Alien: Covenant (Post-release)

Just got back from first show.

It's a good movie.

It's also a dense, sprawling and dark (in all senses) gothic horror show, with a lot to unpack, and I think I'm gonna need a second viewing to really get to grips with it. I don't think there will be a lot of argument that Covenant is a better movie than Prometheus, creating believable and sympathetic characters to make the usual dumb decisions, but that movie's DNA (sorry) is writ pretty large in Covenant's continuing mythology.

That said, this is a movie about David, and we learn nothing whatsoever about the Engineer's motivations (kind of sign-posted in David's 'what difference does it make' question to Shaw at the end of Prometheus.

How much you enjoy Covenant will probably depend on how much you buy into David's role in the creation of the Xenos. Fassbender owns again here, and the David /Walter relationship is probably the most outstanding part of the movie.

Not gonna get into major spoilers, but there is one alien form that veers seriously into WTF territory as we move towards the creature we know and love. Gonna need to see it again, but I think that one's gonna cause some consternation.

I didn't really dig the (over) use of cues from the original Goldsmith score. the callbacks to the Prometheus theme were more sucessful, imho. The end of the movie is blaringly telegraphed a good twenty minutes before it winds up, but is pretty obvious throughout, and is at least well executed.

This is a bleak, uncommercial movie. The few action setpieces feel kind of rushed and obligatory but there are some truly gnarly moments of gooey body horror, and the cornfield battle is quite stunning.

Jeyl will no doubt hate it.
 
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I went and saw this yesterday and have to say, he has the story back on track. And with that ending, there is definitely going to be a 3rd film.

Got home and found this egg timer in the kitchen and immediately thought, make a mold, part fill with clear and let set, sculpt a small "baby", place it in and top up the mold.
 

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Went ahead and bought my advance tickets for next week. I hope Kenny Powers has a few good lines. Ridley seems to be developing a knack for naming characters after city/ states, at least in 2/3 of his alien films. Dallas and now Tennesee. Have to admit after the one trailer, I don't think I will ever think of that John Denver song the same.
 
There`s still something special about going to the theatre opening session of a new Ridley Scott science fiction movie and yes, he still has it.

I think Birdie summed it up best for mine so no need to elaborate much on it. Can you compare it to Alien? The will never be another Alien.

Need to see it again to see if some of the WTH moments arent just SRS giving some back so to speak.

Dont think theres enough legs left in the story for anything more than Alien : Awakenings though.
 
I think Ridley Scott doesn't appreciate or understand what made the original an enduring classic.
I think Mark Kermode explains it best.

 
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Ahem.
I didn't hate this movie.
At the very least there are not half as many things in it to register anywhere on the scale of dislike I held for "Prometheus" ,though I still did have more than one or two WTF moments.
Its perhaps the third best "Alien" movie there has been, and with that level of expectation set its occasionally brilliant and quite good for some of it but its still got some of those tremendously irritating flaws that stem from daft character decisions and dialogue that are really going to grate on alot of peoples nerves, particularly after the stick "Prometheus" got for them, yet it remains, depite that , an improvement, if not a massive one.
But please note this- its a really bleak chapter in a saga thats not really been noted for its overall happy themes.
Its actually very ,very dark ,with an added pinch of bloodily and horribly depressing in exactly the same way "Alien" and "Aliens" ultimately wasn't, and though it pulls much of its identity as a film from its original parentage , its still all kinds of ironic that it totally misses out on what essentailly gave those stories the kind of success they had with audiences.
Its definitely a huge attempt to drag the franchise back in line with peoples expectations though and it does (for the most part )succeed in that. But I can see why its been rewritten so many times , certain moments and ideas don't seem to fit very well together tonely and part of me thinks this is probably due to what Ridley was speaking of in the podcast, he might be trying to push the "Bladerunner" and " Alien" universes together using a fairly obvious bridge.
BUT Ridley mate, its never going to be as big as "Star Wars" its just too ****ing grim and nasty by half to get the required audience numbers. It was all a bit too brutally ugly for me at times and uneven and I was left feeling slightly cheated by the end of it, even though I knew I had definitely seen another " Alien" franchise film this time, if really just one half of one (again!).Ridley really wanted to guarrantee he gets to make another movie in the series I know but I can't quite see much more than one ,unless he does something a little radical, but I'm still not convinced.
The EFX work is (once again) stunning but a little too graphic in parts for my tastes. And it may take some people a while to get over the way the beasties in action are filmed here but the speed and ferocity of their movements in attack, although CGI'd worked well for me,the effects although used differently to expectations are good. The actors and characters were nearly all fine and in no way a fraction as dislikable as in "Prometheus" even though yet again its seems that "In space no-one can ever make a sensible decision". Perhaps it was because they were so domestically ordinary within the context of the filmthat I really felt their deaths on a level I haven't experienced since "Aliens".
But forget about getting any real answers about the Engineers though, most of that part of the story that caused so much discussion is pretty much jettisoned and absent and I didn't even really buy the idea that this planet was even their origin point. This film is really all about the "alien" in the same way "Prometheus" wasn't and on that level it succeeds admirably,and I think it will please alot of the fan base.
But what I REALLY took away from this film in the end is that Ridley is struggling to bring something original back into the series. If anything it seemed he had mashed ,if not altogether successfully ,two of his greatest hits and the strong echoes of that one movie in a key character seemed strangely at odds with the rest of the other film, but to say much more will probably spoil the movie.
Still it was much better than I thought it would be, for those looking to see people killed in many grisly and gory alien ways rejoice, this is the film you've been waiting for.
 
@CutThumb, this is the post release thread right? Tell me some spoilers! I liked your review, but I have a question. You mentioned that the ferocity of the Aliens was CG, which we got in the trailers. Did you spot, if any, any practical effects work, or was everything CGI?
dascoyne I watched that video, and having not even seen the movie yet, I feel like Im going to feel EXACTLY how he felt after he watched it. :lol
 
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What kind of spoilers Snikt? There are probably a ton on line if you really want to go looking for them, I'd rather you do that than me post them here. I got a fair amount of stick for that a few years ago, particularly because we in the UK got the films early.
Much like my review for GOG2 I try to keep what I feel are key details out of it until the US catches up. I for example hated the comical loonytunes quality of some of the moments in GOG2 they felt at odds with the rest of the Marvel universe and I really felt manipulated by the drowning sentimentality in key character scenes, but alot of people loved them. There was little point spoiling that for others who might not have wanted to know the character arcs or story until they saw it. I still feel at odds with most of the comments posted about it, but there is little point in repeating why I didn't like it simply to irritate everybody else.Everybodies different.Move on.
With in A:C I felt there were two stories being told: The main one is exactly on how the original alien was made and you'll get that absolutely explained and several variations of the creature including a new one. I'm guessing there are obviously alot of practical effects within the film, particularly in the death scenes, but they are definitely enhanced by the VFX, but whether they are in full body costumes ,heads or CGI antimated parts combined together from scene to scene is almost impossible to tell, at least until I get the bluray. VFXs are that good now its impossible to distinguish.
But I can say that the blood, gore and physical destruction is horribly realistic , infact it was to much for me at times,and the speed at which the creatures move and their athletisim is more akin to predatory (if highly flexible) big cats, rather more like "Aliens" than "Alien" but the overall origin story is NOT what I was expecting. Again we get that highly unrealistic time line for development (shrug), but its how they are made thats the important issue in the film.
And that ties in with the other key story element being told and thats what happens with Shaw and David. And to explain that in detail more than anything will be to spoil the movie hugely. Its that critical. I didn't like it at all, its drifting further and further away from what I hoped it would be, but thats the way Ridley is going to take it regardless of what I feel and say. It was by far the weakest point in the story for me and the most divisive choice to have made. But thats what I feel about it not what others might.
However it has got the "alien" back into the story and its action sequences at various stages of development were really well done and I was pleased to see them back, even if they were popping out of people all over the place, but its the tone of the story,particularly with the second half that crunches the gears down, only to rev them up again for the end which was text book franchise. And if you don't guess the very end then you haven't been paying much attention, you can see it coming a mile off.
 
I've just seen it as well... And I'm going to have to watch it a couple of times more before I have a definite opinion. It was rather different to what I had in mind. This is not really a movie about the Alien, nor the Alien is the 'bad guy'. It is all about David, and the alien is a secondary subplot and removing him from the script and making it just prometheus 2 wouldn't have changed the movie that much. But David's character was very interesting, everything that surrounded him is disturbing, the whole movie has a 'something is very wrong with this situation' feel to it, uneasy and dark. David's workshop was one of the most interesting set pieces of recent times, and I really think they should have made a VR experience out of that instead of the in utero thing. I really wanted to inspect all those drawings, all the props, everything. There was a lot of hidden Giger references in there, which I would have liked to be more prominent.

I loved the creatures, both old and new, but I would have liked to see more of the original Alien, specially more suspense and a slower pace on its scenes (it's true that the third act feels too rushed, I just wanted them to calm down and take their time to create tension). Some of the scenes were really magistral (loved all the chest-back-neck-bursters) and while you can nottice everything is CGI, it is not BAD CGI by any means. Really detailed and photorealistic CGI, there is just some uncanny valley with the movement I guess.

Not the movie I was expecting, but it definitely brings some new ideas to the Alien universe that I will have to digest before fully embracing it.

The ending is killer, it might be one of the best endings of the whole saga... far from the typical happy ending. It's kind of a cliffhanger (you can really see they have another sequel in mind) but I also feel that whatever you imagine that happens after will be more epic that what they might actually end up filming, so we¡ll see what happens in that regard.
 
I think he is asking because in post release threads spoilers are allowed.
Karmajay nailed it. What I meant is that I didnt want you to censor your review because you were worried about spoilers, and this is the post release thread, so how could there be spoilers? It would defy reasoning to come in here and not think "spoilers" wouldnt be part of the discussion. Most of the time I try to avoid spoilers before I see the movie, but this one, I really dont care. I might not even see it. And so far, based on your review, and a few others, I might not see it in theaters. I would go to look at the effects alone, but Im a practical effects guy, and everything in the trailer was CGI, so my hopes were kinda meh, especially since I have so much love for the first two.
 
Not trying to be snarky or anything, but I don't really see the point in getting into big spoilers until more people have seen it and want to talk about specific elements. That's just basically 'plot summary' and I can point you to several reviews that are very spoilery in terms of the story. I'm sure that if there's anything specific you want to to know we'll be happy to divulge.

Regarding the creatures and CG, I'm a bit rubbish at spotting that stuff, particularly when practical stuff is nearly always CG enhanced. I dug all the creatures other than the new chestburster (the WTF moment I mentioned in my review) and the Big Chap, which you've already seen in the preview. The neomorphs are great, really effed up. That chestburster - it's kind of like a miniature version of the final xeno - very weird, a strange design choice, need to see it again.

As we've already mentioned, the movie is A3 level bleak, and as I think Cut Thumb was alluding to, almost diseased in a 'need a shower afterwards' kind of way. I would say that it's more of a horror movie than any of the other entries. Personally I like a bit of nastyness in my horror, and hey, I've seen the other movies, so I don't need another repeat. That said, as Cut Thumb pointed out, this is not a carnival ride movie, it's grim and unrelenting, and it absolutely isn't the Alien Genisys Blomkamp nostalgia fanfic that everyone seems to want.

I would honestly say to everyone ripping Scott a new a-hole on the other thread - don't bother, you're gonna hate this film. But I'm sure y'all go anyway :lol


Karmajay nailed it. What I meant is that I didnt want you to censor your review because you were worried about spoilers, and this is the post release thread, so how could there be spoilers? It would defy reasoning to come in here and not think "spoilers" wouldnt be part of the discussion. Most of the time I try to avoid spoilers before I see the movie, but this one, I really dont care. I might not even see it. And so far, based on your review, and a few others, I might not see it in theaters. I would go to look at the effects alone, but Im a practical effects guy, and everything in the trailer was CGI, so my hopes were kinda meh, especially since I have so much love for the first two.
 
I get it, but as the post release thread I just thought people would talk about more specific things spoilers or not, cause you know, its post release. But its cool, Im still on the fence about seeing it, none of my friends care to, so Ill probably wait til it comes out on a home release. I have never seen a movie alone, so Im not going to start now! :lol
 
Just finished watching it - it's pretty much as Birdie says; though I wouldn't completely rip it to shreds (it's pretty to look at), it is also utterly predictable and ignores what came before while ruining the mythology of what is to come. Will see it again upon release, but I think was swing and a miss for Ridley.



I did love James Franco's performance, however...
 
Just came back from it, I have mixed opinions. I really love the visuals, except for maybe some obvious cgi sometimes, I wish they came back to the puppeteer/animatronic xenomorphs, these were rad. But anyway, story wise, it's starting to make sense, even though there are a few things I didn't get, but maybe I should re watch prometheus, it's been a while...

I think the magic that had Alien and Aliens is gone. It's difficult to have these back, I can't tell if it's because of the charismatic Sigourney Weaver, or the fact that not knowing the aliens themselves to begin with can contribute to this. Now we know what they are, what they do, and what is more likely to happen. So there's that.

It was an entertaining movie, but I wasn't blown away. I might need a second watch though :p

Another thing that I kinda miss is the quiet suspended time that were in the original movies, this is were the suspense really builds up. I kinda feel that once the story is a bit out of the way, too many things happen at once. It would have been nice to find a more balanced pace maybe.

Also, can someone explain to me what these tiny xenomorphs are at the beginning? And what the spores did? Not too sure I got that.
 
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