[Closed] Alien Covenant - Spoilers

Agree with most of the criticisms here. To add another, the fact that they just go traipsing off, helmetless, into an alien biosphere, blithely assuming that they won't encounter anything toxic or virulent? I can forgive HG Wells for that, but War of the Worlds was published in 1898.

Also, the alien on the ship (impregnation chicanery aside) set a new record for reaching adulthood.

And another thing!

At points, the action was so frenetic, I missed elements of what was supposed to have happened. What did Daniels use to kill the adult alien on the platform? Y'know, after it obligingly ran into the crane grabber?

Also, did one of the neomorphs get killed during the firefight in the wheat field? If not, the wee soul's still running around down there...

I'm just happy that the GoPro mount won't be replaced by a new version in the near future.

What did Daniels use to kill the adult alien on the platform?

Did she just shoot it? With a gun passed to her by David. The robot who three scenes earlier almost cried when that bloke shot his albino alien, but is fine with the killing of his grand creation. Oh, that's right, we were supposed to think it was Walter 🙄

Yup she shot it.

The albino one was his favourite though.

I initally thought it was the Christain Captain blowing kisses at the albino alien for a few moments...

I did quite enjoy the start of the film, with walter waking up, being told to ambulate, bring tea etc, and then the contrast with the next scene, and the music, was great, and seemed to be promising more intelligence than the rest of the film quite managed to deliver - ie the [i]"traipsing off, helmetless, into an alien biosphere, blithely assuming that they won't encounter anything toxic or virulent?"[/i].

I previously saw Guardians of the Galaxy 2 at the cinema. Covenant was a far better film than that, but it still seemed to be trying too hard to pull too much into the storyline perhaps.

Anyway, enjoyed it despite the flaws. Had lots of dreams the night after watching it, some a bit wierd.

Delving once more into the well of disappointment:

Neomorphs:undeterred by assault rifle fire, but shit-scared of flares.

Neomorphs:undeterred by assault rifle fire, but shit-scared of flares.

It wasn't the flare that made it run away.

It wasn't the flare that made it run away.

Dunno, as an alabaster skinned individual I'd probably run from that much light. Surely they'd run towards David for some sexy, fun time face blowing?

Will Walter finger too?

😆 only if you blow

You do know its not real?

A common argument to explain away a weak plot. A story doesn't have to be real to stand up to scrutiny.

You can pull any film apart by saying "Why didn't they just?"

Yes, I agree. But if it's a glaringly obvious "Why didn't they just?", you'd expect a team of writers to be able to come up with something to explain it away. They're writing the story from scratch after all.

I'm just happy that the GoPro mount won't be replaced by a new version in the near future.

😆

It wasn't the flare that made it run away.

What did make it run away?

David.

How do you tie together a weak plot, piss poor writing and anything and everything thrown in from the previous films? We'll just make the characters really stupid. But we did that with Prometheus? OK, we'll make them really really stupid and fall over a lot.

Don't forget to scream as we can here you on a planet.

[quote=Drac ]David.

If you're saying what I think you're saying, the alien was frightened of David because of his Dr Moreau antics, not the flare gun, or the colonists weapons. David is effectively their "monster"

However, it's a new born alien, so unless it has some genetic memory it's highly unlikely that it's scared of David.

The likely answer is it doesn't like light/ sunshine. Remember in Aliens when Newt says "They come out at night". Suggests they are primarily nocturnal or scared of light???

"They come out at night".

Mostly...

Im so relieved that most of you are recounting the dozens of 'wtaf?' moments that I saw, trying to remember them all has almost become a fun exercise in itself.

Can anyone definitively explain how David came to be surfing away on the curly spaceship, loaded with acid rain, with the entire population of that planet conveniently encapsulated with no means of escape?
What was the timescale involved there also?

The abandoned city - missed by scanners (and by eyesight, seeing as it was just around the corner)?

My current fave story developer:

''im taking the spaceship into the storm to see if I can pick up my wife on the radio''

- ''NO! think of the thousands of folk we are responsible for on this ship, computer also says no! we'll die trying! we HAVE to stay here and wait!''

''I really really want to go down and see if I can reach my wife''

- ''ok then, make sure to head straight into the eye of the storm though''

...

- ''ok then, make sure to head straight into the eye of the storm though'

Which would be the calmest area of the storm...

Can anyone definitively explain how David came to be surfing away on the curly spaceship, loaded with acid rain, with the entire population of that planet conveniently encapsulated with no means of escape?

Explained (ish) in the prologue

Colony ship heading to the arse end of the galaxy only has one shuttle. It'll take a while to get 2000 of them down there. 🙂

Anyhow, moving away from the mediocre plot. There must be tons of footage either filmed specifically for the trailers etc. or there was a hell of an edit going on. Which might explain the rushed feeling to the final third.

This is a film that could have been thirty minutes longer and all the better for it.

Which would be the calmest area of the storm...

''ok then, but head for the worst part of the storm'' is wot I meaned.

What about the weird use of Franco for all of 20 seconds? And WTF is Ridley dong with all the religious references?? The last supper photo?.. so dodgy.

What about the weird use of Franco for all of 20 seconds?

Aye that was weird. Apart from the other prologue, which is again a really short appearance, he seems like too big an actor for such little use.

My bet is on a significantly longer directors cut with the prologue stuff expanded and spliced in

Forgot to mention the cheesy Alien-o-Vision in the last act. That was truly awful, like something from that crap Doom movie.

I've just had to google to see if Damon Lindelof has any involvement with the script, which I find to be a reliable barometer as to the cackness of any given film or TV show.

I'm a huge fan of Alien/Aliens.

I don't know if it's because I set my expectations low after the disappointment that was Prometheus, but I actually really enjoyed this.

Sure you can pick multiple holes in it but I was able to just sit back and enjoy the spectacle without over-analyzing it, something I often struggle to do with most films these days.

I didn't get bored at any point and appreciated the multiple nods back to previous films, maybe I was just in the mood for a bit of an Alien greatest hits.

For the sake of balance, there were a few things I liked about it.

Some decent, likeable performances, particularly Fassbender as David/Walter, Katherine Waterston as Daniels, and Danny McBride as Tennessee (haven’t seen any of his other films).

The “back-burster” scene was pretty good. Some real, visceral panic from the actors.

I know a number of women who’ll probably go to see it purely on the promise of some homoerotic Fassbender on Fassbender action.

Despite Ridley Scott’s oft-expressed (not to mention eyeroll-inducing) creationist views, I didn’t actually mind the religious overtones (I thought those in Prometheus were way more ham-fisted). I appreciate that it (as with Prometheus) couldn’t just be another self-contained sci-fi action horror, but rather had to be [i]about[/i] something. Not sure about the implication that David’s “hobbies” are the ultimate consequence of atheism though…

My favourite moment - the landing craft sequence as it flew through the valleys and onto the water. Also felt very 'Poe Daemeron' though.
I still had hopes at this point of discovering a really interesting/savage/visually amazing landscape that would save the film, instead we got a bunch of inept scientists haplessly wandering off into oblivion.

Danny McBride as Tennessee

Sure you can pick multiple holes in it but I was able to just sit back and enjoy the spectacle without over-analyzing it, something I often struggle to do with most films these days.

Thats exactly what I wanted to do, whilst at the same time experience some of the classic Alien tension and maybe inferred claustrophobia, but I found the flaws so glaringly obvious that after 30mins I was instinctively picking out the holes.

I didn't get bored at any point

Just remembered, after the first couple of soldiers fall ill and the Alien on the loose in the landing craft - that painful exchange of:

''get back to the landing craft immediately, I need help!!''

- ''we're coming, don't worry, just a few hundreds meters strolling to go and we'll be there''

''get back now!! im about to die!!''

- ''nearly there love, just let me finish tying my shoelaces..Jeez''

Queue several similar interchanges. Landing craft then blows up.

*characters sprint to exploded craft*

I can't help but feel it was a missed opportunity, again.

The reason I think Alien/Aliens worked so well is that they were entirely different films with the same monsters. This was just a poor cover version mash-up of those 2 movies.

I would've much preferred to see a movie based on what happens to Shaw & David after the events of Prometheus, as David conducts his experiments on Shaw, looked like that could've been a really intense tight movie.

The last supper photo?

I missed that, what was it?

Just seen it. Was looking forward to it for ages and wanted to like it so much

It was rubbish

I can't believe the engineers are allegedly this super advanced race.
No defense system in place against their own biological weapons.
Not a bit of technology to be seen in their giant temple.
Dressed like hobos / wizards
Their giant temple / complex thing appeared to have no lighting.

One field of wheat that was either for them or David just loved Shreddies.

I wonder if that was simply a 'Sowerby Bridge' planet? Just some backwater hick town in engineer terms. The sequel should be engineers coming to visit space Halifax, seeing what robo-fassbender did and being seriously miffed.

A movie of angry engineers invading whatever planet it was that not Ripley and Kenny Powers were headed for and going apeshit would be a vast improvement. All out war between Humans, Aliens / David and Engineers. At least that could conceivably lead to the Space Jockey crash landing on LV-426.

I went to see it today and enjoyed it. I wasn't expecting much but i liked it. I can't help but think the crash, band wallop stuff is essentially there to appease the eye-candy people, the people with attention spans that can be measured by the hadron collider. The real story, the story about David's "work", was the real interest, and quite creepy.

The two bad bits that stood out were Tennessee and Alien-cam: It could really have done without either.

In a nutshell, worth going to see?
Like the Alien films but trailer looks like I've seen it all before.
Don't really do cinema very often...last one was Trainspotting 2 which I thought was really good.

No spoilers...good, bad or indifferent?

I'd suggest you go and make your own mind up.

There's a lot there I can forgive because I love the alien series.

But, covenent has the strong potential to mess up Prometheus even more and retrospectively make alien worse. In Prometheus when they enter the huge head/vases everywhere room there is a mural of a xenomorph on the wall, so how the hell can David have created it afterwards in a cave with his home chemistry set if in some form it already existed?

But, covenent has the strong potential to mess up Prometheus even more and retrospectively make alien worse. In Prometheus when they enter the huge head/vases everywhere room there is a mural of a xenomorph on the wall, so how the hell can David have created it afterwards in a cave with his home chemistry set if in some form it already existed?

As I understand it, that mural represents the result of mixing alien and human DNA (of course, humans share the same DNA as the engineers). Therefore, David wasn't "inventing" crossing alien with human DNA, he was trying to continue their work and perfect it. David is obviously trying to take it beyond being a human/alien hybrid and turn it into a new species.

No spoilers...good, bad or indifferent?

You're in the wrong place you want.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/alien-covenant

Sorry, just a further thought: At several points in Covenant did David refer to the weaknesses of humankind and their undeserved god-status (see the opening scene and his conversation with Walter). Therefore, he saw the need to wipe out the engineers as the human progenitors and engineer the xenomorphs himself to remove all the human faults. He believed he was trying to make Shaw better: as he said himself, humans die, he won't: see the references to Ozymandias (a sonnet about the "ravages of time") too. That also gave him a god complex.

Sorry, just a further thought: At several points in Covenant did David refer to the weaknesses of humankind and their undeserved god-status (see the opening scene and his conversation with Walter). Therefore, he saw the need to wipe out the engineers as the human progenitors and engineer the xenomorphs himself to remove all the human faults. He believed he was trying to make Shaw better: as he said himself, humans die, he won't: see the references to Ozymandias (a sonnet about the "ravages of time") too. That also gave him a god complex.

Yup, that's David's deal. So he'd have been much better served by just keeping schtum, awaiting rescue along with the others, then getting down to business once everyone was tucked up in bed aboard the Covenant. But yeah, there wouldn't have been much of a film without all his Norman Bates shit.

Yeah and the Godfather wouldn't have been any good without gangsters, and Jaws wouldn't have been any good without a shark.