Alien: Covenant

[ghostryder]

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.

I agree. My main problem with the films is they are no longer hard sci-fi. look, in Star Trek Kirk could visit as many planets as he wanted in his shirt and never catch a cold---that that's Space opera--with talking hamsters in space suits. Hard sci-fi would have kirk being killed by a virus the first time the moron stepped on a planet unprotected. Real science dictates if we ever were to colonize a planet with Life we'd probably be on it fully protected by it's organisims decades --developing vaccines and such long before anyone would wander out without a helmet. hell you can't even get on a plane with a visa and fly across an ocean without those preperations right now on this planet!

And that's the rub. They aren't even trying anymore to be convincing sci-fi.

[mirth]

And that's the rub. They aren't even trying anymore to be convincing sci-fi.

On that, we are in complete agreement. The original movie was the perfect blend of legit sci-fi and horror.

It's disappointing that Scott has deviated so far from what made his early work so great.

[ghostryder]

Even Aliens tried. Atmosphere terroforming on a dead moon making it breathable--taking decades. No life so no bio hazard---so the colony on LV-426 not wearing helmets again made sense. Discovering the eggs and being wiped out made sense. Where the hell is the sequel about those colonists? That would make sense.

This movie is running on a string of a plot about as weak as rice paper.

[mirth]

The Hadley's Hope backstory has been filled in by at least one novel. It's supposed to be 'canon'.

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Alien:_River_of_Pain

[ghostryder]

Even that is interesting. Promethius was taking us somewhere interesting as bad as the execution was---this movie however ....isn't where it could have been.

[spoiler]It's taking us to a rather silly plot line of Bad robot. Even before our hero stepped into that cyro chamber and finally realizing what's up I saw that coming 20 minutes earlier when the 2 androids were fighting. Seemingly intelligent and educated people trusted with a project costing billions and over 2000 lives being so utterly dumb the movie was more comedy than horror.[/spoiler]

And my 86 year old mom walking out and her first comment, "I don't understand the point of that movie." And I can't explain it to her.

[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.

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.

I agree. My main problem with the films is they are no longer hard sci-fi. look, in Star Trek Kirk could visit as many planets as he wanted in his shirt and never catch a cold---that that's Space opera--with talking hamsters in space suits. Hard sci-fi would have kirk being killed by a virus the first time the moron stepped on a planet unprotected. Real science dictates if we ever were to colonize a planet with Life we'd probably be on it fully protected by it's organisims decades --developing vaccines and such long before anyone would wander out without a helmet. hell you can't even get on a plane with a visa and fly across an ocean without those preperations right now on this planet!

And that's the rub. They aren't even trying anymore to be convincing sci-fi.

I would like to point out actually, that with all the things you mentioned, that was one thing I related to and actually mentioned to my daughter. But generally, I thought it was a very good movie. Was it canon? No idea really. There did seem to be tie ins - I could see, as I said, that this was a sequel to Prometheus and a sequel to Alien (or it's other prequel) - in other words I could see where the story was going. Was it going in a straight line? No, not really. In fact there are a couple of things I didn't get.

But - as a film - about Aliens with the dreaded xenomorph - and I thought it was very well done in this movie - it was a bloody good film.

Like I said - I liked Prometheus though  :P

[mirth]

Like I said - I liked Prometheus though  :P

You have other redeeming qualities :P

[JudgeDredd]

[spoiler]Even that is interesting. Promethius was taking us somewhere interesting as bad as the execution was---this movie however ....isn't where it could have been. It's taking us to a rather silly plot line of Bad robot. Even before our hero stepped into that cyro chamber and finally realizing what's up I saw that coming 20 minutes earlier when the 2 androids were fighting. Seemingly intelligent and educated people trusted with a project costing billions and over 2000 lives being so utterly dumb the movie was more comedy than horror.

And my 86 year old mom walking out and her first comment, "I don't understand the point of that movie." And I can't explain it to her.
[/spoiler]

Mate - spoiler alert.

I know you want to get your message out there - but try and not ruin it for others. There's spoilers in there that no-one need know. And your indication to when you noticed is a complete and utter ruining statement.

Please mark as spoiler asap so it doesn't spoil anyone's viewing.   C:-)

[JudgeDredd]

Like I said - I liked Prometheus though  :P

You have other redeeming qualities :P

That's good to know...or disconcerting...I don't know which yet  :D

[ghostryder]

I do agree when the movie is just about the alien and the action scenes it's done about as well as it has ever been done. But that consists of what---the last 22 minutes? Not enough as a whole to carry the rest--but I'm a lot more hung up on the canon than a lot of people so I can see why they liked it.

[mirth]

Canon in this franchise doesn't mean much to me. If Alien 3 and Resurrection are considered canon, who really gives a crap?

Basically, this franchise boils down to one great movie (and concept) followed by an excellent sequel. It should have ended there.

[JudgeDredd]

Even that is interesting. Promethius was taking us somewhere interesting as bad as the execution was---this movie however ....isn't where it could have been.

[spoiler]It's taking us to a rather silly plot line of Bad robot. Even before our hero stepped into that cyro chamber and finally realizing what's up I saw that coming 20 minutes earlier when the 2 androids were fighting. Seemingly intelligent and educated people trusted with a project costing billions and over 2000 lives being so utterly dumb the movie was more comedy than horror.[/spoiler]

And my 86 year old mom walking out and her first comment, "I don't understand the point of that movie." And I can't explain it to her.

Thanks for hiding that.  O0

I just thought that was quite a specific part of the movie and with the mention of your realisation, it seemed it should be hidden.

[mirth]

You don't want people to know that Jar Jar Binks is the Alien King?

[mirth]

Meesa gonna facehugga you!

[JasonPratt]

Good grief, I can see senility creeping upon me...  :'( Yep, flipped the numbers around on the moon.

I will be absolutely surprised if the films ever get back to the proper planet(ary moon) with the proper ship and so-forth, in a way that makes coherent sense. At this point I'll be a little surprised if they ever get back to the start of Alien at all. It might be better to treat this as a new alternate continuity going forward, and just ignore trying to tie into the first two films.