Alien Covenant

[JosephAOI]

I loved Covenant as well as Prometheus. I've seen a lot of interesting theories and ideas behind some of the scenes and concepts in the movie but something I've not read any of that I'm the most interested in is

Spoiler

the scene where David "communicates" with the Neomorph.

Do you guys have any thoughts on that scene in particular?

 

[Emperor Guillotine]

I loved Covenant as well as Prometheus. I've seen a lot of interesting theories and ideas behind some of the scenes and concepts in the movie but something I've not read any of that I'm the most interested in is

Spoiler

the scene where David "communicates" with the Neomorph.

Do you guys have any thoughts on that scene in particular?

There is a point in Covenant where David mentions that the aliens

Spoiler

are out to kill biological life, but not synthetic life just like how the initial pathogen wiped out biological life on the Engineer's home planet.

This, however, doesn't account for why the Xenomorphs in the original flicks

Spoiler

did not attack Jones the cat and tore apart synthetics like Bishop.

So in Covenant, I think Ridley Scott was trying to say that

Spoiler

since David is a synthetic, the Neomorphs and Xenomorphs wouldn't attack him

but that obviously doesn't align with anything in the original flicks. I mean, unless Scott was going for

Spoiler

the cheesy as hell "creation meets and worships creator" cliché - but how could the Neomorphs and Xenomorphs have known that David was their creator?

Just seems like a few tiny, inconsistencies in details.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

I really enjoyed Alien Covenant though there were some really stupid parts:

Spoiler

the captain following david down to the egg room and looking inside the egg. Another stupid moment was when the pilot broke quarantine to try and kill the xenomorph, then subsequently released it/blew up the ship.

Spoiler

The obvious foreshadowing and subsequent switcharoo of david for walter. I really want to know how nobody figured out that it wasn't david since Walter could regenerate damage to an extent. THE CAMERA EVEN ZOOMED IN ON HIS NECK HEALING FFS. I actually quite liked how David kept tinkering with the DNA of the xenomorphs, that was a neat touch.

Spoiler

The gore was great, the music was good (even if it was a mishmash of previous scores with some new material), I thoroughly enjoyed the cinematography/framing of shots as well. There were some quite beautiful shots, especially in the beginning of the film. Katherine Waterston's haircut is probably the worst haircut in the whole Aliens universe.

 

[cult]

I watched it last Wednesday.

The movie all around was really entertaining and I enjoyed it. I didn't watch Prometheus before, I just know Alien 1 to 3.
In the end I got what I expected.

 

[MoshJosh]

Saw Covenant today, and gotta say I wasn't a huge fan. I can see why some like this film, but wasn't my cup of tea. I had a number of issues with the plot, ineffective tension building, and character development or lack there of. A number of my issues have been addressed in the above comments but I will add that

Spoiler

How did David make the creature/organism better? The neomorph or whatever (the back burster) is able to infect the host through ear or nose (probably other holes too) without the host even being aware. Adding a huge egg (and queen), and face hugger to the equation seems counter intuitive.
Also, the ship can warn you that there is an organism on board, but no problem with a new random android (I guess this can be explained away by Mother being offline for a while, but still)?
How does David face no resistance when landing on the planet? In fact he seems to be warmly welcomed when he arrives on the planet. A highly advanced alien life form has no air traffic control/is not concerned when a lost ship from a planet storing extremely deadly weapons returns unannounced?
Also is there no protocol/sense of preservation of the human species? The sick soldiers should not have been allowed aboard the shuttle (why is there only one shuttle?) similar to the scene with the sick scientist in Prometheus. And can you really rationalize mounting a rescue party and risking bringing aboard whatever organism has been encountered?
I know I'm kind of nit picking here, and some of these issues could possibly be explained, but still I was disappointed with the film overall.

EDIT: Don't want to make it sound like I totally hated it, just not all i hoped for. There were a number of scenes I really enjoyed

Spoiler

the first back burster scene was pretty cool and intense, and I really enjoyed the fight on top of the rescue ship. I also liked McBride as Tennessee, and thought Daniel's made a good, if not short lived protagonist.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Saw Covenant today, and gotta say I wasn't a huge fan. I can see why some like this film, but wasn't my cup of tea. I had a number of issues with the plot, ineffective tension building, and character development or lack there of. A number of my issues have been addressed in the above comments but I will add that

Spoiler

How did David make the creature/organism better? The neomorph or whatever (the back burster) is able to infect the host through ear or nose (probably other holes too) without the host even being aware. Adding a huge egg (and queen), and face hugger to the equation seems counter intuitive.
Also, the ship can warn you that there is an organism on board, but no problem with a new random android (I guess this can be explained away by Mother being offline for a while, but still)?
How does David face no resistance when landing on the planet? In fact he seems to be warmly welcomed when he arrives on the planet. A highly advanced alien life form has no air traffic control/is not concerned when a lost ship from a planet storing extremely deadly weapons returns unannounced?
Also is there no protocol/sense of preservation of the human species? The sick soldiers should not have been allowed aboard the shuttle (why is there only one shuttle?) similar to the scene with the sick scientist in Prometheus. And can you really rationalize mounting a rescue party and risking bringing aboard whatever organism has been encountered?
I know I'm kind of nit picking here, and some of these issues could possibly be explained, but still I was disappointed with the film overall.

Spoiler

The egg and face huggers were likely an offshoot of the original xenomorphs. David even said that he'd spent time tweaking the infection process, which is part of why they reach maturation faster than a typical xenomorph. It used to take at least a day for chestbursters to appear, though one pops out of the captain within minutes. If David is capable of mimicking Walter to such an extent that the crew members can't distinguish him, then I would assume he harvested Walter's access/override codes or had his own. The crew was distracted by the whole xenomorph incident and likely weren't thinking about why David's face wasn't healing like it should. The protocol for the sick soldiers was to quarantine inside the medical bay, which obviously backfired since Tennessee's wife broke that protocol.

 

[A-Branger]

I loved Covenant as well as Prometheus. I've seen a lot of interesting theories and ideas behind some of the scenes and concepts in the movie but something I've not read any of that I'm the most interested in is

Spoiler

the scene where David "communicates" with the Neomorph.

Do you guys have any thoughts on that scene in particular?

Spoiler

well he kinda created them and study them enough to know how they behave. Thats why he was trying to comunicate with the one that killed the chick until the captain shoot him. Like someone trying to approach a bear or a wild animal. He knew how to behave and how to read them. What I did found bit stupid and surprise no-one has mention yet. Is when the new Alien burst out of the Captain's chest and the two look at each others and he mimic David open his arms. Now that was dumb as F. It should have at the least, look at him and start runnign away or something. Its not like "oh hai father, glad to meet you, let's dance..."

 

[Dredg]

I didn't enjoy Covenant. The plot was forced and I personally can't see how anyone could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Obvious tropes were obvious and the movie wound up being completely predictable.

Spoiler

The new Captain was obviously showcased as incompetent, but there was literally no reason to check out a random alien signal. I refuse to accept that a crew tasked with safely delivering nearly 4,000 colonists and embryos would allow a captain (that they have no problem directly disobeying) to risk the entire mission and everyone's life all because he wants to investigate an unknown planet. I also can't accept that the crew agrees because they don't want to go back into cryosleep. That's just lazy writing at its worst.

Why the hell doesn't anyone wear some form of biosuit to protect them from microscopic threats? Shouldn't this have been SOP? Oh wait, no, because we have to have that EXACT problem occur from Xenomorph spore testicles. This is a slap in the face to the original Alien because it ignores what Ripley stood for. She was the voice of reason in the midst of a lazy and overtly emotional crew. In Covenant, everyone acts like the only training they've ever received was how to use comms and set up a GoPro. Even the fact that they were willing to risk their ONLY recon vessel through a freaking hurricane was jaw-dropping. Didn't even try to plot a course around it. I don't even want to talk about why they thought it was a good idea to try and operate without any safety gear on a sick man who was projectile vomiting black stuff everywhere. That SCREAMS quarantine, which only happened AFTER he started violently convulsing. Even if the door held, congrats, you now have a rapidly growing, highly aggressive alien inside your only way back to the ship, and it is very capable of slaughtering humans.

The first rule of survival is to work and stick together, yet when they walk past the mountains of charred corpses, the first thing they do is split up and trust the strange man when he says their open air fortress is "safe" from the alien species that is fully capable of climbing. Instead, Captain Underpants decides to follow David down to his creepy lair, and look inside an egg. What he should have done, was call the rest of the crew, keep David at gunpoint (and hopefully crippled), while instructing THEIR synthetic to investigate whatever secrets David has, since the creatures do not attack synthetics

Tennessee was absolutely moronic. As ranking officer, he should have turned the damn ship around and set course to their original destination while sending a debrief to earth. Instead, he insists on overriding Mother's safety protocols in order to save a bunch of contaminated humans being hunted by a highly aggressive alien species. The entire Third Act was utterly predictable - the fight was boring and useless, while the twist ending was disappointingly obvious. David had to survive, because he's the bad guy. Obviously he hid embryos in himself because after all of the blunders of the crew, of course they won't give their most advanced tool a full diagnostic. The fact that the ranking officer HELPED HIM REPAIR HIS FACE should have been enough to throw him out the airlock, unless they never read the manual on the self-repair functions of their synthetic. His stab wound healed both internally and externally... did nobody get briefed on the self-repairing function of their robot?

Also, why do the synthetics move and act like Data from Star Trek? In the earlier movies, they acted like normal people. On that note, the writers ripped off TNG's Crystalline Entity plotline.

 

[M3CHK1LLA]

The only thing I felt bit disapointed was the "Alien" part of the movie, the ending. I though it was too rushed and not scary enough. Like the characters werent even scared of the thing and had a masterplan already from the start. Like "oh, the thing is here, cool, lets do this and that...simple" Like the movie needed another 20 min of so to develop a proper sense of fear for that part like the Aliens movies did.

there was no... "lets try to study these things" like in the orig movies. it was like "sure, weve never seen an alien before, but lets just kill it".

also, they didn't seem to be as scared as in the orig movies. i do not remember seeing one bead of sweat...in the originals they were sweating like pigs the whole time lol

 

[A-Branger]

there was no... "lets try to study these things" like in the orig movies. it was like "sure, weve never seen an alien before, but lets just kill it".

also, they didn't seem to be as scared as in the orig movies. i do not remember seeing one bead of sweat...in the originals they were sweating like pigs the whole time lol

exactly, there wasnt any mistery, tension, or hunt, or a "wheres the thing hidding now?". It was like like "oh, the Alien is here, cool... open that door, this door, then that door, and press that button.. ready?.GO!..."

 

[fps]

I didn't enjoy Covenant. The plot was forced and I personally can't see how anyone could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Obvious tropes were obvious and the movie wound up being completely predictable.

Spoiler

The new Captain was obviously showcased as incompetent, but there was literally no reason to check out a random alien signal. I refuse to accept that a crew tasked with safely delivering nearly 4,000 colonists and embryos would allow a captain (that they have no problem directly disobeying) to risk the entire mission and everyone's life all because he wants to investigate an unknown planet. I also can't accept that the crew agrees because they don't want to go back into cryosleep. That's just lazy writing at its worst.

Why the hell doesn't anyone wear some form of biosuit to protect them from microscopic threats? Shouldn't this have been SOP? Oh wait, no, because we have to have that EXACT problem occur from Xenomorph spore testicles. This is a slap in the face to the original Alien because it ignores what Ripley stood for. She was the voice of reason in the midst of a lazy and overtly emotional crew. In Covenant, everyone acts like the only training they've ever received was how to use comms and set up a GoPro. Even the fact that they were willing to risk their ONLY recon vessel through a freaking hurricane was jaw-dropping. Didn't even try to plot a course around it. I don't even want to talk about why they thought it was a good idea to try and operate without any safety gear on a sick man who was projectile vomiting black stuff everywhere. That SCREAMS quarantine, which only happened AFTER he started violently convulsing. Even if the door held, congrats, you now have a rapidly growing, highly aggressive alien inside your only way back to the ship, and it is very capable of slaughtering humans.

The first rule of survival is to work and stick together, yet when they walk past the mountains of charred corpses, the first thing they do is split up and trust the strange man when he says their open air fortress is "safe" from the alien species that is fully capable of climbing. Instead, Captain Underpants decides to follow David down to his creepy lair, and look inside an egg. What he should have done, was call the rest of the crew, keep David at gunpoint (and hopefully crippled), while instructing THEIR synthetic to investigate whatever secrets David has, since the creatures do not attack synthetics

Tennessee was absolutely moronic. As ranking officer, he should have turned the damn ship around and set course to their original destination while sending a debrief to earth. Instead, he insists on overriding Mother's safety protocols in order to save a bunch of contaminated humans being hunted by a highly aggressive alien species. The entire Third Act was utterly predictable - the fight was boring and useless, while the twist ending was disappointingly obvious. David had to survive, because he's the bad guy. Obviously he hid embryos in himself because after all of the blunders of the crew, of course they won't give their most advanced tool a full diagnostic. The fact that the ranking officer HELPED HIM REPAIR HIS FACE should have been enough to throw him out the airlock, unless they never read the manual on the self-repair functions of their synthetic. His stab wound healed both internally and externally... did nobody get briefed on the self-repairing function of their robot?

Also, why do the synthetics move and act like Data from Star Trek? In the earlier movies, they acted like normal people. On that note, the writers ripped off TNG's Crystalline Entity plotline.

Absolutely, all of this. And yet I still enjoyed it because at least it made an effort and had some truly worthwhile ideas at some points, which is honestly more than the design-by-committee blockbusters we now get usually serve up.

 

[Emperor Guillotine]

Can we all agree that James Franco was probably the best part about that whole movie?

 

[ThomasUV777]

I didn't enjoy Covenant. The plot was forced and I personally can't see how anyone could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Obvious tropes were obvious and the movie wound up being completely predictable.

Movies are a lot more enjoyable without the overanalysing. I don't know if you were a fan of the first Alien movies, but they pull plenty of why-the-hell-would-you-do-that-moves in those as well.

 

[M3CHK1LLA]

aliens (the second one) was by far the best in the series imho...so i have high expectations

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Movies are a lot more enjoyable without the overanalysing. I don't know if you were a fan of the first Alien movies, but they pull plenty of why-the-hell-would-you-do-that-moves in those as well.

Exactly. I think Covenant was a good solid Alien movie, definitely better than Alien 3 or Prometheus imo.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

Movies are a lot more enjoyable without the overanalysing. I don't know if you were a fan of the first Alien movies, but they pull plenty of why-the-hell-would-you-do-that-moves in those as well.

I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.

 

[fps]

I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.

We are a more sophisticated audience now (we are, in terms of expectations), and we are more advanced scientifically and in our general understanding of the things we are watching. The films should reflect this move from a comparative adolescence to adulthood, especially when the film-maker is at his current level of maturity.

 

[wankerness]

I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.

I haven't seen this new one, but I know a lot of the complaints in Prometheus were sure to include the fact he was supposed to be some kind of world-class biologist, as opposed to the first movie where they were all just supposed to be not-particularly-intelligent blue collar types.

 

[zappatton2]

I'm not generally a cynic about movies like this, I tend to love some pretty terrible stuff, but I think my love of the original kinda spoiled my appreciation of all the sequels. I did like Aliens, but I am very much a horror movie fan, and for me, the original Alien was a horror movie, with a genuine mood of dread, suspense, and a creature lurking in the shadows that you never really got a good glimpse at, but could be hiding anywhere.

Aliens and all the other sequels to me were more sci-fi/action movies with a horror element, and though Aliens still captured a bit of that element of dread, I didn't really get that at all from this movie. I like the flicks that either 1. scare me, or are 2. so cheese that they end up being hilarious, and this didn't have enough foreboding or characters I cared much for to fill the first requirement, and took itself too seriously to meet the second. All subjective of course!

 

[Sermo Lupi]

I think everyone needs to go back and watch 1 + 2. Half the things people are complaining about are in those films too, most notably the face hugger scene, its just as bad in the first Alien, if not even more so since he can see its alive and moving. The scene in Covenant is a throw back to that.

Loved the first two films, especially the first one. I'm arguably a traditionalist when it comes to the Alien franchise (who isn't), but I was actually quite pleased with Prometheus and Alien Covenant. It's clear they are trying to be very different films than the originals, but I think that's okay; as much as it might be true that they're not masterpieces like their earliest precursors, you should never ask that of any film. Asking the new films to live up to the legacy of the originals is an impossibly high standard to set, especially when the fans doing this are expecting Ridley Scott to use the same hallmarks of the franchise in the new films--many of which, through their novelty in cinema at the time, created the legacy we're asking the later films to live up to. As the saying goes, you can't put the proverbial Alien back in the bag.

There's a common criticism in cinema called the 'idiot plot'. I believe it descends from some remark or other of Roger Ebert's. Basically it's this concept that, if the events of a film could never have happened if the characters didn't continually make obviously poor decisions, then there's a good chance the scriptwriter was lazy or incompetent at advancing his agenda without the crutch of employing idiot characters. What I don't like about this specific criticism is how it is commonly applied on the Internet. In an equally stupid way, a different set of troupes are assumed in refuting its use: all scientists are purely rational and properly trained; all human beings hold the same values in decision-making as the Internet commenter; 'worst case scenarios' are always a sign of a lack of realism and not a series of low-probability events which could conceivably happen that have been chosen for the film because they're simply the most interesting; and so on. Not only is it creatively sterile to reduce human behaviour to a set of predictable inputs/outputs, it willfully ignores the fact that you're sat in a cinema watching a film on a 100 foot screen with a 200 million dollar budget. So yes, maybe only 1 out of every 100 scientists are idiots, but as long as it's a remote possibility, I'm fine with the director cherry picking scenarios for the sake of entertainment.

That in a nutshell is why I don't understand most of the criticisms against Prometheus and Alien Covenant. They're flawed films for sure, and if we want to talk about how the tone or vision for the franchise has changed (because they certainly aren't horror films anymore, nor action films in the same vein as Aliens), that's fine by me. But when people complain about the little stuff--things like scientists taking their helmets off on an alien planet, especially when their atmospheric sensors have told them it was safe to do so and the first 40 minutes of the film were dedicated to showing the recklessness of those same scientists (referring to Prometheus here), what's the substance of the argument? That people can't be unpredictable? Excitable? Stupid in a worldly sense, yet still smart enough to become a credentialed professional? The counter arguments seem as stupid to me as the justifications for why the actions occurred in the first place--at a certain point we just have to accept those things as stuff that could have happened and that did happen for the sake of a more entertaining film. Stupid or improbable, maybe, but not impossible, and when there's so much else going on in these films to discuss and understand I don't see the point in getting hung up on the director making an implausible choice here or there for the sake of a good action shot.