaving down there' scenario, there are moments where it looks like we've gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, 'Let's send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.' Guess what? They crucified him."
Confidence Man
Member
I honestly cannot believe that this is where Ridley Scott decided to take this story; that the classic alien and egg ended up being created by an android from earth.
IdreamofHIME
Member
The 'Alien' sections of the movie are awesome and the 'Prometheus' sections are fucking pretentious nonsense.
What a waste. Doubt Fox will give him any more shots at this.
What a waste. Doubt Fox will give him any more shots at this.
AusRoachman
Member
Maybe Ridley should have just ended it at alien
He is retroactively destroying everything that was mysterious about alien / aliens with every movie he makes
He is retroactively destroying everything that was mysterious about alien / aliens with every movie he makes
It's Reyn Time!
Member
I like it. It lends weight to both Ash and Bishop's fascination with the Xenomorphs.
Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert: You admire it.
Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor...unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
Spunkmeyer: That's a nice pet you've got there, Bishop.
Bishop (without sarcasm): Magnificent, isn't it?
What the hell's up with that quote? Sounds like something a very drunk or high person would make up.
Well, I'm not sure if it's still canon because it was effectiely cut out of the film, but I did stumble across this interview:
Jesus was an Engineer and we killed Jesus, so the Engineers want to murder us all.
I've watched some of his other recent interviews, I'm fully convinced that Ridley Scott is a very drunk and/or very high person, so it makes total sense he would consider this ending.
ronaldthump
Member
Depends on whether or not it makes bank. He'll get at least another one if this does not bomb
Yeah the video version of the interview is amazing: http://ew.com/movies/2017/04/03/alien-ridley-scott-alternate-ending/
He sounds pretty drunk. Lol.
Been discussing the movie a lot today in the office.
General reaction seems more positive in the outside world than in most of this thread. I personally thought it was mostly enjoyable - with some reservations admittedly - and that's mirrored by the majority of people I've spoken about the film with today.
I have decided though that the chest burster raising its arms to David is absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever witnessed in a cinema.
General reaction seems more positive in the outside world than in most of this thread. I personally thought it was mostly enjoyable - with some reservations admittedly - and that's mirrored by the majority of people I've spoken about the film with today.
I have decided though that the chest burster raising its arms to David is absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever witnessed in a cinema.
Maybe he's just old?
Like, that's not a put down. The man is up there. The way he speaks reminds me of my own grandfather.
It's cause dude had faith
Orochinagis
Member
The capitán also told EVERYTHING to David , a total stranger on a hostile planet.
I guess his wife was the brains of the couple
I guess his wife was the brains of the couple
I saw film Thursday and can't believe i saw some those scenes in a Alien film. I like promethus even if was dumb as shit at times but i was interested in next part Shaw and head.
Daniels had 3 times kill the xeno at end (she has a fucking gun and xeno was stuck in crane window) but has to kill it in most convoluted way possible impale on second machine.
Daniels had 3 times kill the xeno at end (she has a fucking gun and xeno was stuck in crane window) but has to kill it in most convoluted way possible impale on second machine.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I wasn't even sure what was happening inside the crane there. It's just that at some point, the bug exploded and the crane opened back up and I was like "oh, I guess this setpiece is over now."
It was not directed well, that bit.
It was not directed well, that bit.
Yeah! Me and my SO said that when we left the cinema. Did the claw just crush it? It looked like she gave it a mine or something, which, if she did, was not set up at all.