Alien: Covenant/Alien Series thoughts.

[Chunky Salsa]

I don't understand this obsession with making tranny versions of the Xenomorph (Resurrection and Romulus) or exploring the beginning and giving us some gay prototypes (Prometheus and Covenant). I am sick and fucking tired of shows and movies that explore the beginning, the inception, the penis in vagina cumming moment. It's a sickness that been prevalent for decades now, where you make a good movie, then rape it with prequels and dozens of sequels to the prequels or spin-offs.
This is made worse by the knowledge that better concept exist.
I remember reading some comic or whatever about an Alien King (counterpart to the Queen) or some Alien civil war where two competing hives were duking it out. This is way more interesting for an Alien fan, then the endless rehashes of the same plot over and over again.

Did you ever play the Alien vs Predator Strategy game, might be up your alley. Had an alien civil war sort of plotline in it. Pretty old now, but still fun.

 

[Adamska]

I remember reading some comic or whatever about an Alien King (counterpart to the Queen) or some Alien civil war where two competing hives were duking it out. This is way more interesting for an Alien fan, then the endless rehashes of the same plot over and over again.

Rogue and Genocide were pretty good ones. Genocide in particular is a good one since it actually does show you what Wey-Yu actually wants to do with them besides just weaponizing them. They basically process hormones and chemicals from xenos to make performance-enhancers that need specific enzymes from the Queen Mother (think super queen) to work without negative side effects.

It also has an attempt to show how the UACM is trying to improve their efforts to fight them since it takes place during the time the Xenos nearly took earth. It means they're even more prepared than the Sulaco was in knowing exactly how nasty this bug hunt's gonna get. It even plays with some fun corporate sabotage aspects.

You could borrow that arc and it'd be interesting for a film. Its biggest problem would be it's pure action slop since the scale of the bug war was insane.

Rogue is somewhat similar to what Resurrection and Romulus were trying to do; where they used Engineering to make something that could command the hive.

In all fairness, I think just dusting off William Gibson's script of Alien 3, completely divorcing itself from Ripley and making it about these space commies they cooked up but never used outside of comics could've been a good pick too. Also since Hicks was the star of that one, it opens avenues for something Alien has been stuck with for too long: being stuck on making a new Ripley.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Impregnate is the term used throughout the franchise.

Yes, yes, but BonesJones was using it relative to a child, seemingly under the impression that a child could not be "impregnated" because she was a child.

 

[Glossy Paper]

The sets are really cool. Mostly nailed the look but surprisingly missing clunky retro scifi knickknacks. Some scenes are too dark for no good reason. Thought exposition-ash would do something to the systems (established in changing hallway temp) to fuck with the protags but nope. Gotta love when Guy mcGuy listens to his headset while doing the sneaking and replies in not-whisper like a dumbass. Why does the protagonist, lifelong slave miner, decide to make an audio log? She's never been on a space trip, why make a log in this style it makes no sense. The callbacks are too much the movie might as well add a cat in a power loader.

TimeToRewatchAlienIsolationLet'sPlay/10

Btw why jam the romulus & remus myth into the movie and highlight it with intentional shots? It doesn't really match what happened on screen or thematically. If it wanted to allude to the Rape of the Sabines it seems kinda a stretch.

 

[74164978231]

Im not sure how much the ending was another case of some weirdo inserting their grotesque fetish or just idiots not communicating.

The mom is shown to lactate goo supposedly to breastfeed the hybrid yet the hybrid is already full grown/developed thus not needing said goo.

 

[Neighborhood Janny]

I was hesitant to go see it, especially after the slop that was Covenant. But I left the theater surprisingly satisfied. I'll spoiler my thoughts so you don't have to worry about scrolling too much.

Spoiler

Unfortunately, all the great world building and character acting was killed by the fucking retarded fan service. Having Andy say "Get away from her, you bitch" was the single most cringiest thing I've seen in an Alien film. The CGI and practical effects were great, but then we get to the Uncanny Valley of fake Ian Holme. That was just terrible. I understand that those synthetic models were probably made to look the same (most likely for cost saving purposes), but this just felt like an unnecessary shoehorn. Also, the myth of Romulus and Remus wasn't even expanded upon. I know the entire Romulus/Remus myth, but I highly doubt your average moviegoer knows it. Why were the vessels named after them? Did the crew of Romulus compromise the mission of Remus? Did one want the project to advance in one direction while one wanted it advanced in the opposite direction? There's nothing there other than the obvious "something happened". At least build on what caused this ship to be abandoned. The rag tag group of corporate slaves were already clueless enough, why make the audience clueless?

As far as the Xenomorphs are concerned, I enjoyed them. I felt that the transition from facehugger to chestburster was a bit too quick, but considering what we learn later in the lab, it makes sense that this is a variation of Xeno that evolves at a much quicker rate. The rate of kills was also pretty satisfactory. I especially enjoyed Bjorn sticking his cattle prod in to the xenussy and subsequently getting killed by the acid blood. What didn't feel right though was that these Xenos weren't hunting the crew. The crew was continually going out of their way to disturb or otherwise upset the xenos, either on purpose or by accident. This results in the Xenos retaliating rather than stalking, which is what made the first Alien so horrifying and compelling. While there is a clear and present danger, these aliens aren't stalkers, but are rather shown to be mindless killers for reproduction.

I'm not going to spend much time on this, but the hybrid human/Xenomorph was retarded. I'm not sure what could have been done to make it enjoyable, but this clearly wasn't a good idea. Interesting in theory, but there has to be another way to explore this idea.

Finally, I want to talk about the actors. Honestly, this is the best case for an Alien film since the original. I really felt that David Jonsson did an incredible performance as Andy. Even though he's synthetic, Andy comes across as genuinely human. Despite the "get away from her" line, I felt Andy was the best. Cailee Spaeny was also wonderful as our protagonist. She's no Sigourney Weaver (and Rain is certainly no Ripley), but she came across as the most levelheaded of the group. Overall, the entire cast was great. The characters being Weyland-Yutani grunt workers struggling to get out of the dystopian hellscape of Jackson's Star was a refreshing change from the regular scientists/military personnel we typically get.

 

[Commander X]

Went to see Romulus, and it wasn't bad as I thought it would be, but it could have been better.

Anyways, the moment where one of the characters perplexingly repeats word for word a famous line that he had no reason at all to say, he might as well have turned to look directly into the camera and said, “Aliens (1986)".

 

[Chunky Salsa]

Went to see Romulus, and it wasn't bad as I thought it would be, but it could have been better.

Anyways, the moment where one of the characters perplexingly repeats word for word a famous line that he had no reason at all to say, he might as well have turned to look directly into the camera and said, “Aliens (1986)".

Face CGI was pretty bad. Station also felt tiny. Like, this thimg looks massive externally but consists of a few rooms, two corridors and some escalators.

I'd say it's about the same level of Alien 3 in terms of plot, but set dressing and atmosphere is on par with Aliens. End was bad, even if some of the imagery was spooky and unpleasant enough to be interesting.

 

[Calandrino]

I kind of liked the 3rd act but I'm trying not to spoil.

Same. I thought the movie was off to a good start when we find out the MC owned a black man as property, but then it got lame until near the end. If something like that had been at the beginning and kicked off the plot, I think it would've been more entertaining.

I still laugh remembering the crew in Covenant removing their helmets and then the black spores immediately getting into their bodies.

Best part was David the robot telling the religious captain guy, "hey stick your head in here... speaking as somebody who was trying to pet the xenos five minutes ago, I promise it's totally safe bro". I won't spoil what happens next!

Incidentally, I re-watched the original Alien, and one of the (many) contrasts between it and Romulus is the way that Romulus has a cheap jump scare/stinger every 45 seconds. Compare that to (for example) the quietly shocking scene where Ripley blunders straight into the xeno without seeing it. Without getting into the specifics of plot or characterization or pacing or anything, Romulus is just a movie for retards tbh.

 

[Glossy Paper]

What didn't feel right though was that these Xenos weren't hunting the crew.

It happened in one scene with the survivor of the crashed ship and that was the only 'oh shit' horror tension moment I felt in the entire film.

 

[Spectre Saren]

Just came here to seethe about Romulus.

That movie fucking sucked ass. Couldn't wait for that greasy haired faggot to get impaled by a xenobro. Second worst movie in the franchise. People bitching about the crew being "stoopid" in Covenant have no idea what a trully retarded crew looks like.

Also, slenderman. I couldn't hold my laugther, neither some people in the audience.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Anyways, the moment where one of the characters perplexingly repeats word for word a famous line that he had no reason at all to say, he might as well have turned to look directly into the camera and said, “Aliens (1986)".

I couldn't hold my laugther, neither some people in the audience.

No one in my (very small) audience laughed but people were groaning audibly whenever there was some verbatim dialog callback to previous Alien films. The movie Predators did the same thing by repeating several lines verbatim from Predator to the point where it's now obnoxious when you spot them. But when that film was in the theaters it seemed less egregious or blatant and people seemed to overlook the movie doing it over and over again. But Predators was more of a soft reboot of the franchise. Alien Romulus feels like high budget fan fiction inserted into the franchise.

But this is nothing new for the franchise. Alien Resurrection was loaded with tons of lines from the first two films and very odd fourth wall breaking lines like referring to the new Ripley by saying "she's something of a .....PREDATOR" right to the audience. So at this point the number of campy and cheesy Alien and Predator films are close to outnumbering the more serious ones which happens to a lot of horror franchises.

As far as the Xenomorphs are concerned, I enjoyed them. I felt that the transition from facehugger to chestburster was a bit too quick.

This is something that all Alien stories have to struggle with. The first film had the xenomorph eating their food supply and one of their dead to grow larger. But you find out that Ash was feeding it and protecting it from the crew (though it feeding on their space meals was never filmed). So the alien having time to grow larger and the crew just sitting around because they don't know Ash is planning their deaths makes sense.

In other stories they need to figure out how to get the aliens right into being full sized quickly. Aliens has them arrive at the colony long after the xenomorphs are frown. Alien 3 has the alien live in the vents and scavenge for food. By the time you get to Prometheus they have that squid thing doubling in size practically every minute. Because the audience, and writers, have no patience for anything but the 'greatest hits' of Alien themed deaths.

 

[Adamska]

Btw why jam the romulus & remus myth into the movie and highlight it with intentional shots? It doesn't really match what happened on screen or thematically. If it wanted to allude to the Rape of the Sabines it seems kinda a stretch.

It's because Ridley Scott is a contemptuous asshole who thinks he's smarter than you. He does that sort of shit a lot to try and flex his midwit knowledge of things.

Dude got pretty mask off when people mocked the Napoleon film he finally got to do that he really wanted to.

And to comment on @Neighborhood Janny : they might have gone that route with the Xenos being passive since it's something that the older script for Alien played with, and Scott more than once mused that Big Chap, aka Kane's Son, was simply defending himself.

The older scripts and even the final script play with the fully grown alien actually being intelligent and just trying to communicate or something akin to that, only attacking due to seeing the humans as threatening it.

Incidentally, I re-watched the original Alien, and one of the (many) contrasts between it and Romulus is the way that Romulus has a cheap jump scare/stinger every 45 seconds. Compare that to (for example) the quietly shocking scene where Ripley blunders straight into the xeno without seeing it. Without getting into the specifics of plot or characterization or pacing or anything, Romulus is just a movie for retards tbh.

Again, Ridley Scott's an asshole. He thinks this is what you deserve since you did not like his fart huffing creationist ancient aliens "masterpiece". Fun fact: He fought really hard and failed to blatantly state Jesus was a Giant Blue Man in the film, and bragged about that in interviews.

Fun fact: Read Alien: Engineers. It's a mostly better script than what Lindeloff mangled out of it for Prometheus. The biggest failure was that the Juggernaut is what crashes on Acheron if I remember right. But the pacing, characters, and motives are all smarter in that script.

 

[Cactus Concerto]

I have a story question for those who've watched the film: based on the Wikipedia synopsis (I know), can anyone explain to me why Tyler isn't the main protagonist, or why Rain exists beyond her being the Ripley surrogate?

I'm not especially familiar with Alien as a franchise either but with his sister, cousin, and I think the cousin's significant other aboard for the adventure, would it not have been more impactful for him to have been the center of the story and have the robot be his friend (or 'brother', whatever) instead? All of these characters are so closely connected but the primary factors have the loosest ties to them all, being the ex-girlfriend of Tyler and her robo-bro. And is there a reason for the robot guy beyond remember berries and familiarity with the aircraft?

And it also just pisses me off that she seemingly survives with no emotional repercussions and her sole partner for this amazing new life is the guy who mattered the most to her to begin with, so she's basically lost nothing during the voyage.

 

[Adamska]

I have a story question for those who've watched the film: based on the Wikipedia synopsis (I know), can anyone explain to me why Tyler isn't the main protagonist, or why Rain exists beyond her being the Ripley surrogate?

Because current year can't make a franchise that has a woman protagonist replace her with a man... even as the industry is collapsing due to refusing to actually make shit audiences want. Also they're too chickenshit to ever change it, despite the actresses they hire never being as good as Weaver was, and thus forever being stuck in her shadow.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Fun fact: Read Alien: Engineers. It's a mostly better script than what Lindeloff mangled out of it for Prometheus. The biggest failure was that the Juggernaut is what crashes on Acheron if I remember right. But the pacing, characters, and motives are all smarter in that script.

One of the better ideas in Alien: Engineers was that the surviving Engineer was already infected with a xenomorph embryo and so he froze himself in the cryogenic chamber to wait for his own race to come rescue him. When the humans unlock the chamber and awaken him he has only an hour until it explodes and kills him. So he kills them all out of rage and frustration and the human explorers try to find ways to prevent him from sending out a rescue signal to more Engineers or even targeting Earth or their local space colony.

Ridley and Lindeloff ended up just ripping off AvP instead. With the old Weyland CEO being on board an exploration mission to become immortal. Figuratively in AvP. Literally in Prometheus. They even had the same style vehicles exploring the terrain. Underground pyramid structures with ancient xenomorph statues. Female lead who was exploring caves before being recruited. Ancient aliens on Earth. I laugh that so many Alien fans hate AvP then praise Prometheus and Covenant when they are the same exact story. Even the endings are the same. Both end with the female lead fighting a giant alien with the help of another type of alien, then a third type of alien being birthed from their former ally alien.

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

I liked the first half because it felt a lot less dumber than Prometheus. I mean they unfroze the facehuggers but didn't realise it and screwed themselves. No issue with that.

Spoiler

I thought the cameo was going to be Bishop, but it was worse. There was no point to it. The repeated lines were stupid - especially "Get away from her you bitch". I did, like most people it seems, liked Andy the Android and I thought his performance was good. But jesus christ, once they tied it into Prometheus and Covenant and basically remade the ending of Resurrection, all my good will was gone. What a wasted opportunity.

 

[Cnut]

So I've read these kiwi reviews and seen a couple on YouTube like Rlm and Rob Ager. The consensus seems to be firmly in the "suck" category with a few caveats. I think I'll skip Romulus.

Do you all think Disney's going to pump a sequel to this one or do something else?

I can't decide while theorizing if there was some suit that either aped the Force Awakens or conversely tried to pull an anti-KK and "give fans what they want" even though it's put through a brain sieve similar to TFA. (Edit. Maybe the more apt comparison would be Rogue One.)

Now I'm just imagining Blomkamp's Alien 5 and having horrible thoughts about Ridley Scott. Neil B didn't get to make his RoboCop sequel either. Now he just makes puppet shows back in Africa or whatever

 

[Overly Serious]

No, Kane acted stupid. He declared the ovomorphs to be eggs, that it had organic life still within, and he still put his face up to it. The reason it works though is it is perfectly within his character and does not contradict it. He was written in script to be a "rainbow chaser", and he was always the most gung-ho of the trio that went to the derelict. He makes a bad call based on what his character would actually do.

Spot on analysis. There's even a tiny background line where Kane tells the Captain "I'd like to volunteer to be in the first away team" and I think it's Lambert in the background who says "That figures." He's established to be the sort of person who would do that. (He's also the first one to actually get out of bed though that's maybe a very subtle misdirect to suggest he's the main character who wont die) The entire movie is really a masterclass in establishing characters with maximum economy. The meals scenes are superb for this. You have Brett raising the bonus situation but getting Parker to broach it, From Parker saying "you're in my chair" to Ash showing he's disliked, to Lambert pulling a face to Parker's pussy joke, Ripley's slight smile and return to her coffee when the bonus situation comes up - she knows how it will play out, that it will lead nowhere and is just sitting this one out. The way Ash is always watching everybody else and the tiny little cue of him staring at Kane right before Kane starts convulsing. The way Parker and Brett have their entire scene with Ripley over a hissing steam vent only to shut it off the moment she's gone. I've rarely seen a film convey so much information with so much efficiency.

Kane is a space trucker. He's exploring the egg vault and interacting with the eggs because he's entranced by being in a giant alien ship. The characters in Prometheus and Covenant are supposed to be world class scientists. Who should not be petting the space cobras or removing their helmets. I can understand the cooks and helicopter pilots in The Thing not being military level cautious as well. And the military personnel in Event Horizon wanting to immediately leave the ship and blow it up. It shouldn't be the other way around.

There are supposed to be some constraints in Prometheus about not being able to get the pick of the crop for Weyland's crew - the need for secrecy, the fact that it's a multi-year voyage, things like that. But it's rather understated and the level of stupidity by some of those characters is still too much to actually be justified. You could write elements that justify some of the stupidity better with some effort on the writer's part. In Covenant, maybe they have to spelunk down some cliffs or get cut off and run low on oxygen and have to remove their helmets because "look, the instruments show it's breathable. You prefer to suffocate?"

I tend to be one of the more generous people when it comes to cutting some movies some slack. The world being against you is a very traditional trope of horror - the rain or the rock slide or the car not starting, all horror traditions and not without reason. It increases the sense of doom when done well. But in Prometheus and Covenant, not done well. In large part because we can attribute their misfortunes to the character's own stupidity.

If you watch Alien you can start down the road of "they were stupid" but as you watch it's revealed that the sabotage is deliberate. Just off the top of my head:
"Hey, why don't you just freeze him?" from Parker -> shut down by Ash before Dallas can really decide.
"What's it key off?" is Ripley questioning Ash's motion detectors. And the later "micro-changes in air density my ass!" as the thing starts failing leading the Dallas's abduction.
The letting them back on the ship, Dallas snapping back to Ripley "look, it happens that way because that's how the Company wants it". The list really does go on. About the only "stupid" thing you can actually lay on the crew is Ripley going back for the cat, and that's not really a question of intelligence so much as "you do you."

Some of the logic in Prometheus was so bad that I thought it was genuinely a plot point that it was. Like the stuff about Engineers creating humanity. We have a fossil record going back millions of years. so were they supposed to have created all life on Earth? The opening scene is just jagged rocks and water - there's no life depicted, not even plant life. So I think the intent was that they began all life. Which makes the timescales of the movie insane. If they're supposed to just be creating humanity, there's that largely unbroken evolutionary history of humanity we already have. If they're supposed to be uplifting humanity to greater sentience, then the part about them already sharing DNA with humans is nonsensical because we also share DNA with the rest of animal life so they're related to Earth's entire animal kingdom. It's so bad that I genuinely thought they must be setting this up as obviously false but no - they just have that little grasp of science.

It's because Ridley Scott is a contemptuous asshole who thinks he's smarter than you. He does that sort of shit a lot to try and flex his midwit knowledge of things.

Explains a lot. My own review was getting long so I skipped this but the Romulus and Remus stuff bothered me as well. The symbolism makes no sense to me. It really feels as if they're just throwing some mythical names onto it expecting this to make it deep. Promtheus at least made sense. (Covenant did not that I could see).

And actually, the religious insertions into Covenant bothered me. You want to show that the Captain is distrusted because of his faith, okay - you could make that interesting. Perhaps the future is heavily atheistic, perhaps there were religious wars and religion is now frowned upon, I don't know. (You want to be bold, though, make his faith Islam). But firstly it seems really arbitrary and secondly it just seems very mean in that his faith is ultimately depicted not merely ineffective but bogus. Is Ridley Scott a militant atheist or something? The captain's entire arc seems to be: "People don't trust me because I'm religious and now I've learned that all my faith is dumb, I dead now!" Way to kick someone when he's down!

Again, Ridley Scott's an asshole. He thinks this is what you deserve since you did not like his fart huffing creationist ancient aliens "masterpiece". Fun fact: He fought really hard and failed to blatantly state Jesus was a Giant Blue Man in the film, and bragged about that in interviews.

I thought his idea was supposed to be that they took a dude back to their home planet to educate him and teach him their beliefs and sent him back to teach humanity, and that dude was Jesus.

Daft plan by the Engineers either way.

Because current year can't make a franchise that has a woman protagonist replace her with a man... even as the industry is collapsing due to refusing to actually make shit audiences want. Also they're too chickenshit to ever change it, despite the actresses they hire never being as good as Weaver was, and thus forever being stuck in her shadow.

I'm actually lightly against switching the protagonists to male. I've no interest in some tit-for-tag "they made male character female so we'lll make female character male". Ripley is iconic and it adds a strong thematic element to the movies that she's female. A kind of positive female archetype - protective mother vs. the negative female archetype of the aliens - destructive Furies. And the whole rape inversion thing of the aliens impregnating men is part of the original horror. Ripley isn't "Woke" because she doesn't humiliate the men around her (except Burke - he deserves it) and isn't shown as better than then. She's competent and she is willing to get in a loader and demonstrate it when challenged. She doesn't show up men, she fits in with them. Which is kind of the opposite of Woke, really.

But as the movies go on, it does become odd to always have a female protagonist. It goes from natural to forced. I was happy with Rain and Andy being kind of the duo protagonists by the end of Romulus. As I said, there's a lot to like about Romulus. It's not awful, so much as it is flawed. IMO.

 

[Evil Peter Griffin]

The only good Alien movies is the first and the second.