Alien: Covenant

[mirth]

What moon are you orbiting?

Soleil Moon Frye

[Gusington]

That is the correct answer.

[mirth]

I knew you would approve.

[JudgeDredd]

I honestly could not fault this film. It's always quite cool hearing other people's take on a movie, but it often leaves me thinking "Did I see the same movie?"

Whilst I couldn't sit here and say it all makes complete sense to me, I left the theatre thoroughly happy with the experience and in fact I'm going out tonight again to watch it.

Maybe I just take a very simplistic view when watching films. I thought this made sense as a film between Prometheus and Alien...at least as much as my memory would allow.

[JudgeDredd]

The moon from the original Alien series was LV-426. Supposedly, the Prometheus visited LV-223, another moon orbiting the same planet as LV-426.

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Acheron_(LV-426)

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/LV-223

Having just watched Prometheus for the 4th time I can confirm it is LV-223

[mirth]

I honestly could not fault this film. It's always quite cool hearing other people's take on a movie, but it often leaves me thinking "Did I see the same movie?"

Whilst I couldn't sit here and say it all makes complete sense to me, I left the theatre thoroughly happy with the experience and in fact I'm going out tonight again to watch it.

Maybe I just take a very simplistic view when watching films. I thought this made sense as a film between Prometheus and Alien...at least as much as my memory would allow.

I think some of the complaints are legit. Prometheus, in large part, relied on supposedly very bright people doing some incredibly dumb things. I suspect Covenant, to a lesser extent, does the same.

I rewatched the first 30-45 minutes of Alien last week. Part of what made is such a great movie is that it didn't rely on the characters being profoundly stupid to advance the plot. In fact, the crew was pretty damned smart about things and the Alien still slaughtered them.

Let me give one example. When Dallas and Lambert bring Kane back to the Nostromo, Ripley has no intention of letting them aboard. She knows it will put the entire ship at risk and is willing to disobey a direct order from the captain to safeguard the ship. Smart. Of course, Ash lets them on board anyway which seems dumb at the time, but later proves to be part of his primary orders from the company. The plot is advanced and the "dumb" decision makes total sense later on.

Compare that to some of the behaviors shown in Prometheus by supposedly brilliant scientists and explorers (as opposed to  the working Joe crew of the Nostromo) . First sign of breathable air, everyone pops off their helmets. Weird alien snake thing? Let's pet it! Alien donut ship falling on you? Continue to run straight ahead instead of off to the side!

Dumb, dumb and more dumb.

[ghostryder]

How does it fail on every level if its Ridley Scott's story and his movie? Granted I haven't seen it yet but I haven't seen a lot of complaints in reviews about the story - the CGI and other effects definitely - but not the story or it's relation to the series' canon.

He's the director. It's not his story nor ever was. He directed the first movie based on a book written by someone else. he left out a whole bunch of the canon in the movie but it certainly exists in the book. These last two film are also not his story. he directs the film. As JasonPratt pointed out correctly who is responsible for the stories of the last two films. The problem is Promethius and those that wrote it have the canon going one direction (Engineers create us. Engineers want to destroy us explaining the eggs found on LV-426).

This last film throws all that out and now wants us to believe David is the one wiping out worlds and creating the alien. No where yet taking us to LV-426. And seeing how destructive and effective the black goo is one HAS to wonder why they bother with the alien eggs at all.

Promethius was taking us somewhere logical. Covennant looks like a bandaid attempt to apologize for Promethius and get back to the horror of the alien irregardless of how illogical getting there actually is. And that is deeply dissapointing because Promethius could have taken us somewhere deep and interesting whereas Covenant takes us to a simple plot line of malfuntioning robot.

[mirth]

He's the director. It's not his story nor ever was. He directed the first movie based on a book written by someone else. he left out a whole bunch of the canon in the movie but it certainly exists in the book.

The first movie was not based on a book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)#Development

[OJsDad]

He's the director. It's not his story nor ever was. He directed the first movie based on a book written by someone else. he left out a whole bunch of the canon in the movie but it certainly exists in the book.

The first movie was not based on a book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)#Development

After completion of the film Dark Star (1974), writer Dan O'Bannon thought to develop some of the ideas (especially the theme of "alien hunts crew through a spaceship") and create a science-fiction action film. Provisionally called Memory, screenwriter Ronald Shusett collaborated with O'Bannon on the project, adding elements from a previous O'Bannon script, Gremlins, which featured gremlins causing mayhem aboard a World War II bomber and wreaking havoc with the crew. The duo finished the script, initially entitled Star Beast, which was later changed to Alien after O'Bannon noticed the number of times the word "alien" occurred in the script.[5][6] Their script was sold to Brandywine Productions, a company formed by producers Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill that had a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox. The writers imagined a low-budget film, but the success of Star Wars inclined 20th Century Fox to invest millions on the production.[7]

[mirth]

^Right. It was an original script that Scott directed, but there was no book with pre-existing canon that Scott was picking and choosing from.

[OJsDad]

No book.  But there may have been a lot more to the script that was left out. 

[mirth]

Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelization of Alien. Not surprisingly, there are significant differences from the movie. Often times, a novel is written before the script is even finished.

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Alien_(novel)

[mirth]

No book.  But there may have been a lot more to the script that was left out. 

That happens with almost every movie though. Generally it is what makes it into the movie that is considered 'canon'. And it's entirely different from making a movie based on an established written work like LoTR.

[ghostryder]

That might be so but the book does exist and does has tons of canon not found in the movie. entire chapters devoted to Nash studying John Hurt with the face hugger on him-whereas the book clearly carries this to great lengths with Nash always knowing an alien was being incubated inside of him.-- totally skipped over in the movie--is just one small example of many where the book is full of details the movie doesn't touch.

[mirth]

That might be so but the book does exist and does has tons of canon not found in the movie. entire chapters devoted to Nash studying John Hurt with the face hugger on him-whereas the book clearly carries this to great lengths with Nash always knowing an alien was being incubated inside of him.-- totally skipped over in the movie--is just one small example of many where the book is full of details the movie doesn't touch.

Every movie novelization has details not found in the film. It's just the nature of the different mediums.

The Alien book was based on the movie, not the other way around. The novelization of Star Wars had many differences from the film. Doesn't mean Lucas was ignoring the canon of the book.