MovieChat Forums > Alien: Covenant (2017) Discussion > Here's MY thing

Here's MY thing

posted 7 years ago by NotASpeckOfCereal (302)
15 replies | jump to latest

After watching this last night for the first time, then coming here right now and reading peoples (valid) complaints about the lack of engineer content, the predictability of the David vs. Walter switcheroo, the boring deaths, etc. etc. and nobody seems to have touched on my biggest disappointment, which is:

After all of the films since the first 1979 beginning, everyone wondering about the xenomorphs, the space jockeys / the engineers, all other aliens to date (including the precursors in Prometheus), it turns out that a whacko robot is responsible for killing off the entire engineer race AND the creation of the xenomorphs as we now know them (the ones Ripley kept having to tangle with)?!

That is, David, a human creation -- Weyland's creation -- turns out to just be the same crazy-android-feeling-superior-over-creator, not-having-kill-human-failsafe tropes that we've read about in books and have seen in sci-fi for decades now?

Scott is not alone covering this old ground as we had just sort of had in Ex Machina. But he's been at this so long that I was expecting better, hoping for a more unique pay off.

The solid sci-fi mystery around this killer species that we were first introduced to, with Weyland (Lance Henriksen?) and the company man (Paul Reiser) wanting to bring to earth for nefarious purposes, is something Scott is now resolving as being our own doing? Because of a mentally ill early-generation robot?

A mystery that, no matter how you feel about Prometheus, was still maintained by the whole first engineer, the seeding of earth, the new discoveries by Shaw and crew, etc.

Poof. "You shouldn't have brought that sick android."

I guess it's always been about an iffy android, right down to Ian Holm's Ash wanting to shove a porno mag down Ripley's throat, something we got a bit of in this film when Daniels uncovered David's "H. R. Giger" inspired drawings of a female-looking being with the mouth orifice full of something tentacle-like.

What's the point then of what is now called "Untitled Alien: Covenant Sequel"? To resolve things sort of like George Lucas's 'Revenge of the Sith', to quickly wrap up how we got from here to there (or more properly, there to here)?

Lame!

The only thing left for Scott to do is provide David with a space jockey to have a chest to burst. He now has a couple of thousand colonists to goof around with (AND embryos) -- I'm sure he'll think of something.

[–] LetThemEatCake (2717) 7 years ago

Scott just wanted to fool people into watching these films, what do you expect.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal (302) 7 years ago

*yawn*

[–] Frogarama (12942) 7 years ago

I'm sure Scott was hoping to go for a more interesting story, but either Fox told him to make it a fairly generic Alien movie because of all the constant whining online about Prometheus, or Ridley just decided it wasn't worth it and that modern movie audiences want basic shit like comic book movies.

This movie wasn't planned. This movie is literally telling the tale of DESTROYING the Prometheus storyline. The soulless David destroyed the engineers, destroyed Shaw, and then after that Ridley fed the Alien remake all the whiners kept demanding. LITERALLY EVERYTHING about Prometheus was destroyed BEFORE Alien Covenant even started! Everything but the soulless robot.

The movie is only related to Prometheus in this meta fashion of destroying everything Ridley wanted to accomplish. The movie is CLEARLY symbolic of that, and nothing more.

In terms of its actual storyline, it is obviously COMPLETELY unrelated to Prometheus.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal (302) 7 years ago

This sounds like the crux of it. I wonder if we will one day get an honest explanation from Ridley. If so, probably not until he's made the next / last one, then he can speak his mind about where he lost control to the studio (if so).

For those of you complaining about this simply being a Scott money grab, you forget that he was not responsible for 1/2 of these films (and NONE of the AvP crap). Any responses countering this that are not reasonably thought out (e.g. obvious trolling) will earn you a place in my ignore list.

[–] Frogarama (12942) 7 years ago

To be fair, all movies are money grabs. Alien itself was Jaws meets Star Wars (the two groundbreaking blockbusters that immediately preceded it), with a "haunted house" vibe. Alien is definitely not an exercise in intellectualism.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal (302) 7 years ago

Sure. All blockbuster films from major studio productions are for-profit, shareholder supported / driven productions. But that's not to saw that everything above the indy / art-house level of cinema is all crap.

There's that some of us have stuck with this franchise as long as we have (once again mentioning the absence of AvP from this discussion). That reason is because, story wise, it came from a reasonably decent base of SOLID sci-fi.

Even Terminator has some elements of this, though it's clear that this also turned into a revenue generator that barely resembles its more meaningful beginnings.

Other solid sci-fi examples, just to get a feel for where I'm coming from: Blade Runner; Moon; Pitch Black; Equilibrium; Predestination; Dark City; 12 Monkeys; Interstellar; Ghost in the Shell; etc. (Note the lack of Star Wars and Star Trek from this, though I love them, are not what I consider to be real sci-fi.)

I used to count the first couple of Alien films in that bunch and thought that, with Prometheus, it could regain its status. No more.

The recent Planet of the Apes franchise is a good example of a sci-fi blockbuster, studio ka-ching that has still not lost its way, though it's not a super-deep intellectual exercise either.

[–] Frogarama (12942) 7 years ago

Oh no, I definitely wasn't equating money-grabs with crap. I do agree, too, that Star Wars is not sci-fi, it is pure fantasy more akin to Lord Of The Rings, just with space ships and technology.

I'd also have to argue over Pitch Black, Equilibrium, and Interstellar, although the last one did try very hard to be sci-fi, and Star Trek at least got a firm footing into true sci-fi with The Next Generation (not all the time).

But I have no intention of debating their merits, just tossing that out there.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal (302) 7 years ago

That's all fair.

[–] Kazak (2025) 7 years ago

I'm thinking heavy studio involvement is the more likely culprit. Scott should've taken a queue from the clearly much bolder David Lynch, and threatened to remove himself from the project if the soulless studio execs didn't back off and let him produce his own unique vision. Not a whole lot of studio involvement apparent in the latest incarnation of Twin Peaks.

[–] komrad (148) 7 years ago

Nevermind the retconning of the Alien. Eggs were already there and Space Jockey was already there...FOSSILIZED! Thousands of years of retconning FFS.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 7 years ago

Scott did this for the moneyz.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal (302) 7 years ago

*yawn*

[–] Kazak (2025) 7 years ago

Doesn't make a ton sense either though. The man is practically at death's door and can't possibly want for anything already.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 7 years ago

Really? My bad. I didn't know that.

[–] TandyMan (10660) 7 years ago

It's very clear to me that studio said "make an Alien movie or don't make a movie at all." Ridley's old. I'm not sure he cares anymore. I think he just likes making movies. Aside from the original trilogy, none of the other Alien films fall into any kind of continuity that makes sense. I actually really love the elements of the psycho android and the way this movie ended was really terrific. If they had left the Alien out all together, had this as a loose sequel to Prometheus with a rogue robot playing god, I think this movie could have been something special.