Board 8 > Alien: Covenant

(+) Yeah! (+)

sucked.
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Not surprising, but disappointing.
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I liked it myself. Isn't going to win over the hardcore Prometheus haters but it's a better film.
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I'm a Prometheus fan and walked out of this one disappointed.
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So is it basically just more of the same or what?

I thought it was quite different. Here come the big spoilers. Please only read if you've already seen this movie or if you REALLY don't give a crap about the series plot.

My favorite part of Prometheus, by far, was the introduction of the Engineers. I loved the first scene when an Engineer dissolved himself to essentially create human DNA, I loved the buildup as the space crew uncovered more about the Engineers, and I really fucking loved the moment where they finally found a live one. That confrontation was probably my favorite moment in the series; I was so intrigued by this race and their motives - why they made humanity, why they wanted to destroy us, what it was they feared or desired. I felt you could have built an awesome series of movies around that.

In Alien: Covenant, the entire race of Engineers are killed in a single two-minute flashback. It was probably the most disappointing movie scene I've watched in years, because it pissed away ALL the potential that Prometheus built, and it reduced the Engineers to a mere plot point.

So basically, David and the lone surviving female from the last movie (Dr. Shaw?) are flying the huge spaceship from the last movie and find the Engineers' home planet. As soon as they arrive, David drops a ton of Xenomorph bio-bombs on the population, infecting and killing all of them. That's the only time we see any Engineers during the whole movie. That lone two-minute scene where they all die.

Another space crew discovers this planet a decade later. There are no more Engineers or anything interesting. There's just Xenomorphs and David, who has since killed/experimented on Dr. Shaw and is now a textbook "mad scientist" trope. He loves to cultivate and experiment on Xenomorphs because he thinks they're the "perfect organism." He's egotistical and hates humans and wants the Xenomorphs to infect them all.

And I guess enough people consider this more interesting than the Engineers from the last movie. To each their own, but... I just don't get it.
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CaptainOfCrush posted...

I thought it was quite different. Here come the big spoilers. Please only read if you've already seen this movie or if you REALLY don't give a crap about the series plot.

My favorite part of Prometheus, by far, was the introduction of the Engineers. I loved the first scene when an Engineer dissolved himself to essentially create human DNA, I loved the buildup as the space crew uncovered more about the Engineers, and I really fucking loved the moment where they finally found a live one. That confrontation was probably my favorite moment in the series; I was so intrigued by this race and their motives - why they made humanity, why they wanted to destroy us, what it was they feared or desired. I felt you could have built an awesome series of movies around that.

In Alien: Covenant, the entire race of Engineers are killed in a single two-minute flashback. It was probably the most disappointing movie scene I've watched in years, because it pissed away ALL the potential that Prometheus built, and it reduced the Engineers to a mere plot point.

So basically, David and the lone surviving female from the last movie (Dr. Shaw?) are flying the huge spaceship from the last movie and find the Engineers' home planet. As soon as they arrive, David drops a ton of Xenomorph bio-bombs on the population, infecting and killing all of them. That's the only time we see any Engineers during the whole movie. That lone two-minute scene where they all die.

Another space crew discovers this planet a decade later. There are no more Engineers or anything interesting. There's just Xenomorphs and David, who has since killed/experimented on Dr. Shaw and is now a textbook "mad scientist" trope. He loves to cultivate and experiment on Xenomorphs because he thinks they're the "perfect organism." He's egotistical and hates humans and wants the Xenomorphs to infect them all.

And I guess enough people consider this more interesting than the Engineers from the last movie. To each their own, but... I just don't get it.

That is really tragic.
I had high hopes for this movie, but it doesn't even sound worth watching.

I've never seen an alien movie, but didn't think this movie was that bad.
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I guess it depends what you are after. I greatly enjoyed the visual experience of Prometheus but was disappointed by the story. This film has a safer, less ambitious story, but it's also a lot less of a mess. The characters are less stupid, and it wisely focuses on something else rather than focusing too much on the Xenomorphs themselves (and thus making them less threatening).

The best thing this film does is shift the focus to David as a singular villain and the true source of the horror. He is the real monster, and Fassbender is terrific. He is by far the most interesting character in the series and I think shifting to tell his story was a good move overall.

With that said, I do think the last 30 minutes of this film (other than the final scene) are very disappointing. Before that though I think it does a good job of linking Pronetheus to Alien and also being an effective, visually beautiful dark sci-fi film.
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Having read up about the stories of both films I am mostly disappointed that this one doesn't really do anything to link Prometheus to the original Alien films.

This does open things up to some more horrifying stuff with David flying this massive ship out there with access to Xenomorphs and 2,000 human embryos.
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And Fassbender was utterly amazing as both David and Walter.
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I dug it up until the ending, which you could see coming from miles off.
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I generally enjoyed the movie, and it has two exciting set pieces, but the ending (and the movie in general, ultimately) was too mean-spirited for me.

So the message of the movie is to not have faith in or trust anyone? And to smirk at the main character being tricked at the end? Well, f*** you too, movie!

I know people complained about people being too stupid in Prometheus, which is true, but I personally find it more frustrating when people do try to follow protocol (in terms of quarantine at least) and act (relatively) intelligently, but still get killed.
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CaptainOfCrush posted...

sucked.

nooooooooooooo this makes me sad
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Nothing about it looked appealing to me in the marketing. I've got a couple of close friends who absolutely adore Fassbender, one of whom is a fan of this franchise. I hope their Fassbender fandom carries the movie for them, because it doesn't sound like anything else will.

Myself, I won't be seeing it. I'm not a horror fan. I like Alien and Aliens and kinda like Prometheus, but Covenant hasn't grabbed me in the slightest.
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I don't want to read the spoilers, but I will say that I read that the main takeaway they took from Prometheus was that everyone hated the Engineers so I'm most intrigued about how they handle that (if at all).
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I wanted more Engineers so it sounds like this is a hard skip.
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People hated the Engineers? Maybe my tastes are weird on this one because I really liked them.

And I will say this: Fassbender was amazing. I didn't like what they did with his character but his performance was top notch.
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