Can't even keep up shake mah head
No slip ups around these parts son
i'm the sheriff around here
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Alien: Covenant |SPOILER THREAD| With more Christian subtext than BvS
- Thread starter Toa TAK
- Start date
Can't even keep up shake mah head
No slip ups around these parts son
i'm the sheriff around here
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Hey now, while I gotcha on the horn here, sherrif, I been thinkin, I like to report an improper use of lore...
Where is the gif from?
Take it up to someone who cares, kiddo
I've got bigger fish to fry, crappier OTs to make
Write it up in one of them blogs or whatever
Now I'm just gonna lay back and cry about a movie that hasn't even come out in God's country
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Seriously, though, you guys should watch Nocturnal Animals. That's a good movie unlike Covenant (I'm guessing).
Prometheus audition tape I believe.
20cent
Banned
This is totally Prometheus 2. Pretty but wasted visuals. Nonsensical setting. Dumbass characters. Dumbass decisions. Lame horror. Over the top gore. Hilarious pseudo-philosophy crap with religious overtones that go nowhere. Non-ending that does not lead to Alien so Scott can make more crap.
LMAO / 10
LMAO / 10
Was going to skip it but a buddy had a ticket so I figured why not?
Whelp I reckon as Bobby notes it's probably a better film overall than Prometheus and has some more interesting scenes in some areas plus more focus on antagonist and aliens.
That said I enjoyed it even less than Prometheus. TBH it felt like Scott took his plans to follow on from Prometheus with David and the engineers and simply shoved in more of an Aliens style film to "silence" critics who complained of lack of alien presence.
Cast - Fassbender aside - seemed mostly wasted (actually McBride was really rather good actually) as there were too many to get enough face time and while note quite as bad as Prometheus they didn't really resonate again. Certainly you're not going to remember them like Dallas, Ripley, Hudson, Hicks, etc (Alien and Aliens both excellently showcasing their core cast).
Killing Shaw of screen was a waste and lost chance for a really powerful and shocking scene of betrayal - essentially felt like Scott simply wiping slate to focus on David. Speaking of which the end of this implies he's going to do the same thing with any follow on from this film with regards David.
There was still way too much dumb stuff going on and the David/Walter switch was really unclear I felt (in terms of how it happened).
At this point it feels like we're in a very different Universe from Alien even though in theory the films are working towards that. Thematically this material doesn't connect at all.
TBH I wish Scott had pushed studio to drop hopes of Alien brand and made completely new franchise here without linking it at all. There is some interesting stuff here (and in Prometheus) and most of it focused on David and the idea of this rouge created being and how it relates to its creators and the idea of creators and their creations in general.
All very interesting but nothing that I think links up too well with Alien.
Certainly with these two films it's obvious Scott is way, way more interested in the androids vs the human cast whereas Alien/Aliens focus was all about humans in peril with the android activity a nice sub plot but hardly the main focus.
It's funny, if he made Alien now I suspect it would be Ash making it to the end of the film with Ripley (if alive at the end) getting dispatched by Ash before the next film.
Whelp I reckon as Bobby notes it's probably a better film overall than Prometheus and has some more interesting scenes in some areas plus more focus on antagonist and aliens.
That said I enjoyed it even less than Prometheus. TBH it felt like Scott took his plans to follow on from Prometheus with David and the engineers and simply shoved in more of an Aliens style film to "silence" critics who complained of lack of alien presence.
Cast - Fassbender aside - seemed mostly wasted (actually McBride was really rather good actually) as there were too many to get enough face time and while note quite as bad as Prometheus they didn't really resonate again. Certainly you're not going to remember them like Dallas, Ripley, Hudson, Hicks, etc (Alien and Aliens both excellently showcasing their core cast).
Killing Shaw of screen was a waste and lost chance for a really powerful and shocking scene of betrayal - essentially felt like Scott simply wiping slate to focus on David. Speaking of which the end of this implies he's going to do the same thing with any follow on from this film with regards David.
There was still way too much dumb stuff going on and the David/Walter switch was really unclear I felt (in terms of how it happened).
At this point it feels like we're in a very different Universe from Alien even though in theory the films are working towards that. Thematically this material doesn't connect at all.
TBH I wish Scott had pushed studio to drop hopes of Alien brand and made completely new franchise here without linking it at all. There is some interesting stuff here (and in Prometheus) and most of it focused on David and the idea of this rouge created being and how it relates to its creators and the idea of creators and their creations in general.
All very interesting but nothing that I think links up too well with Alien.
Certainly with these two films it's obvious Scott is way, way more interested in the androids vs the human cast whereas Alien/Aliens focus was all about humans in peril with the android activity a nice sub plot but hardly the main focus.
It's funny, if he made Alien now I suspect it would be Ash making it to the end of the film with Ripley (if alive at the end) getting dispatched by Ash before the next film.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Yeah, this feels right.
yeah, he killed Shaw in her crio-sleep. Daniels and Tenesse are going to be the next poor Alien factories
which sucks.
No. He probably killed her, or experimented on he rather, after she crashed the ship.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Quick question, regarding that:
David purposefully crashed the ship, right? Like, he warps into the atmosphere, docks with the plant-hanger thingy, bombs the surface... and then crashes the thing into a hill for the sake of having a plausible story if/when people show up, only to spill the beans to the first robot who presses him even slightly on the tale?
That is what happened, right?
David purposefully crashed the ship, right? Like, he warps into the atmosphere, docks with the plant-hanger thingy, bombs the surface... and then crashes the thing into a hill for the sake of having a plausible story if/when people show up, only to spill the beans to the first robot who presses him even slightly on the tale?
That is what happened, right?
This is me, I don't really like David created Xeno narrative too, the Alien franchise is only composed of Alien and Aliens to me, the rest can burn in Hell.
Carl2291
Member
I wouldn't be surprised at all if she was the one who crashed the ship, trying to escape after finding out what he did. She sends the distress signal, he catches up with her and kills her/ experiments with her.
He wanted life to experiment with, there's no life left on the planet... So why crash and ruin his only means of escape?
But in the prologue video he put her to sleep in that bed thing before he viral nukes the Engineers.
Let's be honest here, it's probably just something no one really though about, because much like the rest of the film, everything that happens only exists to provide a premise for the horror slasher narrative and for Scott to jerk off about synthetic life existentialism.
You guys are hard to please lol.
I loved it. David is such a psychopath though!
Straight up killing everyone lol
I think I'm mistaken but is the planet that it'd alien / Aliens the same one that the colonists were going to?
It'd explain why there were eggs there. Not the engineer ship though if David had control of the covenant 🤔
David/Walter and the aliens were the highlight for me. Loved every scene in them.
That black goo though, that's native to the planet yeh?
I loved it. David is such a psychopath though!
Straight up killing everyone lol
I think I'm mistaken but is the planet that it'd alien / Aliens the same one that the colonists were going to?
It'd explain why there were eggs there. Not the engineer ship though if David had control of the covenant 🤔
David/Walter and the aliens were the highlight for me. Loved every scene in them.
That black goo though, that's native to the planet yeh?
Bobby Roberts
Banned
The film itself doesn't show this, but that one prologue they released (so I'm not sure as to whether it's actually a deleted scene - it seems to be - or whether one can "count it" or not) makes it seem as if he puts her to sleep shortly before warping in.
I don't think she's awake when he does what he does.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
It's obvious he put her to sleep before the long travel, not right before bombing...
When she figures out his real intensions, she crashes the ship to deny him his only way to escape. Why whould she send a SOS of her singing?
I'm fairly sure what you see in that message is her taking control of the ship right before crashing it.
Alien, Aliens and Alien Isolation. These are the only entries I take seriously, they are the only ones that fit together. They others all deviate way too much from the original and can't really be reconciled with it.
I'm not sure she did? It seems more like David kept recordings of her and was using the ship as a beacon to lure potential life to the planet since he exhausted his supply? I mean if it was something of her volition that went against David's plan, he would just shut the ship down entirely and turn off all distress signals. It's been -10- years and he is basically king of the planet.
Robot Pants
Member
I haven't seen the movie but the notion that David is responsible for the creation of all xenomorphs is really really bad.
I can't believe they went that route but I guess after Prometheus they really had no choice. Damn that movie. Damn it all to Hell.
Can someone explain to me why there were already statues in the wall of xenomorphs in that one room in Prometheus?
Is it because the black goo gives life to those types of creatures? And the statues depicted weren't actually xenomorphs but a variation of them?
I can't believe they went that route but I guess after Prometheus they really had no choice. Damn that movie. Damn it all to Hell.
Can someone explain to me why there were already statues in the wall of xenomorphs in that one room in Prometheus?
Is it because the black goo gives life to those types of creatures? And the statues depicted weren't actually xenomorphs but a variation of them?
They had a billion choices with the way prometheus set up stuff
A potential answer to that might be that he was not necessarily in the ship when she hijacked it, or she just locked him out. After the crash she probably survived, although heavily injured. He then experimented on her.I'm not sure she did? It seems more like David kept recordings of her and was using the ship as a beacon to lure potential life to the planet since he exhausted his supply? I mean if it was something of her volition that went against David's plan, he would just shut the ship down entirely and turn off all distress signals. It's been -10- years and he is basically king of the planet.
I don't know if the catalyst to her decision is his genocide or the discovery he killed her boyfriend, but that's probably how it happened. Alan Dean Foster's book will probably answer all these questions. I really hope it'll talk in more depths about David's motivations, because creating life is one thing, but creating stupid and feral aliens is another. Currently I don't see it making any sense.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
By this point, Aliens doesn't really fit anymore, either.
I guess I just don't see how you could be so convinced it was Shaw that had anything to do with the ship being on the side of that hill. Nothing really points to it. You're creating a hero moment for her that I don't really see fitting in all that well. It seems much more likely he put her to sleep, did what he did, and never woke her up again.
It takes up a large part of the discussion on pages 3 & 4 of this thread.
Yeah Alien Isolation is the sequel the series really deserves at the end, I don't know why Ridley focus so much on David, the series should focus about how extraordinary/deadly and intelligent Xenomorph are and not about an android failure that is playing God like every damn sci-fy movies.
I won't talk about Elizabeth treatment because it's the biggest waste/failure of the movie for sure.
She was totally Newt'd
Bobby Roberts
Banned
...nah.
If you had to just WATCH Isolation, and couldn't play it, it'd be pretty goddamned boring.
Its story is bad.
Robot Pants
Member
I'm on it. Thanks!
Of course, it's a video game but the settings, characters, Alien Lore and tension are really well made, superior to any Prometheus/Covenant stuff, I admit that I'm enjoying the "Xenos" in Covenant, they're deadly and super aggressive and i love that, but all the Prometheus/David/stupid Crew making stupid decision or acting stupid stuff from the series need to stop for the best, like seriously...
Does any decision or any person of the entire crew made even sense in those movies ? like even a little ? Nope and that's a shame.
Secret Fawful
Member
Nah. The logs, the concept, and the experience outweigh any entry in the series since the first. A game can be a great sequel to a movie, and this game is it. It nails what works about Alien and turns it into an experience that also works.
And it makes androids and corporations in that universe more interesting than any of the movies ever did.
Video games aren't movies. They're not meant to be watched. That's not the point at all. It's the worst argument you can make about a game.
Yes, it's interesting that there is a low-rent Weyland-Yutani type corp that came in with their own station and androids meant to cater to people, but the corp sucks, got in over their head, and also got fucked over by Weyland-Yutani and the Xenomorph and left an entire station of people to fend for themselves. That's a great story. It's a great backdrop for you to try to survive. It's arguably a way better one than Alien had.
Nope, and it gets even worse when you remember that these were the people responsible for colonization and the lives of 2000 colonists. Fuck, I'm not expecting you to be super scientists or anything but the first thing you do after landing on an alien planet is pop a cig and take leaks in the jungle???
Bobby Roberts
Banned
What does this even mean, though? What "alien lore" are we talking about here? There is none.
And the setting/design is phenomenal, the atmosphere is wonderful, and its one of my favoritest games of the last 15-20 years, no lie. I love it.
But I love it because I can play it. Not because it actually does anything worthwhile with its story. Because it doesn't. It's a boring, flat story that doesn't do anything interesting with any of its characters.
it works because its a game. Not because of its narrative.
I disagree completely. It's rote bullshit for the most part.
It's a good concept. That concept isn't done any sort of justice by that game's story. But since all it has to be is a concept that explains why I am where I am, crawling around hallways and ducking under desks, it's fine.
But if you're telling me that the concept was actually executed well from any sort of storytelling perspective? Nah man.
It's a great game.
It's a bad story.
Secret Fawful
Member
So you're arguing that it's not the sequel the series deserves by arguing that it's the sequel the series deserves.
Your argument boils down to "a video game can never be the best sequel to Alien".
It's like the ghost of Roger Ebert came in and possessed you.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
It doesn't really bother me, I'm just trying to shake people from the weird conception that if they substitute the word "lore" for plain ol' story that it somehow makes the (typically shitty and unimportant) story more important and therefore better.
How are you getting that from what I wrote. It's not the sequel the series "deserves" because it's a bad story, centered on another fucking Ripley, told as perfunctorily as possible to accomodate the gameplay.
A video game could be a good sequel to Alien, sure.
Not that one.
And again: I love the game. I love the game because it lets ME run around the halls and get up to some bullshit in a wonderful facsimile of the design and atmosphere of the first movie. But not because it actually advances any story in any meaningful direction, or gives me characters I give a minor fuck about or enjoy all that much.
How are you getting that from what I wrote. It's not the sequel the series "deserves" because it's a bad story, centered on another fucking Ripley, told as perfunctorily as possible to accomodate the gameplay.
A video game could be a good sequel to Alien, sure.
Not that one.
And again: I love the game. I love the game because it lets ME run around the halls and get up to some bullshit in a wonderful facsimile of the design and atmosphere of the first movie. But not because it actually advances any story in any meaningful direction, or gives me characters I give a minor fuck about or enjoy all that much.
Secret Fawful
Member
I didn't see your edit before.
I think I know where we're diverging here. I think the disagreement boils down to the fact that I don't like the stories of any of the Alien sequels nor do I think any of them are interesting or good. I don't like what they do with the concept, I don't like what they do with the Alien, and I don't like what they do with the "world", hereby meaning the corporations and Jockey. I think when people say lore here they mean aspects of the world they didn't know about before. Isolation introduces a new shitty corporation that is interesting in its goals and fuckups. So yeah, it meets the barest requirements for lore, I guess.
Isolation is the only entry in the series, period, where I feel like the version of the Alien that is intelligent and unknown is preserved. I also disagree that Seegson is handled in a rote way. The logs are fairly straightforward "Ahhh we're fucked!" bullshit, but a lot of the way information is given to you about the world and their goals and the purpose of the androids they make is handled fairly brilliantly: in the design of the station and the posters on the walls. Not even in the logs. If you read the posters on the walls of the station, they tell you everything you need to know about the androids and the corporation before you even see one android. From a design standpoint and storytelling standpoint, that is both subtle and brilliant. It's something only a game can do. The logs just flesh it out and answer any lingering questions about areas of the station and events that transpired before you arrived.
It might be rote from a video game standpoint just because Bioshock has been here first, and to be honest, I haven't played Bioshock 1, 2, or Infinite, so I can only notice similarities. It felt like they mixed aspects of System Shock 2 into the Alien universe.
Anyway, I guess from my POV, the requirements needed to be a good sequel to Alien are fairly low. It just happens that outside of maybe 3, which I haven't seen, not one of the other movies has ever fit those requirements. Only Isolation. So that's where I'm coming from.
I think I know where we're diverging here. I think the disagreement boils down to the fact that I don't like the stories of any of the Alien sequels nor do I think any of them are interesting or good. I don't like what they do with the concept, I don't like what they do with the Alien, and I don't like what they do with the "world", hereby meaning the corporations and Jockey. I think when people say lore here they mean aspects of the world they didn't know about before. Isolation introduces a new shitty corporation that is interesting in its goals and fuckups. So yeah, it meets the barest requirements for lore, I guess.
Isolation is the only entry in the series, period, where I feel like the version of the Alien that is intelligent and unknown is preserved. I also disagree that Seegson is handled in a rote way. The logs are fairly straightforward "Ahhh we're fucked!" bullshit, but a lot of the way information is given to you about the world and their goals and the purpose of the androids they make is handled fairly brilliantly: in the design of the station and the posters on the walls. Not even in the logs. If you read the posters on the walls of the station, they tell you everything you need to know about the androids and the corporation before you even see one android. From a design standpoint and storytelling standpoint, that is both subtle and brilliant. It's something only a game can do. The logs just flesh it out and answer any lingering questions about areas of the station and events that transpired before you arrived.
It might be rote from a video game standpoint just because Bioshock has been here first, and to be honest, I haven't played Bioshock 1, 2, or Infinite, so I can only notice similarities. It felt like they mixed aspects of System Shock 2 into the Alien universe.
Anyway, I guess from my POV, the requirements needed to be a good sequel to Alien are fairly low. It just happens that outside of maybe 3, which I haven't seen, not one of the other movies has ever fit those requirements. Only Isolation. So that's where I'm coming from.
She probably had her suspicions early on and Walter/David having no recognition of the cabin + seeing his hand damage pretty much confirmed her fears.
I wouldn't put too much thought into it. It's just badly written.
Carl2291
Member
She discussed the cabin by the lake with Walter earlier in the film, while David didn't have any idea what she was talking about.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Walter wouldn't have forgotten the offer he made to Daniels from earlier in the movie to help her build that cabin now that her husband was dead.
So she brought up the cabin, and David just stared blankly at her.
At which point she's like "oh shit."
While there are a lot of badly written parts to the film, that exchange isn't one of them.
oh was that really it? sigh
it was obvious it was going to be David so I was always on the look out for the clue (he even had time to fix that hole under his chin... ) but that ending reveal went by me lol
ronaldthump
Member
Katherine waterhouse was equally dull in Fantastic Beasts. This OP reminded me where she's from and I was like oh. That's why. It's hard to cast an actress like Ripley/Siggourney - and sometimes I wonder if they shouldn't just do a fake out; and have a female lead for a bit; then kill her off and then have a male lead instead. At least that would be a surprise for the franchise. Not even sure why it'd always have to be a female.
Sure it was great when weaver got the role; but she killed it in Alien+Aliens but this need for the franchise to have female leads is pretty unneccasrary
b&jy77VjiKn$#F
Member
I actually enjoyed Waterson's performance in Fantastic Beast. Think she was okay in this.