Just saw Alien: Covennant

[draigan]

Hi

Wow, I am genuinely curious if anyone actually enjoyed that movie.

I have been a big fan of the alien series for my whole life and with disappointment after disappointment i did not go into this with much hopes but dam i never expected it to be that bad

My honest first though when the movie ended was that this was a giant fuck you to the fans who didn't enjoy the shitshow that was Prometheus.

Spoilers from here on out

Just a few questions in case my memory is failing me but how does David creating the Xenomorphs make any sense in the timeline if in the first movie the space jockey was fossilized in his seat in the ship carrying the Xenomorph eggs

WTF was up with tiny marionette doll instead of chestburster and was I the only one who thought it looked ridiculous?

Why did the Xenomporph just go on a roidrage rampage instead of collecting bodies like its has in all the other cannon movies?

lastly where did the second Xenomorph at the end come from? we only saw the captain get impregnated and that one was killed by the crane?

also just cause it shitted me that second facehugger should not have been that easy to take off and only slightly burned the guys face and ground when the exact same thing in the first movie melted multiple decks of a space ship.

lol sorry if that was a pain to read as a big Alien fan the movie just really pissed me off and i don't want to go on for ever because if i broke down everything i thought was wrong with the movie this post would be about 10 pages long

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

I just posted in the other thread, so I'll copy-paste myself.

Spoiler

There's an inherent problem to explaining something whose strength comes from its ambiguity. All I have to say is "midichlorians" and I'm sure many are on the same page. It's particularly fitting as Scott wants the Alien series to be as prolific as Star Wars (apparently the success of the first SW is why [http://www.blastr.com/2015-9-14/ridley-scott-reveals-how-star-wars-was-responsible-birth-alien] he took on the movie to begin with).

Even putting that aside, this was a poorly executed movie. I know no one's name. Nobody's. I had difficulty keeping track of who was married to who. I didn't care when a character's death was telegraphed over a minute ahead of time in an incredibly obvious way, destroying any tension, suspense or fear. Fassbender is again the best part, but that's because he's really the only one given a chance. Everything else is sped by so quickly that the actors really aren't given the time to stretch their muscles. This crew is even less competent than the Prometheus' crew, far more than can be explained by them being civilians. It can be explained by "this is a toperific movie and the audience demands blood." It's pretty, but that's it.

To top it all off, the core thrust of the movie is a poorly executed bad idea. The aliens were created by a Weyland-Yutani android over the course of a decade between 2094 and 2104 CE. They are the result of a goo made by our creators who were pissed off we killed Jesus. The religious symbolism in Alien 3 taken to an extreme conclusion.

The infuriating thing is so many responses to any criticisms (at least the ones I've seen) use the canonical explanations to shut down criticisms, showing they totally missed the point. I'm not ignorant of the explanations, it's the explanations themselves and the motivations behind them I take issue with. They're awful, terrible explanations that are actively making the original movie worse by association.

Just wait until it's explained the ship on LV-426 was only 10 years old when it was found by the Nostromo, the creature created by humans in a roundabout way only 20 years prior. The pilot a malformed human, not a cargo pilot caught in the midst of an ancient war or even something else. The originally perfectly coherent English distress signal messed up beyond belief for plot reasons, not the remnants of a long-lost civilization laid to waste by unknown methods.

To answer you directly, the canon is fucked by Prometheus. Scott is outright ignoring AVP (as it is no longer possible since the creatures didn't exist until 100 years later), but he's replaced it with something just as bad. Which is particularly odd considering he's the original director of the series.

The chestburster was ridiculous, yes.

The movie was gory, it had to kill everyone to get blood.

The guy who got the facehugger on his face for less than 10 seconds was impregnated. You quickly see the proboscis retracting when it's thrown across the room. That's why David kept him around. It burst from his chest in the medlab. Yeah, it's bullshit.

 

[draigan]

I just posted in the other thread, so I'll copy-paste myself.

Spoiler

There's an inherent problem to explaining something whose strength comes from its ambiguity. All I have to say is "midichlorians" and I'm sure many are on the same page. It's particularly fitting as Scott wants the Alien series to be as prolific as Star Wars (apparently the success of the first SW is why [http://www.blastr.com/2015-9-14/ridley-scott-reveals-how-star-wars-was-responsible-birth-alien] he took on the movie to begin with).

Even putting that aside, this was a poorly executed movie. I know no one's name. Nobody's. I had difficulty keeping track of who was married to who. I didn't care when a character's death was telegraphed over a minute ahead of time in an incredibly obvious way, destroying any tension, suspense or fear. Fassbender is again the best part, but that's because he's really the only one given a chance. Everything else is sped by so quickly that the actors really aren't given the time to stretch their muscles. This crew is even less competent than the Prometheus' crew, far more than can be explained by them being civilians. It can be explained by "this is a toperific movie and the audience demands blood." It's pretty, but that's it.

To top it all off, the core thrust of the movie is a poorly executed bad idea. The aliens were created by a Weyland-Yutani android over the course of a decade between 2094 and 2104 CE. They are the result of a goo made by our creators who were pissed off we killed Jesus. The religious symbolism in Alien 3 taken to an extreme conclusion.

The infuriating thing is so many responses to any criticisms (at least the ones I've seen) use the canonical explanations to shut down criticisms, showing they totally missed the point. I'm not ignorant of the explanations, it's the explanations themselves and the motivations behind them I take issue with. They're awful, terrible explanations that are actively making the original movie worse by association.

Just wait until it's explained the ship on LV-426 was only 10 years old when it was found by the Nostromo, the creature created by humans in a roundabout way only 20 years prior. The pilot a malformed human, not a cargo pilot caught in the midst of an ancient war or even something else. The originally perfectly coherent English distress signal messed up beyond belief for plot reasons, not the remnants of a long-lost civilization laid to waste by unknown methods.

To answer you directly, the canon is fucked by Prometheus. Scott is outright ignoring AVP (as it is no longer possible since the creatures didn't exist until 100 years later), but he's replaced it with something just as bad. Which is particularly odd considering he's the original director of the series.

The chestburster was ridiculous, yes.

The movie was gory, it had to kill everyone to get blood.

The guy who got the facehugger on his face for less than 10 seconds was impregnated. You quickly see the proboscis retracting when it's thrown across the room. That's why David kept him around. It burst from his chest in the medlab. Yeah, it's bullshit.

Very well put mate way better than i could of and thanks a lot for the answers especially where the second Xenomorph came from, was there a scene at all showing his body and i just missed it or was it just the quick shot of the facehugger after that was the clue?

I know they changed a lot over the years but i was under the impression from the previous films that the facehugger needed time to impregnate its victims but that was just an assumption because of how long it stayed on the host body.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I too already typed my opinion in my threads a month ago. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.950241-Anyone-else-watched-Alien-Covenant-Spoiler

Just a few questions in case my memory is failing me but how does David creating the Xenomorphs make any sense in the timeline if in the first movie the space jockey was fossilized in his seat in the ship carrying the Xenomorph eggs
No idea.

WTF was up with tiny marionette doll instead of chestburster and was I the only one who thought it looked ridiculous?
Yeah that bit was weird as I'm used to see the tiny alien as a prop than a tiny cgi.

Why did the Xenomporph just go on a roidrage rampage instead of collecting bodies like its has in all the other cannon movies?
Technically the white ones are dubbed "Neomorph" and I can guess since they are like the prototype/ first form to the one we know therefore their intelligent is different?

lastly where did the second Xenomorph at the end come from? we only saw the captain get impregnated and that one was killed by the crane?
Remember that guy went in and a face hugger jump on him and the other guy got it off him and killed it? I guess within that quick timeframe he was impregnated somehow?

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Snip

Both. You see the facehugger's tube being retracted after it's ripped off his face. On the ship, you see his open chest in the medlab. In the original movie, it took about a day to impregnate Kane and at least a few more hours before it emerged. In Covenant, it takes as long as it did in AVP; about 10 minutes. One explanation is the LV-426 eggs were old as all hell which is why it took so long (though their age may no longer be an explanation). At this point, Kane is the anomaly.

 

[draigan]

Snip

Both. You see the facehugger's tube being retracted after it's ripped off his face. On the ship, you see his open chest in the medlab. In the original movie, it took about a day to impregnate Kane and at least a few more hours before it emerged. In Covenant, it takes as long as it did in AVP; about 10 minutes. One explanation is the LV-426 eggs were old as all hell which is why it took so long (though their age may no longer be an explanation). At this point, Kane is the anomaly.

Ah thanks I'm not sure how i missed that but then again by that time i was kinda just wanting it to be over

 

[draigan]

I too already typed my opinion in my threads a month ago. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.950241-Anyone-else-watched-Alien-Covenant-Spoiler

Just a few questions in case my memory is failing me but how does David creating the Xenomorphs make any sense in the timeline if in the first movie the space jockey was fossilized in his seat in the ship carrying the Xenomorph eggs
No idea.

WTF was up with tiny marionette doll instead of chestburster and was I the only one who thought it looked ridiculous?
Yeah that bit was weird as I'm used to see the tiny alien as a prop than a tiny cgi.

Why did the Xenomporph just go on a roidrage rampage instead of collecting bodies like its has in all the other cannon movies?
Technically the white ones are dubbed "Neomorph" and I can guess since they are like the prototype/ first form to the one we know therefore their intelligent is different?

lastly where did the second Xenomorph at the end come from? we only saw the captain get impregnated and that one was killed by the crane?
Remember that guy went in and a face hugger jump on him and the other guy got it off him and killed it? I guess within
that quick timeframe he was impregnated somehow?

Cheers, I did know about the Neomoprhs more meant the Xeno they just seem roided out to me rather than the sleek stealthy bastards they usually are, plus they felt too big but that might have just been me