SlipperyFishes
Banned
Groot. It's Evil Baby Groot
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Alien: Covenant |SPOILER THREAD| With more Christian subtext than BvS
- Thread starter Toa TAK
- Start date
So it could look like David was puppeteering it.
Let that be your fan cannon. These are just The Future Adventures of Crazy David The Space Bound Android.
Requiem!?
That was so bad I stopped after a few minutes... Anyway my canon is up to 3. But Newt and Hicks are out and about.
Monocle
Member
Those little guys were awesome and creepy. Like vicious little skeleton dolls that'll try to rip your throat out. I love them. I want one.
Not really. Not like in Prometheus where people had time to make collected judgement and then made foolish choices just because.
Most of the crew's mistakes in Covenant make some kind of sense.
But also: there's something to be said for going along with the experience and understanding that the game is rigged against the protagonists. At some point they're going to have to start messing up and dying. This kind of movie is first and foremost about providing an experience. The Alien formula is pretty firmly established by now, so why is it so hard for some viewers to accept that bad calls and panicked mistakes are in store.
Lights and Waves
Member
Your post is proof that their merchandising plan worked.
youbastards
Member
Since we didn't see his demise, I'm guessing Walter will eventually repair himself and learn to fly the crashed Engineer's ship?
Monocle
Member
No I mean I want an actual little beastie who will crawl around my house like a spider monkey and eat my neighbor's goldfish.
I would have to send him away to another loving home before he grew too big and sassy though.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
You'd think the Prometheus and Covenant ship would send messages back (even if it takes 1.3 years) to tell earth "hey, there's this alien race with a bio weapon that wants to exterminate earth."
Just so, ya know, some plans can be made.
Just so, ya know, some plans can be made.
Monocle
Member
Let's all break out the tiki torches and chill on lawn chairs and brainstorm all the things that would have made an airtight masterpiece out of this monster movie about robot-on-alien genocide and robot-on-robot homoeroticism and evil alien creatures that kill you from the inside of your body and then rip your friend's head off.
Somebody tweet Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It was a facehugger who "impregnated" Ripley with the Queen. It's possibly a random ocurrence.
exmachina64
Banned
If they were "just" a highly aggressive space predator, there wouldn't have been a cargo hold full of eggs.
Garcia el Gringo
Member
What do you find promising about the ending of Covenant? Prometheus' ending filled me with a sense of wonder with how open-ended I perceived it to be at the time, but I felt a bit like I was going through the motions as a viewer at the end of Covenant knowing where Scott wants to take this saga from recent interviews.
The immediate set up with David making the Covenant his new lab could be delightfully twisted, but big picture (without knowing if there's going to be any interesting twists) we know the current plan is to connect this with the original Alien.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Is blood that slippery? Cause it killed 2 people. I can see why David hates humanity.
I mean, you can put a chicken in a hutch - humans didn't create chickens.
You ever have a badger run at ya? Because it's frightening.
Monocle
Member
He's a fast and mean little guy though. He has spunk.
But really, I bet it would feel a bit like having a giant bug in the room. A big jerk bug that wants to hurt you. There's a sense of panic, right?
Let's follow this strange person we never met before, but he has a flare gun through the woods, through a mass graveyard. Told we're safe in this wide open temple surrounded by death, find his pet shop of horrors, go off alone, see him communicate with the creature that just bit your friends head off, follow him so more, stick your head in a giant fucking egg because he told you its safe, etc.
This is about on par with Jason telling you to come down a dark alley, while you have no clothes on, in the middle of the night, after you just saw him kill your friend. Shit, you seem like an alright fellow. Let's bounce.
Thank you! I couldn't find the gif of it last night.
Monocle
Member
Let's watch the crew say "screw this you guys!" and hop back in their ship and zip over to their original destination and live happily ever after in that lady's cabin. Actually the last 1.5 hours of the movie could have been all about that lady building her cabin. The placement of the front door to your lakehouse is really crucial for proper feng shui you know.
Fucking lord, entertaining some of you guys is like trying to lead a cow downstairs. Why don't you put your critical powers to use by thinking up some reasons why a scared and disoriented group of people who are out of their element and faced with a succession of mind blowing discoveries and events might do some silly things that you in your comfortable chair would not do?
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Okay.
You don't follow the guy that just scared off the psycho weasels that just blew up the lander and killed something like 5 people in 10 minutes. You tell him to fuck off. He fucks off.
Now what.
What do you think happens that prevents the panicking, resourceless team from dying out there.
At some point, some amount of nightmare logic has to be allowed to come into play in a horror film.
It still has to be done well, yeah. But at a certain point it's not so much criticism as it is amateur bug testing for fiction. You're trying to break the game instead of play it.
You don't follow the guy that just scared off the psycho weasels that just blew up the lander and killed something like 5 people in 10 minutes. You tell him to fuck off. He fucks off.
Now what.
What do you think happens that prevents the panicking, resourceless team from dying out there.
At some point, some amount of nightmare logic has to be allowed to come into play in a horror film.
It still has to be done well, yeah. But at a certain point it's not so much criticism as it is amateur bug testing for fiction. You're trying to break the game instead of play it.
FaintDeftone
Junior Member
Alright, so I saw the film last night. This was one of my most anticipated of the year. I walked out of this thing so disappointed that it's depressing.
I loved Prometheus. Say what you want about that film, but I thought it introduced some really fascinating themes and ideas that I was excited to see explored in another film. Prometheus was one of those movies that after I watched it, I began scouring the internet looking for explanations and fan theories. I loved the way that movie made me think and I thought the philosophical approach was a really cool direction for the series. I couldn't wait to know more as soon as that ending kicked in and we saw David and Shaw fly away in that Engineer's ship. The possibilities were exciting.
In comes Covenant, where Ridley Scott basically took everything exciting about Prometheus and threw it out the fucking window. Who are the engineers? Why did they create human life? What was the black goo and its origin? What was Shaw and David going to say to them and how would they approach them? Fuck all that, bomb the bastards and kill them all in a matter of seconds and forget about it!
This film did Elizabeth Shaw dirty too. Her fate, while disturbing and shocking, just reduced her to Alien fodder. I actually really enjoyed her character and she could have been the next Ripley. Instead, after everything she's been through and how she wanted to fight to continue her search for answers, Ridley Scott just threw her ass out the window too. She was a device used to build David's character up to be a cruel, heartless monster and I honestly thought her character deserved better than that. All of this feels like Scott just wanted to get rid of the Prometheus links as quickly as possible and move on to a different direction, which to me wasted a TON of potential.
Anyway, Covenant was fantastic up until we met David. After that, the film went down hill big time. The deaths weren't suspenseful, the pacing slowed down to a crawl and the Alien encounters became predictable. I laughed at how they dispatched the final alien onboard the Covenant. It was so methodical, perfectly executed and quick that it lacked any and all suspense. The twist ending I saw coming a mile away. The action sequences were fine, but there weren't enough of them and the two biggest action scenes were rushed and unexciting. The Neomorphs were much more frightening to me and as soon as the Xenomorph appeared, things were much less suspenseful.
Man, I'm so bummed with this movie. I won't call it a bad movie, but a terribly disappointing one. So much of Prometheus' potential was squandered and it ended up being an average slasher movie with very little actual slashing. The characters were dull, the visuals were mostly dark and less appealing and I felt horribly unsatisfied when the credits rolled. I liked Prometheus much more than this. I now feel how people who hated Prometheus felt.
I loved Prometheus. Say what you want about that film, but I thought it introduced some really fascinating themes and ideas that I was excited to see explored in another film. Prometheus was one of those movies that after I watched it, I began scouring the internet looking for explanations and fan theories. I loved the way that movie made me think and I thought the philosophical approach was a really cool direction for the series. I couldn't wait to know more as soon as that ending kicked in and we saw David and Shaw fly away in that Engineer's ship. The possibilities were exciting.
In comes Covenant, where Ridley Scott basically took everything exciting about Prometheus and threw it out the fucking window. Who are the engineers? Why did they create human life? What was the black goo and its origin? What was Shaw and David going to say to them and how would they approach them? Fuck all that, bomb the bastards and kill them all in a matter of seconds and forget about it!
This film did Elizabeth Shaw dirty too. Her fate, while disturbing and shocking, just reduced her to Alien fodder. I actually really enjoyed her character and she could have been the next Ripley. Instead, after everything she's been through and how she wanted to fight to continue her search for answers, Ridley Scott just threw her ass out the window too. She was a device used to build David's character up to be a cruel, heartless monster and I honestly thought her character deserved better than that. All of this feels like Scott just wanted to get rid of the Prometheus links as quickly as possible and move on to a different direction, which to me wasted a TON of potential.
Anyway, Covenant was fantastic up until we met David. After that, the film went down hill big time. The deaths weren't suspenseful, the pacing slowed down to a crawl and the Alien encounters became predictable. I laughed at how they dispatched the final alien onboard the Covenant. It was so methodical, perfectly executed and quick that it lacked any and all suspense. The twist ending I saw coming a mile away. The action sequences were fine, but there weren't enough of them and the two biggest action scenes were rushed and unexciting. The Neomorphs were much more frightening to me and as soon as the Xenomorph appeared, things were much less suspenseful.
Man, I'm so bummed with this movie. I won't call it a bad movie, but a terribly disappointing one. So much of Prometheus' potential was squandered and it ended up being an average slasher movie with very little actual slashing. The characters were dull, the visuals were mostly dark and less appealing and I felt horribly unsatisfied when the credits rolled. I liked Prometheus much more than this. I now feel how people who hated Prometheus felt.
Monocle
Member
This is exactly where I'm coming from. I want to play the game. And the game is pretty OK!
So much of the David scenes played as farce. Was this a parody in disguise? Like I don't even know how to explain some of what I was seeing.
I didn't expect this movie to double down so hard on the David character and if Ridley INSISTED on doubling down so hard on him, why not make him the audience surrogate? Commit to this idea and make him the main character. The first 30 minutes (which felt long by the way) sets up a non descript crew that becomes fodder anyway. The movie would have been better off eschewing the crew on a mission conceit and just continued with David after Prometheus.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I mean, I'm not saying there's not a lot to criticize, because there very obviously is. I'm doing it all over the thread in fact. My recommendation comes with the caveat that at best it's only a little better than Alien 3.
But man...
But man...
I had a Jack Russell come at me those nasty shits with Lockjaw it looked slightly bigger then one.
Monocle
Member
Maybe a better question might be why you interpreted the scenes that way. I mean to me it was great fun to see the result of this synthetic man in the grip of megalomania doing his Frankenstein/Moreau thing for a decade. His drawings and specimens and vivisections were creepy and cool. His scenes with the other model of himself had a real tension and charge. I could watch that stuff all day.
You think the cold calculating evil scientist character would have been a more suitable audience surrogate than a crew of characters who, just like the audience, must discover what's going on with the mysterious new world they've found? Characters who have relatable relationships and emotions, which establish that they are real people who have something to lose?
I mean sorry to be obnoxious but it's probably a good thing you didn't write this movie.
You actually cared about these characters? Can you tell me anything about any of them other than the fact that they're married and on a colonization mission?
I was onboard with the film (odd issues bugging me) up until the White Xeno sneaks into temple then the film just crashes into dumb shit not being exciting or scary.
I much rather watch a 2 hour film of David infecting and creating Aliens ending with the formation of the Egg. Could even have no dialogue or have him talk to himself.
I much rather watch a 2 hour film of David infecting and creating Aliens ending with the formation of the Egg. Could even have no dialogue or have him talk to himself.
D
Deleted member 102362
Unconfirmed Member
Both.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
They're absolutely the most interesting moments. You get to watch Ridley Scott yell at himself for like 30 minutes.
And then seduce himself.
And then give himself JUSTIFICATION to do it.
It's fuckin' bananas.
I await the next film to have 3 Fassbenders trying to seduce each other
Monocle
Member
I didn't particular care about them, but I sympathized. And that was all that was necessary for their suffering to mean more than "OK bye."
Not that I was shedding tears, but each injury and death made me go "ouch wow that sucks." I was engaged.
Stop, my pants are tight enough already!
They sort of lost my sympathy when they landed on an uncharted alien world without helmets and exposed themselves needlessly to deadly airborne pathogens, but I guess they had to go without helmets because this story they wanted to tell couldn't be told otherwise
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Not really, part of what makes it is a balance. Having poor decisions is human, it makes sense. Them following David isn't entirely out of the blue and for their current status, it makes sense. Of course, this is right before the med bay scene, which is questionable, but it still works.
But it falls apart completely once they hit David's home. Its poor characterization alongside poor plot progression, to continually make every event based on an even more irrational decision than the previous. You need to balance it out at some point. The film does not. It works more as a parody, because you have an escalation to almost the point where if Scott was not reaching out to the audience and breaking the 4th wall with David's and Crudup's conversation, I don't have a response to it.
And after quite possibly one of the most idiotic scenes. You get the new Ripley who battles it with near perfect decision making, twice. Outside of being blinded to David. Tying herself down to shoot at it, using the crane, sealing off the corridors to force it into the bay, baiting it perfectly, ejecting it into space, etc. The rationale is completely different than half an hour ago. It does not match up at all between her wondering off alone first in a place where people have been reported dead/missing, etc.
You need the suspension of belief to allow the characters to happen and the horror element to take place, but it's also the director's duty to make sure it's not overused to the point of insulting the audience. It's an excuse in this case, it doesn't just work, since it's not one or two decisions. It's an onslaught of them. It's unbalanced. And it's a mess.
I'll say this, the film started off fine. The first 1/3 was strong, decisions made sense even if wrong, etc. I know people are bitching about the girl slipping on blood, but you think that's an issue when a fucking alien just popped out of someone's back? But by the 3rd fall, it maybe better to use a different tactic. Yet largely, it's probably the most human the cast felt in an Alien flick since the first. But the second 1/3, this all goes out the window in favor of advancing the plot for either scares or David moments. The finale 1/3, it changes it up again, but this time for action set pieces.
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
Monocle
Member
They thought they were going to live there. They had analyzed the atmosphere IIRC. Of course they took their helmets off. Nobody stepped on the evil death fungus on purpose.
I don't get why they'd suddenly lose your sympathy by carrying on like normal people on their previously established mission. Unless you were predisposed not to care about them or something.
Ignoring the fact that going into an alien atmosphere with no containment suits makes zero sense, the only person who came off as acting unusually stupid was the Captain. Maybe the other two in the ship for going along with Danny McBride's "let's risk killing 2k people to save my wife" plan. The rest either went into hysterics after seeing the neomorphs burst out of their friends, or were just outclassed.
Maybe I'm misremembering but all I recall was that that Mother did some preliminary reconnaissance on the planet and it was deemed earthlike and habitable but that doesn't preclude the possibility that they could have expose themselves to indigenous pathogens.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I mean, I can kinda see this, but I disagree with it. The characterization is a problem in this film, definitely (there's just way too many characters - which is another similarity to Alien 3 that jumped out at me) but I'm not sure how the nightmare logic breaks at David's home. They're stuck there. A lot of the decisions being made are being made with that in mind, I think.
Granted, the elements of the parodical do come into play, I'm not even trying to deny that. I think they're fuckin fascinating at times, too. But I don't think David's Haunted House of Frankenstein's Horrors segment is all that imbalanced.
I do think the execution is questionable once the neomorph hits the bathroom. But there, it's not so much imbalanced as herky-jerky? There's a stop start feel to a lot of it.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
It makes plenty of sense as per the logic of most sci-fi films and even the Alien movies, really.
They scout the planet from the ship, deem it fine to walk around on, and they walk around on it.
They put suits on in Alien because the atmosphere demands it
They DON'T put suits on in Aliens because the atmosphere doesn't - even though they KNOW there's an alien infestation on the ground.
They put on suits in Prometheus because they're not sure (they then take them off because they're stupid)
They don't put on suits in Covenant because the readings say its' a better planet than the planet they were going to LIVE ON.
Alien isn't really "hard sci-fi" and never has been.
it's Star Trek rules for planetary exploring, basically.
But yeah, a lot of the panicked/dumb decision making in the first half at least makes sense from a character perspective. I think it's a valid criticism that Danny McBride doesn't seem to freak out at seeing an Alien, or that Daniels gets super gung ho after watching one almost kill her and that's basically the extent of her reaction. I think those are good points to be made against the film.
However a lot of the "dumb" decisions being made by the crew in that first half are being made by people who are REACTING CORRECTLY to what the fuck it is they're seeing for the first time in their lives, so their bad decisionmaking fits in the situations they've been placed in.