ldcommando
Banned
Are there any Proto-xenomoprh vs Neomorph scenes in the movie ?
Nope
Are there any Proto-xenomoprh vs Neomorph scenes in the movie ?
Nope
Read in interview lead designer noted they decided to ditch the more obvious biomechanical trappings and go with more of a real world look (in that it's a living creature with muscles and veins).
Disappointing really as Scott was so keen on the biomechaical look for Alien and noted only Gieger's art looked truly alien and thus that was crucial to the look.
TBH the lower legs aside (limitation of the time of course) the original suit Geiger put together still looks best when well shot (such as emerging from the pipes in Narcissus).
In Alien Isolation where they blended original Geiger with better lower limbs for convincing movement the result was fantastic.
Here it loses the weird not flesh/creature vibe the biomechanical look delivered and just looks like a moderately funky human variant. Only the classic long dome head makes it look odd at all now.
But then with Prometheus and Covenant Scott has gone much further than anyone else in franchise in making the alien merely an exotic creature and lost the true sense of alien essence he himself first captured.
Given I decided to skip film I figured I'd most here and see if my worst fears were the case and oh boy does it sound like they were. Reading reviews/comments it's obviously a damn odd amalgam of Prometheus and Alien 3 and as disjointed as that implies.
The fact they'd skip chance to show Davids betrayal of Shaw (which could and should have been a very powerful scene and a key moment for David) says it all for me. Scott's skipping about chasing various themes and as dead that take his fancy, and while some good elements are emerging the whole is very messy.
I'll probably skip completely in cinema and just watch later for curio value at home.
Ridley scott has said the next film is set between prometheus and covenant so i guess you will see the betrayal then, we will also discover exactly what happened to them both during the ten years.
It might go into more detail how david found the formula for creating the xenomorphs seen in covenant, and if he had any help or guidance from engineers after landing.
Ridley Scott goes against anything that was in the first Alien movie. Xeno's take minutes to grow into full-sized adults. No feeding required. Ingestation from facehuggers takes minutes and in one case, it literally took SECONDS for a non-fully attached facehugger to implant an egg. (I think this last one came from a tacked-on, new, re-write ending to add more Xenomorph to the "Alien" movie.
As for David and Shaw, there isn't much there to show as I outline below. Out of character action that results in Shaw never waking up. Cheap, cop out writing that I am not surprised after Prometheus and the rest of this movie.
Read in interview lead designer noted they decided to ditch the more obvious biomechanical trappings and go with more of a real world look (in that it's a living creature with muscles and veins).
Disappointing really as Scott was so keen on the biomechaical look for Alien and noted only Gieger's art looked truly alien and thus that was crucial to the look.
TBH the lower legs aside (limitation of the time of course) the original suit Geiger put together still looks best when well shot (such as emerging from the pipes in Narcissus).
In Alien Isolation where they blended original Geiger with better lower limbs for convincing movement the result was fantastic.
Here it loses the weird not flesh/creature vibe the biomechanical look delivered and just looks like a moderately funky human variant. Only the classic long dome head makes it look odd at all now.
The deacon on the wall in Prometheus is more or less just an easter egg based on original production art for the neomorph (which was supposed to appear in Prometheus but got shitcanned during the rewrites)
To put it in gaming terms, it's a cut character who's asset is being reused as art direction.
I would not be surprised if Scott forgot it was even in the movie.
Could the next film, or the film after that, retcon what we saw in this one? Sure. Covenant doesn't explicitly close any doors on those theories in its text, but that's because it's not even thinking about anything other than its own story, really.
But there is nothing in Covenant that suggests in any way, anywhere, a read that says "oh, David just stumbled onto a pre-existing race of penisbeasts and simply came up with his own variation." Nothing in this movie even hints in that direction. You as a viewer have to want to go there as a reaction to what is being blatantly shown to be THE ORIGIN of the egg/facehugger/chest burster lifecycle.
That it doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's wrong. Not making a lot of sense is how Ridley makes these things. That's how Prometheus "works"
There is no queen. The xenomorphs are not an engineer creation, or a life form created/independently evolved that either the engineers or David studied and patterned their creations after.
The mad scientist robot on a dead planet made them. You see the very first two xenos "born".
That's Covenant.
So basically disregard thing because reasons? Engineers have had this Magical God Goop for millennia and did fuck all with it but along comes this robot and in 10 short years we have xenos? Ridley Scott, go home you're drunk!
To put it in terms from another prequel series (and it's gonna keep getting used as a comparison as discussion continues)
Just because there are variations on droids (and specifically, protocol droids) to be seen in the background of the movies doesn't negate the fact that Anakin built Threepio.
Just because something deacon-y was added to a wall in post-production on Prometheus doesn't mean David didn't create the xenomorph.
Speaking to EGM's point above regarding the Alien's lack of mechanoid design: one of the bigger missed opportunities for scares is that Ridley never once has it blend in with its surroundings. You only see it think/consider maybe twice.
Most of the time, it just reacts like an angry animal. It is very much like the one in Alien 3.
So basically disregard thing because reasons? Engineers have had this Magical God Goop for millennia and did fuck all with it but along comes this robot and in 10 short years we have xenos? Ridley Scott, go home you're drunk!
Honestly, I feel that with the mixed reaction to Prometheus and huge interest in Blomkamp's Alien 5 (which doesn't exist anymore), Ridley realized he should should probably change the story to satisfy those who wanted to see the Xenomorph and gave us covenant rather than Prometheus 2.
No the neos get killed off before the xenomorph is bornAre there any Proto-xenomoprh vs Neomorph scenes in the movie ?
Lol if you think he might not retcon Aliens at this pointScott should've just made a sequel to Aliens. Fuck all this prequel shit.
He's 3/4ths of the way there.
Bobby, seems to me that you enjoyed the film quite a bit.
Is it a good place for an Alien first timer like some of my friends?
Where do you publish your review BTW? Would be curious to read it.
Cool I'll look out for it later.I don't know that I'd say I enjoyed it "quite a bit." I mean, I think Alien 3 is okay, I don't think it's a bad movie, but I recognize that it's fundamentally broken, too, and has a lot of problems that no "Assembly Cut" could fix (and it doesn't)
So Covenant hurdling that bar isn't much of a superlative, really. It works more than it doesn't.
However, yeah, I think a lot of people's hangups with this film and its storytelling are going to come from a familiarity with the series that goes any deeper than a casual watch or two. If you don't have that familiarity, the stuff that happens in this film might likely just feel a little more "natural" in terms of progression, I guess.
I mean, there are people here for whom Resurrection was their first Alien movie, and they were able to hang just fine. This is a much better movie than that is.
I write for the Portland Mercury. But since it's an actual print publication, my review won't go live until next Wednesday at the earliest (that's when the paper streets every week)
Looking at those "prologues" as they're calling them, I'm really starting to wonder if they're not all just deleted scenes, really.
Because I think they might be.
Looking at those "prologues" as they're calling them, I'm really starting to wonder if they're not all just deleted scenes, really.
Because I think they might be.
The alien vision scenes felt so cheap and tacky. It felt 90s cheesy like resurrection. The entire final sequence was a rushed, tension-free cliched mess.
That and the "let's blow this fucker into space!". I cringed, and the movie had built up some goodwill by that point. Compare that to Aliens with the build up to the loader fight (which this seemed to hint at) and it's night and day. Seeing a cgi alien wiggle its butt down a vent hole on CCTV wasn't tense - it all felt so basic for a movie on such a supposed grand scale.Yeah. I didn't think they needed the alien vision shots. It was the POV shots of corridors? Which, to be honest, we don't have a sense of the layout of covenant = what's the point anyhow. There's no sense of reference.
There's actually a leaping shot of the alien in the trailers cut from the film. That suggest it's hunting someone - they needed more jeopardy in the final act but Tennessee and Daniels both were never really ever near the Alien til the airlock and even then, it quickly got trapped in the drivers booth for a bit.
agreed it was tension-free. I was so bored. I mean, Air Lock again?! Is that the best they can do? Again?!! Someone needs to do a mega cut of aliens being blown out to space
That and the "let's blow this fucker into space!". I cringed, and the movie had built up some goodwill by that point. Compare that to Aliens with the build up to the loader fight (which this seemed to hint at) and it's night and day. Seeing a cgi alien wiggle its butt down a vent hole on CCTV wasn't tense - it all felt so basic for a movie on such a supposed grand scale.
And yeah, it felt like a LOT was cut from this movie. It showed pacing wise IMO.
Yeah, it's kind of jarring how much these filmmakers have access to with CGI etc but if the core idea isn't strong it just all feels weightless and pointless. Practical effects win every time with stuff like that.and the loader fight was good because it wasn't a fully covered outfit and ripley had to actually fight for her life. There was also a heft and reality to the the loader and it was a fight to the finish to get the queen out of the airlock. That was done well. This? Not exciting at all - to be honest, I was also not invested in Daniels as a character to I didn't really care if she lived or died.
Not even sure how Daniels wasn't pulled out too space. Mag grav shoes? lol
Looking at those "prologues" as they're calling them, I'm really starting to wonder if they're not all just deleted scenes, really.
Because I think they might be.
Is Ridley Scott becoming the new George Lucas?
How could Ridley Scott think "you know what this birth of Xenomorph needs have its tiny arms raise up"
Holy fuck did anyone think that not look laughable
Ridley Scott is, and has always been a much better director than George Lucas.
I'm guessing the film doesn't address the hive creation or the alien queen from Aliens. Is it still possible to reconcile Scott's alien with Cameron's?
Didn't like this sequel. No answers again, just more questions. Zero lore.
But as of right now, looking at what he's doing with his story, and knowing he's going to tie it DIRECTLY into Alien - I think it's more likely he's just going to say "fuck it" and write Aliens out of canon. He's more than halfway there already.
That would definitely get some negative pushback from fans especially with how much people still talk about that second film.
That's kinda where I was going. Is Scott rewatching Aliens and taking notes for this origin story? Does he care about Cameron's contributions to the mythology, or Fincher's? I think not. Fox probably does though, right? At least with Aliens.Considering the fanbase is already hard at work trying to figure out a way to wedge in Cameron's Queen, let me add my own little bit of water to be carried:
Considering these are David's first attempts at the xenomorph (I think fans are already calling them "protomorphs" or something like that?) there's still room for improvement, and even in the main series, there were variations in how fast it took for a xenomorph to gestate, or how fast it took for a facehugger to fall off after impregnating a host.
So yeah, in the next movie, there are possibilities for variations on the theme he essentially just composed in front of us.
Will that variation allow for a version of the animal that grows eggs inside itself and shits them out? Maybe.
But as of right now, looking at what he's doing with his story, and knowing he's going to tie it DIRECTLY into Alien - I think it's more likely he's just going to say "fuck it" and write Aliens out of canon. He's more than halfway there already.
David is the QUEEN!!!So how are they handling the Queen issue?