Prometheus was definitely a disappointment, so I’ve put off watching Covenant because everyone always says it’s worse than Prometheus. I finally watched it tonight, and I thought it was a hell of a lot better. It’s actually a good Alien movie imo.
Spoilers beware:
I enjoyed the synthetic, and I think they did a good job with both of them. I liked most of the crew, especially the lead actress. That relieved smile at the end was too cute. The actual aliens were bad ass too. The fight with the two “kids” was crazy. It’s awesome to finally see aliens do crazy animal attacks. Especially loved the 360 tail attacks. The “it respected me” scene was cool too, that’s such a great idea. They were relentless with their attacks and they just kept coming back.
I know people harp on what’s Dr Shaw being killed between movies, but I think it works fine. Really shows you how evil David’s become. I could have done without the obvious twist at the end, but whatever. Movies gotta movie, I guess.
I don’t know what I’m missing. Do people dismiss the movie without seeing it or something?
Every person in these movies is a blistering idiot. Like, the levels of stupid on every single person in these expeditions is insane.
The original Alien didn’t require the entire cast to be complete morons, unfit to even operate as an adult in society, much less be mission-critical crew on a colonization mission.
If it hadn’t been for the android in the original Alien, they would have observed reasonable quarantine procedures and there wouldn’t really have been a problem.
That’s one of the main reasons I think these movies are bad. The writers either did not care enough or were too incompetent to write intelligent, believable, relatable characters that I actually grow to care about.
Prometheus at least explained the stupidity:
They explicitly state that the crew signed up for a 4 year cryo-sleep, to an unknown destination, completely blind as to where they are going or why.
These aren’t the best and brightest. That’s why you get a biologist going “Look! An unknown alien life form! I wonder if it wants to be friends!”
Everyone makes fun of the map guy getting lost, but the map guy isn’t making the maps, his drones make the map and feed the data back to the ship, he has no clue what the map looks like.
Why wouldn’t they send the best and brightest? Weyland is infinitely rich and has a personal stake in the success of the mission.
Because they are intentionally not telling people where they’re going or what they’re doing with a 4 year cryo-sleep.
“Hey, I’m going to take you out of your life for a minimum of 8 years, I can’t tell you what or why, just trust me bro.”
Yup, everyone loves a good old-fashioned idiot plot.
I think the big beef with it is that they abandoned the plot thread left hanging from Prometheus.
“Let’s steal a ship and go find the Engineers home world!”
Well that sounds awesome!
“Yeah, fuck it, she died in a crash, let’s re-do the plot from Alien again…”
I really didn’t like how they found an engineer world, but it was just one agrarian city that was overrun and wiped out in a flashback. No discovery, no attempt to understand them, nothing but victims to create a spooky atmosphere.
David wanted to experiment and perfect his genetic monsters, but the species that created the xenomorphs in the first place? The ones who’s genetic material seeded life on all planets with humanoids? Fuck 'em, unleash the bats.
And then where did the bats go? After they killed all the animals and bugs on the planet? I suppose they just died, leaving David alone with some eggs, hoping another colony ship would just show up in the middle of uncharted space.
It was better than Prometheus, but it was still a poorly conceived movie. It was better than Alien 3, but worse than Alien Resurrection. I haven’t seen Romulus yet, but I hear it’s the best one since Aliens.
I’ve only seen them both once. Though after seeing Romulus, I’m going to go back and watch all the movies again. I’m a pretty big fan of the rest of the movies to varying degrees. My thoughts were that outside of the Alien universe they could be OK scifi movies. But as part of the Alien lore, I felt they were poorly told, felt rushed, and didn’t feel consistent with the others. Having the xenomorphs designed felt like a cheap shot. The alien in the first one was scary as hell because it evolved as a perfect hunter. All it did was eat and breed, and neither of those things were less than nightmarish. It felt like Scott was trying to tell a bigger story than the series needed and really got away from O’Bannon’s vision (the same can be said about 3 and 4. I’d still argue that they felt like the same universe though)
Like I say though, I’ve only seen them once, and it’s been a while.
Prometheus clearly wasn’t intended to be an Alien film, and the studio told Scott to make it one or the film wouldn’t get made.
Even leading up to its release, Scott was reluctant to call it an “Alien” movie, opting to say it and “Alien” were very loosely related, while the studio was all-in calling it an “Alien” prequel.
I enjoyed both movies. Prometheus wasn’t perfect but it keeps coming back to my mind over the years. The really far shot of the ship flying through the atmosphere. The little scanner drones. The intro with the sacrifice. And the Wayland and David story are interesting, and much more. It just has some misses here and there and that’s unfortunate but it definitely doesn’t make it bad.
You blow in the hole, I’ll do the fingering.
Michael Fassbender as Walter in Alien: Covenant
Yes, with such amazing dialogue. Who could not take this movie seriously?