Alien: Covenant - 2017 - Ridley Scott

[Sarlaccfood]

Watched this for the first time after it got some positive words in the new Alien TV show thread. Even though I didn’t feel like it was the worst film ever made or anything, I just felt nothing.

 

Well…I did feel annoyed that I now need to use more brain energy to pretend it doesn’t exist as, like Prometheus, it utterly ruins the Alien’s origin. But it’s so clear when they made the first movie the ship and pilot they find has been there hundreds of years and not like, 10 minutes or whatever the fuck they were planning on doing with the sequel to Covenant, that it shouldn’t be too hard. 

[Fierce Poodle]

Such a piss-poor film. I wanted to shove that flute up Fassbender’s ass.

[Hanzo the Razor]

1 hour ago, Fierce Poodle said:

Such a piss-poor film. I wanted to shove that flute up Fassbender’s ass.

 

I'm sure David would have enjoyed that.

[Gambit]

The only thing I really remember about this film is the oh so obvious ending and the Alien baby arms stretched out scene that looked like it could've been an outtake from Spaceballs.

 

[Ran]

I finally watched it for the first time last night. Enjoyed it more (way more) than Prometheus but that's not to say I found it particularly good.

Spoiler

It has a great premise for a horror ending but it's pretty insulting how it's supposed to come off as a twist. The android switcheroo is just so glaringly obvious the minute they meet I wish they'd just acknowledged to the audience "we know YOU know this is actually David" and just ramped up the tension around the survivors not being aware during the last act.

 

[JoeK]

I still think it's one of the very worst films I've ever seen in my life. 

 

It genuinely upsets me when I think of how much money was spent on the fucking thing, only for it to be the piece of shite it ended up being. I get so unnecessarily worked up about it when I think about it. I don't understand how anyone involved in making this thing think it was in any way, shape or form a good idea. 

 

Edit (because I'm still annoyed ) :

 

Alien works because it's the very definition of only giving the audience what they need to build up suspense and excitement in any given situation. Nothing wasted. Every shot is important to the overall movie. It is one of the very best pieces of movie-making you will ever find. It has literally the most basic fucking plot you'll ever see and that's all you needed.

 

Aliens pretty much offers the same trick, although I'm not a fan of the director's cut at all, and think the theatrical release is by far the better movie. Still, it's a paper-thin plot but it's again all you need.

 

Everything to come is trying to offer an audience something that was absolutely no needed. It's like all these big franchises - they think the audience wants to know all the little details about who the aliens are, and why the aliens exist and what the fuck is going on with Weyland etc etc. And - to be fair - I thought I wanted to know these things as well. 

 

But you don't really. Because what you think of in your mind is waaaay better than the end result. Always. 

 

Despite both Prometheus and Covenant looking beautiful (and whatever else I might think of the films, they are very pretty films), they have completely killed off any interest I had in any other continuation with the series.

 

'Careful what you wish for' - never a more apt saying when it comes to the Alien franchise. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Festoon]

4 hours ago, JoeK said:

I still think it's one of the very worst films I've ever seen in my life. 

 

It genuinely upsets me when I think of how much money was spent on the fucking thing, only for it to be the piece of shite it ended up being. I get so unnecessarily worked up about it when I think about it. I don't understand how anyone involved in making this thing think it was in any way, shape or form a good idea. 

 

Edit (because I'm still annoyed ) :

 

Alien works because it's the very definition of only giving the audience what they need to build up suspense and excitement in any given situation. Nothing wasted. Every shot is important to the overall movie. It is one of the very best pieces of movie-making you will ever find. It has literally the most basic fucking plot you'll ever see and that's all you needed.

 

Aliens pretty much offers the same trick, although I'm not a fan of the director's cut at all, and think the theatrical release is by far the better movie. Still, it's a paper-thin plot but it's again all you need.

 

Everything to come is trying to offer an audience something that was absolutely no needed. It's like all these big franchises - they think the audience wants to know all the little details about who the aliens are, and why the aliens exist and what the fuck is going on with Weyland etc etc. And - to be fair - I thought I wanted to know these things as well. 

 

But you don't really. Because what you think of in your mind is waaaay better than the end result. Always. 

 

Despite both Prometheus and Covenant looking beautiful (and whatever else I might think of the films, they are very pretty films), they have completely killed off any interest I had in any other continuation with the series.

 

'Careful what you wish for' - never a more apt saying when it comes to the Alien franchise. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazing that the Alien franchise now requires nuking from orbit 

[monkeydog]

29 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

Amazing that the Alien franchise now requires nuking from orbit 

 

Only way to be sure.

[Stoppy2000]

I think it's worth watching just for Fassbender. Plus it has some gruesome body horror. Obviously it shits all over the alien mythos but it's not like the canon has been well looked after anyway...

[Spacehost]

On 27/07/2021 at 23:14, Sarlaccfood said:

Watched this for the first time after it got some positive words in the new Alien TV show thread. Even though I didn’t feel like it was the worst film ever made or anything, I just felt nothing.

As much as I shit on Prometheus, at least it was enthusiastically, obnoxiously bad. Covenant is just boring, interspersed with bits of Prometheus-level awfulness that can’t elevate the movie to true trash.

[makkuwata]

I’ve listened to a few audiobooks that they don’t seem too worried about taking down from YouTube. This universe is trash. You just gotta respect it on its terms.

[ZOK]

21 hours ago, JoeK said:

Aliens pretty much offers the same trick, although I'm not a fan of the director's cut at all, and think the theatrical release is by far the better movie.

Yes. The whole ‘telling you what happened at the colony before the marines get there’ of the Director’s Cut ruins the storytelling of the movie.

[Paulando]

19 minutes ago, ZOK said:

Yes. The whole ‘telling you what happened at the colony before the marines get there’ of the Director’s Cut ruins the storytelling of the movie.

Yes.

 

And that sentry gun scene is boring af.

[JoeK]

31 minutes ago, ZOK said:

Yes. The whole ‘telling you what happened at the colony before the marines get there’ of the Director’s Cut ruins the storytelling of the movie.

 

I also think it insults the audience's intelligence.

 

When you go off to investigate a whole colony that's vanished, you know something pretty bad has happened - even if you had never even heard of the first film. Actually, even if you somehow came into Aliens thirty minutes after the sodding thing started.

 

Aliens is a great film - I think it's fantastic, but it's more or less the beginning of when you start to see the seeds of Cameron's fondness for bloat in his movies. He's a good film-maker, but he's not got much of an ability to resist filling his stuff out with unnecessary fat.

[Harsin]

My immersion also shattered when it turned out Hadley's Hope is run by the captain of Red Dwarf.

[RubberJohnny]

The bit that sticks in the memory in this is they're in a big space storm, their ship is bouncing about, a couple of them go into the back and talk privately, and the camera the entire time is just framed on the join between the articulated set and the static set, like you can just see half the spaceship bouncing around in the background and then just stop before where the characters are, breaking the illusion completely.

 

You could have framed the camera in a way where this didn't show, or just moved them further into the static set. It's not like it's framing anything particularly interesting where it is, it's just aimed at a bit of the roof, and it's there for ages, it's almost like they didn't care.

[Paulando]

The worst thing about this was David and all the fingering, and the silly flute and the dancing baby alien. Like, I could put up with all of that other hacky shit to enjoy a dark body horror space romp, but I don’t think I could handle David again.

 

I caught the med bay scene with the comedy slipping on TV the other week, and it was super enjoyable. Very bloody and tense, and the music was great.

[ZOK]

I’ve still not seen Covenant, by dint of when I eventually got round to watching Prometheus a few years back it was so stupid it actually made me angry. I presume Covenant will have the same effect?

[Scribblor]

I need to rewatch it, because I haven't seen it since the cinema. My take then was:

• Shitloads better than Prometheus, with far less of "apparent subject expert acting like they've never even heard of the subject" decisions or nonsensical plot developments
• Still plenty of "that's a stupid decision" (but that's a hugely common trope for horror films)
• It's a very different type of film to Alien, which wasn't really what I wanted at the time but isn't the film's fault
• It looks gorgeous
• I don't think I liked any of the characters, but I did enjoy Fassbender's performance

[jonny_rat]

With the flute scene, it has my favourite incomprehensibly weird moment in a film ever I think. Like, it's enough that fassbender is trying up seduce himself by playing the flute, the fingering, yes yes yes all that.

 

But it's the specific detail that he plays the theme from Prometheus - the movie Prometheus - on that flute. Has David watched Prometheus?? Is Prometheus a film in the Alan: Coving Ant universe?

 

What a brilliant movie. And then the little dancing alien. Absolute treats

[FishyFish]

39 minutes ago, jonny_rat said:

With the flute scene, it has my favourite incomprehensibly weird moment in a film ever I think. Like, it's enough that fassbender is trying up seduce himself by playing the flute, the fingering, yes yes yes all that.

 

But it's the specific detail that he plays the theme from Prometheus - the movie Prometheus - on that flute. Has David watched Prometheus?? Is Prometheus a film in the Alan: Coving Ant universe?

 

What a brilliant movie. And then the little dancing alien. Absolute treats

 

Where can I watch Alan: Coving Ant?

 

I hope it's a new Alan Partridge movie!

 

The bit with the flute that I liked was the way that David curls up like a dead spider when attacked. I thought that was a striking image.

[Stoppy2000]

The flute scene is absolute magic. If this wasn't shitting on the alien lore then I'd probably rate it higher. 

It's still the 4th best Alien film. 

 

[Exidor]

Inseminoid's a better Alien film than Covenant or Prometheus. I'll grudgingly acknowledge that Covenant is the best Space Pinocchio film of the two.

[readonly]

Covenant is better than Prometheus, but they're both fucking terrible. Fassbender is the best thing about both films because he's memorable. The lightly sketched marines in Aliens who die before the one hour mark are better characterised than anyone in either of the later films, who are a bunch of forgettable ciphers (not to mention morons).

[ZOK]

31 minutes ago, Stoppy2000 said:

The flute scene is absolute magic. If this wasn't shitting on the alien lore then I'd probably rate it higher. 

It's still the 4th best Alien film. 

 

Unpossible. There are only three best Alien films to start with.

[Floyd]

Ahh, you know, I watched this again the other day as I was flicking over Disney + and quite enjoyed it. The only thing really annoying was how quickly the infection and chest bursting happens. I mean, Ripley spend the whole of Alien 3 with a queen in her.  I think unless i mis-remember that) It should be days rather than hours!

 

I knew the Alien grew quite quickly, as it did in Alien.... (Which I have also just re watched)

 

Now I'm on a Alien binge!

[Fierce Poodle]

9 hours ago, ZOK said:

I’ve still not seen Covenant, by dint of when I eventually got round to watching Prometheus a few years back it was so stupid it actually made me angry. I presume Covenant will have the same effect?

It makes Prometheus look like Citizen Kane.

[ZOK]

Good lord!

[Alex W.]

Covenant is a movie that knows it’s the kind of movie Prometheus actually is, but is therefore less good at being that movie. But it’s still endearingly mad. I think with a little light editing and a more melodramatic soundtrack you could have a real gem.

[K]

I think I’ve gone into this in more detail in another thread, but I really like Covenant and Prometheus. The idea of the human characters being incompetent idiots feels less like a huge oversight on the part of the filmmakers, and more like a deliberate attempt to satirise corporate greed and human exceptionalism, and to showcase the delightfully inventive cruelty of the series’ real protagonist, David. Weyland-Yutani are assumed to be some kind of untouchably perfect elite space corporation, but I think treating them as being more like a futuristic Serco or Tesla is equally valid and possibly more interesting. I mean, imagine Elon Musk’s version of the expedition to the planet in Prometheus. I can’t imagine it going any worse than the one in the film does, and the last time I watched the film I took a similar level of pleasure from seeing the hand-picked team of supposed experts turn out to be a gaggle of duds who fuck everything up through their Dunning-Krugerish levels of being unable to anticipate or even imagine their own failure.