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[kswiston]

I wouldn't go that far.

That's some pretty well-done trash if that's what we're gonna call it.

Every film from the past two decades has had its CG described as garbage by someone on these boards.


The shot from the trailer looked good. Most of the stuff from that sequence was pretty good actually. I had more of an issue with the white ones earlier in the film.

I do wish that we got more practical Alien effects in the shots where more complicated movements weren't an issue.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

I think there were a few shots of both the Neo & Xenomorphs that were dudes in suits.

Having them calmly walk around and checking shit out casually would have amped up the creep factor considerably.

But instead Ridley seemed cool with "If they notice you they screech like demons and hit lightspeed from a crouch"

 

[Garcia el Gringo]

Just left the theater, liked it but didn't love it. The stupid crew is a staple of this franchise so I don't know what's the big deal about that, the horror stuff was pretty gruesome and Shaw's fate depressed the fuck out of me.

This is where I'm at. I enjoyed the movie, but I don't know if I'll have the same level of sustained interest in Scott's saga going forward - I'm just not that excited about where this is going. I'm still processing it though.

Shaw's mangled corpse, and the macabre drawings of her, had to be one of the most upsetting things I've ever experienced in fiction with how invested I was in her. Pretty ambivalent about that.

Are there any good in-depth interviews with Ridley Scott on Covenant and where sequels might go? I stopped following the press tour stuff maybe a week ago, and of course I passed on watching anything that talked about the whole of Covenant.

 

[Biggest-Geek-Ever]

"Total garbage cgi" seems to nowadawys basically be code for effects that look cgi, which is reductive that it's become meaningless. There are films with awful cgi, Covenant is not one of them.

That said, I do think some of the cgi creations were jarring. Especially the chestburster(s) since we all have that reference of the one from Alien, and that was a perfect use of practical effects.

 

[Dead]

Ridley Scott has lost his fucking mind

Straight dumpster fire of a movie. Doesn't even have the decency to share the same stunning production design as Prometheus.

 

[Nepenthe]

Just got back, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Not sure why people don't dig the look of it; I got a real kick out of the establishing shots that relayed the scale between the crew and the planet. I really like Ridley's sense of contrast. I also didn't mind David's motivations and the themes attached to them, as obvious as they are. It helps better contextualize the fuckboi shit he did in the last movie of just randomly infecting people for shiggles and the feelings of disappointment he had in Weyland. I think I also preferred the finale of this one to Prometheus. It's a more traditional and suspenseful confrontation versus "Hey, let's run parallel to the rolling ship." Speaking of which, Alien crews are stupid. All of them. I have never left one of these films thinking "Yep, everyone did the right and/or logical thing."

 

[Toa TAK]

I'll give Scott's current saga this: the stories are not all that well executed, but with after Aliens, the movies starting with Prometheus and now Covenant are easily the most interested I've been in this series. Aliens to the third power through AVP:R suck and didn't really do anything (I think) that was all that interesting thematically. First one was space-rape, then the second motherhood, but after that? *shrug*

 

[kswiston]

"Total garbage cgi" seems to nowadawys basically be code for effects that look cgi, which is reductive that it's become meaningless. There are films with awful cgi, Covenant is not one of them.

That said, I do think some of the cgi creations were jarring. Especially the chestburster(s) since we all have that reference of the one from Alien, and that was a perfect use of practical effects.

I know the Aliens are the easiest things to pick on, since we have practical effects to compare them to (and they were a bit too fast for my liking). However, most of the ship and vehicle stuff looked good. I though that there were some nice touches with the landing shuttle interacting with whatever mountainous countryside they picked for shooting (New Zealand?).

 

[AdventureRacing]

The biggest complaint from Prometheus was how stupid everyone in the movie was and they went and made a movie where the characters were even more stupid. At the moment I'd rank this as my 5th favourite alien film but that could change when I've had time to think about it. There was just so much I didn't like and few redeeming qualities.

"Total garbage cgi" seems to nowadawys basically be code for effects that look cgi, which is reductive that it's become meaningless. There are films with awful cgi, Covenant is not one of them.

That said, I do think some of the cgi creations were jarring. Especially the chestburster(s) since we all have that reference of the one from Alien, and that was a perfect use of practical effects.

Couldn't disagree more. Some of the effects were really good but anything involving the aliens (before they resembled the xeno's) was hideous. Some of the worst effects I've seen in a big budget film for a while. It was pretty jarring. I don't know how much of that was CGI or not I just know it looked awful.

Edit: the reading what you said I'm not sure I actually disagree with it. I agree with the sentiment that complaints about 'cgi' usually just mean something that sticks out whether it be practical, CGI or whatever else.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

I know the Aliens are the easiest things to pick on, since we have practical effects to compare them to (and they were a bit too fast for my liking). However, most of the ship and vehicle stuff looked good. I though that there were some nice touches with the landing shuttle interacting with whatever mountainous countryside they picked for shooting (New Zealand?).

That shot of the shuttle coming in for the water landing specifically had me like "I didn't think I could be impressed by one of these fuckin' things in a movie again, but I'll be damned if this little moment was cool as hell"

Because it was pretty cool.

 

[Melchiah]

I really wish Covenant was more a Prometheus sequel than an Alien prequel. It made one of my all time favorite movies retroactively worse. It had such a great Lovecraftian atmosphere, with the unknown creature, cosmic horror, alien technology. Now it's the offspring of a disappointed robot.

I agree in a sense, that both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant diminished the aliens; first they were born of bio-weapons, and now they're created by a man-made robot. They were more intriguing as a mysterious (and possibly ancient) species, that had evolved in an environment completely different to our own.

 

[radios shipping overview]

This is one of those movies where no one thing immediately stands out as bad, and yet the entire package actually is pretty bad. It looked pretty good overall, it had great produciton design, and the actors did their jobs well. The script was functional, but not as bad as Prometheus. But...

The tone was really ghoulish and cynical. Everybody in the movie felt like a plaything for David, and most of the humans just seemed to be there to show us a bunch of body horror.

I don't like the way David is being made the big bad explanation for all the evil in the franchise. To me it takes away from the first few movies' themes of human corruption and greed driving the spread of the xenos, and takes away humanity's responsibility for it. Ash was evil because he was following the orders of the Corporation. Carter Burke was evil because he was a corporate stooge. David is evil because he has a god complex?

Also, Shaw got an even more gruesome off-screen fate than Newt and Hicks. Yikes.

 

[kswiston]

I agree in a sense, that both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant diminished the aliens; first they were born of bio-weapons, and now they're created by a man-made robot. They were more intriguing as a mysterious (and possibly ancient) species, that had evolved in an environment completely different to our own.

When Ridley's done with this series, they'll wait maybe a decade and reboot the whole thing. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

[Einchy]

The only parts that I didn't like much were all the bits before Kenny Powers got the message, as soon as they got that, I started really getting into the story.

 

[Nepenthe]

I do want to say I was highly disappointed that Shaw got killed, and in such a gruesome manner too. I left Prometheus being excited for the exploration she and David were going to go on, and when the hooded figure with the flare showed up to save them, I was like "Oh, she turned into a bad bitch!"

Ehhhhh. :'D.......

 

[Toa TAK]

can I get a RIP in the chat for shaw

 

[Einchy]

I do want to say I was highly disappointed that Shaw got killed, and in such a gruesome manner too. I left Prometheus being excited for the exploration she and David were going to go on, and when the hooded figure with the flare showed up to save them, I was like "Oh, she turned into a bad bitch!"

Ehhhhh. :'D.......

Yeah, I was REALLY hoping that was Shaw and David was back to where he took them.

can I get a RIP in the chat for shaw

F

 

[Melchiah]

When Ridley's done with this series, they'll wait maybe a decade and reboot the whole thing. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Perhaps, but I think it would take considerable effort to undo the damage. Once something is stripped bare of mystery, you can't just pull back the curtains again.

Can't wait until the next movie, where we find out that David transmutes himself into a Xeno and literally becomes the Alien Queen.

That gave me a chuckle.

 

[Melchiah]

This is one of those movies where no one thing immediately stands out as bad, and yet the entire package actually is pretty bad. It looked pretty good overall, it had great produciton design, and the actors did their jobs well. The script was functional, but not as bad as Prometheus. But...

The tone was really ghoulish and cynical. Everybody in the movie felt like a plaything for David, and most of the humans just seemed to be there to show us a bunch of body horror.

I don't like the way David is being made the big bad explanation for all the evil in the franchise. To me it takes away from the first few movies' themes of human corruption and greed driving the spread of the xenos, and takes away humanity's responsibility for it. Ash was evil because he was following the orders of the Corporation. Carter Burke was evil because he was a corporate stooge. David is evil because he has a god complex?

Also, Shaw got an even more gruesome off-screen fate than Newt and Hicks. Yikes.

Good post, and I agree with everything. As much as I disliked the predictable plot and some of the characters, I still found the movie audiovisually astonishing, fairly entertaining, and pleasantly gruesome in how no-one gets a happy ending, but David.

 

[duckroll]

Ridley Scott has lost his fucking mind

Straight dumpster fire of a movie. Doesn't even have the decency to share the same stunning production design as Prometheus.

I think there are moments where it touches Prometheus in production design. The approach into the Engineers' city with all the statues of bodies, the flashback to the city itself when David arrived, detail in all the clutter of David's rooms, lots of good stuff. The problem is that the show doesn't do anything significantly interesting with ANY of it. So it all just feels wasted.

 

[kswiston]

I think there are moments where it touches Prometheus in production design. The approach into the Engineers' city with all the statues of bodies, the flashback to the city itself when David arrived, detail in all the clutter of David's rooms, lots of good stuff. The problem is that the show doesn't do anything significantly interesting with ANY of it. So it all just feels wasted.

The whole film felt a bit rushed, but I don't how that could have been avoided without increasing the running time. I can't think of many wasted scenes. I suppose you could have cut some of the alien slasher stuff by dropping a few redshirt characters and replaced it with plot/characterization. But the Alien slasher stuff was sort of the point.

No doubt the BluRay will have a version with an added 20-30 minutes of footage.

 

[Dead]

no interest in seeing anymore footage of this movie lol unlike Prometheus.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

The whole film felt a bit rushed, but I don't how that could have been avoided without increasing the running time. I can't think of many wasted scenes. I suppose you could have cut some of the alien slasher stuff by dropping a few redshirt characters and replaced it with plot/characterization. But the Alien slasher stuff was sort of the point.

No doubt the BluRay will have a version with an added 20-30 minutes of footage.

I bet the blu-ray hits and we find out all that "prologue" shit wasn't actually "prologue" shit but were straight up deleted scenes.

 

[CartridgeBlower]

Wait, so they set up that the engineer ship crashed (hence them pointing out that the trees were cut)...but then they show in flashback the ship perfectly gliding over the engineers as it doses them.

So did David unleash the virus...then crash the ship?

Fuck this movie. Ridley killed the franchise again. Alien is dead. This movie is going to do toxic box office.

 

[duckroll]

The whole film felt a bit rushed, but I don't how that could have been avoided without increasing the running time. I can't think of many wasted scenes. I suppose you could have cut some of the alien slasher stuff by dropping a few redshirt characters and replaced it with plot/characterization. But the Alien slasher stuff was sort of the point.

No doubt the BluRay will have a version with an added 20-30 minutes of footage.

I dunno how this film can be improved much because it is fundamentally flawed from the premise alone, but if there's one thing I would have preferred, it would be that if Scott is only interested in exploring David as a character and the dramatic irony of mankind's creation going on a quest to destroy his own creators and their creators, that he should have just gone with that. Make David the main character, tell the entire "tragic" tale from his perspective. Make a movie about him arriving on the planet, doing all the shit he does, how he fucks Shaw up, and have a gothic montage of his years of solitary research, then some people finally come looking for the Prometheus in the final act and he goes all Dungeon Keeper on them.

That would be a more interesting film to me. I dunno about "better', but more interesting.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Wait, so they set up that the engineer ship crashed (hence them pointing out that the trees were cut)...but then they show in flashback the ship perfectly gliding over the engineers as it doses them.

So did David unleash the virus...then crash the ship?

Fuck this movie. Ridley killed the franchise again. Alien is dead. This movie is going to do toxic box office.

I was asking that way earlier in the thread, but it seems like that's the case. He docked the ship, bombed the people, and then crashed the ship into the hill so as to make for a convincing cover story on the chance anyone found him there, I guess?

 

[brandonh83]

Fuck this movie. Ridley killed the franchise again. Alien is dead. This movie is going to do toxic box office.

It felt like no care was put into it. Just yeah let's do this and that... because.

I actually thought it was okay until people started dying.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Wow, the whole theater was fucking silent when the movie ended. Not like they were shocked. But literally everyone could see that ending "twist" coming from a mile away. So everyone is just like "okay? is that it?" Everyone knew that he was David. You could feel the theater was just completely unresponsive to that flat and predictable ending.

I don't even know if Ridley Scott wanted it to be a twist. It's predictable, but he plays it coy as if we're idiots.

 

[Allonym]

I enjoyed it but a lot of characters were being silly, most allowed their emotions to overtake rational thinking. Are we to assume that David set the protocols for Muthur to reroute ships and have them investigate alien transmissions? Daniel's should have vetted "Walter " more before just casually laying in the stasis pod. I won't waste more words on the movie though, I'm sure any potential complaint I have has been covered extensively. Hopefully in the next film, we find out who created humans and engineers and the humans will be much more intelligent.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Also this is why you don't fucking let couples man your space missions, Weyland.

 

[kswiston]

I was asking that way earlier in the thread, but it seems like that's the case. He docked the ship, bombed the people, and then crashed the ship into the hill so as to make for a convincing cover story on the chance anyone found him there, I guess?

He got bored during those 10 years, and crashed it doing sky donuts.

 

[brandonh83]

Really hate how in your face everything was. There was no tension because they put all the creatures just out there in broad sight. The only part I found remotely scary was when the girl went to clean up and the creature was in there with her, because it was just... there and you didn't see it running around like an assclown beforehand.

Xenos were scarier in the other films even in fucking ALIENS because Cameron was still careful in how he presented them and there was still plenty of tension like the scene in the bunk with the facehugger. This movie had like, fucking nothing apart from the part I just mentioned but even that wasn't anything to write home about.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Dumb people doing dumb shit doesn't stand out as blatantly as Prometheus. Billy Crudup's captain is an incompetent idiot who inherited command which makes his bad decisions believable, but the writers made the mistake of giving him a moment of genius for seeing through David's bullshit only to follow him into a dark basement after being given a tour of his house of horrors laboratory full of human experiments and through the gift shop of the Geiger art gallery.

 

[Alienfan]

You can see it. Some of the CGI especially with the Alien in broad daylight looked like total garbage.

Eh, I thought for the most part the effects were great. The new Aliens were a great mix of practical and CGI, and pretty terrifying. The broad daylight scenes with the xenomorph wasn't the greatest, but the stuff indoors was a lot better

 

[Melchiah]

I dunno how this film can be improved much because it is fundamentally flawed from the premise alone, but if there's one thing I would have preferred, it would be that if Scott is only interested in exploring David as a character and the dramatic irony of mankind's creation going on a quest to destroy his own creators and their creators, that he should have just gone with that. Make David the main character, tell the entire "tragic" tale from his perspective. Make a movie about him arriving on the planet, doing all the shit he does, how he fucks Shaw up, and have a gothic montage of his years of solitary research, then some people finally come looking for the Prometheus in the final act and he goes all Dungeon Keeper on them.

That would be a more interesting film to me. I dunno about "better', but more interesting.

I'd pay to see that version.

 

[kswiston]

Dumb people doing dumb shit doesn't stand out as blatantly as Prometheus. Billy Crudup's captain is an incompetent idiot who inherited command which makes his bad decisions believable, but the writers made the mistake of giving him a moment of genius for seeing through David's bullshit only to follow him into a dark basement after being given a tour of his house of horrors laboratory full of human experiments and through the gift shop of the Geiger art gallery.

Hold on a second. Remember the scared-shitless biologist in Prometheus that all of a sudden wanted to play with the penis snake like a puppy? That was dumber than even Crudup's trip with David to go look at the face-hugger eggs.

 

[duckroll]

Hold on a second. Remember the scared-shitless biologist in Prometheus that all of a sudden wanted to play with the penis snake like a puppy? That was dumber than even Crudup's trip with David to go look at the face-hugger eggs.

Okay but neither of those two scenes is as comical as a woman locking another woman in the quarantine room with an infected host about to birth an alien, and then after refusing to open the door when it was still safe, goes back and opens the door when it is clearly NOT safe, then SLIPS on blood like a jobber, runs out, and then proceeds to blow up the entire ship with a misfire.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

Hold on a second. Remember the scared-shitless biologist in Prometheus that all of a sudden wanted to play with the penis snake like a puppy? That was dumber than even Crudup's trip with David to go look at the face-hugger eggs.

Yeah, I'm saying the dumb decisions aren't as dumb and are more believable and in line with the characters in Covenant. Their only mistake was making the dumb character be smart for a hot minute before becoming dumb again.

 

[kswiston]

Yeah, I'm saying the dumb decisions aren't as dumb and are more believable and in line with the characters in Covenant. Their only mistake was making the dumb character be smart for a hot minute before becoming dumb again.

I misread "as" in that statement as "in". I don't know why I failed to read the rest of the post. My mistake. It is past 2am, and I should go to bed

 

[duckroll]

In retrospect, Covenant is better as a comedy than a horror film.

 

[Biggest-Geek-Ever]

Edit: the reading what you said I'm not sure I actually disagree with it. I agree with the sentiment that complaints about 'cgi' usually just mean something that sticks out whether it be practical, CGI or whatever else.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I'm fine with someone saying it's distracting, but the phrasing of "garbage" or "shit" bothers me in how frequently it is used. If Alien Covenant is the bar for shitty CGI, what do we call this?

Okay but neither of those two scenes is as comical as a woman locking another woman in the quarantine room with an infected host about to birth an alien, and then after refusing to open the door when it was still safe, goes back and opens the door when it is clearly NOT safe, then SLIPS on blood like a jobber, runs out, and then proceeds to blow up the entire ship with a misfire.

Ha, yes. And after we already saw the other character slip and the fall on the blood too!

I do think, overall, the dumb moments here are still bad, but don't feeling quite as utterly illogical in the context of the entire movie as they did in Prometheus. The snake scene is a great example: here we have two scientists that got lost (despite having a full 3D map of the cave and full contact with the ship) after running scared from the giant head room. They then come back to this very room even though there's black ooze everywhere. And then the movie establishes one of them is smoking pot. So, you think, a reason for why one of them has impaired sensibility, he'll be the one to do something stupid, right? Nope!! The other guy decides to pet the clearly aggressive looking snake thing.

 

[sirap]

In retrospect, Covenant is better as a comedy than a horror film.

Having two different characters slip on the same pool of blood sealed that for me.

All it was missing was the Benny Hill theme song playing in the background.

 

[brandonh83]

Having two different characters slip on the same pool of blood sealed that for me.

All it was missing the Benny Hill theme song playing in the background.

Oh man, I forgot about that. And the creature running and smacking into the door or whatever.

 

[SolidChamp]

Ridley Scott has lost his fucking mind

Straight dumpster fire of a movie. Doesn't even have the decency to share the same stunning production design as Prometheus.

FINALLY someone else seems to notice this. I've been saying it since the early pages of the thread; this is one BORING movie to look and squint at.

 

[duckroll]

Having two different characters slip on the same pool of blood sealed that for me.

All it was missing the Benny Hill theme song playing in the background.

We need this. The blu-ray can't come soon enough. This will be the greatest youtube upload to come out of Covenant when someone finally does it.

 

[CartridgeBlower]

So in Ridley's drunken state of mind...why did the original Engineer ship from the first Alien have eggs and facehuggers on it if David created them?

I really want someone to ask him this with a camera in his face so it can be recorded how dumb he has let this shit get.

 

[Count Dookkake]

I liked the the shout-out to this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a1VY1vPfZk

 

[brandonh83]

FINALLY someone else seems to notice this. I've been saying it since the early pages of the thread; this is one BORING movie to look and squint at.

Yeah. While it was by all means competently shot, and it did have a fair share of decent shots/sequences (I liked the flashback), it was mostly just surprisingly visually bland compared to Prometheus and most of Scott's other films.

What I didn't think was competently shot was the finale, but the entire finale sucked so I guess that makes sense. That sequence with Daniels on the landing ship dangling by the cord and using the crane to catch the alien was so fucking stupid and jarringly shot/edited that I couldn't believe Ridley did that.

And the end of it in the Terraforming Bay was an absolute disaster.

 

[SuperStiltzkin]

I misread "as" in that statement as "in". I don't know why I failed to read the rest of the post. My mistake. It is past 2am, and I should go to bed

lol no worries

Okay but neither of those two scenes is as comical as a woman locking another woman in the quarantine room with an infected host about to birth an alien, and then after refusing to open the door when it was still safe, goes back and opens the door when it is clearly NOT safe, then SLIPS on blood like a jobber, runs out, and then proceeds to blow up the entire ship with a misfire.

Another moment where a character does something smart and follows it up with something dumb. I was starting to like her cause she knew something was up when you land on an alien planet and someone starts coughing up blood. Lock em both up in quarantine. Smart. Good girl. Then she waltzes in with a shotgun like the Joker after he stumbles out of the overturned semi in TDK.

 

[Biggest-Geek-Ever]

So in Ridley's drunken state of mind...why did the original Engineer ship from the first Alien have eggs and facehuggers on it if David created them?

I really want someone to ask him this with a camera in his face so it can be recorded how dumb he has let this shit get.

You'll be able to find out in late 2018, all for the price of admission!