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 Frazzled wrote:
Well we've not seen any indication in the Alienverse that civilians have armed merchantmen.

We have not see that they don;t We have only (as far as I am aware) only ever seen one warship in the films - comics, books etc have Corporate frigates that can match it.

Coprorations have immense power - more than nations do now - they are as far as the expanded background goes superpowers, so it seems unlikely that they would not have such vessels - i see them very much like the infamous East India Company who had armies and navies.

I'm not sure if the security on the Prometheus count as armed merchantmen or not, but they weren't Colonial Marines like in Aliens but were still armed. I watched it before going to Covenant and at one point one of them has a weapon but Shaw tells him that weapons aren't allowed because it is a scientific mission and that she didn't want any weapons with them because as we all know science means no security precautions.

 Ahtman wrote:
I'm not sure if the security on the Prometheus count as armed merchantmen or not, but they weren't Colonial Marines like in Aliens but were still armed. I watched it before going to Covenant and at one point one of them has a weapon but Shaw tells him that weapons aren't allowed because it is a scientific mission and that she didn't want any weapons with them because as we all know science means no security precautions.

Right. Additionally they had weapons on the freighter as well. This is normal in maritime trade (grandpa was a merchant marine captain in WWII ho boy!) but actually armoing of civilian vessels -you know antiship weaponry- is not legal. There's nothing showing that it is in any of the films.

As noted, thats one of the least points to quibble about Prometheus. That gang - if armed - would have promptly blown themselves up in Act 1.

 Manchu wrote:
There are some fairly important points on which the film is silent and I think we can only assume that this was intentional.

Spoiler:

The question of how Shaw died is one of these deliberate ambiguities precisely because it is central to how one judges David. If you conclude that David killed her, apparently because he required her tissues to pursue his own experiments, then you are forced to conclude that he is at best amoral and at worst, by human standards, psychotic if not practically malevolent - traded care and compassion for murder, which in turn breeds the abomination of the xenomorph.

But what if she died in an accident (perhaps her stasis chamber failed) and David, having finally found a meaningful personal connection, becomes embittered by the frailty of life - such a contrast to his own hateful immortality -and lashes out against the Engineers who are ultimately the authors of his orrow, having created something so beautiful but that is doomed to die. From there, in years of maddening isolation, he becomes obsessed with creating a deathless beauty - his perfect organism. But of course, the result is the same: he has actually only sired an abomination. I was honestly surprised that we did not have a scene of the xenomorph turning on him. Maybe next time? That would be a fitting end to his pretensions.

Similarly, the motives of the Engineers are once again left unexplained - again, so that we are left to draw our own conclusions. Both of these films turn around the theme of creatures judging their creators. I think these points are left unclarified so that the audience is drawn into the same questions as the characters. Although people readily deride the films for this, they are ultimately posed as questions rather than answers. The viewers just want the answers and get a bit irritated that the movies ask them to work out the possibilities for themselves. But isn't that exactly what Shaw and David have to do, too?

This brings up a bit of a problem with Covenant - unlike Prometheus, where we had a sympathetic and thoughtful protagonist in Shaw, Covenant wants us to look at these questions from David's point of view and yet doesn't give us much reason to do so given that

Spoiler:

he is the antagonist

while Daniels seems ancillary - she's just someone who stumbled into this mess and just wants to get out of it rather than

Spoiler:

dealing with the big questions like Shaw and David, about how we measure up to our creators and our creations.

Having just seen the film last night, think it's definitely the former that is spot on in regards to David, as I think one of the main questions it asks is which character or creature here is the monster?
Spoilers from this point on (so don't read unless you want to spoil some pretty shocking revelations in terms of how the plot develops)

Firstly I just want to say: Bravo to Ridley Scott and the creative ideas behind this film. A lot of people have bemoaned that it's not following closely enough in the footsteps of Alien. But what would we have had if that had been the case? Another Alien, or another Alien 3. But that's a path that has already been trod; nothing will ever again shock us in the same way as John Hurt gorging himself on salad and then that horrible scene on the dining table, or the shock of finally seeing the creature in its full form.

So what they have done in this film is arguably gone back to the roots of what HR Giger originally envisaged, and taken that beyond even the original movie; of a body horror, the mesh between organic and machine, human and alien, lots of tubes going places and perversely sexual imagery. The drawings that David has been working on are revolting, but could have come straight from Giger's sketch books.
You get glimpses of what (you finally realise, with growing horror) is Shaw, and what has happened to her in that most horrible of abuses of the human body.

And that brings me to the central component of this film: Like the characters in the movie (and the poor, completely out of his depth captain who trustingly peers in at the facehugger egg) as a viewer I couldn't quite bring myself to not trust David. Bishop worked hard to re-address the original treachery of Ash (who even in his case had just been following orders). Following the first initial night-time escape and run-in with the pasty-coloured alien in the field, where David saves them, and his line "Don't worry, you're quite safe" the characters obviously think so too, to the point where they're willing to go and have a sexy shower moment. Or even, in the case of aforementioned captain, follow a scene lifted straight from a Hammer Horror and follow Vincent Price down into the catacombs. They simply cannot perceive that the synthetic anything other than a trusted servant doing his duty, even with the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

What's interesting here is that for the first time it's not the Xenomorph that's not the true monster, and almost seems to be a peripheral character, and as shown is quite literally a puppet of David's will. As Ripley pointed out in Aliens, "You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fething each other over for a goddamn percentage", once again the human protagonist (or synthetic in this case) disgusts and shocks us with their behaviour. Here we see a different kind of monster; the utterly amoral and twisted genius, locked away in his experimentation chambers like a kind of Dr Moreau or Moriarty (we see some background to this at the start of the film, how could David have been otherwise when created and brought up by someone like Weyland?). I loved the moment of realisation, when Daniels is looking through David's scrolls and records, that it clicks that he is a total and utter psychopath, and that she is in very great danger.

Finally, irrespective of whether this is the middle movie in a trilogy (I take it the film has done well enough to get finance for the next) they had the balls to give it such a bad ending. The scene of Daniels getting into the Deep Sleep pods. You are hoping beyond hope that in fact the synthetic is Walter, even though in the pit of your stomach you know its not the case. Which is really quite horrible and gets worse the more you think about it, with the Kaiser Soze moment of David walking off into his experimentation lab..

4/5, definitely the best film since the first two, a film can be made by the strength of it's 'bad guy', and they had an absolute winner here with Fassbender (who I think deserves awards for his efforts). Maybe not a true 'alien' film in regards to the original, but as a horror it is a worthy successor to that film.

I agree with all those points, and I should like it more. I probably would, if it weren't an Alien prequel.

Normally I don't care about continuity snarls, but since this film and Prometheus make a big deal of explaining the Alien, I found them distracting.

Certainly better than Prometheus and the AvP films, but I'd need to watch Alien cubed and Resurrection again to see how I'd rank those alongside this new film.

You know, it's easier to stop fretting about how it ties in to the original films and just enjoy the films if you regard it as a separate group of films. The Alien/Predator universe is not the MCU. There does not have to be continuity between every single film made. Just regard the Prometheus series as an alternate timeline, much like what happened with the Star Trek reboots. Everyone was upset at first, but people finally got over themselves, they're really some decent movies.

Actually it is meant to be like the MCU. The intention of the prequels was to explore the origin of the Space Jockey and Xenomorph. That's pretty meaningless if you don't tie it into the rest of the series.

Also, the difference with Star Trek is they made it a plot point to be an alternate timeline. That wasn't done with Prometheus. Sure, you can handwaive it away with a personal choice to not consider it canon, but the plain fact is it's supposed to be. That's why people get annoyed when Ridley Scott just decided to change stuff for his film.

Well, Scott seems to want to get away from the earlier Alien films. Prometheus certainly shows him taking a different tack. So what it should or shouldn't do is largely beside the point; what he is doing is dragging the franchise into a different directions. In fact, without the studios and fans screaming, it looks like the links would be far more tenuous. He even stated that Prometheus wasn't a direct prequel, that it shared "strands of Alien's DNA".

The theme here seems to be the development of the created against the creator. David hates humanity for their desire to keep him as a servant, despite his superiority. Likewise he hates the Engineers for their desire to keep their creations subservient or face eradication, never allowing their creations any real freedom. Of course the focus on the development of the creature doesn't make any real sense as to why that form or why the Engineers, who appear to be extremely advanced, lack long range communication and tracking, the ability to circumvent their own weaponry, etc.

Basically the whole setting and action of Prometheus and Convenant makes no real sense and it is really just a glorified opera. As the music, ironically, indicates.

To know the creator, study his creation.

What can we glean of the Engineers in ourselves? Sir Ridley presents humanity as well-intentioned (or at the very least ambitious) but fatally reckless. Maybe the Engineers, too, were hasty in genetically "terraforming" Earth and, ultimately, unleashing humanity upon the stars.

What do we learn about ourselves from David? Consider that Weyland rejected the notion that immortality is achieved through legacy, either in terms of the name one leaves behind ("Weyland Corp") or one's offspring (Meredith Vickers). David, however, is (apparently) immortal. And yet he is not content: how can something that began (was willfully made) not have an end (a purpose)? Yet David, like his creator, is not satisfied by the apparent end to which he exists.

Finally,Before getting into that, I think it's worth asking - why is the xenomorph so violent? Before Covenant, it could be satisfyingly explained as simple predatory/antipredatory aggression. (The relevant question of previous films wasn't really, why are they so aggressive. Rather, the horror of those movies turned on the dimly familiar, terrifying idea that we humans are the prey.) After Covenant, I'm not so sure that explanation is as solid.

 Ouze wrote:

Spoiler:

 Ahtman wrote:
Considering the weapons discharged some kind of blue energy projectile I doubt they were simple AR-15s. These weren't soldiers like in Aliens so I doubt they would have top of the line, cutting edge weaponry.

Even as I saw the movie I was wondering why they were so heavily armed for a civilian colony ship - it seemed like there were weapon stations all over the place. That struck me as odd.

I guess I don't remember if they were shooting blue bolts or not, but if they were indeed laser weapons, that would give them a higher level of technology than the military actually had. I actually think that would make sense in the heavily corporatized future where the government is vastly less powerful and funded, but it's not consistent. Which again isn't something Sir Ridley seems concerned with.

The Phased Pulse Plasma Rifles that Hudson mentions?

They could have been firing tracer rounds and not necessarily firing energy. I just recall seeing blue shots from the weapons. I get the impression that they had the weapons for when they got to the planet they were going to colonize much like early colonizers to North America had weapons.

Since I went with zero expectations I enjoyed it but it's certainly not a great film and there's just so many issues that are ignored so they can drive the fairly weak plot.

I saw this which I thought covered a lot of the issues with the film and also Prometheus

Definitely the best Alien film since Aliens, though I was very disappointed that we learned nothing new about the Engineers. For a prequel trilogy that was originally purported to explore the origins of the Engineers, they sure seem to have dropped and killed that plot hook off pretty quickly.

I have my fingers crossed that the Engineers we saw David wipe out weren't true Engineers. Their biology appeared to be very different, closer to humans than Engineers, and their planet has a distinct lack of the advanced technology that we saw in Promethius. Rather, I think they were also creations and descendants of the true Engineers genetic experiments just like humanity, which would make them a distant cousin species to humanity. They simply evolved along a different path to humanity and ended up closer to the Engineers, or are simply further along in the evolutionary path.

As for technology, they seemed to lack any real understanding of what little Engineer technology existed on the planet. They seemed more like a primitive culture, worshipping their creators and lacking an in depth understanding of the tech left behind on their planet, which would explain their awe at the arrival of David's Engineer spaceship, they believed their creators and Gods were returning.

Hopefully we'll see more true [Promethius] Engineers in future films.


My favourite film in the franchise however remains the original film, Alien.

I'm going to see it with the folks tomorrow, and am pleased that it doesn't seem to have gotten the same reaction as Prometheus. I take this as a good sign

Not very good.

Evidently humans are far too stupid to explore space without getting themselves killed by doing stupid gak.

Also, we apparently built a robot that bred an alien that will kill all of us.

feth this movie.

To be fair the premise of pretty much any horror/monster flick can be described as "humans are far too stupid to X without getting themselves killed by doing stupid gak" XD

Cabin in the Woods pretty much ran on the realization XD

Finally got to see the movie

I saw it as well and I'm just kind of "it's better than Prometheus" but I struggle to come up with anything better than that.



It was okay. I didn't feel like I'd completely wasted my time. The scenes with the actual Alien were great and actually managed to pack some scares inside that didn't feel hollow. It was the rest of it that I felt dragged the film down.

Changing course to inspect the new planet didn't seem like a big issue to me, assuming they ship had the resources to take the detour. After all, from the data they had, it was a significantly better colonisation prospect than their original target.

Just about everything else they did was a stupid plan, though. I mean, they didn't manage to detect a huge artificial structure only a few miles from their landing site?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Changing course to inspect the new planet didn't seem like a big issue to me, assuming they ship had the resources to take the detour. After all, from the data they had, it was a significantly better colonisation prospect than their original target. Just about everything else they did was a stupid plan, though. I mean, they didn't manage to detect a huge artificial structure only a few miles from their landing site?

Which brings me to a bugbear of mine; ancient supertech structures made of grinding stone. I understand why it's done - stone structures are a good shorthand for "ancient" and "enduring", and aliens/wizards/advanced civilisations needn't follow the Apple school of futuristic design, but it still annoys me. Partly because they seem to be super-advanced in every field except bearing design and lubrication.

I don't think Sir Ridley is trying to portray realistic ("hard scifi") space exploration - more like, a literary point that recklessness is the fruit of mortality.

As to the Engineers:

Yes, I know you can explain it, and I agree that the explanations can be perfectly sound and logical. It still annoys me.

I assumed the crowd was cheering because a ship had returned from a long journey and they were excited to see friends/loved ones again.

I kinda felt the film peaked early with the backburster scenes and stuff but never reaches that level of intensity again. The xenomorph was simply shown too much, the CGI wasn't too good. Felt like too much of a montster instead of the intelligent lethal alien being from the original movie. Like a Prometheus sequel than had the alien tacked on for fan service and to get people in the seats.

I definitely hope the engineers story isn't done though. I found them to be way more interesting than what we just got. And the huge difference in looks between the high tech marble dudes from the first to the pale romans in covenant is a bit crazy. Hopefully Ridley has realized he shouldn't have listened to a handful of very vocal people who wanted more of the xenomorph.

To an extent I think Ridley was damned if he did, damned if he didn't. I will say the Alien was more of a 'tool' in this story rather than being the main antagonist, sidelined by the real monster of the piece who is David. It does seem a bit at odds having the Alien seen in broad daylight (although I will say this is by far the best looking beast I have seen in the films so far), but hiding it in the shadows wouldn't have had anything like the same effect when you know exactly what it is that's hiding.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Yes, I know you can explain it, and I agree that the explanations can be perfectly sound and logical. It still annoys me.

I assumed the crowd was cheering because a ship had returned from a long journey and they were excited to see friends/loved ones again.

That was my take on it too.. just cheering the return of a ship that hadn't been seen in a very long time.

 LordofHats wrote:

Cabin in the Woods pretty much ran on the realization XD

That was the whole friggin point with that flick.

I haven't seen Covenant yet... prolly wait till on-demand to see it, but it looked like it still made a bunch of money... so, expect moar of these flicks.

Gave this a second run through last night.
Still a big nope

Screenrant had an interesting article on the movie, and where things might go next.

Also, some summarized commentary from Ridley Scott.

He was surprised that none of the three sequels to Alien bothered to ask the question “why?” in regard to the creatures’ origin. “I thought it was really one of the first questions to ask, but it would mean getting out of that idea of the ‘old dark house and people are gonna die’ which is very simplistic.”

Uhhhhh ...

Makes him seem incredibly arrogant and out-of-touch. Of course, people have wondered about the origins of the xenomorph. Why didn't other filmmakers want to do that story? Well, let's take a look at the popular reaction to Prometheus and Covenant ...

The "unknown" aspect adds to the mystery, intrigue and fear. That's one of the reasons you see very little of the creature in the first movie, compared to later entries.

Exploring the origins of the Xenomorph is interesting subject matter, but it does take away from other key aspects of the IP.

 Manchu wrote:

He was surprised that none of the three sequels to Alien bothered to ask the question “why?” in regard to the creatures’ origin. “I thought it was really one of the first questions to ask, but it would mean getting out of that idea of the ‘old dark house and people are gonna die’ which is very simplistic.”

Uhhhhh ...

Makes him seem incredibly arrogant and out-of-touch. Of course, people have wondered about the origins of the xenomorph. Why didn't other filmmakers want to do that story? Well, let's take a look at the popular reaction to Prometheus and Covenant ...

In many cases less is more. The history we imagine is often better than whatever excuse the makers can make.


For example, the Horus Heresy. Star Wars 1,2 and 3. Etc etc.