Quote from: PAS Spinelli on Sep 03, 2020, 10:57:37 PM
Having a pretentious "message" doesn't make a movie good or enjoyable
I mean, I really enjoy
Alien: Covenant. Not because of whatever "pretentious message" you're referring to, but because I found the ideas that the film was putting forth to be very fascinating, both on their own to feet and within the larger context of the Alien series.
Quote from: PAS Spinelli on Sep 03, 2020, 10:57:37 PM
Ridley's vision for the prequels never had anything to do with this franchise and should have stayed out of it.
Not true.
Prometheus began life as a direct Alien prequel and, while it started to distance itself from that structure during pre-production, it never pushed itself out of that franchise. It re-interpreted many of the core ideas and twisted many of the concepts that we thought meant one thing on their head (which, I totally understand pissing people off) but at its core, it still was very much ingrained with the DNA of the Alien movie and the Space Jockey mystery and played on those familiar ideas while presenting them with material totally new to the series.
Androids (which have been prominent since the first film and have been a staple since), the nature of creation and lineage (which initially manifested with the parallels between Ripley and the Queen's presentations of motherhood in
Aliens and was further expanded upon more directly in
Alien: Resurrection with humans finally getting to meddle in affairs that they simply cannot control), and the religious subtext (which drove
Alien 3) all have roots in the original four films and expanding on them in the prequels feels like material ripe for the picking to me.
I'm not saying you, or anybody for that matter, has to like them. I myself have a ton of problems with
Prometheus, from a filmmaking perspective, despite my pretty unabashed love of
Alien: Covenant (which I do also have problems with, but hey, nothing is perfect). But I don't think it is fair to say that Ridley's "take" on the material wasn't appropriate for the series or should have stayed out of it. At the end of the day, its just a couple of movies that whoever comes in next to take over the reigns are probably going to gloss over anyways - every filmmaker that's come into the series has basically always glossed over whatever the previous films have done in order to put their own stamp on it and, essentially, start from scratch.