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

Toa TAK

Banned
His character was pretty shit yeah. His whole the company doesn't like me because I'm religious thing made me scratch my head a bit and then he willingly gazed in to the abyss so to speak and I was thinking, well actually maybe they don't trust you because you are a fucking idiot.

See I think he's just an idiot, myself.

But Ridley really believes it was because he was religious. (22:40)

Oh, and I guess it's called Covenant because of the colonists coming over to the Americas and their own "covenant" they made on their way there (think of the Mayflower Compact). That answers my own question. X(
 

Spacejaws

Member
Ok this thread is big now I'm sure this complaints been made but anybody else sick of Aliens taking what seems like seconds to mature at times?

The Neomorphs just seem to pop out straight away but with the ol religious captain seem like he not knly birthed a morph in a matter of minutes but it also matured to full size extremely quickly...

Maybe I'm out of the Xeno lore but I thought the Xenomorphs A. Gestate a little longer like the guy at the end to be fair causing a nice 'The Thing' unsettling as anybody could be infected really and B. Run around as a little infant for awhile gradually growing until the become a dangerous SOB.

I honestly rate Alien 3 really well and the DC did a good job fleshing out the little guys life cycle but here it's like the movie didnt have time for those rules and everything just popped out or was a big scary alien when it was needed.

Overall liked the movie in a general sense. It looks pretty (except for over abundance of dodgy CGI, is this Prometheus 2 or Alien Resurrection 2?) the charcters are kinda interesting, the setup is nice and some of the actions scenes are exciting but it fucks around with Alien lore in a really bad way that I'm going to have to read up on. Destroying the entire Engineers planet so easily? David creating eggs? The rules around Xenomorphs?

Yea not sure how I place this movie yet. It definetly feels more Prometheus 2 than an Alien sequel. This is coming from someone who avoided all trailers and press snippets I went in with no idea what to expect and now I leave a bit bemused.
 

Hagi

Member
See I think he's just an idiot, myself.

But Ridley really believes it was because he was religious. (22:40)

Oh, and I guess it's called Covenant because of the colonists coming over to the Americas and their own "covenant" they made on their way there (think of the Mayflower Compact). That answers my own question. X(

Hah Ridley is a hoot

I did quite like the film, there's a lot of weird decisions being made with the scope and how it relates to the rest but I did enjoy my time with it. The way the film ends is mental and I'll be pretty disappointed if we don't get a sequel because I really want to see what the fuck they do with David and the colony.
 
Nah you guys are misreading that scene. We were just told the robots don't lie. It's only evil Fassbinder who is a discontinued and discarded model. So that is why Billy Crudup looks into the face hugger. He was told its safe and has absolutely no reason to think its not.

The bad decisions in Covenant mostly make sense. Certainly far more than Prometheus. The crew members in Prometheus are so shit. Idris and his merry band? Gimme a break, those guys weren't even characters. Those scientists who pet an alien snake? Just as bad.

You actually have real characters with enough time dedicated to them to give them a unique feel. There's quite a lot of tension and drama between them. And of course making them all family members of each other is what really sells a lot of the extreme drama and tension.
 

Lashley

Why does he wear the mask!?
Just finished it.

Man, the locations were beautiful

The crew....My God, how idiotic are they? Prodding random plants on an alien world, splitting up? Idiots.

I saw the final twist coming a mile away too, I kept looking for the hole in his neck.

Fassbender stole the show, the God.
 

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
Hah Ridley is a hoot

I did quite like the film, there's a lot of weird decisions being made with the scope and how it relates to the rest but I did enjoy my time with it. The way the film ends is mental and I'll be pretty disappointed if we don't get a sequel because I really want to see what the fuck they do with David and the colony.

The ending is just another lazy as shit way to get the xenomorph off the planet. "With the new FaceHugger Mini you can now carry a deadly xenomoprh in your pocket! Perfect for long journeys across the void, when storage space and viable host life forms are at a premium! Available now from all Weyland-Yutani dispensaries!"
 

Slaythe

Member
I still can't comprehend why some people in this forum love to talk in such hyperbolic way.

What hyperbolic way ?

The soundtrack is better, the cast is better, the art direction is better, the story (believe it) is better, the action is more tense and thus better than shitty videogame jumpy CG that get discarded in 5 seconds, the characters (again, against all odds) are better, the pacing is better.

I can't think of a single thing Covenant did better. Thus, literally.

I didn't say "covenant is the worst thing in the world", which would be hyperbolic.
 
Just finished it.

Man, the locations were beautiful

The crew....My God, how idiotic are they? Prodding random plants on an alien world, splitting up? Idiots.

I saw the final twist coming a mile away too, I kept looking for the hole in his neck.

Fassbender stole the show, the God.

You're meant to see the twist coming. It's not a secret.
 

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
You're meant to see the twist coming. It's not a secret.

Generally when you telegraph a twist in such a blindingly obvious way, it's to subvert audience expectations with a different twist later on. Instead Ridley just played it straight and the switcheroo unfolds exactly as we were all expecting. It just makes the characters feel like complete morons because the audience already knows what's going to happen from the second David appears. The whole movie is focused on getting the xenomorph and David off the planet as quickly and lazily as possible.
 

Kazuhira

Member
It was more about knowing if Walt was going to betray them or the mind/body swap was going to happen than the actual twist tbh.
Killing David offscreen was not going to happen so yeah,they didn't even try to hide the obvious plot twist.
 
What hyperbolic way ?

The soundtrack is better, the cast is better, the art direction is better, the story (believe it) is better, the action is more tense and thus better than shitty videogame jumpy CG that get discarded in 5 seconds, the characters (again, against all odds) are better, the pacing is better.

I can't think of a single thing Covenant did better. Thus, literally.

I didn't say "covenant is the worst thing in the world", which would be hyperbolic.

Prometheus crew was way dumber than the Covenant one. In Prometheus we watch scientists, experts in their fields doing exactly what a totally ignorant person in those fields would do. It's not just acting in a stupid way under a stressful situation, we are talking about "offensive to the viewer" level of stupid, like:

- a surgeon beginning to remove a person's appendix, but forgetting to put the patient under anesthesia.
- an electrician trying to fix an energized electrical box, not wearing protective gloves, using his wet bare hands.

The captain in Covenant is the only one acting at the same level of imbecility, being the worst when he follows David downstairs after seeing him having a damn alien as a pet.

Some of the rest of Covenant crew for sure do stupid things, but none of them are as bad as the crap we watch in Prometheus.

So yeah, you were hyperbolic. Think for a moment, when you say "literally" it means that in every aspect we could discuss about those movies, in all of them, 100%, Prometheus is better. Do you get how ridiculous the claim sounds?
 
Covenant is a better movie than Prometheus in many, many ways. The only thing I think Prometheus has a clear advantage in is set design and cinematography.

Basically, it looks prettier.

That's about it.
 
I watched this movie knowing exactly what i was going to love and hate. All the space trucker intimacy on the ship was brilliant. Everything else was just shit. I could watch an entire movie of them just being on the ship.
 
I watched this movie knowing exactly what i was going to love and hate. All the space trucker intimacy on the ship was brilliant. Everything else was just shit. I could watch an entire movie of them just being on the ship.

I'd say that the first act was excellent all the way up until David shows up. The moment he arrives and the second act begins it falters simply because no one asks the smart questions and David's motivation is all wrong.

They tell him there is a colony ship early on. His motivation should be to help them get off the planet and back to their ship as fast as he can. Blame Shaw's death and all the experimentation on the engineers, and admit to bombing the crap out of them because of that. Once on the ship cop to the murder and let loose an alien or 5 so he can have the run of the ship
 
Covenant is a better movie than Prometheus in many, many ways. The only thing I think Prometheus has a clear advantage in is set design and cinematography.

Basically, it looks prettier.

That's about it.

Prometheus is shit but its visuals are unparalleled, the overall story has a ton of potential and its pot holes, while horrid, could almost be forgiven at the time because there the vague promise that they would be answered/corrected in the sequel.

Then comes Covenant, which, while certainly better paced and better plotted than Prometheus, suffers from characters and dialogue that are somehow even worse than the last film while also answering none of the previous questions and having its own logic problems. Here was a film that was a chance to right all the wrongs of the past film but decides to crash and burn instead.
 
Nah you guys are misreading that scene. We were just told the robots don't lie. It's only evil Fassbinder who is a discontinued and discarded model. So that is why Billy Crudup looks into the face hugger. He was told its safe and has absolutely no reason to think its not.

The bad decisions in Covenant mostly make sense. Certainly far more than Prometheus. The crew members in Prometheus are so shit. Idris and his merry band? Gimme a break, those guys weren't even characters. Those scientists who pet an alien snake? Just as bad.

You actually have real characters with enough time dedicated to them to give them a unique feel. There's quite a lot of tension and drama between them. And of course making them all family members of each other is what really sells a lot of the extreme drama and tension.
I don't agree with this at all. The only characterization half of them had was "this one is married to that one. Be sad when something bad happens." They're all so forgettable.

They were unmistakable fodder in a horror movie and never went passed that.
 

Leynos

Member
I don't agree with this at all. The only characterization half of them had was "this one is married to that one. Be sad when something bad happens." They're all so forgettable.

They were unmistakable fodder in a horror movie and never went passed that.

Other than David, and Walter, I can not recall the name of a single character from Covenant. I don't even remember how many there were other than the aforementioned robots, the main heroine, a mopey captain that is far too trusting, and a foolhardy pilot.
 

cjp

Junior Member
I'm confused.

If David engineered the facehuggers then what are they doing in the derelict ship at the beginning of Alien?
 

cjp

Junior Member
choofed.gif


Fassbender needs to do himself a solid and star in better movies. He's wasting himself with so much trash.

Have you seen Trespass? Go watch it.

Edit: dp, my bad.
 

Hagi

Member
I'm confused.

If David engineered the facehuggers then what are they doing in the derelict ship at the beginning of Alien?

We don't know, Ridley probably doesn't either.

Excising part of the alien life cycle was a strange decision to me. Getting rid of the iconic chest burster design and replacing it with a shrunken version of the alien just so it can emote to david was something.
 
Then comes Covenant, which, while certainly better paced and better plotted than Prometheus, suffers from characters and dialogue that are somehow even worse than the last film while also answering none of the previous questions and having its own logic problems. Here was a film that was a chance to right all the wrongs of the past film but decides to crash and burn instead.

I disagree. Covenant aims lower and lands more punches because of it. The characters and dialogue aren't worse at all, I don't think. They're better. Not by much, but improved just enough that the sheer frustration that many felt at Prometheus isn't there, for me. Maybe closer to mild frustration/annoyance.

A lot of Prometheus' sins are kinda unfairly visited upon Covenant precisely because people were withholding judgment on that completed movie, thinking its follow up would somehow change what it was. Covenant was never going to do that, though. Prometheus was always going to be exactly what it was. Nothing was going to retroactively improve it. And so when Covenant didn't do that, (of course it didn't) people caught twice the case of disappointment, and I think Covenant ate a lot of shit it didn't really earn on that note.
 

Tookay

Member
I can't think of a single Covenant character that was better than those in Prometheus.

And Prometheus' characters were dreadful.
 

Random Human

They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
Covenant's opening and the interactions between the crew are better than the similar stuff in Prometheus, a lot of which is kind of awkward and not very good. I think they both have rocky middles that feature some dumb stuff, but then the third act of Prometheus just flies off the rails, while Covenant's is... actually kind of good? The ending at least is awesome.
 

Veelk

Banned
The problem that Prometheus had with it's characters were that they were all unholy levels of stupid. Like, the entire snake scene is still one of the most jawdroppingly idiotic things I've ever seen a fictional character do.

Alien's covenant mostly carries that over. I think the signature act of stupidity of this movie is the religious guy finding out that David is a keeping a pet that killed your crew mate, see that he values this alien thing more than that crew mate, killing it and witnessing the only moment of extreme emotional reaction he shows, then following him into his creepy evil alien fuck dungeon, and then when he tells him to stick his face into that egg looking thing he does it without a second thought.

And while that's probably the most extreme act of idiocy in the movie, it's far from the only one.

And while we obviously don't need character to be bastions of hyperrationality or anything like that, whatever your doing with your character, if the audience has no respect for them, they're not going to focus on empathizing with their plight or trying to think about what their arc is or how they resonate with the themes of the movie or how their relationships are with the other characters.

They're just going to think "What a moron," and laugh at his well deserved darwin award.
 

J_Viper

Member
The problem that Prometheus had with it's characters were that they were all unholy levels of stupid. Like, the entire snake scene is still one of the most jawdroppingly idiotic things I've ever seen a fictional character do.

What makes those ridiculous decisions in Prometheus so much worse than Convenant is the acting

The snake scene is dumb enough on it's own, but then you add those two dudes, both of which are embarrassing, and it becomes ten times worse

Yeah, the Covenant crew does equally dumb shit, but the performers are solid enough that it's not as bothersome. To me, anyway.
 

WinFonda

Member
I didn't care much for Prometheus, but I liked Covenant.

Yes, there's a lot of stupid character moments in Covenant just like Prometheus. BUT, the crew of Covenant was more likeable imo. Particularly, Katherine Wasterson did a much better job with her character than Noomi did with hers; she's a really strong actress. Then we have Fassbender's David which has had time to develop across two movies, and he's become this delightfully over-the-top villain. He's more fun to watch in this too.

The high for me in Covenant was when the first crew members get infected and they're trying to get them back to the medbay. This was such a high tension sequence, it was so well directed and acted. That 5 minutes or so of film was enough for me to forgive whatever might come after as we got into the David plotline. It was that good. It made me think to myself, "fuck yeah this is Aliens alright"

That's where it peaked though, and unfortunately none of the other horror or high tension moments maintained that quality. Still, much better than anything we got in Prometheus.
 
Prometheus is a flawed movie with some neat concepts that ultimatmey make it pretty good. Alien covenant is just fucking terrible. I will not acknowlege/accept that fucking david created the xenomorphs
 
A visual / text breakdown of Advent, the Covenant special feature in the form of David's message(s) to Weyland-Yutani.

http://www.scifimoviezone.com/aliencovenantadvent.shtml

I hate it. Literally just an excuse for intelligent design (the BS theory), whereas a random splicer would have the same effect and not throw out the 'alien' part.

I suppose in a way it's a blessing of sorts that O'Bannon didn't live to see this crap happen.
 
I hate it. Literally just an excuse for intelligent design (the BS theory), whereas a random splicer would have the same effect and not throw out the 'alien' part.

I suppose in a way it's a blessing of sorts that O'Bannon didn't live to see this crap happen.

O'Bannon's initial concepts for the Xenomorph were even MORE batshit insane than this crap, believe it or not.
 
It does literally everything worse than Prometheus.

Literally.
Nah, Covenant actually manages to be entertaining.

You're literally misusing the word literally.

This is a slasher movie with aliens and an evil scientist- no need for hate with proper expectations.

Hell, Prometheus doesn't even have android kung fu.
 

Jinroh

Member
So this advent thing definitely buries the possibility that David merely recreated the engineer's aliens. It's beyond stupid.
 

Kazuhira

Member
So this advent thing definitely buries the possibility that David merely recreated the engineer's aliens. It's beyond stupid.

That's still possible,remember there's a mural of the Deacon in the ship of Prometheus so they already exist by the look of it.
 

ced

Member
Watched it last night, worse than Prometheus, I'm not sure how someone can manage that.

At least Prometheus is so bad it's good to me, maybe this will grow on me like that.
 
Just saw the movie.
SHeeeeeeeesh that was... Weeeeelp.
Why the crew must be so dumb ?
Where should I start...
-Landing on an unknown planet without suit.
-Eating random crap on said planet
-Smelling weird stuff on that planet
-Splitting on weird unknown planet
-Blood slipping gag.. TWICE.
-Crew come back from a recognition mission... where half their group has been brutally murdered. What does the couple decide to do on the very same night ? Shower sex. That's right. A deadly creature was down there because of a virus, no one's going to quarantine and the couple decide to have sex.

Also... did I saw Fassbender going on how Fassbender is perfect and how Fassbender loves Fassbender... then Fassbender kissing Fassbender ? :"""")
At least, that made the movie existence worthy. Fassbender kissing Fassbender.
 

Toa TAK

Banned
Fassbender on Fassbender is absolutely the highlight of the movie. Everything centered on both of those characters poking and prodding each other is neat, if a little pretentious.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
This movie was shit. I didn't like Prometheus but I think this one is actually worse.

Prometheus had some good moments such as the Engineers, and David was a great character in that. The rest of the Prometheus cast acted very bland, top rated actors such as Elba and Theron, but the ones in Covenant are somehow even more one dimensional. That guy that goes to that egg basement, what the fuck man. Right after you've shot that alien and seen David's reaction, lol. If these baffoons are going to lead humanity towards new life, then fuck me.

Turns out, in Covenant, David has been fixed by Shaw, he apparently killed her offscreen and is completely obsessed with creating new lifeforms. He has his little lab and freaky dungeon, he's gone straight mad scientist offscreen. For the rest, this is completely predictable. People land on unknown planet, they do not protect themselves, they step on and touch weird stuff and they are going to feel sick. Where have I seen this before?

It was also very obvious that David was with them at the end. We didn't see the outcome of the fight. He did cut off his hand though, but the camera panned to it.
 

Daffy Duck

Member
Watched this last night, as an action film I enjoyed myself, it had a bit of tension and went along OK, as an Alien film trying to setup Alien it was fucking garbage.

It shits on everything.
 

vio

Member
Everyone is so casual, this lady is few mins inside this alien bulding and she decides to go have a shower or something, on her own. After everything that just happened.


edit. Prometheus was biggest movie disappointed for me. Yet, i am way more unhappy what happened to Shaw than how Alien 3 killed off Aliens characters. Even Alien Resurrection is better than this.
 

commedieu

Banned
I just paid 20 dollars for this on PSN.

I didn't think it could be worse than prometheus, but dear sweet Christmas it was. Another moronic crew? We just saw that. There are believable ways to get characters into trouble. You disconnect immediately when morons just pop out of a ship and split up on an alien planet.

David vs evil david, and the creation of a perfect lifeform because of daddy issues. Ok

Just.

Fuck me what a waste of money. I love this franchise so much. Sad to see it die some bizarre death.
 
Thinking of watching this...because it's Alien and I feel like I have to.

I didn't hate Prometheus and I can handle the dumb crew thing.

Should I give it a watch?
 
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