Spoilers-Alien Covenant contradictions.

[Jedi Marso]

Saw it today and enjoyed it, warts and all.

I'd say the biggest thing this movie suffers from is the classical horror-movie trope: the protagonists are galactically stupid and do so many nonsensical things that their deaths, in the end, can be construed as nothing more than gory Darwinism. While that fits with a bunch of idiot high school kids running around the woods, it doesn't fit so well when the protagonists are presumably some of humanity's best and brightest on a mission to colonize an alien world.

Looking back at the original Alien, I have to agree that the xenomorph has lost most of its 'oomph' as a horror baddie. We know what it looks like now, how it behaves, what it's strengths and weaknesses are, and how best to kill it. Watching a fresh set of victims on screen have to re-discover this all over again has lost its magic. Hell, even Cameron knew better than to make Aliens another 'horror' movie.

As for continuity issues with the other movies and the AVP films, I think it was a mistake to set this franchise up as a prequel series. Then again, the whole continuity has been pretty hopelessly screwed up since the original AVP anyhow. I'll just watch 'em as popcorn entertainment now and not try to mentally string any of the movies together. In my head-canon, Alien and Aliens are the only two movies in THAT franchise, and this latest effort is more a reboot than a prequel.

 

[Nightowl1701]

See, I can forgive ALMOST all of the character stupidity here. These aren't a group of disparate individuals of questionable (likely BS'd) credentials, thrown together by the promise of big bucks for a long trip that you won't know the reason for until you get there; these aren't a ragtag group of down-on-their-luck space truckers just in it for the money who can barely stand each other. These are married couples. FAMILIES. Deeply in love with and committed to each other. No doubt at least one or two of the main crew have their own embryonic children in that freezer. No doubt their lander's instruments were telling them the atmosphere was perfectly safe to breathe, with nothing in the air to endanger them - because at the time, there wasn't. No doubt, having walked for kilometers with no sign of any animal life or other kind of danger at all, they were lulled into a false sense of safety.

And then it all goes to hell. Far, FAR faster than in any previous Alien movie. And suddenly it's your loved one, your significant other, screaming, bleeding, burning and dying right in front of you. With no prior warning whatsoever, no way you could have seen it coming. Of course you're going to totally lose your shit. And that leaves you wide open to making a fatal mistake yourself.

Except for staring right into the open top of an Alien egg, after all you've already seen and heard. Trying to get your Steve Irwin on in a bulletproof spacesuit seems downright reasonable in comparison to walking right into that blatantly obvious death trap. THAT was totally unforgivable.

 

[Aragorn]

I can forgive one stupid death, with the character going hysterical and getting herself blown up. But the others had IQs that were dependent on advancing the plot.

 

[NOVE9]

Really the one weak scene for me was the captain staring into the egg, that was the silliest scene in the franchise. I saw the david switch from the get go but I still felt the horror for the character finding out that he wasn't who she thought he was (why the fuck anyone would trust these synthetics in this universe is beyond me though). It was great acting.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Except for staring right into the open top of an Alien egg, after all you've already seen and heard. Trying to get your Steve Irwin on in a bulletproof spacesuit seems downright reasonable in comparison to walking right into that blatantly obvious death trap. THAT was totally unforgivable.

Really the one weak scene for me was the captain staring into the egg, that was the silliest scene in the franchise. I saw the david switch from the get go but I still felt the horror for the character finding out that he wasn't who she thought he was (why the fuck anyone would trust these synthetics in this universe is beyond me though). It was great acting.

Is it really that bad though? Oram had already proven that he was well over his head in the position of command, varying from his decision to visit the planet despite Daniels' concerns to his inability to react after the shuttle blew up. Further, he's still grieving for his wife who died just hours ago. Granted he's reaching the point of not fully trusting David after he killed the proto-Xenomorph, but he's never seen the facehugger egg before. Yeah, it may have been stupid from his perspective, but he's not thinking clearly anyways. I don't see that moment nearly as egregious as others do.

 

[NOVE9]

He'd just been led through a room full of ghoulish experiments and david had admitted to infecting the planet. Then david showed him this room where he'd made the perfect form of the creature and was like "check out this egg thing that just opened up, look closer. Just a bit closer, yep really get your face in there".

 

[Timby]

Except for staring right into the open top of an Alien egg, after all you've already seen and heard.

To me, that's Scott having the balls to make the most reviled, so-called "unrealistic" part of Prometheus into a really excellent sick joke.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I saw Covenant this evening. Rather than write something new, I'll copy my Facebook status (and a comment I wrote once I got home):

I thought this was quite good. It's not really an Alien film; rather, it's a direct sequel to Prometheus, and it's heavy on the philosophy.

A direct sequel to this film would probably be very bleak.

I've seen reviews that love it, and I've seen reviews that have trashed it. And having seen it, I can understand why. It's more psychologically disturbing than any of the other Alien films, and the marketing for the film gives the impression that the film is something that it very much is not. I was fine with that, I was in the film's groove pretty early on, but it's not going to be to the liking of everyone. So I expect this film to be polarizing.

One other observation. I have said that Prometheus is "a Star Trek story where everything goes wrong" (ie., strange new worlds, boldly going, all of that), but Alien: Covenant amps that up quite a bit. You have a landing party mission that goes way off the rails, a mothership that can't do a damned thing, and the ruins of an ancient civilization to explore.

I'd have preferred the original title, Alien: Paradise Lost, because there's a literal Pandaemonium in the film, but that might've been a little too on-the-nose.

Now, some other thoughts I've had since those Facebook comments...

I don't really see any contradiction here with the idea that Xenomorphs have been around for a while and what David did to make his own. In some ways he was recreating the Engineers' work, in other ways he was furthering it. So I don't really see this as a "secret origin of the Xenomorphs." Primal killing machines are baked into the DNA of the Engineers' bioweapon; at most, David figured out how to create the absolute worst version (ie, the Xenomorph) on his own.

I couldn't decide if that was Elizabeth Shaw's preserved body after... whatever it was David did to her or an effigy of her created by David as a memorial to his insanity. The reason I couldn't decide -- it didn't resemble David's sketches (which looked like Noomi Rapace crossbred with a Giger technofetish design). While I didn't care that "the last supper" scene wasn't in the film, the scene with Noomi would have really benefited the film by making... whatever that was pack even more of a punch, to see that David would do that to the one human who had ever shown him any kindness.

 

[Nightowl1701]

To me, that's Scott having the balls to make the most reviled, so-called "unrealistic" part of Prometheus into a really excellent sick joke.

Oh, people in the theater were laughing all right. Hadn't seen a "that-is-so-WRONG" reaction like that since Anakin Skywalker's 'nightmare' in AOTC.

I couldn't decide if that was Elizabeth Shaw's preserved body after... whatever it was David did to her or an effigy of her created by David as a memorial to his insanity. The reason I couldn't decide -- it didn't resemble David's sketches (which looked like Noomi Rapace crossbred with a Giger technofetish design). While I didn't care that "the last supper" scene wasn't in the film, the scene with Noomi would have really benefited the film by making... whatever that was pack even more of a punch, to see that David would do that to the one human who had ever shown him any kindness.

I'm going with it being the real body. Looking closely, I did see some Giger-esque biomechanical mutations on the sides of her head. Maybe David found she was mutating when he went to wake her up (an after-effect of the trilobite infection? No way all that black goo was out of her system after that surgery), and put her out of her misery. Look at that scene again when he drops the bio-bombs - he is in pain. I'm really looking forward to Alan Dean Foster's Covenant prequel novel later this year...

 

[Tosk]

the eeriness of no flora

There was flora all over the place.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

There was flora all over the place.

Errr...yeah, I obviously meant fauna. Brain fart.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I'm going with it being the real body. Looking closely, I did see some Giger-esque biomechanical mutations on the sides of her head. Maybe David found she was mutating when he went to wake her up (an after-effect of the trilobite infection? No way all that black goo was out of her system after that surgery), and put her out of her misery.

I came across a good -- or, at least, interesting, theory that tracks with your ideas on Reddit, which I'll quote because the Alien subreddit has a terrible color design:

Elizabeth's dissected corpse looks like it was mutating in some ... truly strange manner. It doesn't look like experiment. It more looks like she died while David was treating her, trying to cure the infection. It also looks, from the recent death of Elisabeth, she at least lived several years on Paradise.

Giger must be so proud

Maybe that's what you get when you stupidly and naively step in to an alien hibernation machine and you come out of hibernation with a mostly biomechanical body.

The link in the quoted material is to an image of what Shaw had become. It's rather gross.

 

[davejames]

I re-watched Prometheus before watching Covenant and I actually think I liked Prometheus more... that might just be because I've had a while to make peace with all the stupid stuff in that film though.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. As badly written as Prometheus was, it at least tried to do something different and tell a different kind of story that was focused more on the Engineers and their role in this world. Not to mention you had the movie's gorgeous production design and the thrill of seeing Ridley Scott direct another Alien movie after so many years.

But Covenant doesn't even have that much, and from the very start felt to me like just a dull, uninspired rehash of previous Alien stories, with yet another set of characters who explore a new planet and get killed off one by one, by a creature that no longer has any sense of mystery about it whatsoever. And only a few brief moments seem to capture the incredibly thick atmosphere and sense of dread that permeated the first two movies.

And don't get me started on all the ridiculous, over the top action sequences at the end involving giant claw machines and giant Tonka trucks, that felt more like something you'd see at the end of a Abrams Star Trek movie. Ugh.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Got to read the Covenant novelization today. Here's what Alan Dean Foster adds to what we saw in theaters:

Spoiler: Deleted Scene #1:

When Walter looks in on the frozen Daniels at movie's start, we get a glimpse into her dreams (as David did with Shaw in Prometheus). In this case, reliving a memory of her and Capt. Branson in bed at their apartment on Earth, where he's showing her changes he made to the holo-designs of their planned log cabin. A good cut, in my opinion - tells us nothing we don't already get in the final film, and maybe one echo of Prometheus too many.

Spoiler: Deleted Scene #2:

At the end of the shaken crew's bridge briefing after Branson's semi-cremation, the new Captain Oram clumsily tells Daniels to take a couple days off and "cry it out" in her quarters. She's too numb to do so. Walter visits her, with a very surprising gift - three joints he grew in Hydroponics! He also suggests keeping busy would be a better way to deal with her grief, that they check out the terraforming bay as she'd wanted to do earlier (which leads of course to that scene where she tells him about the log cabin). I'm not sure I remember right, but I think the scene of her looking at Branson's mountain climbing video was moved earlier to this point in the film to cover the deletion (it was originally after the funeral).

Spoiler: Deleted Scene #3(?):

When the lander sets down on the lake, Walter is first out, alone. He takes a deep breath, then reports back to the crew that the air is breathable with no pathogens, that breathing gear won't be necessary. (Hey, be nice - it was true at the time...) This may have been Alan Dean Foster's own add-on here.

Spoiler: Deleted Scene #4(?):

Oram's not the only religious member of the crew. Looking over the Derelict's bridge area and its' massive chairs, Rosenthal murmurs "God, they were giants." "I'm afraid I don't believe in giants," Oram grumbles. Rosenthal pulls a Star of David necklace out of her shirt, kisses it and whispers "I do."

Spoiler: Deleted Scene #5:

In his 'laboratory,' David initially shows Oram a full sized Xeno egg ("It lies as I found it, a supreme example of the Engineers' skill... and hubris") that he'd had to 'euthanize' as it 'became aggressive.' He opens its' top flaps himself, then invites Oram to look in. When he hesitates: "Really, Captain, if I had wanted to infect you with something, I could have thrown you a viable egg sac (earlier) instead of a petrified one." Slowly, carefully, Oram looks in... and sees only a dead, petrified Facehugger.

As they descend into the Egg chamber, David smears himself and Oram with a lavender-smelling ointment that blocks the overpowering smells in the chamber and protects 'from... other things.'

When the living Egg opens moments later, David sticks his own head inside the Egg himself first. "See? Alive, but inert. It's not matured, not developed enough to sense me." Oram correctly points out that David is not organic. "Very true. That's another thing the ointment is for... it blocks any indication of your living presence."

Spoiler: Extended Scene #1(?):

Oram's chestburster starts to come out as the traditional wormlike creature, but even as it emerges it molts into the Spaceballs model we saw in the film (thanks to the wildly accelerated growth rate David had programmed into this 'advanced model'). The scene continues past the film version, as the alien visibly grows to its full size right in front of David. David whistles at it; head cocked, the Xeno tries to do the same (comes out as a hiss instead). At least it tried...

Spoiler: Deleted Scene #6:

Neomorph #1 escaped the explosion of the lander, and both creatures had attacked the crew in the tall grass. Neomorph #2 was killed by Oram; Neomorph #1 confronts the Protomorph as it catches up to Daniels and Lope at the open plaza. The two monsters slug it out as Tennessee approaches with the cargo lift. Of course, the Protomorph wins.

Spoiler: Deleted Scene #7(?)

Once Daniels, Tennessee, Lope and 'Walter' are back on the Covenant, Daniels and 'Walter' have a chat about David and the Engineers. 'Walter' at first claims he feels nothing and has no opinions about his 'brother,' then admits: "A professional satisfaction that he has fulfilled his mission. He wanted to create a new world in his image, and he has." As for the Engineers: "I do not think they were pleased to suffer any intelligences save their own." Daniels muses that if there are other civilizations out there besides the Engineers, hopefully they'll be 'more like us.' Talk turns to what Origae-6 will be like, giving Daniels almost-certain Famous Last Words: "One thing's for sure... it can't be any worse."

Spoiler: Other spoilers:

Elizabeth Shaw died the same year Prometheus ended - 2094. She was 36. And David was indeed experimenting on her while she was still alive.



It was nine hours from Oram's facehugging to his giving birth. Less than Kane's, but not by much.

It certainly appears it was not the facehugger that had impregnated Lope, at least not in the traditional way (and certainly not in five seconds); his trapped arm was blocking his mouth. The book gives no clues in any direction what it was. I'm gonna guess that it happened on the Covenant, once everyone was back on board and out of view, and it was something along the lines of what David did in the movie's final scene...

ADF also flat-out refused to call the movie's opening event a 'neutrino blast.' He calls it an 'atypical energy burst consisting of heavy particulate matter.' A 'unique concentration of spatial and gravitational distortion' in the area masks the blast until it's right on top of the Covenant.

 

[Mage]

I really need to let some of this sink in.......

I liked it. Not sure yet if I loved it. I need a rewatch to figure that out. Mostly, my girlfriend and I are sitting here, feeling pretty much totally weirded out by Fassbender's amazing portrail of a very fucked up David.....

 

[Markonian]

So, would an Alien/The Thing crossover up the scare/horror factor?

Do we know when the prequel novel will be out?
Man, I would've loved a space opera-like "Shaw and David explore/negotiate with with Engineers" Paradise: Lost, with Alien: Covenant as the next sequel after that.

 

[Nightowl1701]

'Alien Covenant - Origins' will be out in September, if I recall right.

 

[publiusr]

So, would an Alien/The Thing crossover up the scare/horror factor?

Only if you introduce THE THING like they did The Horde in SPLIT.

Here is the scene I'd have liked to see. You hear about an archaeologist who found a Predator pyramid in the Antarctic. But he also found the remains of Outpost 31. (A throw-away line.)

This individual is who David lures to the eggs.

You have the perfunctory face-hugger leap that everyone expects. But something else happens.

The archaeologist just stands there. No attempt to evade. The face-hugger has an easy time of it and wraps up.

David is puzzled. He then hears heavy breathing. You see the flesh of the face-hugger start to ripple. The fingers loosen up--and you hear something like a ceti-eel scream, as the face hugger tries to dislodge itself and run.

"Oh no you don't" says the archaeologist, whose face is starting to split-like the Griggs Thing: http://thething.wikia.com/wiki/Griggs-Thing

Then the face-hugger is eaten/absorbed. David doesn't get far....

Another take:
http://www.outpost31.com/FanThings/FanFiction/ancientenemies.html

 

[Richard Baker]

Started reading the Novelization last night- pretty good so far.

 

[Nightowl1701]

The story synopsis of Alien Covenant - Origins was just revealed. It is not only absolutely NOT AT ALL going to be the story we were led to believe it was, but a totally unnecessary one at that. One that's not going to have a single goddamn Xenomorph, Neomorph, Deacon, Engineer, or even a drop of black goo anywhere in sight.

Spoiler: There, I just saved you $8.

As the colony ship Covenant prepares for launch, and the final members of the crew are chosen, a series of violent events reveal a conspiracy to sabotage the launch. Yet the perpetrators remain hidden behind a veil of secrecy. The threat reaches all the way up to Hideo Yutani—the head of the newly merged Weyland-Yutani Corporation—when his daughter is kidnapped. Is the conspiracy the product of corporate espionage, or is it something even more sinister?

While Captain Jacob Branson and his wife Daniels prepare the ship, Security chief Dan Lopé signs a key member of his team, and together they seek to stop the technologically advanced saboteurs before anyone else is killed, and the ship itself is destroyed in orbit.

It's pretty obvious now, Ridley Scott's just trolling the hell out of everyone (including Fox) who had a problem with Prometheus and/or demanded the return of Giger's Xenos.