Movie Alien: Covenant

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So, finally got around to seeing yesterday. Knew that it has deviated from the locating the Engineers storyline that Prometheus set up, but was still disappointed with the lack of depth on that plot line.

As a standalone Alien film, thought it was fine. Acting was good (Fassbender is brilliant), decent suspense at times and freaked me out once or twice like a good Alien film should. In this respect, I'd give it a 7.5/10.

But in the context of Prometheus, and what was promised in its closing scenes (Shaw and David using one of the Engineers' ships to fly to their home planet) it is a glorious opportunity missed. The best scenes IMO were the all too brief flashbacks as David recounted their landing on this planet.

But *, there's an entire movie missing between this. Really is ridiculous that they pivoted away from the Prometheus concept instead of doing justice to that mythology.

Just because they did it half assed to begin with, and received some (understandably) confused feedback, doesn't mean the concept should be abandoned completely.

There are still so many questions.

- at what point did David kill Shaw? I believe she was in stasis during the journey to the Engineer planet, but where was she when they landed?

- surely she wouldn't have wanted to miss that moment of arriving, so I assume she was already dead. There's surely no way she would've allowed David to obliterate them either.

- where are the rest of the Engineers? It looked like just one city, with maybe a few thousand of them? Is that their entire population?

- do they not have other planets/systems they occupy? Hard to believe such an advanced race is confined to just one smallish city right?

- why did they decide to eradicate humans? That's two films down now, and still not one ******* answer for this.

- I knew the moment Walter appears after fighting David (especially as they didn't show the end of the fight itself) that it was in fact David. But a bit bizarre they all just presumed it was him without really checking. But overall this is a minor gripe, there probably just wanted to get off that planet given the carnage around them.

- also I found it weird that they so easily believed that the structure they escaped to was 'perfectly safe' as David said. You could very easily see that it was not an enclosed structure, and could easily be penetrated (ie, that massive balcony at the top where the alien could easily come into). Again, a minor gripe but given the military presence, surely they would've wanted to secure the compound before everyone just relaxes and splits up. Weird.

I hear there is going to be a 3rd film in this trilogy, so let's ******* hope it's third time lucky. Overall, I give this a 5/10.
 

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Carbine Chaos said:
I watched Prometheus for the first time last night. Seen that a lot of people are confused about David killing Shaw because of their 'connection' at the end of Prometheus.

Rubbish. He hated humanity and only saw her as a means of being put back together so he could essentially become a God of creation. Made sense to me.

Maybe he had a shred of compassion for her for treating him well but that was overridden by his ambitions. She would have tried to stop him.
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This would be fine except that prologue they released online about Shaw and David strongly implies David is falling in love with her. A theory going around is that she did not return the feelings of love and this sent him over the edge. I think she was probably the one human he actually had any feeling for and it would have been nice if they explored it a bit more.
 
I think they created a film that, while it offers the origins of the Alien as we know them, rehashed things already done in previous Alien films. This gives a continuity of sorts, but it also robs us of anything new to enjoy. We've seen synthetics go crazy before, and we've seen one's sacrifice themselves for their human companions too. We've seen a similar finale at the end of Aliens. The writers have just created a plot twist instead of adding anything of substance, new, and exciting to the franchise. I find that disappointing to be honest. 5/10
 
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Bomberboyokay said:
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I know they're delivery style is to take the piss, but they're bang on with pretty much all of their comments. Some of the decisions made here are pretty glaring, and contradictory.

But that line about Scott saying that Jesus was an Engineer, wtf? Have never heard that before, would be nice if they actually decided to put some answers to these questions in the films themselves....that's 2 movies down and we still know * all in regards to this plot line.
 
I thought the Jesus/engineer thing was a fan theory I've seen online, not an actual plot point. People think the biological weapon being made on the planet Prometheus went to was meant for us but I never thought it was clear.

I disagree about not knowing anything more about this plot line, I think this film explains how the xenomorphs were created, it's just not a very satisfying explanation in the sense they went for a plot twist rather than creating something new in the franchise.

The Prometheus aliens create man and wants to destroy humanity due to our imperfections - man creates AI - AI creates the xenomorphs to destroy man due to the outrage of having such a mortal imperfect being be their creator. Man just can't catch a break really. :eek::D
 
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Punchy Bassett said:
So xenomorphs were created by David way into the future? So how did they end up on Earth for the Alien V Predator movies? And how did a Xenomorph skeleton end up in the Predators ship in Predator 2?
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Only saw the AvP movie once (thought it was crap) but if I recall correctly, they said the Aliens have been coming to Earth for thousands of years right? So how is that possible if David hasn't created them yet....

But then again, there's a simple Hollywood explanation - those films aren't cannon.
 

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Watched this one on blu ray last night & damn it looks good. Thought this a major improvement on Prometheus & really like where it left off with David able to experiment away till his black heart's content for a few years. Found it a bit sad that Shaw didn't make a (live) appearance but love the idea that David harvested her eggs to help him engineer the xeno pods. If so & given she was infertile but became a mother of sorts eventually, it's the twisted type of Alien thinking I love, thinking back to what they did to Ripley in 4.

But as seems the norm these days with a Ridley Scott film, there are a couple of deleted scenes which just had to be in the final cut - there's one in this with the crew getting their drink on prior to going into stasis which would have given the audience reasons to connect & empathise with each & every one of them. But no, our intro to the crew is a captain we know absolutely nothing about getting fried. & I should care why exactly?

That said, it had more going for it than not & I'm sure a decent fanedit will be on it's way soon enough. & another 2 films in the works apparently to look forward to. - 7.5/10.
 
Watched it this morning, not the worst film but mostly just meh.

BlakeyNoFlakey said:
I think they created a film that, while it offers the origins of the Alien as we know them, rehashed things already done in previous Alien films. This gives a continuity of sorts, but it also robs us of anything new to enjoy. We've seen synthetics go crazy before, and we've seen one's sacrifice themselves for their human companions too. We've seen a similar finale at the end of Aliens. The writers have just created a plot twist instead of adding anything of substance, new, and exciting to the franchise. I find that disappointing to be honest. 5/10
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Yep, it wasn't bad but we've seen it all before and it's been done to death now.
 
Was it just me or was the CGI for the first lot of Aliens kind of ordinary?
The captain guy being silly enough to believe it was safe to look into the egg.
The androids swapping over was also extremely obvious.

Have to watch this again but despite the flaws of Prometeus almost think it was better.
 
GG.exe said:
Alien, like Rocky, and many other movies with 800 sequels and prequels, jumped the shark a long time ago.
Only Star Wars ;)
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Rocky never jumped the shark. Ok Rocky IV was a bit much, and Rocky V wasn't very good, but the shark wasn't jumped and the last two have been good.

Sent from mTalk
 
Kram said:
The start of this was actually decent but jumped the shark the moment that David rocked up wearing that cloak.
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Just watched it last night and this is pretty accurate. It's a reasonably well made film until this point...then the pacing and story go haywire as it attempts to shoehorn two different types of movies into one.

Hate how Shaw was just disposed of off screen. Would have much preferred her to continue as the main character.

The end twist was obvious the moment Fassbender walked out of that building/temple.
 
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