Alien Covenant

[Kontra Kommando]

Saw it last night, and I highly recommend watching it! I give this movie 5 out of 5 stars.

 

Spoiler

The trailer really didn't do the movie justice IMO; forget the trailer completely. You will need to watch Prometheus to understand this story. Michael Fassbender does an amazing job once again. Danny McBride's character was also cool.  This movie will connect a lot of the dots between Prometheus, and Alien. I'd say this is the new best 3rd movie of the series, and is worthy of being compared to the first two films. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

 

[Jayextee]

Saw it a week ago (like shit, did us Brits get it before the US?) and thought it was, well, disappointing.

 

People Are Stupid In Space 2: This Really Is A Sequel To Prometheus

[Kontra Kommando]

1 hour ago, Jayextee said:

Saw it a week ago (like shit, did us Brits get it before the US?) and thought it was, well, disappointing.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

People Are Stupid In Space 2: This Really Is A Sequel To Prometheus

 

I liked Prometheus too, though :P

 

 

Major spoilers:

Spoiler

Oh well. Yea, it just came out yesterday here. I like the idea that David is a robot bent on exterminating humanity out of hatred. So I figure David is supposed to be like Frankenstein's monster to Humanity. And the Xenomorph is David's Frankenstein's monster that he created. I bet the story will conclude with him being destroyed by the Xenomorph in the last of the next two films. I found it interesting that David thought of Walter as being a "Robot", despite the fact that he was a robot himself. Moreover, David was sort of prejudice towards Walter for having software that prevented him to behave like David. Nevertheless, he tried to convert him. David also had a clear hatred towards humanity itself, and referred to them as a dying species cling on to life. He viewed synthetics as the next step in evolution. David is like the reverse of Ripley. The stories will focus on him, as the main antagonist. I caught that they made the Engineer's city look like the port of Carthage, and their remains looked like the volcanic ash statues of Pompeii. David has become like the harbinger of death, utilizing the engineer's technology to destroy humanity. I believe he will go back to LV-426, with the eggs he created, on board. This will be the site of the crash that Ripley finds in Alien (1979). I bet David will create the queen, and it will probably be the monster that destroys him. She already kills synths indiscriminately as we saw with Bishop, in Aliens (1986). Maybe the xenomorphs themselves are aware enough to know that they also pose a threat to them. There was a scene where David was trying to domestic the neomorph. I guess, those are the result of the black ooze he released into the Engineer's city.

An alternative theory i have in regards to the Queen:
The xenomorph borrows from their genetics, and he combined it with insect-like animals, as they were engineered by David, when he created the facehuggers. When they're combined with human being through gestation, they become the Xenomorph. I'm guessing the xenomorphs evolve to have their own means of reproduction, as one could become a queen. Thus they take on a colony like society. This in turn discards their need for David as a means of creation.

 

Edited May 20, 2017 by Kontra Kommando

[Jayextee]

Yeah, but...

 

...part of the appeal of the original Alien films for me, and I guess a fair few others, is the whole 

mystique surrounding the creature itself. It has a bizarre (and frightening) reproductive cycle, seemingly lives only to kill and looks pretty unlike any known terrestrial form of life. The farther it gets from that 'unknown' quality, the less it appeals on the same level; Prometheus watered down the lore with "they're biological weapons" and Covenant dilutes it further by taking the step to "the Xenos we know are David's experiments on the original weapons".

 

Instead of adding to canon, I argue it detracts. Prometheus and Covenant answered questions that were better-left unasked. Not only this, but the answers are unsatisfying and clichéd -- and although I realise to some extent the original Alien helped create many of the genre's clichés, it doesn't help by adding so much predictability to the pile. We didn't need a Xenomorph origin story, let alone one so uninspired.

 

But then that's like, just my opinion, man. I will admit I enjoyed Fassbender's performance/s and the casting was arguable better in Covenant than Prometheus. But I'm personally skipping right to the final stage of grief - acceptance, that there may never be a decent film in this franchise again with the direction it has taken.

 

Apologies for all the spoiler text. ;)

[Kontra Kommando]

This is what I would consider to be in my opinion best to worst aliens-related films (I know avp is not canon to the other aliens films). But I include them, because I think the first AVP (2004) was actually better than Alien Resurrection (1997).

 

Alien (1979)
Aliens (1986)
Alien Covenant (2017)
Prometheus (2012)
Alien³ (1992)
Alien vs Predator (2004)*
Alien Resurrection (1997)
AVP 2: Requiem (2007)*

 

 

Edited May 20, 2017 by Kontra Kommando

[RUSH]

I confess I've only seen the first two Alien movies. I hear the others suck, so I never bothered watching them. Though I should probably get around to seeing Prometheus/Covenant sometime.

 

That being said (of the first two) I greatly prefer the first. That's one of the best movies ever made. By comparison the cliches found in Aliens made it kinda corny at times. Too much stereotypical "let's rock!" brainless marine muscle flexing and whatnot. Though the action and set pieces were still badass. An entertaining film, but lacking the twisted atmosphere and slow rising tension of the original. Seriously, the first Alien captures a unique feeling of mystery/dread and impending doom so strong it's only rivaled in intensity by The Thing. Absolute horror perfection.

[notjimmyboigreez]

43 minutes ago, RUSH said:

I confess I've only seen the first two Alien movies. I hear the others suck, so I never bothered watching them. Though I should probably get around to seeing Prometheus/Covenant sometime.

 

That being said (of the first two) I greatly prefer the first. That's one of the best movies ever made. By comparison the cliches found in Aliens made it kinda corny at times. Too much stereotypical "let's rock!" brainless marine muscle flexing and whatnot. Though the action and set pieces were still badass. An entertaining film, but lacking the twisted atmosphere and slow rising tension of the original. Seriously, the first Alien captures a unique feeling of mystery/dread and impending doom so strong it's only rivaled in intensity by The Thing. Absolute horror perfection.

i hear what your saying and its true by today's standard but at the time it was not like that.

[Tracer]

Just saw it.  What a huge disappointment.

 

Here is a new alien movie...let's make it predictable as shit and throw in some romance...oh, and cyborgs are apparently capable of love, too.

[rehelekretep]

the Alien 3 director's cut is actually really good - pity most people have only seen the theatrical release, which was butchered and barely makes sense when compared with the DC.

[Jayextee]

2 hours ago, rehelekretep said:

the Alien 3 director's cut assembly cut is actually really good

 

Fixed.

I'm in the minority that consider Alien 3 to be among the stronger films of the series (not too hard when put against Resurrection or Prometheus, it has to be said). But it's no director's cut; simply by virtue of David Fincher not having, nor wanting to have, anything to do with it.

 

Personally, I think the film is larger than the sum of its parts; and tells a deeper story, steeped in metaphor, than being just a simple Xeno-slasher flick. As always though, YMMV. :)

[rehelekretep]

good point! i forgot that Fincher basically stormed off in a huff afterwards

i love the feel of the film. im not a film student so its hard to put into words, but

Spoiler

the depressing feel of the film, the lighting, the themes of faith (trust in God, in these convicts, in each other etc.), all comes together really well. i also like the warped symmetry of the 1st film/1 alien - 2nd film/multiple aliens - 3rd film/1 alien

i must say i wish theyd ended the series there, or at the very least Ripley's involvement (Resurrection is a travesty).

 

[fraggle]

22 hours ago, Jayextee said:

Yeah, but...

Not going to bother with spoiler text since I haven't seen the movie anyway. I saw Prometheus.

 

I think you make a valid criticism but it's kind of inevitable so long as they keep on making more Alien movies. Every one they make builds lore and makes the creature slightly more unknown than it was before. For example, Aliens revealed that there are queen aliens; Alien 3 revealed that if it's a dog that gets facehugged you get a different creature.

 

There's the old cliche that we're afraid of the unknown and I think there's some truth there. There's something visceral and scary on an animal level when we feel like we could be threatened by something that we can see but don't know what it is. Humans figure things out - once we know what something is we can learn more about it, discover its weaknesses and learn to protect ourselves. Our defence moves to a more rational footing. Ghost stories are a good example - since ghosts don't exist we can never learn anything about them, so they remain timeless as a basis for scary stories told around a campfire.

 

I do think the modern Alien films perhaps suffer from this a bit, but Prometheus at least seemed like a good film - the best Alien film they could have made. They should probably proceed cautiously in terms of developing the series; I'm reminded of the Borg in Star Trek, who initially had some of these same scary "unknown" qualities, but over a series of Borg stories became Just Another Alien Species for the crews to have to contend with. Probably Alien is safe so long as they never try to humanize the aliens - that was the main mistake they made with the Borg.

[Jayextee]

 

@rehelekretep Just going to wax lyrical about Alien 3 (or at least, the assembly cut; I can't even bring to mind the theatrical version) for a while (in spoiler tags, so it doesn't clog up the thread for anyone who came here for Covenant commentary)...

 

 

 

In a word: patriarchy.

 

Yeah, yeah, it's considered to some to be a dirty word used by people who want a "it's all men's fault" get-out in lieu of they're own personal responsibilities, I get that. Fact is though, the male-dominated society was with us through the dark ages and well into the 20th Century and we're (finally) throwing off the dregs of what is an antiquated model. What this has to do with Alien 3? The film depicts a literal patriarchy; with the genius (IMO) touch of throwing religious fervour into the mix; an exclusively-male society (albeit a small one on Fiorina 161) that is not only threatened but destroyed by strong female presences -- which I mention as a plural because we have:

 

 

 

 

• Ripley
• (unbeknownst) the Queen inside Ripley
• the alien

 

 

 

The latter of which I consider to be, if not de facto female, at least a feminine (read: antithesis to male, not feminine characteristics - oh, not by a long fucking shot) presence owing to the fact that, because of the Queen producing the eggs from which their parasitic reproduction cycle begins, the alien is a matriarchal being.

 

I allude to the film being steeped in metaphor; I believe it is. As the alien itself was reportedly a metaphor for rape, this film is to me an allegory for the old guard patriarchy's fears of women; that they may destroy everything established in an imperfect-but-working system.

 

And the icing on the cake? The Fiorina 161 patriarchy is small fry, versus the larger organisation which seeks to take this feminine domineering force and use it for its own ends -- not only the leitmotif of the original four films, but reflective of how modern capitalism frequently co-opts activism and good causes for its own purposes.

 

No doubt Fincher et al would disagree with me; they saw a poor film with little meaning. I've seen it described as 'nihilistic' myself. I disagree, and think it's utterly brilliant.

 

@fraggle I pretty much agree with everything you said. I'd like to address one point though, as I've been discussing Covenant's failings (which are also Prometheus' failings, to me at least) with a friend and it's fresh in my mind.

 

Probably Alien is safe so long as they never try to humanize the aliens - that was the main mistake they made with the Borg.

 

Agreed, totally. However I wish the actual humans themselves were humanized at the very least: first through third movies all presented a slice-of-life with characters whose motivations were clear, etc. We get to know these people on relatively-familiar turf and are invested in them before the Xeno enters scene and threatens everything we now care about.

 

Resurrection reduced most of these characters to catch-phrases (ahhhh, Whedon. Some things never change...); Prometheus, and by extension Covenant, doesn't even do this. We're straight to business, and everything feels like a contrivance to put the beasty on scene before murdering the cast. Admittedly, there's only so much mileage in the first three movies' formula I mentioned, but perhaps the series had already run its course pre-Resurrection?

 

I will repeat YMMV though - your mileage may vary. Neither Prometheus nor Covenant were without merit, and it's cool to enjoy them. I'd watch both again, for sure.

 

[Man of Doom]

So I watched this last night, and I have to say, this is quite possibly the weakest Alien film I've seen so far (I haven't seen Alien: Resurrection in its entirety).

 

If anything, I managed to find more negative things to say about this than the positives. Just for comparison, there's an equal number of positives vs. negatives that I can say with Prometheus.
The positives:
 

Spoiler

 

Michael Fassbender as both Walter and David is easily the best part of the movie, but the latter somehow manages to be the most infuriating aspect of the movie, given the context. Even with the script being somewhat wonky, Fassbender still manages to do a fantastic job.

The characters of Daniels and Tennessee are actually not that bad. In fact, most of the cast do a pretty good job in terms of acting.

David's motivation, while if leaning into "guy who wants to destroy Earth," does have quite a bit of weight, namely that he was basically treated like shit in Prometheus.

If there's one thing that Ridley Scott has always done, it's to make a very gorgeous movie, with very bold visuals. It's very much shown here.

The various call backs to Prometheus were a fairly nice touch.

 

 

The negatives:
 

Spoiler

 

The homoerotic undertones are so blunt and so overt that it's hard to take that aspect of the movie seriously. Hell, David even kisses Walter on the lips to show him his own weird-ass version of love.

 

This movie somehow manages to play every horror cliche in the book completely straight:
-A jump scare is literally telegraphed to the audience, just before it happens.

-The majority of the characters here are somehow even dumber than the idiots in Prometheus, and even the latter should have all won Darwin awards. Case in point, two minor characters literally slip and fall on blood smears when they're trying to escape from the Neomorph.

-The plot of this entire movie would have been avoided if Covenant itself went to the planet it was planned to go to, but because of a system failure that could be easily fixed (and is the same systems failure that essentially cremates James Franco's character; yeah, he's apparently in this movie), they decide to go to this particular planet that they have no experience with. 

-There is a literal shower scene that involves the Xenomorph, and it plays just as well as you'd expect. It's there that the Xenomorph almost feels like another Jason Voorhees.

 

My previous points, combined with how Covenant tries to pay homage to the original Alien to a fault, just makes the whole experience feel like a dumbed-down version of the original Alien. At least Prometheus tried to be more ambitious.

 

Both the Neomorph and the Xenomorph do not look good at all. I'm not talking about their design, I'm talking about how they were handled, namely that they're pretty much CGI for the entire movie, and said CGI looks like it came from two decades ago.

 

This may be a bit much, but I feel that Covenant falls into the same trap as AVP: Requiem, namely that it takes the wrong lessons to be learned:
-The script is peppered with so many f-bombs that it comes across as more juvenile than mature.

-I'm very much a sucker for gore, but the amount of gore in this movie comes across as rather excessive and unnecessary. This may be one of the gorier Alien movies, but for the wrong reasons.

 

I'm sure that we all came to Prometheus to see how the Xenomorphs came to be, but this wasn't it. Instead of the Xenomorph's origin being naturally occurring, the perfect organism literally exists because of an android's God complex. In other words, the very premise of the deadliest creature in existence was always because of the hubris of mankind. This is just as bad as trying to humanize the aliens, and it left a very bitter taste in my mouth. I'm guessing that we're at fault with this one, because prior to Prometheus, we were always curious as to how the Xenomorphs came to be.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, fraggle said:

There's the old cliche that we're afraid of the unknown and I think there's some truth there. There's something visceral and scary on an animal level when we feel like we could be threatened by something that we can see but don't know what it is. 

This is exactly what made the Xenomorph so fucking scary. That we knew so little about it back when Alien originally came out made it all the more iconic, in combination with its appearance.

 

 

Given what I've been told prior to this movie, I actually went in expecting to hate this movie, but after watching it, I thought it was OK.

[Tracer]

2 hours ago, fraggle said:

Probably Alien is safe so long as they never try to humanize the aliens - that was the main mistake they made with the Borg.

Eh....

[Mr. Freeze]

Just came back from it. Really enjoyed it, the first non-shit Alien film since Aliens. Honestly I don't get really understand a good amount of the complaints. It just seems like people weren't paying attention during the movie. 

[Urthar]

Saw it last night. I thought it was pretty bad. It's pretty much a retread of the 1979 movie, with some of the Prometheus storyline superficially dealt with, but without any of the suspense or creativity of either film.  I think Ridley just wanted to get his retirement pension and bowed to the studio's desire to give the fans a xenomorph picture.

[Kontra Kommando]

12 hours ago, Jayextee said:

I'm in the minority that consider Alien 3 to be among the stronger films of the series (not too hard when put against Resurrection or Prometheus, it has to be said). But it's no director's cut; simply by virtue of David Fincher not having, nor wanting to have, anything to do with it.

I really liked Alien 3 as well. However, I think Prometheus was better IMO.

 

I wonder how it would have been had they gone with the script to keep Michael Biehn. It probably would have been more of an action movie like Aliens.

[Chezza]

Does most viewers truly hate Alien Resurrection that badly? It's holywood cliche and deviates from the atmosphere of the classic Alien but I find it a fun watch with good costumes.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Chezza

[rehelekretep]

i cant speak for everyone, but as a massive Alien fan, the decision to 'clone' Ripley just ruins the narrative arc of the first 3 films, the tone is completely wrong, and i didnt think it was a very good film.

[Agentbromsnor]

I liked the first two alien films, and I even liked the campy feeling of Alien vs Predator, but I absolutely hated Prometheus. Is this film anything like Prometheus?

[Jayextee]

37 minutes ago, Agentbromsnor said:

Is this film anything like Prometheus?

 

It follows directly on, references the same events, has the crew being the same kind of unscientific stupid on a new planet to roughly the same ends.

I guess so.

[Liberation]

I enjoyed it myself, it made Prometheus better, looking back on it. However it is butchering how the aliens were created... badly, but then Prometheus did that anyway.

 

As a film, yeah its was enjoyable and probably the most gory out of all the alien films, you just have to get over the first 3 alien films as nothing will compare to them. The franchise is a mess really after / during alien 3.

[Jaws In Space]

Just saw it & I've got to say that I didn't enjoy it all that much. The first hour or so of the film was pretty solid with building up the characters & setting a rather tense setup, but really this part of the film was just copying what Alien had already mastered. Once David shows up though the whole film just falls apart. Everyone suddenly becomes extremely stupid as they get picked off one by one. I hated the ending, such a stupid cliche & I saw it coming from a mile away. The film should have cut it's cast in half, most of them were completely forgettable & served as nothing more than canon fodder. Also I thought that the film handled Dr. Elizabeth Shaw's character very poorly, she was the most interesting thing about Prometheus & they completely dropped the ball here.

 

Anyways here's how I rate the films

Aliens 10/10 my favorite film of all time

Alien 10/10

Alien3 9/10

Alien Vs Predator 5/10

Alien: Resurrection 5/10

Alien: Covenant 4/10

Prometheus 2/10

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem 1/10

[Kontra Kommando]

Spoiler

Here's my chart

 

I think we all agree that nothing tops the original 2, and Avp: requiem is at the bottom of the list.

 

Interestingly, the discrepancy comes from the movies we are deciding that were in the middle-to-good.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Kontra Kommando

[rehelekretep]

i am offended that you put Prometheus so far above 3 :x

[Jayextee]

If we're tier-listing this shit:

 

UNDERRATED TIER

Alien³

 

TOP TIER

Alien

Aliens

 

WATCHABLE TIER

Alien vs Predator

Alien Resurrection

Alien: Covenant

Prometheus

 

SHIT TIER

Alien vs Predator 2 Requiem

 

 I'll state that 'watchable' is basically a 4-way tie for me. None are really good movies, but all sorta enjoyable in their own way. And yes, I put Alien³ personally above The Big Two^TM because, fuck it, I really like the movie (that is, the Assembly cut -- theatrical is probably bottom 'watchable' or even sat right above AvP2 in the shit tier).

 

Also Alien > Aliens because the psychological horror; especially first time around; beats out action for me, even though Aliens is pretty damned good action. Just don't watch the original Alien straight after Spaceballs. I once did. ;)

[Kontra Kommando]

1 hour ago, rehelekretep said:

i am offended that you put Prometheus so far above 3 :x

Don't get me wrong, I really like Alien 3. I remember when it first came out. Though I had to wait to see it on HBO when I was a kid. I think the Runner is one of the cooler looking Xenomorphs. It was fascinating especially, at that time, when it was realized the Facehugger could impregnate different species. I just didn't like the story so much, but the visuals were top notch. I also liked the Weyland-Yutani commandos at the end. The synthetic versions from Alien vs Predator (2010), I thought was really cool  as an enemy.

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by Kontra Kommando

[Kontra Kommando]

I'm sure in the future, there will be more people that will appreciate Prometheus, and Alien Covenant. When Alien 3 was released, most people thought it was bad. Nevertheless, according to Rotten Tomatoes, most people think Alien 3 is the worst of the canon-series. However, my opinion is that its a lot better than Resurrection.

 

1. Aliens: (98%)
2. Alien: (97%)
3. Prometheus: (72%)
4. Alien Covenant: (71%)
5. Alien Resurrection: (54%)
6. Alien 3:  (46%)
7. Alien Vs Predator: (21%)
8. AVP: Requiem: (12%)

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by Kontra Kommando

[RUSH]

When it comes to using Rotten Tomatoes, I personally prefer to reference the audience score (%) instead of the critic Tomatometer. Not that it makes much of a difference for the Alien movies anyway, but in general (for all movies) I find it to be more accurate overall.