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Alien Covenant (spoilers)
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Sandman
May 21, 2017, 4:36:39 AM5/21/17
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I know this group is dead, but anyway.
Saw this movie last night, and boy did it suck. It was obviously gorgeous as
fuck, just like Prometheus, but that's about it.
So while Prometheus set out to answer as few questions as possible, and
create a shit ton of more questions, Covenant seemed hell bent on taking us
further away from the Alien "lore" and what made Alien such an awesome
movie.
First off, the movie lacks any form of character buildup. We have a few
rushed scenes in the beginning about who's who, but the only characters
whose name you'll ever remember is Daniels and Tennessee. Even Prometheus,
believe it or not, has more characters than this movie.
So these colonists has a malfunction on their ship, and just so happens to
find a suitable planet that is not their original destination, and hey,
let's go check it out. They land, and the shit hits the fan, some form of
black "spores" get into two crew members and five minutes later, small
albino aliens jump out of their bodies. Boom! Excitement! Action! The first
one is dispatched of fairly quickly but the second one manages to escape
(only to be shot in the face a bit later).
This movie is not about "Aliens", it's about the David/Walter androids. Some
60% of the movie is about him/them. Walter is the new generation of the same
android, and he's not "evil" (think Ash/Bishop) but also played by
Fassbender (expertly so, I might add). But they soon find out that this new
planet is inhabited by only David, who crashed the engineer ship on this
planet, releasing all the black goo/spores killing all engineers (this was
supposedly their home planet). Shaw is supposedly already dead since David
killed her, so fuck you - relatable character from Prometheus!
As it turns out, since landing, David has been doing some bio-engineering of
his own in a quest to "create" something. So it turns out that the alien
eggs from the original movie are *created by* David. What. The. Fuck?
So he lures the captain down to his egg chamber, impregnates him using a
face hugger that looks just like the ones in Alien, and what bursts out of
his chest is... NOT a chest burster! No, it's a mini-alien! Like a 5" puppet
of an alien... Holy fuck this is stupid. But no worries, ten minutes later
it is fully grown and jumps on the freighter ship that is taking the
remaining crew members back to Covenant. But hey, luckily, this is a stupid
ass alien that is easily trapped and crushed in a crane, boom, done.
David impregnates another victim back on the Covenant and that Alien grows
huge as fuck quick as hell (well, Daniels is asleep so it may have been a
few hours, but screen-time it's like five minutes). So Daniels has this
plan, they should lure the alien through the corridors back to an airlock
and shoot it out in space (hmmm, seems familiar) and it *fucking works*.
This is the stupidest Xenomorph ever. They open and close doors until it
peeks it head out in the cargo bay saying "hey guys, is this where you
wanted me?" Sigh...
So they trap it inside a vehicle, it breaks out and just as it is about to
pounce Daniels, she ducks and the alien is pierced on another truck and
boom, done.
But this movie isn't about the Xenomorphs, they're just a slight
inconvenience. This movie should be called "David: Covenant", because it's
about him more than anything else. And I'm sorry, in a movie taking place in
the Alien universe and taking place before the events of the original movie,
I am not wrong to expect one of two things: Either a movie that recreates
the tension and horror of that first movie - OR a movie that gives answers
to the questions from the first movie. Covenant delivers neither.
If anything, this is attempting to be a remake of Alien but missing what
made Alien good. It's paced like an action movie, and all aliens die like
little bitches.
The story line is exactly the same. Spaceship stops enroute to target,
signal is detected, crew lands to find source of signal, is "infected" by
alien life form which is brought back to ship, alien life form is shot
through air lock. Done. Compress it all to more action-like pacing and
insert HUGE chunks of David scenes where he plays the flute and cuts his
hair and talk about how humans are unworthy. Sigh...
--
Sandman
Saw this movie last night, and boy did it suck. It was obviously gorgeous as
fuck, just like Prometheus, but that's about it.
So while Prometheus set out to answer as few questions as possible, and
create a shit ton of more questions, Covenant seemed hell bent on taking us
further away from the Alien "lore" and what made Alien such an awesome
movie.
First off, the movie lacks any form of character buildup. We have a few
rushed scenes in the beginning about who's who, but the only characters
whose name you'll ever remember is Daniels and Tennessee. Even Prometheus,
believe it or not, has more characters than this movie.
So these colonists has a malfunction on their ship, and just so happens to
find a suitable planet that is not their original destination, and hey,
let's go check it out. They land, and the shit hits the fan, some form of
black "spores" get into two crew members and five minutes later, small
albino aliens jump out of their bodies. Boom! Excitement! Action! The first
one is dispatched of fairly quickly but the second one manages to escape
(only to be shot in the face a bit later).
This movie is not about "Aliens", it's about the David/Walter androids. Some
60% of the movie is about him/them. Walter is the new generation of the same
android, and he's not "evil" (think Ash/Bishop) but also played by
Fassbender (expertly so, I might add). But they soon find out that this new
planet is inhabited by only David, who crashed the engineer ship on this
planet, releasing all the black goo/spores killing all engineers (this was
supposedly their home planet). Shaw is supposedly already dead since David
killed her, so fuck you - relatable character from Prometheus!
As it turns out, since landing, David has been doing some bio-engineering of
his own in a quest to "create" something. So it turns out that the alien
eggs from the original movie are *created by* David. What. The. Fuck?
So he lures the captain down to his egg chamber, impregnates him using a
face hugger that looks just like the ones in Alien, and what bursts out of
his chest is... NOT a chest burster! No, it's a mini-alien! Like a 5" puppet
of an alien... Holy fuck this is stupid. But no worries, ten minutes later
it is fully grown and jumps on the freighter ship that is taking the
remaining crew members back to Covenant. But hey, luckily, this is a stupid
ass alien that is easily trapped and crushed in a crane, boom, done.
David impregnates another victim back on the Covenant and that Alien grows
huge as fuck quick as hell (well, Daniels is asleep so it may have been a
few hours, but screen-time it's like five minutes). So Daniels has this
plan, they should lure the alien through the corridors back to an airlock
and shoot it out in space (hmmm, seems familiar) and it *fucking works*.
This is the stupidest Xenomorph ever. They open and close doors until it
peeks it head out in the cargo bay saying "hey guys, is this where you
wanted me?" Sigh...
So they trap it inside a vehicle, it breaks out and just as it is about to
pounce Daniels, she ducks and the alien is pierced on another truck and
boom, done.
But this movie isn't about the Xenomorphs, they're just a slight
inconvenience. This movie should be called "David: Covenant", because it's
about him more than anything else. And I'm sorry, in a movie taking place in
the Alien universe and taking place before the events of the original movie,
I am not wrong to expect one of two things: Either a movie that recreates
the tension and horror of that first movie - OR a movie that gives answers
to the questions from the first movie. Covenant delivers neither.
If anything, this is attempting to be a remake of Alien but missing what
made Alien good. It's paced like an action movie, and all aliens die like
little bitches.
The story line is exactly the same. Spaceship stops enroute to target,
signal is detected, crew lands to find source of signal, is "infected" by
alien life form which is brought back to ship, alien life form is shot
through air lock. Done. Compress it all to more action-like pacing and
insert HUGE chunks of David scenes where he plays the flute and cuts his
hair and talk about how humans are unworthy. Sigh...
--
Sandman
sol...@gmail.com
Jun 11, 2017, 7:31:37 AM6/11/17
to
I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
sister...@gmail.com
Jun 26, 2017, 5:36:02 AM6/26/17
to
So, when "A:C" arrived, I had no illusions. What could Ridley possibly do to redeem himself? This time, I was determined to go in with no pre-conceived notions. *Take a deep breath and just enjoy the movie, Trace, just enjoy the movie*. I did. I enjoyed it because I stopped kidding myself that Ridley would indeed redeem himself. CGI was superb - eye candy galore. But noticed quite quickly that remarks and personalities of the some of the characters were stolen from the orig "Alien".
And yes, we got a bad robot! David the narcissistic synthetic! Creator insults him; kills creator (implied); becomes creator; ah, that's how it all starts! WOW! FFS! Still a little confused by the *advanced* synthetic - AI had certainly moved on very quickly - considering we had Ash first (later as far as time sequences go). Bishop displayed empathy, so we know they had advanced. But in "A:C" we get an incredibly advanced AI - or perhaps, due to naughty David's actions, they downgrade the intellect later?? There is going to be a sequel to the prequel's sequel, yeah? lol
The one thing that made me laugh out loud ((good job I manage an independent cinema and could do it in a private show) - of which I did lots of laughing and groaning out loud with "Prometheus")) was the chestburst scene when the fully fledged, albeit mini, zenomorph stood up to hail its creator. Mutual respect from a fricking zenomorph! I don't think so! Jeez, I did laugh.
Because we are not going to get what we wanted Ridley to do for us - we have to accept that these new films are simply sci-fi horrors or even spoofs to the original classics. We ask for much and don't get much - so acceptance is part of the healing!!! :P
Tracy - aware this place is dead but putting her pennyworth in!
Where's Covenant when you need him!!!
sister...@gmail.com
Jun 26, 2017, 8:30:12 AM6/26/17
to
And yeah, the demise of Elizabeth Shaw was very disappointing. The fact that Elizabeth Shaw was killed off really *ucked me up. I had this idealistic (sci-fi futuristic view) that she goes off to the Engineer's home world to kick butt. Gets metamorphasised at DNA level in some way and it is in fact SHE who is the SJ on LV426! A nice twist and bit of self-sacrifice always goes down well - even if the Nostromo mistakes a warning signal for distress!But then, we would not have had the fantastic 'Alien' to drool over!
sister...@gmail.com
Jun 26, 2017, 3:25:26 PM6/26/17
to
On Monday, June 26, 2017 at 1:30:12 PM UTC+1, sister...@gmail.com wrote:
> And yeah, the demise of Elizabeth Shaw was very disappointing. The fact that Elizabeth Shaw was killed off really *ucked me up. I had this idealistic (sci-fi futuristic view) that she goes off to the Engineer's home world to kick butt. Gets metamorphasised at DNA level in some way and it is in fact SHE who is the SJ on LV426! A nice twist and bit of self-sacrifice always goes down well - even if the Nostromo mistakes a warning signal for distress!But then, we would not have had the fantastic 'Alien' to drool over!
Oops - just watched it again. Walter tells David that he was too intellectual and they did indeed downgrade the intellect of the synthetics. That answers that quesion!
> And yeah, the demise of Elizabeth Shaw was very disappointing. The fact that Elizabeth Shaw was killed off really *ucked me up. I had this idealistic (sci-fi futuristic view) that she goes off to the Engineer's home world to kick butt. Gets metamorphasised at DNA level in some way and it is in fact SHE who is the SJ on LV426! A nice twist and bit of self-sacrifice always goes down well - even if the Nostromo mistakes a warning signal for distress!But then, we would not have had the fantastic 'Alien' to drool over!
Sandman
Aug 23, 2017, 5:45:27 AM8/23/17
to
In article <73c3e9dd-0862-46fa...@googlegroups.com>, sister...@gmail.com <sister...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Long time no *see* Sandman! I agree with everything you say above. Bear with me for a couple of mins. To start, I hated "Prometheus" - probably because this original bunch of anal fans wanted the SJ story - his beginning and his ending. Ridley mocked us with his "for the true Alien fans, there is a little bit of Alien DNA". Of course, what we got was a messy, badly inconsistent story and terrible incontinuity through sheer laziness. I tried going in with an open-mind but have been ripping it to shit ever since.
>
> So, when "A:C" arrived, I had no illusions. What could Ridley possibly do to redeem himself? This time, I was determined to go in with no pre-conceived notions. *Take a deep breath and just enjoy the movie, Trace, just enjoy the movie*. I did. I enjoyed it because I stopped kidding myself that Ridley would indeed redeem himself. CGI was superb - eye candy galore. But noticed quite quickly that remarks and personalities of the some of the characters were stolen from the orig "Alien".
>
> And yes, we got a bad robot! David the narcissistic synthetic! Creator insults him; kills creator (implied); becomes creator; ah, that's how it all starts! WOW! FFS! Still a little confused by the *advanced* synthetic - AI had certainly moved on very quickly - considering we had Ash first (later as far as time sequences go). Bishop displayed empathy, so we know they had advanced. But in "A:C" we get an incredibly advanced AI - or perhaps, due to naughty David's actions, they downgrade the intellect later?? There is going to be a sequel to the prequel's sequel, yeah? lol
>
> The one thing that made me laugh out loud ((good job I manage an independent cinema and could do it in a private show) - of which I did lots of laughing and groaning out loud with "Prometheus")) was the chestburst scene when the fully fledged, albeit mini, zenomorph stood up to hail its creator. Mutual respect from a fricking zenomorph! I don't think so! Jeez, I did laugh.
>
> Because we are not going to get what we wanted Ridley to do for us - we have to accept that these new films are simply sci-fi horrors or even spoofs to the original classics. We ask for much and don't get much - so acceptance is part of the healing!!! :P
>
> Tracy - aware this place is dead but putting her pennyworth in!
>
> Where's Covenant when you need him!!!
The most ironic part is the guys that blamed Cameron for messing up the
> Long time no *see* Sandman! I agree with everything you say above. Bear with me for a couple of mins. To start, I hated "Prometheus" - probably because this original bunch of anal fans wanted the SJ story - his beginning and his ending. Ridley mocked us with his "for the true Alien fans, there is a little bit of Alien DNA". Of course, what we got was a messy, badly inconsistent story and terrible incontinuity through sheer laziness. I tried going in with an open-mind but have been ripping it to shit ever since.
>
> So, when "A:C" arrived, I had no illusions. What could Ridley possibly do to redeem himself? This time, I was determined to go in with no pre-conceived notions. *Take a deep breath and just enjoy the movie, Trace, just enjoy the movie*. I did. I enjoyed it because I stopped kidding myself that Ridley would indeed redeem himself. CGI was superb - eye candy galore. But noticed quite quickly that remarks and personalities of the some of the characters were stolen from the orig "Alien".
>
> And yes, we got a bad robot! David the narcissistic synthetic! Creator insults him; kills creator (implied); becomes creator; ah, that's how it all starts! WOW! FFS! Still a little confused by the *advanced* synthetic - AI had certainly moved on very quickly - considering we had Ash first (later as far as time sequences go). Bishop displayed empathy, so we know they had advanced. But in "A:C" we get an incredibly advanced AI - or perhaps, due to naughty David's actions, they downgrade the intellect later?? There is going to be a sequel to the prequel's sequel, yeah? lol
>
> The one thing that made me laugh out loud ((good job I manage an independent cinema and could do it in a private show) - of which I did lots of laughing and groaning out loud with "Prometheus")) was the chestburst scene when the fully fledged, albeit mini, zenomorph stood up to hail its creator. Mutual respect from a fricking zenomorph! I don't think so! Jeez, I did laugh.
>
> Because we are not going to get what we wanted Ridley to do for us - we have to accept that these new films are simply sci-fi horrors or even spoofs to the original classics. We ask for much and don't get much - so acceptance is part of the healing!!! :P
>
> Tracy - aware this place is dead but putting her pennyworth in!
>
> Where's Covenant when you need him!!!
perfect vision of Sir Ridley Scott, and here we have him, messing
everything up far beyond anything Cameron could ever do :)
--
Sandman[.net]
sister...@gmail.com
Nov 16, 2017, 2:12:50 PM11/16/17
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