I feel like I need to drive to wherever you are and high five you for this post.
So well said.
Alien: Covenant (Prometheus Sequel)
- Thread starter Mr Webber
- Start date
I feel like I need to drive to wherever you are and high five you for this post.
So well said.
I can only concur. I came back last night in a mild state of shock as to how bad it was. I went in with low expectations, hoping to be mildly-but-positively surprised, because part of me really wanted to like this. So you'll all have to pardon my coming internet rage-rant.
Ridley Scott just took everything good about the Alien franchise (even the good parts of Prometheus), stomped all over them and set them on fire. He destroyed all the mystery, all the suspense and committed just about every cardinal sin that a horror director can. (It's surprising how much CG monster they can show on a ship with most of the lights turned off!)
AvP Requiem was a much better movie than this. And Jeunet is hereby forgiven for Resurrection and the crying "newborn" Alien.
I feel bad for all the obviously talented people that worked on the film. There was some absolutely stunning craftsmanship on display, and there are a couple interesting thematic moments (that would have been fine in a film called "David" as Jedi-72 suggested) ) but they were utterly destroyed by an old man's need to recapture lost glory and take away from the achievements of better directors.
It blows my mind that Scott actually tried, badly, to mimic one of the key scenes in Aliens. (I'm honestly surprised no one uttered the words "five by five".) He also completely destroyed one of the scenes he himself is most famous for and it was all I could do to not laugh out loud at the see-through-Jack-Skellington-wannabe. It was also very evident that he had been affected by the hype Blomkamp got for his treatment and it's nothing short of pathetic for a filmmaker who has the reputation of a visionary genius.
This piece proves that Scott is nothing without being propped up by having better people around him. It's evident that Schusset, O'Bannon, Cobb, Giger, Moebius, Hill, Giler and the other key people on Alien were what made it good. If there is any sanity left in Hollywood, they will either bury the franchise or wait until Scott retires and let someone else have a crack at it.
On a related note: Someone needs to kick the shins of any animator who thinks "chattering teeth" on CGI monsters is somehow cool. It's not. It's cheesy and pathetic. STOP IT. The only time it was cool was when Harriet Sansom Harris did it in the X-files episode "Eve 6" and when Hopkins did it in SilenceotL. We don't need the animated equivalent of the Wilhelm scream.
Ridley Scott just took everything good about the Alien franchise (even the good parts of Prometheus), stomped all over them and set them on fire. He destroyed all the mystery, all the suspense and committed just about every cardinal sin that a horror director can. (It's surprising how much CG monster they can show on a ship with most of the lights turned off!)
AvP Requiem was a much better movie than this. And Jeunet is hereby forgiven for Resurrection and the crying "newborn" Alien.
I feel bad for all the obviously talented people that worked on the film. There was some absolutely stunning craftsmanship on display, and there are a couple interesting thematic moments (that would have been fine in a film called "David" as Jedi-72 suggested) ) but they were utterly destroyed by an old man's need to recapture lost glory and take away from the achievements of better directors.
It blows my mind that Scott actually tried, badly, to mimic one of the key scenes in Aliens. (I'm honestly surprised no one uttered the words "five by five".) He also completely destroyed one of the scenes he himself is most famous for and it was all I could do to not laugh out loud at the see-through-Jack-Skellington-wannabe. It was also very evident that he had been affected by the hype Blomkamp got for his treatment and it's nothing short of pathetic for a filmmaker who has the reputation of a visionary genius.
This piece proves that Scott is nothing without being propped up by having better people around him. It's evident that Schusset, O'Bannon, Cobb, Giger, Moebius, Hill, Giler and the other key people on Alien were what made it good. If there is any sanity left in Hollywood, they will either bury the franchise or wait until Scott retires and let someone else have a crack at it.
On a related note: Someone needs to kick the shins of any animator who thinks "chattering teeth" on CGI monsters is somehow cool. It's not. It's cheesy and pathetic. STOP IT. The only time it was cool was when Harriet Sansom Harris did it in the X-files episode "Eve 6" and when Hopkins did it in SilenceotL. We don't need the animated equivalent of the Wilhelm scream.
Noeland
Master Member
Yeah, I was very disappointed by the film, but not surprised by it.
I was discussing this was friends today and I made the point that Ridley is disregarding all the films but his own, including James Cameron's film. Imagine that every film after Alien never got made. That, I believe, is Ridley Scott's mindset here. I don't think he gives a single rats butt if it bothers the fans. He's on his own path here and you're either with him or you're not.
Granted, even with that mindset he's disregarding a few moments in Prometheus that hinted at the Xeno and had nothing to do with David. And he's no where close to explaining how the eggs created by David got on a totally different Engineer ship. He moved away from that idea entirely. So maybe I'm all wrong and what he's doing is disregarding ALL the previous Aliens films, even his own. Or, maybe the legions of fans who cried "The man is senile!" after Prometheus are correct.
I really enjoyed Prometheus despite it's flaws, and I was hoping to walk out of this film with the same attitude.
I was discussing this was friends today and I made the point that Ridley is disregarding all the films but his own, including James Cameron's film. Imagine that every film after Alien never got made. That, I believe, is Ridley Scott's mindset here. I don't think he gives a single rats butt if it bothers the fans. He's on his own path here and you're either with him or you're not.
Granted, even with that mindset he's disregarding a few moments in Prometheus that hinted at the Xeno and had nothing to do with David. And he's no where close to explaining how the eggs created by David got on a totally different Engineer ship. He moved away from that idea entirely. So maybe I'm all wrong and what he's doing is disregarding ALL the previous Aliens films, even his own. Or, maybe the legions of fans who cried "The man is senile!" after Prometheus are correct.
I really enjoyed Prometheus despite it's flaws, and I was hoping to walk out of this film with the same attitude.
Prometheus, even with the idiot scientists, was a masterpiece compared to this huge turd. I'm hearing that even people that love Alien, but not Aliens, think this was a total waste. The only people I can imagine liking it are those who don't' really care about the lore and continuity, but just want to see more gut-ripping action done by the monsters.
But Ridley can uncanonize and ruin his reputation all he wants. It's not going to stop USCMs from appearing at cons, nor will any of his work ever be quoted or remembered in popular culture as much as Cameron's sequel.
kristen jones
Master Member
C'mon now!
I get that you didn't like it... and that others don't as well. That's perfectly fine... we are never going to all agree. But BETTER than AvPR? Not even close, man. And it certainly doesn't wipe away the stain of the Newborn. Let's be realistic and not resort to hyperbole.
Last edited:
kristen jones
Master Member
I don't know that he intended to answer that question in *this* movie. Now that we have been shown that the eggs were David's creation, there are a number of ways that some of them could have been brought to LV-426 on another Engineer ship. After all, it's at least likely that more than the two we've seen are in existence. Perhaps another returned to the planet where David left the eggs after Covenant and decided to take them? Hard to know at this point, but I don't think that just because he hasn't addressed it yet that it means he's walked away from the idea entirely.
Last edited:
kristen jones
Master Member
Don't care about the lore and continuity? How so? Was the "lore" really all that clear to begin with? isn't that why we all talk about not wanting the mysteries to be revealed? That sounds like cloudy lore to me.
Who was complaining about not caring about the lore when James Cameron gave us a queen laying eggs instead of showing the birth cycle we glimpsed in Alien? Nobody, because up till that point it hadn't been established *where* the eggs came from. I submit it's a similar situation here. the fact that David apparently bio-engineered the eggs doesn't undo the existence of JC's Queen. There's still ALOT of time between here and JC's Queen...who knows how she comes about? Covenant at least hinted that David used his affection for Shaw to drive himself toward creating a tribute to her. Even his referece that the eggs have been waiting for their "Mother" is a clue. Perhaps he's used Shaw's DNA to work toward developing the Queen to further his creation as a tribute to Shaw. Who can know?
The point is there is plenty of room for SRS to work forward to those things.
I was one of those who thought he'd lost his mind as well... and feared that I'd come away hating it as many of you do. I didn't. I can't explain why we've had different experiences...all I can say is that my personal fears were not confirmed, and I can see a way forward from this *if* he keeps it together.
Yeah I pointed out in the post release thread David has 7 years and 2000 colonists to develop a Queen. And in order to have a true "perfect organism" the species needs to be able to self replicate.
Noeland
Master Member
I appreciate the wishful thinking, and the hope that somehow Scott is going to validate Cameron's ideas, and link everything up seamlessly. I just don't see that notion presented in any way, shape, or form in Covenant. Yes, the story could take a radical left turn and David could fly back to the planet in Prometheus and stock up another ship with his eggs, and create a queen. But why? He somehow create several eggs on his own without a queen, even dissecting one into sections. He had facehugger eggs hidden inside himself. They were teeny tiny liittle buggers. Do they "grow" to be full sized eggs? Whatever the case, they are being made without a queen.
But I suppose we shall see what happens.
But I suppose we shall see what happens.
But the entire species continued existence would be solely predicated on David's intervention, that's far from perfection.
I was expecting to like it more than Prometheus, which had a lot of interesting ideas but was a mess of a movie character-wise and shouldn't have been part of the Alien franchise at all.
AvPR is at least a fun "what-if" guilty-pleasure take on the horror slasher genre. And Resurrection at least went in a direction that felt somewhat plausible, while not really demystifying the Xenomorph or the Space Jockey. In comparison Prometheus and AC are just a convoluted mess of retconned ideas that make a mockery of the source material. AC was just Ridley trying and failing to dig himself out of the hole he dug with Prometheus (regardless of how much he claims to not care about what people think).
He tried to mimic the dropship sequence from Aliens, tried to create a new Ripley (clothes and hair included), tried to recreate his iconic chestburster scene (by swapping out the snake-Xeno for see-though-*****-pose-striking-Jack-Skellington) while repeating the daft character mistakes of Prometheus. There was no suspense, no surprises, no real horror and he's just making a muddled mess of everything. If he had simply continued on the Prometheus storyline and moved further away from "Alien" with his David story, it would probably have been a lot better, but instead he tried to use the Xeno as a way to get people into theaters, probably out of fear that a movie about an android with emotional stability problems might not be a huge box-office draw.
Of course he can come up with things to "answer" all the loose ends and inconsistencies he has opened up with these two films, but how will the end result be better when all the mystery has been taken out? He started a couple of the coolest things in cinema history and is now just ruining them because he can't let go or accept that others have continued (and in many ways improved) what he started.To me, Covenant is just a bad remake of Alien that tries to prop itself up taking away things from other films in the franchise. Ridley's hubris actually began I think, when he did the director's cut of Alien, because that life-cycle scene really didn't belong in the movie and should've been kept as a DVD-extra.
It's not often I roll my eyes during a movie and wish it was over, but I darn near walked out of this one.
Page from the Covenant novelization where he didn't create Alien. So confused.
kristen jones
Master Member
well David doesn't claim to have created the original pathogen....only to have experimented with it's "Infinite variations" to try to bring about a strain which he felt was the zenith of it's potential.
cratercritter
Well-Known Member
Star Wars is pop-corn sci-fi for the masses. Can't compare it to the Alien franchise.....two different sci-fi genres with different appeal, different audience generally.
Axlotl
Master Member
I was a kid when ALIEN came out, and I wasn't allowed to see it, because it was rated "R".
But one day our family was visiting some friends and ALIEN happened to be on HBO.
None of us were allowed to see "R" films yet, but the parents were all downstairs playing pinochle, and curiosity got the better of us, so we watched it.
My sisters were absolutely terrified, and I admit me and my buddy Ben were pretty scared too.
The thing that struck me about the alien at that time, the thing I found so utterly horrifying, the thing that gave my sisters nightmares -
was that this thing was one of god's creations. Just another thing god made, just another thing we're sharing this enormous universe with.
I hate that that wasn't "good enough" for RS, and that he had to invent a bunch of alien-creator/insane-robot nonsense to answer questions nobody but himself was asking.
I haven't seen Covenant. Don't plan to. I know enough about it from reading this thread to know that I'm not interested.
Alien died with #3 anyway, so no big loss.
But one day our family was visiting some friends and ALIEN happened to be on HBO.
None of us were allowed to see "R" films yet, but the parents were all downstairs playing pinochle, and curiosity got the better of us, so we watched it.
My sisters were absolutely terrified, and I admit me and my buddy Ben were pretty scared too.
The thing that struck me about the alien at that time, the thing I found so utterly horrifying, the thing that gave my sisters nightmares -
was that this thing was one of god's creations. Just another thing god made, just another thing we're sharing this enormous universe with.
I hate that that wasn't "good enough" for RS, and that he had to invent a bunch of alien-creator/insane-robot nonsense to answer questions nobody but himself was asking.
I haven't seen Covenant. Don't plan to. I know enough about it from reading this thread to know that I'm not interested.
Alien died with #3 anyway, so no big loss.
Grey
Sr Member
Yeah, Star Wars is an adventure, the Alien franchise is an adventure in how much dissapointment its fans can endure.
Noeland
Master Member
I would argue that what you describe might just be perfect as far as David is concerned. I would also argue that RS may not really care about that aspect of the story. Again, I didn't see anything in the film that made me feel like RS is interested in the least in supporting Cameron's ideas.
Don't be too surprised if the next film hasn't created an entirely new way for the Alien to reproduce that involves turning 2000 colonists into eggs. That was Ridley's original idea. Eggs were made from people.
Yeah I posited that very idea in the other thread, David uses the colonists to create the eggs seen in the crashed ship in LV426. And it's interesting the dead Engineer pilot crashed landed and sent out a warning...
Mr Mold Maker
Master Member
What we could have had instead of the CGI mess..
There was also a full body puppet operated from behind by a performer, as well as animatronic pieces. I am not sure much of any of the hard work Odd Studio put into the Alien this film shows. I personally think they did very well and it's a shame it was all painted over.
