Alien Covenant

[Q99]

I'm making this thread even though I haven't seen it because I figure someone's got to make it and I wonder if any of you have seen it?

[Sea Skimmer]

Nope. Did just see this Rick and Morty tie in though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnRHBLmCK0o

[Q99]

Nice!

[NecronLord]

Prometheus II: C-, it's better than Prometheus, but the same can be said for genital waxing. I will now spoil the plot massively:
Spoiler

The crew are massively incompetent, and all get fucked up due to a series of terribly incompetent mistakes.

1. On receiving a signal from an alien world with a human voice in it, they turn their colony ship around to investigate. I'll let this one slide for the most part, as no one wants to go into cryo-sleep again after an accident, which is fair enough.
2. On landing on an alien world with a breathable atmosphere no one takes any NBC gear, and go hiking in the woods without any skin barriers at all. They get infected with a pathogen and two of them die from sudden explosive alien-formation.
3. They trust David, the android from Prometheus.
4. They split up while aware that there are dangerous predatory alien hominids out to kill them. For bathing purposes.
5. David, obvious murder-bot, has just rejoiced in the murder of one of the crew. Visibly. And protested when the captain shot a Neomorph that tore a human's head off. The captain has a rifle pointed at him, but lets the obvious murder-bot persuade him to come down to the basement and look into a big egg-thing that is obviously alive. You know what happens next.

It's unintentionally funny, because I couldn't take these people's suffering seriously.

The Black Goo works as advertised, and forms an aerosolized weapon that infests anything meaty, including a big crowd of engineers on their homeworld. It persists in the environment in protective spores that infest other animals later. It gestates 'Neomorphs' rather then the familiar aliens.



Neomorphs are contracted by aerial exposure to the crypto-nanotech weapon, and in high densities it can spawn them out of a host in half a minute; exposure to latent black goo in the spores takes something on the order of an hour to gestate an immature neomorph. They are only one form that is spawned, David's lab shows many more that he's seen, both corpses and illustrations; they all have a short lifespan, with all the neomorphs from the original attack being dead ten years later.

David has deployed the bioweapon on the engineer planet, and has been living there in their ruins for ten years, during which time he has experimented and cultured his own personal strain of monsters; the familiar xenomorphs. Which I like, because they never made sense as a biological weapon despite Ridley Scott claiming that loudly, at least as the product of a madbot their failings can be explained as 'he's mad.' Certainly a xenomorph infestation is less dangerous than a neomorph attack.

He's also an insane rape-bot, and it's strongly implied he raped and tortured Elizabeth Shaw from Prometheus to death, which is the only genuinely creepy part of the movie; the Neomorphs are cute and seeing baby neomorphs fuck up humans who are too dumb to live just amuses me.

Fassbender's David is the least pleasant thing in the Alien Movies to date - and the only consolation we get in this movie is that in some future date the space jockey from Alien may meet and hopefully kill him in order to get that hold full of eggs, because he wins in this movie, and escapes with samples of his creation.

Xenomorphs grow up even quicker than usual, there's a lot of biotech magic.

When watching Alien, I always had the impression that the crew were ordinary. After Prometheus and Covenant, I now appreciate that the crew of the Nostromo are the most professional and competent mofos in space.

Best line: "Now you hold it, and I'll do the fingering."

[Lost Soal]

I quite enjoyed it although it annoys me that they kept going with the obvious.
Spoiler

Lets make it ambiguous whether Walter or David won the f..
David won. We know he did.
The gestation and implantation periods have been getting shorter for years

[Tandrax218]

So basically it's a retard fest all over again just like in Prometheus ?

Well at least i wont go to the cinema and spend my c-bills on this thing.

[Adam Reynolds]

Other than The Expanse(which is why I started getting recommended the rest of the similar videos), anything Adam Savage has promoted as part of his webseries this year has been terrible. He previously did a tour of Ghost in the Shell and has now done this, and both times I was impressed by what we saw with their work, only to find that the final product was complete crap.

It really goes to show the tragedy of bad writing in movies like this. For all the work dedicated artists put into things like set design and effects shots, they are so often undercut by lousy scripts. It is actually leading to a state in which trailers are better than movies most of the time.

[Tribble]

So... why did David do what he did?
And why did the Engineers create humans, leave notes on Earth on how to get to their military base, then change their mind and apparently try to destroy them?

[Tandrax218]

I don't know if anyone else has spotted this trend on other forums and boards, but the moment you ask these questions:

So... why did David do what he did?
And why did the Engineers create humans, leave notes on Earth on how to get to their military base, then change their mind and apparently try to destroy them?

you are assaulted for not being a fan boy, nad not understanding the "grandeur and ingeniousness" of Prometheus, this crap movie and ridley scott.

[Q99]

I don't know if anyone else has spotted this trend on other forums and boards, but the moment you ask these questions:

So... why did David do what he did?
And why did the Engineers create humans, leave notes on Earth on how to get to their military base, then change their mind and apparently try to destroy them?

you are assaulted for not being a fan boy, nad not understanding the "grandeur and ingeniousness" of Prometheus, this crap movie and ridley scott.

Yeeeea, no-one on the other forums I'm on is that impressed. I mean, not even close, we only have a few people who admit to liking Prometheus at all, and not much more impressed with this one.

One thing I'll note is the origin of xenomorphs being made by David's experimentation does, ironically, make them less 'alien'.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Spoiler

He's also an insane rape-bot, and it's strongly implied he raped and tortured Elizabeth Shaw from Prometheus to death, which is the only genuinely creepy part of the movie;

Sorry can't get my spoiler tag to work


Raped and tortured her to death?? Not sure where you got the rape thing from.

Torture is an interesting word. Looks like he performed genetic / medical experiments on her and performed a vivisection - but I don't think it was to "torture" her. I don't think David gets pleasure out of her death - just that she was a means to an end.

[PREDATOR490]

I decided to skip watching this film until I see some credible indication it would be worth it. The trailers and teasers made me firmly believe the story was going to be shit and thanks to the spoilers provided. I can safely say I fully intend to skip this film both because it is a blight on the alien franchise and no continuation from Prometheus is going to dig out the shit show tangent they went with.
Spoiler

Turning David into a rape-bot of the Prometheus's main character. I fully expected him to fuck her over but Jesus Christ...

So... crazy Rape-Bot makes the Xenomorphs that are sexual rapish monsters. Uhhh, I guess that makes sense over them being bio-weapons but it does not make it any less bitter to have xenomorphs forever tied to this worthless addition to the franchise.

[NecronLord]

Prometheus, did you leave the cinema for some reason?
Spoiler

David says " same thing I'm going to do to you" and then mounts and practically sticks his tongue down Daniels' throat. Earlier on he says he 'loved' her.

Are you immune to subtext?

And if you think human vivisection does not rate as torture, I direct you to the Nuremburg trials.

[PREDATOR490]

I said it before, it is amusing that these films end up making the Predator cross over films look both coherent and more fun.
Aliens came away from that and went into a brand new realm of fucking insanity while Predators got a decent addition to their franchise.

I have seen Youtube and read bunches of explanations about Prometheus and I still cannot fathom what the hell was going on or why. Turning a franchise that was essentially a monster horror movie into some sort of 'deep' sci-fi drama is a really silly thing to do. I fully expect the same individuals that preach that Prometheus is just awesome and arrogantly belittle anyone that disagrees because they do not get the deep content.

At this point, I do not think this franchise is going to recover until they drop this prequel bullshit and accelerate back to the Colonial Marines. Fuck it, throw in the Predators and the Engineers if they really want and turn it into Alien Space Wars.

[Q99]

I understand what was happening in Prometheus- or at least, have read explanations that sound very solid to me- I'm just quite unimpressed with them.

At this point, I do not think this franchise is going to recover until they drop this prequel bullshit and accelerate back to the Colonial Marines. Fuck it, throw in the Predators and the Engineers if they really want and turn it into Alien Space Wars.

My solution is to go full alt-continuity.

Takes place after Aliens. Stars Newt. Naturally occurring Xenomorphs are discovered- as well as, perhaps, other aliens (just because they're the *star* aliens doesn't mean it has to be all xenomorphs all the time).

[NecronLord]

I should also mention that some of the action scenes come off as pratfalls, for instance multiple times people slip and fall on blood and viscera, which they probably intend to be horrible but because I found all of the characters contemptible, just made me laugh heartily.

[Q99]

I should also mention that some of the action scenes come off as pratfalls, for instance multiple times people slip and fall on blood and viscera, which they probably intend to be horrible but because I found all of the characters contemptible, just made me laugh heartily.

It's weird they're going this route with the characters considering *most* of the casts of 1 and 2 and even 3 were likable.

Also is it weird that the random crew of an ore ship keeps coming across as more competent than the 'professionals' in the last two movies?

[Shroom Man 777]

How did David get a new body?

[NecronLord]

Thusly!
Spoiler

[Gandalf]

I should also mention that some of the action scenes come off as pratfalls, for instance multiple times people slip and fall on blood and viscera, which they probably intend to be horrible but because I found all of the characters contemptible, just made me laugh heartily.

It's weird they're going this route with the characters considering *most* of the casts of 1 and 2 and even 3 were likable.

Also is it weird that the random crew of an ore ship keeps coming across as more competent than the 'professionals' in the last two movies?

Perhaps in one or two films it will be revealed that the crew of the Nostromo were a genetically engineered team of xenomorph hunters, with knowledge of their abilities suppressed?

[NecronLord]

I think it more likely that the company put something in the water or air of the Prometheus and Covenant to impair reasoning.

[K. A. Pital]

Intellectual capabilities of future humans are degrading.

It is a hint from the genius Ridley - Idiocracy is coming, and this is Idiocracy in space, with aliens.

[wautd]

I saw it last weekend. It was... OK. Not good but not bad either. Certainly the most gory one of the franchise though (which I'm not a fan of).

Still waiting for an Alien movie that brings back the damn pulse rifle. The single most coolest gun in the whole franchise any sci-fi movie ever made

[Joun_Lord]

Still waiting for an Alien movie that brings back the damn pulse rifle. The single most coolest gun in the whole franchise any sci-fi movie ever made

Well it is a dressed up Tommy Gun with a cut down Remington 870 underneath, both fantastic guns IRL so its no wonder the Pulse Rifle itself is kickass. Plus that sound, truly awesome.

On topic, David doing what he did really makes the Xenos far less cool then they used to be. They used to be somewhat mysterious, their origins too. Were they weapons of war or something being sent to be disposed of? Were they made or naturally occurring? What was their relationship with the Space Jockeys?

But we got the answer and it sucks, same with the answer of who the Space Jockeys were. Not some completely alien creature or eldritch abomination, nah just a bunch of Shaq sized pale Mark Strong looking humans, thats fucking it.

As an aside, what the frak is up with David's obsession with the xenos? I kinda assumed in Prometheus him pretty much date raping that sterile dude was part of some plot to study the effects of the red matter....I mean macguffin....I mean black goo for Weyland. Pretty much all the synths with an obession with the xenos have done so for a reason. Like Ash having a hardon for them, calling them a perfect organism because I guess in his robit brain the perfect organism is a living gimp suit rape machine, was done because the company ordered him. David, I dunno, maybe I'm forgetting some or missed some subtext.

Another aside, Promi and Covenant really confirm what some here said I think after Prometheus came out, that Ridley Scott is living in the shadows of Alien and Aliens but seeming to not understand what made them work. Alien was an amazing science fiction horror movie with an ensemble cast of likable believable characters that you felt for when they died. Normal people thrust in an impossible situation, reacting pretty intelligently and fighting tooth and nail to survive. Aliens was a actiony romp with probably the greatest badass female lead ever, a great cast of supporting characters, and again believable characters you actually didn't want to die, even the green Lt Gorman you kinda grew attached to. Considered by some to be one of the most realistic portrayals of soldiers in sci-fi and cinema in general, just normal people trying to do their job.

Noe of the followup movies managed to do the series right. Aliens 3 had a decent cast playing okay characters who seemed atleast moderately intelligent but had no suspense, no real action, and was maligned by interference. Alien Resurrection has a incredibly bland cast of characters (despite Ron Perlman being there) who were pretty much total idiot cardboard cutouts and the action and suspense was crap. AvP had decent-ish characters that showed some....some intelligence but bland action, no horror. AvP2 had gore and rape that seemed to only exist to shock people like forcing Xeno embryos down pregnant women's throats to eat their unborn babies and a kid with a chestburster.

Ridley got the reigns back, seemed to want to do his series justice and.....more of the same. Prometheus was a freaking mess with scarcely a likeable character, most of the cast seemed to only exist to pad the body count, everyone was idiots, and the plot was nonsensical. There was no suspense, the action was crap, and they wasted the talents of so goddamn many good actors. And didn't exactly add anything positive to the mythos of the Alien universe.

Covenant seems to be more of the same with the added benefit of tons more rape and the shitting on the fans of Prometheus who wanted to see how Shaws story continued. Well now they know, with genocide and rape. Wooo, bet those fans feel lucky.

I have my problems with Neill Blomkamp, like the fact he seems to make the same movie over and over and also Die Antwerp ruining an otherwise decent movie, but I so goddamn wish it was his Aliens sequel being made instead of this even if it would somehow involve some graffiti covered urban wasteland and something to do with class divide and racism.

[Q99]

Intellectual capabilities of future humans are degrading.

It is a hint from the genius Ridley - Idiocracy is coming, and this is Idiocracy in space, with aliens.

Maybe the reason all the corporate people in the other movies are so willing to participate in get-the-xenomorph plan that gets them killed is they're a product of this negative eugenics programs whereas space haulers and prisoners and space marines are largely outside of it.