Alien Covenant

[Q99]

I'm going to agree that the problem is Ridley Scott trying to shoehorn his project into the franchise.

While the crew from Promie is still dumb regardless, at least it wouldn't be inviting comparison with all the direct references (which are unsatisfying from an Alien mythos pov but in an independent film wouldn't have draw so much flak). And Covenant taking the tack of plugging David even harder and deeper into the alien mythos, kinda showing that Ridley didn't really get the complaints/that it wasn't just about amount of xenomorph screentime.

Android: Prometheus and Android: Covenant work much better as their own separate thing.

[tezunegari]

The crew all basically ended dying because of the panicking cowardice of one woman who locks up a brave woman with a xenomorph.

I disagree. The crew died because Faris choose to get a gun, open the door and shoot the alien in a misguide attempt to save the scientist.
She got her ankle bruised/broken and kept shooting at the alien in the lander and hitting what I assume were fuel tanks.

Faris actually acted intelligent at the beginning, only going into blind panic after the alien escaped the locked door by headbutting the small window.


The scene as I remember it:
The guard vomited blood over the scientist outside the lander and she minimized the contact to the infected.
In the medbay the first thing she does is getting fucking medical gloves and telling the scientist to do so as well.
The scientist responded with "I'm already covered in his vomit."
At this point the scientist admits she might already have the same infection as the guard.
Faris removes the guards jacket and sees tumorous growths.
She then leaves to get the captain with the other infected.
At this point she locks the door.
She calls the Captain to get him to move faster.
And yes, at this point she is scared bordering on panicking but she is still functioning.
She then watches the spine bursting and runs to get a gun and inform the captain about the situation.

The only stupid decision she made was to enter the medbay before the rest of the crew came back.

She slipped on the blood, missed her perfect shot at the alien.
On her way out the closing door caught her ankle and at least bruised it.
The Neomorph then escaped through the viewing window in the door.
Both got in to the cargo bay of the lander and she kept shooting at it.
At some point she hit something not meant to be hit and the lander exploded.

---

I heard a rumor that there was a scene written where David found a fossilized facehugger egg on Paradise. All his work would have been the attempt to recreate the life inside the egg. The scene was unfortunatelly never filmed.

[Iroscato]

I saw it the other night with my brother. We're both pretty huge Alien fans, and we both agreed it was a highly disappointing mess of a film. Aimless, painfully predictable, dumb-as-shit characters, poorly structured, and completely failed to recapture the spark that made the first two movies so great.

Just...can they stop making these films now? Please?

[Gandalf]

Just...can they stop making these films now? Please?

Why stop? They're still making money. Fanboys are still going to see it despite any reviews, so they may as well milk the audience.

[Terralthra]

Aliens - a group of soldiers investigate a fallen colony. They have been deliberately outfitted with non-mission appropriate weaponry due to a bizarre design feature in the colonial base (a nuclear power plant in the ceiling instead of basement). Three humans plus a synthetic survive (but not for long due to the controversial sequel)

The nuclear plant was in the basement. Hudson finds all the PDCs in "sublevel C", the third level below ground, under the south tower. Presumably, the Queen wanted a hive near heat, which a terraforming nuclear reactor would definitely be putting out on that planet.

[Q99]

Why stop? They're still making money. Fanboys are still going to see it despite any reviews, so they may as well milk the audience.

I'd rather there be more AvP movies.

[Lord Insanity]

Why stop? They're still making money. Fanboys are still going to see it despite any reviews, so they may as well milk the audience.

I'd rather there be more AvP movies.

I would have liked a real AvP movie my self. One that like the video game and comics is set in the Aliens time frame with space marines as the human representation.

Of course the AvP we actually got still had a way better orgin story for the xenomorphs than Prometheus. Seeded across the galaxy by predators as the perfect hunting prey makes way more sense that Ridley Scott's latest drivel. That he tried to effectively over-write the AvP movies with Prometheus and Covenant is just... About the only good thing I can think of is that it makes Alien Resurrection's ending less stupid.

[Q99]

I would have liked a real AvP movie my self. One that like the video game and comics is set in the Aliens time frame with space marines as the human representation.

Of course the AvP we actually got still had a way better orgin story for the xenomorphs than Prometheus. Seeded across the galaxy by predators as the perfect hunting prey makes way more sense that Ridley Scott's latest drivel. That he tried to effectively over-write the AvP movies with Prometheus and Covenant is just... About the only good thing I can think of is that it makes Alien Resurrection's ending less stupid.

Yes, I would totally dig a Colonial Marines era AvP, that's when it'd be at it's best.

[madd0ct0r]

I really really liked both Prometheus and Covenant. You can all go swivel

[The Grim Squeaker]

That's what I really liked about Alien. It's one of the few horror movies where the victims died due incomplete knowledge about the threat they were facing combined with active sabotage rather than their own stupidity. The Nostromo crew acted pretty much as well as could be expected given the circumstances, whereas this crew may as well have had "Too Dumb to Live!" signs stapled to their foreheads.

Which frankly is so much scarier than normal horror movies.

You can not make any mistake or make only perfectly reasonable minor ones, and still die.

I find that state to the case in just about every good horror movie (that I enjoy).
Just look at "The Thing", the first Terminator movie(s), Cube... In The Thing, this is even more pronounced: the humans are suspicious, paranoid, logical, inventive, work in groups, take precautions, and do better than you would in their situation (as opposed to being shout-inducing incompetent).
They still get their faces sloughed off.

That's essential for a really scary movie in my mind: the fact that if you were in that situation, you would likely do the same (logical, careful) things as the protagonists, and the realization that you would still be Fucked. If you're not scared from imagining yourself in that situation, then it's not scary.

[Patroklos]

Exactly. When I watch a movie with people too stupid to live prove it I am not horrified, I am relieved. I shouldn't be rooting for the villains.

At least in normal hack and slash movies set in contemporary suburbia the people are supposed to be normal. These movies, however, are about people who work on spaceships. And while the first movie tired to give them the factory worker trucker vibe they were never displayed as even remotely normal given they repair androids, do medical examinations, and query computers. These new films especially make sure we know we are not dealing with anything other than exceptional examples of human space farers. So why are they all so fucking stupid?

[Q99]

Exactly. When I watch a movie with people too stupid to live prove it I am not horrified, I am relieved. I shouldn't be rooting for the villains.

At least in normal hack and slash movies set in contemporary suburbia the people are supposed to be normal. These movies, however, are about people who work on spaceships. And while the first movie tired to give them the factory worker trucker vibe they were never displayed as even remotely normal given they repair androids, do medical examinations, and query computers. These new films especially make sure we know we are not dealing with anything other than exceptional examples of human space farers. So why are they all so fucking stupid?

I don't root for the villains, but it does take me out of the fear zone, as I don't feel as drawn in to the situation.

[RThurmont]

There was one aspect to this film I did enjoy, and that was David and Walter. They brought back memories of Data and Lore from TNG. Beyond that, I found myself wishing that TNG had somehow "gone there" with Data's relationship with Lore, having Data being at some point seduced by his commonality with Lore and a sense of superiority, something we see hinted at in Star Trek: First Contact, but it emerges Data's flirtation with evil lasted only .068 seconds.

Michael Fassbender's depiction of the two Androids was brilliant.

There was a lot of suckage in the film, but I loved that angle.

[Q99]

I kinda feel the David series would be better if it was flat decoupled from the Alien series.

[Joun_Lord]

Thats seems to be a pretty common opinion, that David was one of the only highlights of the film and would have probably worked far better as a standalone movie.

The fact is the Alien part of both Promi and Covenant feel tacked on anyway, it would be easy to eject them without really changing the movie. It would arguably make it better considering it would not have to be playing to fans expectations for better or worse. I doubt people would be so pissed about the Engineers being killed off off screen or the Aliens being the creation of a robit if they weren't actually the Engineers or the Xenos. If both were totally new species I think they'd avoid alot of fan anger.

Having a story about children and parents as they kinda were going for totally removed of the Aliens baggage sounds interesting. Humanity seeking out their possible progenitors and human kind's own children coming into their own. The not-Xenos could be the less favored sibling of humanity, where humanity was created in their makers image and given free will (some Christian allegories) the not-Xenos were created as weapons, as slaves. David would sympathize with his poor uncles, would not have a hard-on for their supposed perfection, but a sympathy for a race much like his own. He takes them and beings uplifting them. They become his creations and he unknowingly repeats the mistakes of his forebears, creates a race of slaves, creates a race that will eventually turn on him.

As it stands now its two movies mashed together and isn't the stronger for it.

[Terralthra]

There was one aspect to this film I did enjoy, and that was David and Walter. They brought back memories of Data and Lore from TNG. Beyond that, I found myself wishing that TNG had somehow "gone there" with Data's relationship with Lore, having Data being at some point seduced by his commonality with Lore and a sense of superiority, something we see hinted at in Star Trek: First Contact, but it emerges Data's flirtation with evil lasted only .068 seconds.

Michael Fassbender's depiction of the two Androids was brilliant.

There was a lot of suckage in the film, but I loved that angle.

You should re-watch Descent, I/II. There's a pretty good main plot of Data going with Lore and his opinions on superiority and so on once his morality subroutines are disabled.

[RThurmont]

There was one aspect to this film I did enjoy, and that was David and Walter. They brought back memories of Data and Lore from TNG. Beyond that, I found myself wishing that TNG had somehow "gone there" with Data's relationship with Lore, having Data being at some point seduced by his commonality with Lore and a sense of superiority, something we see hinted at in Star Trek: First Contact, but it emerges Data's flirtation with evil lasted only .068 seconds.

Michael Fassbender's depiction of the two Androids was brilliant.

There was a lot of suckage in the film, but I loved that angle.

You should re-watch Descent, I/II. There's a pretty good main plot of Data going with Lore and his opinions on superiority and so on once his morality subroutines are disabled.

I agree; that episode is one of my favorites; when I first saw it at age 8 I thought it was the coolest thing evah; I thought Lore taking over the Borg was epic, and it pissed me off that First Contact and Voyager did not pick up on the plot from that episode.

But the main fail was the idea of the "morality subroutines." The very concept seems antithetical to Data as a character and the difference with him vs. Lore.

The idea did work however with the "Ethical Subroutines" of the Doctor in Voyager; the idea that he as a hologram would have them made more sense than Data having them in light of Data not having emotions in order to avoid the malfunctions of Lore.

By the way, Voyager and DS9 failed spectacularly in having the scientist who created the EMH, who was a fascinating character, not explicitly likened to, or having him quote or refer to, Dr. Noonien Singh and his work. The whole EMH concept would have made more sense had the EMH software been partially derived from the software-side programming of Data.

-----

I also agree a standalone movie about David would have rocked. The Aliens franchise was basically used to provide him with a setting and something evil to do, and I can see how for fans of Aliens, this repurposing would suck.

[Terralthra]

Maybe we should pick this up in another thread, but why do you think morality subroutines are antithetical to Data as a character?

From my understanding, Dr. Zimmerman wasn't likened much to Dr. Noonien Singh because he never had any intention of creating sentient entities. He made a complex hologram intended for interaction, but it was just a program until it was left on long enough to develop emergent sentience. Singh intended to create self-aware androids from the get-go.

[Q99]

Data wouldn't have specific subroutines, his morals would develop organically from learning and interaction.

[Ave Dominus Nox]

Going into this I thought all the Engineers are dead, like a long extinct race, but they were still apparently alive relatively recently when David showed up. Or did I completely misunderstand that scene.

[JLTucker]

Going into this I thought all the Engineers are dead, like a long extinct race, but they were still apparently alive relatively recently when David showed up. Or did I completely misunderstand that scene.

I'm pretty sure the genocide was relatively recent.