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WoodyAlien's Replies
It had a 30 million budget and brought in 19million on opening weekend, s o I think it will double it's budget and finish in 60-65million range. Pretty good for a small action film and is reminding me of "The Acvountant" unexpected performance from last year.
Well-cast.....yes. well-acted...no. Goodman has little screen time and is playing.....John Goodman. Compare real-life Comey to John Goodman's portrayal while stuffing down a British sandwich down his throat. It was a funny scene, but far from realistic. McCoy seems like he is over-acting in every scene with his exaggerated impressions, eye squinting, fidgeting and general uneasiness whenever he and Theron share a scene together. If he would have played the role cooler and been more detached, he would have been more believable. Even Theron's character at one point in the movie calls him out on it "I don't believe this hungover act you are doing". If Lorraine thinks he is laying it on thick, what kind of believable spy does that make him? Sofia's vulnerability during the bathroom episode was very refreshing to see in a young actress, otherwise her performance lacked nuance or believability in her "free-spirit/devil may cate" portrayal of a spy, even if she was there only 1 year on assignment. Toby Jones only role is to sit at the table and utter lines without any emotion or care. A stiff upper lip, nay a stiff lower performance, I say. Thus the rating.
Try this instead:
Michael Fassbender in the McAvoy role.
DeNiro in the Goodman role (a CIA director role he played before).
Alicia Vikander instead of Sofia.
Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of Toby Jones.
Russian heavy played by.....actually that short performance on screen was just right. That one I would not change.
Now you can see how this movie would be much better? But it's not an Oscar contender with a big budget, so we are left with this.
John Wick 2, Rambo: First Blood, Enter the Dragon, Argo are all action movies, and all but the 1st one are considered classics/Oscar winners. They have something else in common: each has a rating of 7.7 on imdb user reviews. When one movie stands out as clearly inferior, I think it shows that it is benefiting from "recency bias" of new users who are unfamiliar with older films, and/or blown away by special effects.
The similarity in A.B and JW2 is that they are both shallow, summer popcorn movies, and not nearly well-enough executed to warrant further attention. The difference is one has a juggernaut of an actress who is an Oscar winner and stands head and shoulders above her co-stars. While the other stars Keanu Reeves who is outperformed by virtually every member of the cast (save the mute female assasin), appears wooden, and cannot emote on screen. While one actor's performance elevates an average movie, the other (Keanu's) sinks it.
The bullet action scenes have been executed much better in video games, so to elevate the rating of a movie based on spectacular bullet choreography would be a disservice to the director's vision for that movie. Even action movies can be spectacularly choreographed while at the same time not sacrificing either the creative vision of the director, or nuanced plotlines (see: Dark Knight). Thus while both of the aforementioned movies have similar elements, what differentiates A.B. is the acting of the titular character, sound editing and authenticity of mileu: East Berlin ( down to the exact Pan Am logos on the plane).
Thank you for adding some meaningful comments to my post. In regard to John Wick, the first movie was a fun action, bullet-ballet. The 2nd one was such a disaster. Keanu May have done some of his worst acting in this movie. While the shootouts were completely unrealistic, they were expertly done. But JW2 was a mess in every other sense. I got duped into watching it opening weekend seeing the 7.7/10 imdb score. That's 2 hours I wish I had back!
So yes, this film is immeasurably better in every sense. I like how she took her licks in this movie because in most action movies with male stars, they seem almost invincible. The bruises and blood on her small frame accentuate the realism of the fights. The Platinum Blond guy she fought was a particular highlight. If you've been in a real fight, you know how quickly you lose your breath, and start staggering and being off-balance. I immediately made a mental note that this is something almost NEVER seen in any action movie. Fights in other movies are non-stop making you think the combatants have the lung capacity of Michael Phelps in carrying on a brawl. In this particular fight scene, it was notable that when they were both severely damaged, they still knew that in the next 3-5 minutes one if them had to die and thus the tension was ratched up for the viewer knowing that this was a "do-or-die" encounter.
I love how the music encapsulated that era so well, and the little details of Berlin's riotous and rebellious youth loitering and sitting on top of vehicles. Yes, this was Berlin! When I visited Berlin myself 15 years ago, it has some of those same elements left over from the late 80s, including the ever-present graffiti. I will re-watch this movie in the next week or so, just so I could pay attention to the sound editing and how it fit each scene.
The staircase fight is one of the best ones that I have seen and would hold up against any other ones from the past. It is brilliantly executed, filmed with sophisticated long takes, and believable enough given the discrepancy in opponents' weights. The earlier fight in the deceased agent's apartment is poorly done however, and is not very believable. But other than that one exception, the rest of them, including the latter one with the blond guy are excellent.
Nobody goes out and intentionally tries to make a bad movie, but most movies in Hollywood are an ensemble endeavor where you have several scriptwriters, editors and producers all opining on how a movie should be made. This is always bad. So what happened with this film is that there a number of boxes that had to be checked: more diverse alien forms or variations, less philosophy and more action, dumbed-down dialogue for the masses, clear and easily spelled-out plan for characters to follow, easy "evil" characters "David" to boo, and heroes to cheer "Daniels". This was so cookie-cutter, that in my view of the film, if they replaced Alien's with any other monsters you would not notice. A generic sci-fi movie, might as well have been another "Doom".
1. It seems Aliens keep evolving from little worms into the white "pet" that David was talking to, and then into the dark ones. Btw did anyone notice Davis statue and Weyland' David as both "perfect form" creations at the beginning of the movie? How and why they evolve, no one including the filmmakers know.
2. They certainly should be all white. It's only logical
3. No David did not birth the queen.
4. Eggs = last writing. Don't expect t this movie to add up.
5. David was not in love with Shaw. David is a machine trying to understand humans. It does not "love" or "hate" Shaw or anyone else. Humans are an inferior species and he basically becomes an amateur surgeon-geneticist trying to create a new better species, the same way he was created.
6. David sees Daniels as a great opportunity to continue his experiments. There is a weak attempt by filmmakers to discuss Love vs. Duty. It doesnt go anywhere, because the writers are not smart enough to come up with intelligent dialogue.
7. Facehuggers, xenomorphs, eggs.....its all a mish-mash. Just enjoy the special effects and it will all be over soon.
If this film was considered "art" then out would not matter how much the movie made at the box office. If it made 0$, the artist would still want to complete the trilogy, if that was indeed the intention. However, Ridley Scott does not have this integrity in him. If no studio finances the next alien movie, he won't put his money at stake and fully pay for it himself, the way Mel Gibson did when "Passion of the Christ" came out. That's the difference between a true filmmaker who is a visionary and believes in making important films like Orson Welles for example who financially backed every movie he made, and a profiteer like Ridley Scott.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The lead actor may not look like DiCaprio, but he certainly studied the Leonardo's tics, speech patterns and mannerisms. If you've seen the Aviator, Shutter Island or some of his other dramatic roles, then you can pick up on some of the same acting patterns in this movie. Especially the front desk dialogue was delivered the same way that DiCaprio has delivered his lines.