Alien: Covenant

The trailer came out around Christmas and looked pretty good.

And just recently they released a four minute "prologue".


I've been a huge fan of the Alien franchise since I was a kid. Prometheus was kind of shit, but I'm optimistic for this based on what I've seen and read.

 

Prometheus was awful and sadly this doesn't look like it'll be tying up any of the myriad loose ends from that film.

That said, the Aliens are back so... yay, I guess?

 

What is the point of this film?

 

Ridley Scott needs a retirement fund.

 

Ridley claims it's ok Promethus sucked because it's building up to this.
In reality, he tried to do far too much and suck us in with too little. This is wiping egg off his face. Over all I'm a sucker for his work so my hopes are high.

Let's be real though all the Alien movies that had him involved were great. While Promethus was a prequel it lacked what we all really wanted.

 

Ridley can fuck off.

 

I'm not looking forward to it unless Scott does the following two things:
1. Remember what his world is supposed to look like. I did not like Prometheus partially because the design for the movie felt way too clean to be in the universe. Whenever I think of Alien, I think of 70s - 80s style retrotech and a darker atmosphere, which the film lacked. There's a bit of grunge, of dirt in the series since a big thing with Scott was having places look lived in. Prometheus was too clean on the whole, and the ship itself way too advanced for the period it takes place. No seriously, he tried to argue it was a top of the line ship, but this was canonically like 30 years before the original Alien... no way in the nine layers of hell would top of the line trump modern commercial. I mean for pete's sake, our smartphone of the now kicks the teeth out of a Cray-2, the fastest computer of the 1980s. This is also including how clean and computerized the planet itself felt as a whole to boot.
2. Likeable characters that make sense. One of my big beefs with Prometheans is that the movie had too many people, and none of them felt particularly rational and human in that movie. I mean you have scientists who use their craft to advance their vaguely creationist bent, you have experts flee in the sight of their job, yet show no understanding of aggression.

He can fix those two issues, the movie should run a lot smoother than his last foray.

 

Controversial Opinion Alert!

I actually thought Prometheus was a decent movie. It's one of those films that I watched, thought it was alright (nothing too special, but alright) then went online and discovered that people apparently didn't like it very much. Yeah, it wasn't as good as Alien 1 or 2 (I haven't seen 3, should I?) or AVP1 (AVP2 kind of sucked, but the first one was cool), but few movies are. I also thought that Man Of Steel was a pretty good film, and I still think it's pretty good.

Anyways, I'm actually looking forward to the new Alien movie. The Alien looks cool, and the action footage in the trailer looks pretty cool as well. I'm a bit iffy on the romance/couples thing to be honest. I remember seeing the couples in the trailer and immediately getting a little bit of my interested deflated, especially with the gay couple. Nothing against gays (I'm bi-sexual, and I've been with a couple guys), but lately when a movie promises homosexuals I groan a little because it's getting a little lame. For instance, the Power Rangers promised a homosexual character, but what we got was nothing more than a single lame 'confession' scene. For God's sake, if you're going to market your film as having a gay character, the least you could do is pay it off at some point with (at minimum) a kiss or something.

 

Honestly if you can survive the first ten minutes of the film where it basically gutpunches you, Alien 3 is pretty good, being better than the original AvP by far. Especially if you watch the assembly cut or happen to prefer the original movie to Cameron's.

I might give Covenant a shot after a day or two of it being in theaters, if only because I have a few free tickets. Though Jesus the trailer turns me off hard when looking at it; the black goo thing, the world just being a lazy fucking rehash of earth because sets too hard, the action cynically added in to bring people in, gratuitous sex. And the fucking places still looks too clean for my liking.

The short scene was a decent step up though, so maybe if it's a bit slower and a bit better at hiding things I might actually have a winner. They actually got me when I thought they were going to do a reprisal of Kane's death. I was pleasantly surprised and happy they weren't that lazy.

 

As long as we don't have Joss Whedon writing we should be fine.

 

The Alien series is a series of very highs and very lows. Some instalments have been fantastic (Alien, Aliens, Alien Isolation) and the rest have been shit (Alien 3, Alien Ressurection, Alien colonial marines etc).
From the trailer, it could go either way, I really hope its good though.

As far as i'm concerned, there is no greater ship then Ripley/Hicks. As long as we see lots of people melt and get eaten, everything else is fair game. I guarantee at least 90% of everyone watching couldn't give a fuck about the progressiveness of a film where everyone dies.

 

Why put it in then is my question and kind of the point I was trying to make. If an element serves no purpose in a film, then why have it in at all? Plus, as some people have pointed out, it seems stupid to have the couples purpose in the movie to be populating the new colony (or whatever it was), and then have a gay couple as one of the pairs of people who are supposedly used for breeding. It's like the joke about having same-sex animal pairs in Noah's Ark for the sake of being progressive.

 

Because the vast majority of western people are fucking dumb and eat up progressive pandering like no tomorrow, even if its worthless filler; especially if its worthless filler. To make it relevant, The Alien franchise has always been a story about a strong independent woman surviving against a terrifying and dangerous enemy with having to be protected and occasionally, saving a passer by or 3.
But its not enough to draw in the crowds anymore. Having a story with well written characters in engaging environments jut doesn't interest the typical hormonal tumblr crowd, instead they need spoonfeeding lesbians and transgenders just to feel like the story is worth their time.
TBH, i'm not that worried, as long as the Xenomorphs are as terrifying as ever, the setting and story is engaging, the characters are likeable and the sound and set design is both beautiful and piss-yourself-scary then nobody will care. At its best, the franchise raises the bar on cinema and media as a whole. We look back at Alien or Aliens and we all still love the story and the setting and wish Vasquez and Hudson had survived. We boot up steam and play Alien isolation and we piss ourselves the whole way through and love every second.
No amount of gay couples or sex scenes or hand holding will ever make a movie good and I hope the producers know this, because I really want to remember this movie the same way I do the first 2 films.
Edit: Thanks Joke of the day

 

Xenomorphs*. Necromorphs are from Dead Space.

 

Are you kidding? Products that blatantly pander to the Tumblr often fail to earn money outside of their Ponzi Scheme using Patreon since they never buy tickets and actually don't give a monkey outside of virtue signalling. The gay couple thing is a bit dumb for the plot, but it isn't too egregious. I'd be impressed if they had the balls to show a kiss though since that doesn't happen that often.

 

Off-topic, but does anybody remember Gia, or Loving Annabelle, or that lesbian movie that came out in January (or whenver it did) that apparently kind of sucked? I also remember a Canadian award-bait movie about elderly lesbians that came out a couple years ago which was kind of lame on retrospect. A Canadian movie about lesbians taking a roadtrip to Canada to get married when they're retired just sounds like it's trying too hard to pander to too many things that left-wing people seem to like.

Gia was pretty good. You should watch it if you haven't. I Love You Phillip Morris was also really good.

 

I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoyed Prometheus, although I understand why most everyone hated it.

 

I feel like it would have gotten better reviews if it wasn't hyped as "THE BLOCKBUSTER PREQUEL TO THE CLASSIC ALIEN!!"

 

Yeah, it was definitely going for a different vibe than Alien/Aliens, also anything connected with that franchise is gonna have huge expectations. Honestly, it would have been better if they'd disconnected it from the Alien universe and just had it as a standalone sci-fi universe.

 

Then it would have been just a generic modern sci-fi movie. The references to the Alien movies and the Giger imagery are more or less the only real stand-out parts of the film. Replace that with some generic anicent aliens and you have something that Halo or Destiny or Dead Space have covered time and time again.