Alien: Covenant - Prometheus 2


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Thank God the Alien franchise is finally getting away from the Ripley obsession, all the previous films had to have Sigourney Weaver in them which severely limited where/when they could place them which I think was down to Weaver trying to wedge her feet under the producer's table.

 

I think Ridley Scott (and possible the Fox execs) recognised this.

Just came back from watching this. I enjoyed it overall more than Prometheus. It's a bit more focused, more fun, and seeing the Alien again was nice. It was used sparingly, but mostly worked. The whole creator vs creation theme is now told through a single character and their warped take on it, and worked better than Prometheus, which I felt never made anything close to a point and didn't manage to properly apply its themes to either a story or a character arc.

 

The movie is absolutely awful as a Prometheus sequel, though. And if you want to pick it apart, it's about as dumb as its predecessor was. Which is to say, pretty ######## dumb.

 

I almost wish they went all in with the dumb throwback horror and made that one character more over the top, it would have perhaps made for a more enjoyable experience, because aiming to be smart is where these last two movies fall apart.

 

So, on the better side of Alien movies, really bad as a Prometheus sequel, decent watch overall. 6 or a 7, depending on what you expect from it.

  • Like 1

So, I made the mistake of going to the Covenant Wikipedia page. I now know the entire movie plot. Now, I'm also not the type of person who cares when stuff is spoiled, I'll still watch just as intently as without spoilers. And knowing what happens in Covenant doesn't stop me from wanting to see it still.

 

But uh, THE HELL Ridley Scott? I sure hope the studios have been pushing you to do some of this crap, because uh, reasons?

So yeah, as @Syanide says above - it's 100% an Alien movie rather than a sequel to Prometheus.  I mean I can see how they made the leap from Prometheus to this, and some of the themes they (awkwardly) (half) explored were interesting if you want a story about creators, the self-aware creation and so on but...

 

To me it felt like a lead in for what could be an awesome 3rd act.

Edited by Nefarious Trigger
8 hours ago, Nefarious Trigger said:

So yeah, as @Syanide says above - it's 100% an Alien movie rather than a sequel to Prometheus.  I mean I can see how they made the leap from Prometheus to this, and some of the themes they (awkwardly) (half) explored were interesting if you want a story about creators, the self-aware creation and so on but...

 

To me it felt like a lead in for what could be an awesome 3rd act.

Well, the next movie should already be in the works, I think the plan was always to make more, no surprise if this leaves things open just for that reason alone.

2 hours ago, George P said:

Well, the next movie should already be in the works, I think the plan was always to make more, no surprise if this leaves things open just for that reason alone.

Yeah, as I understand it, they've said "Continue the story" with a multi-movie deal.

On 5/19/2017 at 2:40 AM, LOC said:

So, I made the mistake of going to the Covenant Wikipedia page. I now know the entire movie plot. Now, I'm also not the type of person who cares when stuff is spoiled, I'll still watch just as intently as without spoilers. And knowing what happens in Covenant doesn't stop me from wanting to see it still.

 

But uh, THE HELL Ridley Scott? I sure hope the studios have been pushing you to do some of this crap, because uh, reasons?

Reading a plot on one page is not the same as watching a two-hour-long movie :) 

On 2017-5-20 at 5:18 PM, Nefarious Trigger said:

So yeah, as @Syanide says above - it's 100% an Alien movie rather than a sequel to Prometheus.  I mean I can see how they made the leap from Prometheus to this, and some of the themes they (awkwardly) (half) explored were interesting if you want a story about creators, the self-aware creation and so on but...

 

To me it felt like a lead in for what could be an awesome 3rd act.

Well the title is alien:covenant :laugh:

 

On topic,  Yeah one would think the engineers would have some sort of safe guard for their own virus. Just seems dumb how David killed them all and how no other response was triggered.   Eg. if they created life on earth, who's to say that's the only planet with engineers and why no retaliation is had against david.

It's just bad writing, things happen so unnaturally just because the script says they need to happen, no natural progression.

 

Just as an example, the ship David and Shaw used to get to that planet is seen crashed in the side of a mountain, even though David was perfectly competent docking it when he dropped the cargo on the Engineer city. Why didn't he just land it somewhere? He could have then used some time to experiment, and then take off on the ship and go to Earth or wherever and wreak havoc there. Nah, better have the ship crashed and him sending a distress signal for 10 years. Such p*ss poor writing.

 

My favorite dumb thing in these movies is that in the 2100 years that have passed since some crap went down on the planetoid from Prometheus, none of the other Engineers deemed it important to check up on their weapons facility that carries incredibly dangerous, planet-destroying bioweapons.

 

It's already giving me a headache and I just scratched the surface.

  • Like 2
22 minutes ago, Syanide said:

Just as an example, the ship David and Shaw used to get to that planet is seen crashed in the side of a mountain, even though David was perfectly competent docking it when he dropped the cargo on the Engineer city. Why didn't he just land it somewhere? He could have then used some time to experiment, and then take off on the ship and go to Earth or wherever and wreak havoc there. Nah, better have the ship crashed and him sending a distress signal for 10 years. Such p*ss poor writing.

Damn, I never even considered why the ship had crashed rather than landed. I guess it could have been shot down or otherwise disabled by some defence system?

 

 

Quote

My favorite dumb thing in these movies is that in the 2100 years that have passed since some crap went down on the planetoid from Prometheus, none of the other Engineers deemed it important to check up on their weapons facility that carries incredibly dangerous, planet-destroying bioweapons.

That's another good point. Although...

Spoiler

I was wondering whether the humanoids that David killed were actually engineers or just another of their creations?

 

14 hours ago, Syanide said:

It's just bad writing, things happen so unnaturally just because the script says they need to happen, no natural progression.

 

1.Just as an example, the ship David and Shaw used to get to that planet is seen crashed in the side of a mountain, even though David was perfectly competent docking it when he dropped the cargo on the Engineer city. Why didn't he just land it somewhere? He could have then used some time to experiment, and then take off on the ship and go to Earth or wherever and wreak havoc there. Nah, better have the ship crashed and him sending a distress signal for 10 years. Such p*ss poor writing.

 

2.My favorite dumb thing in these movies is that in the 2100 years that have passed since some crap went down on the planetoid from Prometheus, none of the other Engineers deemed it important to check up on their weapons facility that carries incredibly dangerous, planet-destroying bioweapons.

 

It's already giving me a headache and I just scratched the surface.

1.So true! Didn't realize that.

2. yup pretty much said so myself 0 common sense for such a planet making/race forming species.

 

 

 

 

 

14 hours ago, Syanide said:

 

Spoiler

Apparently, the advanced race of engineers appears to be lacking missile defence systems and some basic intelligence gathering (from one of their own ships). They couldn't have possibly foreseen that one coming, eh? :D 

 

  • Like 1
On 2017-5-23 at 0:44 AM, Syanide said:

It's just bad writing, things happen so unnaturally just because the script says they need to happen, no natural progression.

 

Just as an example, the ship David and Shaw used to get to that planet is seen crashed in the side of a mountain, even though David was perfectly competent docking it when he dropped the cargo on the Engineer city. Why didn't he just land it somewhere? He could have then used some time to experiment, and then take off on the ship and go to Earth or wherever and wreak havoc there. Nah, better have the ship crashed and him sending a distress signal for 10 years. Such p*ss poor writing.

 

My favorite dumb thing in these movies is that in the 2100 years that have passed since some crap went down on the planetoid from Prometheus, none of the other Engineers deemed it important to check up on their weapons facility that carries incredibly dangerous, planet-destroying bioweapons.

 

It's already giving me a headache and I just scratched the surface.

I'm not gonna argue there was some horrible writing in this, however, you seem to be making some massive assumptions...

 

You're assuming David crashed the ship intentionally, given his nature of experimenting something could have forced that situation that was outside of his control. I think Scott has already stated that Awakening is due to fill the gap between Prometheus and Covenant so don't assume we've seen the last of Shaw and David's relationship so I'd bet we find out a little more about what happened in the next movie.

 

The second point regarding the abandoned theorised military installation and bio weapons. You seem to be making an assumption that they didn't check on it, they may have been there, figured out exactly what had happened and chose to abandon/quarantine the facility under the unfortunate belief anyone who did stumble upon it wouldn't survive long enough for anything to come of it. 

 

I personally didn't like the whole idea that the Aliens were created by an android obsessed with the concept of creation. Additionally, it kinda throws things like the original Aliens vs Predator movie out of sync because that facility in the Ice had existed for hundreds of years if not longer. That wouldn't be possible if they hadn't been "created" yet. If they are going to continue with this, then I do hope David continues to evolve his Alien because that Alien was by far not even close to the original in terms of its intelligence and lethality.

 

 

  • Like 1
5 minutes ago, Skiver said:

Additionally, it kinda throws things like the original Aliens vs Predator movie out of sync because that facility in the Ice had existed for hundreds of years if not longer. That wouldn't be possible if they hadn't been "created" yet.

AVP's universe is separate from that of Prometheus and Alien.

  • Like 2
39 minutes ago, Mirumir said:

AVP's universe is separate from that of Prometheus and Alien.

I'm not sure if anything has been officially stated or if anything from the previous movies strictly pointed it out but this put a firm nail in that coffin. Otherwise, I'm not aware of anything that would say they absolutely have to be.

1 hour ago, Skiver said:

I'm not sure if anything has been officially stated or if anything from the previous movies strictly pointed it out but this put a firm nail in that coffin. Otherwise, I'm not aware of anything that would say they absolutely have to be.

I don't know if it has officially ever been talked about by Scott, but there's absolutely no way after Prometheus that AVP can be canon with the Alien universe. In Prometheus, the founder of Weyland Corp is Peter Weyland. In AVP, the founder is Charles Bishop Weyland.

 

Of course, that's doesn't mean that Fox can't merge the two universes, Predator and Alien, into the same universe again with a reboot of AVP or something similar.

 

 

 

As for this film, I actually enjoyed Prometheus so much more than this. As has been stated before, it just didn't have a good flow or natural progression to the story. It was entertaining, if the brain is turned off, but with any thinking, too much logic fails for this film.

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