Alien Covenant Fan Reviews

[DoomRulz]

I feel like we're agreeing here. That's my point. If you can't come up with something new and original, then just leave it be.

Or, make it in another genre or medium.
I was elated (and of course terrified) when I played Alien Isolation for the first few hours, for example. I would like a sequel, maybe expanding on some directions (or adding RPG elements, I don't know). But it's not the same thing, I'm the player, the alien chases a character whom I play, it's a whole different experience.

Yes, certainly the EU allows for a whole range of ideas that don't necessarily translate well to the film's continuity. I guess I should get back to playing Isolation. I've barely touched it.

You should. It's probably the best thing to happen to the Alien franchise in over a decade.

My only problem is, as you know, I love fast-paced shooters like DOOM and Quake. I can admit Isolation is very awesome for its uniqueness, but it's sooooooo slow.

[Salt The Fries]

I feel like we're agreeing here. That's my point. If you can't come up with something new and original, then just leave it be.

Or, make it in another genre or medium.
I was elated (and of course terrified) when I played Alien Isolation for the first few hours, for example. I would like a sequel, maybe expanding on some directions (or adding RPG elements, I don't know). But it's not the same thing, I'm the player, the alien chases a character whom I play, it's a whole different experience.

Yes, certainly the EU allows for a whole range of ideas that don't necessarily translate well to the film's continuity. I guess I should get back to playing Isolation. I've barely touched it.

You should. It's probably the best thing to happen to the Alien franchise in over a decade.

My only problem is, as you know, I love fast-paced shooters like DOOM and Quake. I can admit Isolation is very awesome for its uniqueness, but it's sooooooo slow.

I love both kinds of games equally.

[cliffhanger]

I agree. Isolation was the best entry in the series since the original trilogy in my opinion...

yes, i feel like isolation is really, really really so good that it feels like a movie in itself.
it's so good, that it should have been an actual movie.

still, the fact is, that we're saying that, is really because covenant didn't deliver at all.
what a mess.

i can't grasp on how many ingredients for a great movie there was and how utterly flabbergasted i am that it is so severely underwhelming and stupid.
A moment of awe and wonder and confusion about the derelict should have been present. Exploring the derelict could have been absolutely great,
to then get infected somehow. Decide to go back to the lander - which should have been damaged in such way during the landing that it needs repairs to be able to lift off again. Some body scans show that apart from 2 crewmembers, the rest of the crew is in perfect health.

They leave the 2 sick crewmembers that have gotten a detection of 'foreign cells presence' and the 2 girls that die in the movie stay with them to run tests and try to 'heal' them. scans show a tumor-like growth on the back of one of the members and around the throat/lungs of the other member, which causes one severe back pain, and the other respitory problems. they demand repairs go about harder because they must go to quarantine aboard the covenant to do professional work.

meanwhile, the rest of the team took off again to set up a campsite or a more suitable landing location for better transfer from ship to ground.

quickly, the scenario unfolds of the back and throatbuster. ejogo's character is in medbay with both of the sick members when they start shaking violently and calls for faris to get to sickbay fast as she was doing repairs to the ship so they can take off. ejogo's character gets attacked by one of the neomorphs and when faris tries to get it off with a knife it bleeds acid harms ejogo's character more, then the other neo comes after faris, who tries to escape but slips and has her gun in between the door which causes the neo to escape, after her. she kicks it away outside with a fire extinguisher, to which it bails away and the other neo sees her so she grabs a gun and fires at it. she uses the flamethrower function but sets the compartment on fire and is still attacked, then shoots around, and causes a explosive canister to combust and BOOM. gone lander.

the rest of the team already heard the commotion, runs to them, and is too late and immediately gets attacked. walter does his heroic saving of daniels,
and then david appears,

after a minute when they calm down on what just happened, he says they need to go away as it's not safe in the open, and he can provide shelter. they follow him through the field of corpses, which is much more emphasized on, and shown much more the horror.

when they enter the citadel or the temple, they look around in confusion and say 'stop!' loudly when david guides them further, demanding explanations for what the fck is going and what the fck has happened here and how the hell he got here, and also where is shaw. they found her necklace but where the hell is she?

david explains that she didn't make it. walter demands he tells them what has happened there and what this place is.

david then explains what happened after prometheus. we are shown the prologue scene with shaw. the docking. the vase dropping.
he tells them that he had no control over what was happening as the ship was in some sort of auto-pilot function and he watched the devestation below as the ship they were on was a weapon of mass extermination.

That the planet was not the homeworld of the engineers they ran into on lv-223. the ship they were on left that planet 2000 years ago, and the civilization that has the same human DNA as the engineers on LV-223 was waiting for their return. They had built their city around a vast circle in the ground, where tthe scorpionaut was hidden within for all that time untill the return of the juggernaut with david and shaw. They worshipped the centre, and when suddenly the juggernaut entered the atmosphere, the scorpinaut appeared, and the civilization ran in amaze and religious fanatism towards the machines they had no idea of the doom it was carrying, offering things to the gods they thought were returning to take them into walhalla.

the vases were dropped like bombs and were then subsequentially shot by some electrostatic weapon in one hard beam which shot a powerfull supersonic wave of thunder to the ground, instantly charring, electrocuting and killing every living thing in a radius of 30 miles.

david claims then that whilst trying to stop the mayhem unfolding, shaw tried to pilot the ship away from the docking station and ignited it's engines - nothing like you have ever seen before, brilliantly simple and logical - but were catapulted into the mountains in doing so, the shock being so violent it killed shaw upon impact.

the video they shaw was a recording of shaw whilst leaving lv-223. the impact caused the signal to be broadcast, and out of respect for shaw's fate, david decided to leave it, not expecting anybody to arrive there anyway.

"but now you are here". please, make yourselves at home.

well i'll stop here, as i would only clog this thread with what i personally feel would have been endlessly better and more open.
so sad.

i can only hope for a directors' cut to fix some of the issues and atleast make it bareable.

[Snake]

Too bad Aliens: Colonial Marines wasn't any good...Absolutely badass trailer imo:

[HuDaFuK]

Not picking on you here, but it's a pretty common visual effect. It's been around for a while and used in lots of movies that involve clones or duplicates on screen at the same time for other movies. It's not necessarily cgi, more like computer assisted, although I think it can be accomplished with out computers too.

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Hell, even Red Dwarf did it for an early episode with two Arnold Rimmers in it, and that show could barely afford sets, let alone computer generated effects work that was still in its infancy and insanely expensive at the time

[KiramidHead]

Not picking on you here, but it's a pretty common visual effect. It's been around for a while and used in lots of movies that involve clones or duplicates on screen at the same time for other movies. It's not necessarily cgi, more like computer assisted, although I think it can be accomplished with out computers too.

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Hell, even Red Dwarf did it for an early episode with two Arnold Rimmers in it, and that show could barely afford sets, let alone computer generated effects work that was still in its infancy and insanely expensive at the time

Lol now I'm imaging David meeting Rimmer.

[Engineer]

Not picking on you here, but it's a pretty common visual effect. It's been around for a while and used in lots of movies that involve clones or duplicates on screen at the same time for other movies. It's not necessarily cgi, more like computer assisted, although I think it can be accomplished with out computers too.

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Hell, even Red Dwarf did it for an early episode with two Arnold Rimmers in it, and that show could barely afford sets, let alone computer generated effects work that was still in its infancy and insanely expensive at the time

Yep! That's pretty much what I thought, but I'm no expert so I didn't want to speak out of place and stick my foot in my mouth. Lol.

[Mr. Clemens]

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Yes, it can be done optically in a static shot pretty easily too, provided the actors don't cross the invisible 'line' between their screen spaces.

Take one: Actor on Left | Double on Right
Take two: Double on Left | Actor on Right

Then you cut the negative down the middle and splice the left side of take one with the right side of take two. Voila! Did it for one of my own short films (though digitally, I confess, but the principle is the same)

[Snake]

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Yes, it can be done optically in a static shot pretty easily too, provided the actors don't cross the invisible 'line' between their screen spaces.

Take one: Actor on Left | Double on Right
Take two: Double on Left | Actor on Right

Then you cut the negative down the middle and splice the left side of take one with the right side of take two. Voila! Did it for one of my own short films (though digitally, I confess)

Exactly, it only works when your camera is stationary. Cool name Mr. Clemens, your IQ is certainly over 80 

[Mr. Clemens]

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Yes, it can be done optically in a static shot pretty easily too, provided the actors don't cross the invisible 'line' between their screen spaces.

Take one: Actor on Left | Double on Right
Take two: Double on Left | Actor on Right

Then you cut the negative down the middle and splice the left side of take one with the right side of take two. Voila! Did it for one of my own short films (though digitally, I confess)

Exactly, it only works when your camera is stationary. Cool name Mr. Clemens, your IQ is certainly over 80 

That's talking pre-digital though. It's now completely possible to have the camera go where it wants and still double your actor. Motion control + compositing.

[Snake]

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Yes, it can be done optically in a static shot pretty easily too, provided the actors don't cross the invisible 'line' between their screen spaces.

Take one: Actor on Left | Double on Right
Take two: Double on Left | Actor on Right

Then you cut the negative down the middle and splice the left side of take one with the right side of take two. Voila! Did it for one of my own short films (though digitally, I confess)

Exactly, it only works when your camera is stationary. Cool name Mr. Clemens, your IQ is certainly over 80 

That's talking pre-digital though. It's now completely possible to have the camera go where it wants and still double your actor. Motion control + compositing.

Exactly, the shots have been enhanced with CGI, hence my point.

[Engineer]

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Yes, it can be done optically in a static shot pretty easily too, provided the actors don't cross the invisible 'line' between their screen spaces.

Take one: Actor on Left | Double on Right
Take two: Double on Left | Actor on Right

Then you cut the negative down the middle and splice the left side of take one with the right side of take two. Voila! Did it for one of my own short films (though digitally, I confess)

Exactly, it only works when your camera is stationary. Cool name Mr. Clemens, your IQ is certainly over 80 

That's talking pre-digital though. It's now completely possible to have the camera go where it wants and still double your actor. Motion control + compositing.

Exactly, the shots have been enhanced with CGI, hence my point.

But it's not computer "generated" it's just manipulated using a computer as the interface. It was generated by actually filming fassbender a second time

[Snake]

It doesn't even require computers. There are plenty of films out there that effectively blended multiple copies of the same person on the screen at once long before anyone thought it was possible to use computers for special effects.

Yes, it can be done optically in a static shot pretty easily too, provided the actors don't cross the invisible 'line' between their screen spaces.

Take one: Actor on Left | Double on Right
Take two: Double on Left | Actor on Right

Then you cut the negative down the middle and splice the left side of take one with the right side of take two. Voila! Did it for one of my own short films (though digitally, I confess)

Exactly, it only works when your camera is stationary. Cool name Mr. Clemens, your IQ is certainly over 80 

That's talking pre-digital though. It's now completely possible to have the camera go where it wants and still double your actor. Motion control + compositing.

Exactly, the shots have been enhanced with CGI, hence my point.

But it's not computer "generated" it's just manipulated using a computer as the interface. It was generated by actually filming fassbender a second time

It's a technique from the 19th century, ..They don't use it anymore these days and it would be supremely difficult to make it all look believable.

[RidgeTop]

@Tangakkai : The mural represents the Deacon. There is no problem here...

You know, this mural was also in Prometheus:

[BigDaddyJohn]

So... am I the only one who has a problem with the following discontinuity:

Spoiler

David being the one who created

[close]

the Xenomorph?

How can it be that in Prometheus we see: 

Spoiler

[close]

And yet at the same Time it's only later

Spoiler

that the Xenomorph is actually created

[close]

?

It makes no sense to me at all.

And what about this guy:

Spoiler

Since when can David time travel and go back to design a Deacon?

[close]

This movie has Plot Holes the sizes of Pangea, unless someone cares to help me out here.

Because Scott likes this vision more.  And that mural isn't the xeno.

It looks pretty f**king like a xeno. That or either a goat then. WTF. They dont give a shit about continuity! Cmon guys thats obvious. Its all about money not the story.

Im so waiting for a sci-fi mocking Prometheus & Covenant where someone wants to take off his helmet or exit the dropship without helmet and everyone shoot him down how idiot he is and he is not allowed to do it because million ways you can die on a foreing planet.

That would instantly put Ridley in his place :'D not to mention the major flaws of his movies.

Ridley Scott has a tendency to destroy what he created, and he loves to rationalize a lot of legendary, symbolic, mythical stuff etc (exodus). I think this is sterile in terms of creativity, and obviously in terms on continuity, it was plain to see in covenant (facehugger that impregnates in seconds, the mural in prometheus), I still thought there were some enjoyable moments like the first two neomoprhs births, which were tense, but overall it wasn't that great I think, not absolute garbage, but forgettable