Well I think we know who that was. And the studio decided to take a bit of a leap of faith that the story he wanted to tell was interesting. And I am one of those people who kind of likes Prometheus, though it kind of sits apart from the Alien series in my brain. Haven’t seen Covenant yet.
Well when you do please let me know what you think. I didn’t dislike Prometheus as much as I did this one. I would be curious what your thoughts are on it.
Yeah, I’ll post in here. And I totally do mean to see Covenant, I’m just way behind on movies. Haven’t seen Rogue One, Ant Man, any horror movies in years. But once Covenant shows up on Netflix I’ll jump on that, I am curious about it.
I really liked Alien 3. It had its flaws and I don’t think that the “junk/prison” world fit in too well with the universe that Scott and Cameron had created, but I liked the British “2000 AD” feel of the place, and they played it straight. It was a shame that Newt and Hicks were erased off-camera, but oddly that didn’t upset me much.
It also gave Ripley a reasonable final heroic send-off that fit in well with the whole nihilistic universe. In a way it’s good that Aliens 4 was never, ever, ever made, because another movie with Ripley in it would have erased that moment… probably with some silly crap about a clone or some alien/human hybrid that would have sent the entire series down a spiral of campy shame.
Isn’t this Alien Resurrection? The other one was the prison, dog birth thing. Are you saying there was a 5th?
They’re joking and pretending resurrection (which is the fourth movie, yes) didn’t happen.
Oh! I didn’t know that one was so hated. It was the umm, first one I could see in theater, by myself, and I waas just excited for that. I don’t hate it… Covenant is worse in my book.
I really really dislike Resurrection. It’s just such a hodgepodge of, well, stuff. I can’t bring myself to hate any movie that has Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya and Brad Dourif in it, but god is it a mess. And what the hell was up with that albino hybrid alien?
At least Resurrection wasn’t as bad as the last two new ones.
Ridley, STAHP.
Finally saw this now that it’s hit HBO. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either. As a follow-up to Prometheus it seemed like more of the same only even more confusing. Plus, lots and lots of really dumb decisions by a crew that is supposedly experienced with space travel, colonization and all the stuff that comes with it. Prime example mentioned upthread…no helmets/suits on newly discovered planet. Who cares if the atmosphere is breathable, common sense and all the regulations of space travel dictate you don’t expose yourself to unknown organisms in an unknown environment, especially not when you are going to return to your ship filled with 2000 colonists!
Even setting that aside for plot reasons, there was much about this movie that screamed horror trope. From staring in horror at newly emerged neomorphs (instead of squishing them while they were still helpless), to going off alone time and time again (with predictable results), to the laughable sexy time shower scene (also with predictable results that wasted two perfectly good characters)…trope, trope, trope. I expected better from Ridley Scott.
As for the overall mythos of the “new Alien universe”…I am left confused about a whole lot of stuff. As near as I can tell after seeing both movies:
In Prometheus, the crew finds the moon/planet that the Engineers (who created life on Earth and various other planets) have been using to develop a bio-weapon that will destroy what they’ve created on planets where they feel their experiment has failed. For unexplained reasons, the Engineers on this research base apparently lost control of the experiment, getting themselves marooned on the planet and eventually killed off by their own experiment, excepting the one in the stasis pod which the crew awakens. In the end they sacrifice themselves to stop that Engineer from escaping and renewing the plan to destroy Earth, and the only survivors are Dr. Shaw and David’s head.
Somehow, after the ending of Prometheus, Dr. Shaw and David’s head manage to get an Engineer spaceship serviceable. This seems implausible given that if there were any serviceable ships, the Engineers would have escaped in them to begin with. Then, they are also somehow able to recover David’s body, and Dr. Shaw reattaches his head at some point. (I got this from watching the short film that was supposedly released prior to Covenant.) David then puts Dr. Shaw into a stasis chamber and pilots the Engineer craft to the Engineer homeworld over the span of several years.
Presumably during this time he begins his experimentation with the Engineer bio-weapon, which the ship just happens to be stocked full of. When they eventually reach the Engineer homeworld, David has decided the Engineers are not worthy or something, and releases the weapon onto their city, killing them all. Apparently there is only one city on the entire homeworld, and after killing everyone in it David crashes his own ship into the side of a mountain, marooning himself on the Engineer homeworld. No other Engineer ships ever seem to come to the homeworld to see what’s going on…like ever, so David spends a few years there experimenting on the xenos, including using Dr. Shaw as an incubator, which makes zero sense if he does, in fact, love her as he tells Walter.
In the end, the Covenant provides Davis with not only a ride off the planet, but a ship full of hosts for future experimentation, and he glides off into space to…do what exactly? He obviously believe he is the “creator” of the new and improved xenos. If the mythos says these events happened long before those in the original Alien movies, then we supposedly have David to thank for what we know as the classic xenomorph. Given Ripley’s crews’ discovery of the alien eggs on a crash Engineer ship, we can surmise that eventually David manages to infect another Engineer outpost or ship with his xenos?
In the end, while the whole “AI decides he’s God and we’re not worthy” scenario is an interesting one, I would much rather go back to good old-fashioned Aliens where xenos over-run a colony or a ship and the space marines have to show up, kick some ass and use their wits to win the day and/or escape alive. Maybe even some side by side combat with the Engineers after initially being hostile but teaming up out of necessity to defeat the xenos.
I just saw it on HBO too.
It’s just half of Alien grafted onto half of Prometheus, as far as I can tell. I found the pretentious literary references tiresome. There were a ton of fanservice callbacks to Alien, like the opening credits, snatches of Goldsmith’s score, production design, etc. It rather grated.
I think Ridley killed the franchise by smearing Von Daniken nonsense all over an elegant tale of terror in space.
But, it was his franchise to kill. He made the fucking thing, he can murder it if he wants. We still have two great movies to cherish.
Oh cool, it’s on HBO now? Time to check this bad boy out.
I saw it on HBO too. I liked it better than Prometheus but agree it’s also plenty stupid.
The last bit was like watching Windows 8 vs Windows 10… and Windows 8 wins. Yuck.
I finally saw this too, and the visuals were all cool… The “twist” at the end was absurdly predicable.
The biggest thing for me though?
The female protagonist was essentially… not developed at all. I mean, she had wasn’t even in most of the movie. WTF is up with that? I literally can’t even recall her name.
Prometheus was way better than Covenant.
I just watched this yesterday. I agree with the overall sentiment that this is not a very good movie, and it feels pretty rote to me. I actdually skipped some scenes (like the fight on the cargo ship as they tried to leave the planet… I was saying “wtf, don’t go out there and fight it, just fly your ship into space, the creature will die”
Her name was … uh… “New Demi Moore”.
A lot of the stupidity and inconsistencies have been discussed here but there’s one question I still have about the whole timeline - which maybe points out how stupid it is to do prequels to existing franchises. It’s been touched on above but it still bugs me.
Oh I guess unhidden SPOILERS ahead.
At the end of Covenant, we have David on the ship with free reign to do whatever he wants. According to this timeline Covenant happens about 18 years before the original Alien movie.
How on earth do we go from a vindictive “humans don’t deserve to live” android scheming with xenomorphs to and a butt-load of humans to the setting of Alien? He’s killed off all the Engineers, right? So how does Alien world get the facehuggers and the signs of life that are there? Even if the Engineers seeded colonies all over the universe, how do the face hugger eggs get there? Or will the cancelled/non-cancelled movie end up being “David takes a trip to Alien world to set up his face hugger breeding operation, then starts up a distress signal to (someday in the indeterminate future) lure humans to the planet”
I read that Scott liked the idea of establishing David as a sort of overarching evil presence in the Alien universe… but even if you retconn that in, that idea makes no sense given the Alien movies that follow.
Am I trying to read too much into this? Should I just accept it as a movie that’s not terribly good?
That wouldn’t fit with Alien, though, since the facehuggers presumably hitched a ride on the Engineer ship and crash-landed on the planet.
Not sure what the continuity is supposed to be. Covenant was so terrible I stopped caring.
Nope. They can survive in a vacuum. Remember the first one? The alien climbs into the thruster nozzle after Ripley blasts it into space. She has to fire the engine to kill it.
So the whole point of launching the creatures into space is basically to get them away from the spaceship? They don’t perish in a vacuum?? I didn’t know that. I guess they are the perfect bioweapon!
Interesting. The more I consider it, the more I think that the alien is like a dolphin. Dolphins can live under water, but not forever. They have to come up for air. I would thing that the alien has to metabolize something to stay alive. So while it may be able to exist in a vacuum for some time, eventually it would die. It crawled into the thruster hoping to regain entry to the shuttle.