MovieChat Forums > Alien: Covenant (2017) Discussion > A Covenant to dupe Alien's devoted fans

A Covenant to dupe Alien's devoted fans

posted 7 years ago by WoodyAlien (27)
24 replies | jump to latest

Ridley Scott turns 80 this year. It's sad when senior citizens are forced to labour at such an advanced age to make ends meet. Oh you thought I was talking about Sir Ridley? No, he is a multi-millionnaire who did not labour at all over this mess of a prequel. But his production company along with 3 others did slap on the "Alien" moniker on this disaster of a movie and we are ready to dupe the die-hard fans!
The plot? Let's reuse the old one about settling a planet but running into unforseen difficulties along the way. The actors? What actors! We can hire a few extras, give them disposable lines, 0 background stories and let them loose. Billy Crudup & Danny McBride are the only recognizable faces who with their language and mannerisms bring zero believability to their characters. The other "actors" are devoid of any real nuances other than mostly screaming in terror or acting tough. Fassbender is the only hope and while being an excellent actor is given preposterously fantastical dialogue which strains the credibility of his role in the movie.
Speaking of dialogue, the script it seems was written by a couple of high school kids who were up past their bedtime and had to turn in a full length paper in class the following morning. Through this all-night crunch session we have this script as a result. While Prometheus raised curiosity and nicely touched upon some philosophical questions about life and creation of it, Covenant hardly is interested in this deep subject matter. Save for a throwaway opening exposition nicely filmed about Peter Weyland and his creation David which resonated with fans of 2001: A Space Oddity, the film avoids exploring any aspects of creation, morality or the fall of man and rise of the alien species.
The characters in this movie do exactly the opposite of what any right-minded person is thinking in their situation. The cinematography is the lone part of the movie that does not provoke anger or dismay. Cinema: B, Plot: D- Act: C-
Total: D

[–] Varadero8 (140) 7 years ago

Woodyalien, you watched it ? I may just watch online. I would normally go to theatre, but don't care now

[–] Strannger (2007) 7 years ago

Because nothing beats the theater experience

[–] Varadero8 (140) 7 years ago

Yup, something to do, have a feeling Alien Covenant won't be in town long ?

[–] Strannger (2007) 7 years ago

Probably a few week in theaters and gone

[–] Varadero8 (140) 7 years ago

My theatre sucks now

[–] WoodyAlien (27) 7 years ago

It will probably do well for about 2 weeks until Pirates and Wonder Woman take over, but this movie was shockingly-underdeveloprd on all fronts. I suppose if you have never seen an Aliens movie, you will enjoy this as an action flick, but none of the complexity of the Alien lore is here.

[–] WoodyAlien (27) 7 years ago

Yes saw the midnight show. I am a huge Alien fan, but this debacle was just shocking. I mean it's as if Ridley Scott just "mailed-it-in". Very upsetting effort from a once-great director.

[–] Varadero8 (140) 7 years ago

Watch online then.

[–] CraigJamesReview (1458) 7 years ago

Yeah, very redundant and near-brainless action film I was so let down by this.

I'm trying to go for an engaging, funny youtube channel so, if you have the time, take a look. Hope you enjoy what you see. Thanks in advance. A review of the movie here- https://youtu.be/fyYgj2Fpur0

[–] thebricks (292) 7 years ago

You could definitely see it was color-by-numbers and predictable crap.

[–] mikeflatley (756) 7 years ago

You mean you knew dat wuz David all along?

[–] WoodyAlien (27) 7 years ago

I agree with "thebricks", that is exactly what these movies are: "cookie-cutter", "paint-by-numbers" affair where you know what's coming before the actors had a chance to utter their lines. Some scenes are embarrassingly taken wholesale from other movies like Predator, etc. A la "I need to take a leak" scene. Hmm....i wonder what will happen next. Or David saying " I want to show you something" and leading captain to show the eggs. Would a captain responsible for his entire crew hear David say, "You can trust me, take a closer look" (at the eggs), and obligingly proceed to do so seeing the dangers all around and death of some of his crew? In this "movie" he sure does! Such idiotic and predictable scenes roll one right into the next one. I can go on.

[–] ace242000 (4) 7 years ago

If Ridley Scoot is a "once-great director" then what about "The Martian" great movie I thought. As fars as Alien series the one that questions me the most is Alien 3. Only survivors of Aliens were Newt, Ripley, Hicks, and partial droid so why would they just kill all that off at the beginning of 3. For Alien Covenant I feel they filled in Promethus quite well considering before ACV came out no one understood what Promethus had to do with Alien Series now we know. Biggest hole in the series they filled. Seen ACV in movies and loved it!

[–] Dallas (304) 7 years ago

You were obviously not paying attention, they answered nothing other than shaw dead and davids still a dick.

As for Scott, he's great director but he's limited by his script. That why ac looks awesome, but has the dumbest story and characters this year.

[–] ace242000 (4) 7 years ago

I did pay attention and in Prometheus Shaw and David had a weird relationship. Shaw treated David as a human being not a bot. David was raised in a very cold environment which is prob why he was a dick in Prometheus and Covenant. Shaw also wanted to see the Creators of those aliens that killed her man in Prometheus and proceeded to explore at end of the movie in alien spaceship. I believe Shaw and David had relations because they were connected emotionally and he took advantage of her not going into details but thats where it ends with her. With his script being limited prob why its not the best as far as story is concerned.

[–] Dallas (304) 7 years ago

Yup, you didn't pay attention. I think you should try watching Prometheus again, buddy. There's a lot more going on than what you describe. It's not very well done, but it's in there.

The main questions are about who we are, where we come from and what happens when we die. If the engineers made us, why? If they want to destroy us, why? What does it mean to have faith in the face of over whelming evidence to the contrary?

David didn't have sex with shaw, I honestly have no idea where you got that from. Shaw is seen as excited about getting her answers. But that's it. David in Prometheus isn't the nut job he is in covenant. He's doing what he's told by wayland in Prometheus. He sees infecting Charlie as a means to that end of finding immortality for wayland. But he's not evil, he thinks Charlie is after the same thing and so he asks him "what would he do to get his answers". Charlie says anything and then David pops the goo in his drink. It's an experiment by David by not because he wants to, because he's told to by wayland. Yet in covenant he's just straight up genocidal. The David in Prometheus is nothing like the David in covenant. The David in covenant hated humans and the engineers. The David in Prometheus was just indifferent. How he escalated that much in the company of someone treating him as an equal is hard to understand. He hated humans because they were inferior to him yet they controlled him as little more than a slave. So why would he turn on someone that not only saved his life, but had always treated him with kindness and respect. If he had done what he did to any other character in Prometheus it might have more sense. But we are led to believe that once David learned all there was to know about the engineers, is when he lost his shit. But once again, nothing is explained.

It's all just bad story telling. Nothing gels the way it should. As an alien clone, it's good. As a sequel to Prometheus, it's awful.

[–] brux (14666) 7 years ago

You're comparing Apples and Oranges.

The Martian was completely written and easily adaptable to movie format.

The plot was the main problem with Prometheus/Covenant ... ie, there was none.
If someone had written a good story already and all they had to do was to convert
it to a screenplay who knows.

[–] ace242000 (4) 7 years ago

I did not want to use The Martian as an example. Promethus was bad just bad compared to Alien Covenant (at least they filled the movie in with the Alien series and they had to) and that's not a good example for latest comparison. Prometheus to me was a major letdown besides Alien 3 to the series ever. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of questions about this whole series. Before I seen Alien Covenant my main question besides others was What does Prometheus have to do with Aliens? other than the same director there needs to be a connection they filled that prob not the best way but its filled now. With that I can move on with the series.

[–] brux (14666) 7 years ago

Prometheus was terrible, I agree.
Covenant was better, but still had lots of problems.

[–] WoodyAlien (27) 7 years ago

This is exactly the point. Directing is easy when you have Matt Damon's acting chops and good looks plus an intriguing idea explored about a scientist trying to survive Mars. Good dialogue and story make for a good movie. In this Alien: Covenant the story is underdeveloped, character motivations unexamined, acting and dialogue wildly unrealistic, and many questions asked in Prometheus are not even explored. This was a rush to the finish job, kill some humans, onto the next planet. If you replaced the xenomorphs with killer dinosaurs and kept all the acting, dialogue and story intact would be able to tell it's an "Alien" movie. I just imagined several scenes and it becomes clear that hallmarks of Alien franchise are absent.

[–] Cornelia123 (784) 7 years ago

WoodyAlien, I agree with you for the most part. I didn't hate the film, but I was expecting it to be more intelligent in every way. Like I said in another thread, it seemed like a dumbed down version to me.

They should have made the first half of the film with Shaw and David and them finding the the Engineers. And the second half could have been about David's betrayal which would have led us nicely to Alien Covenant with Daniels and her crew (albeit with a smarter script etc). I think most fans would have been happy with that.

[–] WoodyAlien (27) 7 years ago

Bingo. You just described the perfect plot of what Alien: Covenant should have been. Very astute observation. The interesting dynamic between Shaw and Davis was the crux of the cliffhanger ending in Prometheus. It was exciting to imagine what it would be like to meet the engineers for Shaw. How David would serve as a translator for the encounter. What questions unanswered in Prometheus could have been expanded on here. What does it mean to be a machine like David desperately trying to transcend his existence? What is the value of human beings as superior and at the same time inferior species? What role did the Engineers play in the past with regard to human species and in the future with regard to xenomorphs? None of those interesting questions were explored. Instead the movie killed off the engineers and Shaw in one swoop by forcing the viewer to believe that at some point in their lonely flight together to the planet, David became homicidal maniac and decided to kill everyone. Plot hole: David had no idea what the Engineers planet would look like, what/who they would encounter, let alone his bizarre experiments which he could not have possibly planned while still in flight. I think Shaw's character was killed off because it would cost too much to retain the actress for the sequel, or she simply refused once she saw the infantile script.

[–] Cornelia123 (784) 7 years ago

Exactly. Why did Prometheus raise all those questions and then Covenant not even bother answering them? How very convenient to just in passing shoddily explain what happened to Shaw, who had been presented as this great big pre-Ripley heroine in Prometheus, and suddenly make David 'bad' out of the blue with this great ambition to 'be' the Creator. Yeah right. I think Scott waited so long to make Covenant, a good 5 years after Prometheus, because he had no idea how to answer all those questions and then in the end he said, 'What the heck, I'll kill Shaw off, make David be bad and cash my check anyways'. Clearly Scott had lost interest in the Alien story a long time ago as he turned his interest into reviving Blade Runner, which will make him a few more millions. (Seriously, did he have to make another Blade Runner? So unnecessary imo). I feel sorry for Noomi Rapace. She had been so keen to reprise her role as Shaw, and suddenly they just cut her out of it all together. She would have been up for it, believe me, and was probably even contractually obliged to do the film if Scott had wanted her to, but of course, he didn't, so he cut her loose. What a wasted opportunity!

[–] WoodyAlien (27) 7 years ago

When Prometheus was in theaters I read the message boards and there were so many interesting ideas that the movie explored that people were excited about how they were going to be answered in the sequel. Now we know that the producers did not even bother to peruse the message boards for what the fans wanted. Other franchises like Deadpool reward fan loyalty and give them more of what they want, but not in this franchise. The director in charge of the reigns of the franchise should also be co-authoring the script. This did not happen here: big mistake. The Shaw reveal (disembowled remains) was preposterous as an explanation for her demise. It implied David experimented on her after he killed her. Not sure how her remains were kept in such good condition after all this time ;) Oh yeah not to mention that she would have died of natural death within a week of landing on the planet, since clearly the planet did not have any human food that could have sustained her (unprocessed wheat doesn't count).
Replace brought tremendous energy to the role and bravery in the vein of Ripley, but "Hey, we don't need continuity, right guys?"
David turning "bad" was not really explained in a way that made sense. I am surprised to hear Naomi was keen to reprise her role. Did you read that somewhere. I searched the web with no info as to why she was excluded from the film. I think Prometheus was supposed to be a one-off. That's why it didn't carry the "Alien" moniker. When it became profitable and studios greenlighted a sequel, Ridley was unprepared and not interested in contributing to the script.