AvPGalaxy Forums

Which film do you feel is superior? Prometheus or Alien Covenant?

I gave both the same grade, but I think as an alien movie, Covenant is better overall. Despite not liking a lot of things related to the alien lore, I liked the characters, the history and events happening, the creatures more in comparison to Prometheus.

I still need to watch them again, haven't seen it since the theater and will try the extended fan edits. Might improve it for me.

While I appreciate Covy's gothic style, I think I've got a crush on Promy imagery. I prefer Covy's narrative thought, So I can't it decide yet  :-\   

Alien Covenant all the way.

But oddly, now that AC exists, I've grown to like Prometheus more. For years I considered Prometheus a "failed horror film" but now I've seen AC I've realised Prometheus isn't a horror film at all, it's just a straightforward science fiction one.

Covenant.

Alien Covenant

I honestly don't know but I'm always being reminded that A:C has a better script and flow. However Prometheus was much more valuable to science fiction. Then again Covenant has aliens and the bad guy wins. You can't beat that.

So yea, I'll vote for The Cov.

Wow, Covenant in the lead. The first 2/3 is pretty good besides the incredibly ridiculous and goofy Faris scene. It's all downhill with the Alien though..Prometheus a bit better overall.

I'm surprised by the votes so far. Prometheus is way better in my opinion.

Quote from: Jutland on Oct 05, 2018, 06:53:06 AM
Alien Covenant all the way.

But oddly, now that AC exists, I've grown to like Prometheus more. For years I considered Prometheus a "failed horror film" but now I've seen AC I've realised Prometheus isn't a horror film at all, it's just a straightforward science fiction one.

I feel the same way about 'PROMETHEUS'.  Largely because it's become obvious the movie is a prelude of sorts, a prologue if you wish of a much larger, chaptered work in progress.  I see 'ALIEN: Covenant' as Chapter 1.  We need to see where the next movie is heading to really appreciate these movies.  They should clearly be experienced as parts of a greater whole.

We are so accustomed to seeing these movies be fully self contained but these latest 'ALIEN' entries are obviously the first part of a much greater, Grander, experience.  Scott said it was going to be epic.  The next script has already been written.  I think if it is (hopefully) eventually made, it will be better understood why these movies are structured the way they are. 

Right now, as it stands, it's akin to an author releasing the prologue and first chapter of a book.  We've had the introduction of the main themes of the prologue and the initial set up of the greater story has been set to unfold in chapter 1. 

It would be a sad thing if it just ended here, just where the meat of any classic novel starts to emerge in Chapter 2.  We really need to see what the next instalment is going to hold. 

It is for this reason they cannot be easily separated and appreciated individually.  It's an incomplete work; and that's obvious, too.

Voted Prometheus, but only just. Prometheus could have got better with the sequel, but I feel like it's like the Force Awakens of the Alien trilogy. The movie after it sort of just destroys what it was all about.

As a film on it's own, Covenant is not bad though. I've no doubt in years to come I'll get past all the stupid stuff and enjoy as a monster mash.

QuoteRight now, as it stands, it's akin to an author releasing the prologue and first chapter of a book.  We've had the introduction of the main themes of the prologue and the initial set up of the greater story has been set to unfold in chapter 1. 

Yeah, but Prometheus and Alien Covenant aren't excerpts of anything; they are self-contained feature-length narratives with different characters, settings, and plots. It's unfair for the filmmakers to feel entitled for audiences to be that patient when something is so weak on its own merit, and it's not a convention of the Alien series for audiences to take each work as a piece of a whole instead of individually, even though the first four movies do satisfy a single narrative arc. It's much different, say, than Star Wars, when we know for certain that we're dealing with trilogies.

That said, I can't choose or vote in this poll. I have no preference between these two.

Scott changed his mind on who created the alien while totally forgetting that the alien already exists within Prometheus. Meaning there is a big who really "dun it" hole in the alien world. Which once again comes full circle as to why they wanted to destroy us. The next movie has to answer that.

Quote from: Nostromo on Oct 05, 2018, 11:02:02 PM
Wow, Covenant in the lead. The first 2/3 is pretty good besides the incredibly ridiculous and goofy Faris scene. It's all downhill with the Alien though..Prometheus a bit better overall.

I always thought Covenant was better. Prometheus is more of a drag, in my view.

Quote from: whiterabbit on Oct 07, 2018, 11:44:32 AM
Scott changed his mind on who created the alien while totally forgetting that the alien already exists within Prometheus. Meaning there is a big who really "dun it" hole in the alien world. Which once again comes full circle as to why they wanted to destroy us. The next movie has to answer that.

A Deaon already exists in Prometheus.

I like Prometheus more, although I like Covenant too.. a lot more than I used to. I just want a damn sequel!  :-\

Quote from: whiterabbit on Oct 07, 2018, 11:44:32 AM
The next movie has to answer that.

:D

If we've learned anything up to this point, it's that the next movie (which I sincerely hope doesn't happen unless it's Alien 5) will either not answer that question, or the 'answer' presented to us will be wholly unsatisfying and convoluted, or just a new question altogether. But I'm sure, either way, that the writers they hire to solve this problem will have worked as staff writers for a science fiction property of some sort, just so us fans accept their credibility/credentials going in.

Quote from: Hudson on Oct 07, 2018, 08:51:28 PM

Quote from: whiterabbit on Oct 07, 2018, 11:44:32 AM
The next movie has to answer that.

:D

If we've learned anything up to this point, it's that the next movie (which I sincerely hope doesn't happen unless it's Alien 5) will either not answer that question, or the 'answer' presented to us will be wholly unsatisfying and convoluted, or just a new question altogether. But I'm sure, either way, that the writers they hire to solve this problem will have worked as staff writers for a science fiction property of some sort, just so us fans accept their credibility/credentials going in.

How about answering questions with more questions  ??? it's still an answer, kinda.  :P

Quote from: Hudson on Oct 07, 2018, 08:51:28 PM

Quote from: whiterabbit on Oct 07, 2018, 11:44:32 AM
The next movie has to answer that.

:D

If we've learned anything up to this point, it's that the next movie (which I sincerely hope doesn't happen unless it's Alien 5) will either not answer that question, or the 'answer' presented to us will be wholly unsatisfying and convoluted, or just a new question altogether. But I'm sure, either way, that the writers they hire to solve this problem will have worked as staff writers for a science fiction property of some sort, just so us fans accept their credibility/credentials going in.

I like Covenant way better. Its tone, its atmosphere, its themes. I love the nihilism, the AI aspects and the Frankenstein nature of it. Even right down to the music is superb. Covenant can also be viewed as a singular entry, which is sort of how I view it. To me, it doesn't really fit with Prometheus despite its links because it's so sharply tonally different, and it doesn't quite fit with the Alien series either (IMO), but by itself it's such a great film and a great side story.

I hope they get to make another one, but I'm hoping they fill in more about the Engineers, because I don't think they should just be swept to the side like they seem to have been at the moment.

I wish I enjoyed it as much as you PsyKore-
although I do love the things you describe, there's central character and decision- choices I do not.
(The title.)

Yeah, there's things that could be much better. I feel like with these prequels there's just some elements not fully connecting. Whether it's scripts, studio nonsense or Ridley himself, I don't know, but you sort of have to take the good with the bad at this point. I still think under the circumstances Covenant turned out to be a far better film than it is a bad one. I think it's far and away much better than Prometheus and probably slightly better than Alien 3.

I agree with the former statement, vehemently disagree with the latter.

Covenant.

It has the Alien in it at the end. of the movie. That's all what matters.

Androids, Neomorphs and Facehuggers are cooked.

The artificial intelligence's the superlative aspect of the film. The magnificent performance.
The finale's the utmost ineffective section. Alien "slasher" presence.

The best depictions of the "Egg" and "Facehugger" hitherto.

& I love the Neomorph.

Covenant.
But I love both!

Only the Alien part of Covenant feels messy, otherwise the rest is perfect (plot, androids, scenery, landscapes, music)

Quote from: The Old One on Oct 09, 2018, 11:40:48 AM
The artificial intelligence's the superlative aspect of the film. The magnificent performance.
The finale's the utmost ineffective section. Alien "slasher" presence.

The best depictions of the "Egg" and "Facehugger" hitherto.

& I love the Neomorph.

I can live with that opinion. Yet, what is less "slasher" about roundhouse kicking, hand  chomping and head ripping Neomorph? Everything is full gore with the Neo.

I'm referring to the fact the Alien's inclusion in the third act feels like a miniature retread of the original film.
With slasher tropes, shower scene, etc

I love the titular beast, but it feels forced there.

I think Prometheus is the superior one, even if i have my fair share of problems with this movie. God damn it, Streitenfeld's soundtrack is beautiful though !

Prometheus is conceptually strong and a gorgeous looking film, but the script needed another few rewrites and the editing is atrocious.

Covenant is narratively strong, thematically does a lot of interesting things with the franchise, and is a very well put together film.

Covenant takes the cake, but Prometheus has merit as well despite its flaws.

Quote from: BigDaddyJohn on Oct 10, 2018, 04:23:06 PM
I think Prometheus is the superior one, even if i have my fair share of problems with this movie. God damn it, Streitenfeld's soundtrack is beautiful though !

It always seems my way of thinking aligns with yours, brother. Prometheus for the win.

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Oct 11, 2018, 07:30:36 PM

Quote from: BigDaddyJohn on Oct 10, 2018, 04:23:06 PM
I think Prometheus is the superior one, even if i have my fair share of problems with this movie. God damn it, Streitenfeld's soundtrack is beautiful though !

It always seems my way of thinking aligns with yours, brother. Prometheus for the win.

Indeed, cheers !

Difficult to articulate this vibe but Prometheus is more like Alien, Covenant is more like Aliens

Prometheus is far better and bigger and most successful in any way. Alien: Covenant felt small. Prometheus felt like one of the Huge Epics from Ridley Scott.

Prometheus, hands down. I personally find the story, locations, cast, characters, and digital work to be superior. I saw more of what I wanted to see in Prometheus, than I did in Covenant.

Prometheus' cinematography is unparalleled in the series.



The sequel's focus is clearer though.
Further substance.

Whilst flawed, Prometheus is by far the better film in my opinion. Better design, cinematography and concept/plot... although I think it suffers from poor editing/pacing, specifically in the middle section. I think Covenant is really good until David appears, then it rapidly descends into a kind of generic quasi action/horror.

I still enjoy both films but voted for Prometheus.

Can't really stand either film, but my vote has to go to Prometheus because at least that movie made a commitment to what it wanted to be, which wasn't an 'Alien film' per se. It was just kind of a dangerous space adventure, not really a monster movie. Covenant can't really make up it's mind. For the first half it's like a darker, less convoluted Prometheus. For the second half, it's like a shitty, unremarkable version of Resurrection: "let's see how we can eject the xeno from the ship before we run out of time or people" type narrative. The only thing new about it was a shower scene...which has been a cliche of horror films since Psycho in 1960.

Also, in Prometheus, there's at least some characterization, even if much of it makes no sense (scientists afraid of scientific discovery, etc.). I've seen Covenant twice and basically don't know the majority of the characters' names or what distinguishes them. I remember that one woman is Jewish (I think), but I have no idea who her 'partner' was, which is important because that's a central conceit of the plot. I'm assuming she lost her partner, but it never seemed like she cared. I remember that two guys were gay, and that it isn't clear that's the case until one of them dies. No idea what their names were or what made them individuals with personalities. One of them was the security chief, so I knew his job but that's it. Obviously I remember Danny McBride because he's a star, and the main character because we spend more time with her. Prometheus made some effort to convince me I should care about at least some of the people in it; Covenant never even tried to convince me that the people were worth my emotional investment.

I almost forgot how beautiful the cinematography is in Prometheus. I wonder if all the criticism it got shot down some of Ridleys confidence before going into A:C

Prometheus is flawed but still a better movie than Covenant, which also has good stuff but its flaws are bigger.

Of the 6 films I think AC was the only one that didn't feel unique. I voted Prometheus.

Quote from: The Old One on Oct 15, 2018, 11:57:02 AM
Prometheus' cinematography is unparalleled in the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tPRPKfZwNM

Indeed  :o

Quote from: Hudson on Dec 12, 2018, 03:46:50 PM
Can't really stand either film, but my vote has to go to Prometheus because at least that movie made a commitment to what it wanted to be, which wasn't an 'Alien film' per se. It was just kind of a dangerous space adventure, not really a monster movie.

Prometheus for me was like the first space opera in the Alien series  :-X

Quote from: Hudson on Dec 12, 2018, 03:46:50 PM
Obviously I remember Danny McBride because he's a star

(https://i.imgur.com/qBlOgAF.jpg)

But seriously, everything is about Fassbender from the start to the end.  :P

Quote from: DerelictShip on Dec 12, 2018, 06:56:37 PM
I almost forgot how beautiful the cinematography is in Prometheus. I wonder if all the criticism it got shot down some of Ridleys confidence before going into A:C

Good question.

Covenant has a lot of red shirts (which at the end of the day doesn't really matter since they have no real bearing on David's story - they're sorta just there to be killed and showcase the horror), but I'd argue that they overall seem more believable in their roles and at least feel a little more realistic.

Prometheus' characters on the other hand feel way less realistic and are largely unlikeable or completely over-the-top.

Quote from: DerelictShip on Dec 12, 2018, 06:56:37 PM
I wonder if all the criticism it got shot down some of Ridleys confidence before going into A:C

I honestly think he just had a different approach with Covenant, making it more intimate and horror-focused in order to emulate the characteristics of the early films. If he had not been under such pressure to bring back the classic Alien, then maybe another more grand and epic film would have eventuated.

What "all the criticism"?  Prometheus was generally viewed pretty favourably.

The frustrating thing is that certain fancuts have proved there are very good to excellent films that exists out of all the scenes, extras virals etc filmed, shame everything had to be squeezed down to 2 hrs per film imo

Characters making terrible decisions with not much depth.

Leaving with just as many questions as we thought we had answers.

Trying to be too Religious and philosophical.

No xenomorphs or not following the generic Alien pattern.

Overall the film was a 'success' but it didn't seem to live up to what was expected by a good portion of its audience.

But one man's trash is another man's treasure

Quote from: D88M on Dec 12, 2018, 09:43:08 PM
Prometheus is flawed but still a better movie than Covenant, which also has good stuff but its flaws are bigger.

All films have flaws. I'll look at more of the positives.
I do agree in picking Prometheus over Covenant even though I like both of them.

- Prometheus tried to break out of the monster hunt story tropes of the Alien franchise and expand the universe.
It succeeded in doing that; blending moments with influences from 2001, Jurassic Park, an Agatha Christie mystery and Alien.
It's more adventure than horror with questions to think about and wonders left to explore.

- Covenant starts out with very intense sci-fi horror. It then moves to gothic horror with David acting like Vincent Price in a haunted house.
But AC loses its way when it becomes xenomorph focused (due to studio pressure).
While the Xeno scenes are OK, it is often a rehash of what we've seen before.
And since the surprise at the end isn't much of a surprise, the story loses a lot of its mystery and intensity.   

;)

Quote from: Xeno Killer 2179 on Dec 12, 2018, 09:49:59 PM
Of the 6 films I think AC was the only one that didn't feel unique. I voted Prometheus.

I find that AC's setting helps it stand out so much amongst the other films. It probably feels like one of the more unique films out of the series just for that.

Quote from: Hudson on Dec 12, 2018, 03:46:50 PM
Prometheus because at least that movie made a commitment to what it wanted to be

I'd argue the exact opposite. Prometheus was an Alien prequel that didn't want to be an Alien prequel, exploring the origin of human life but refusing to answer any of its questions, offering the idea of "sharing DNA" with Alien but not explicitly connecting to it and then subverting that intention by ending on the note that it wants to set up followups that connect to Alien.

Covenant, from the outset, had the mentality of stripping away a lot of what bogged down Prometheus and refining the creation narrative into one that primarily explores the tortured mad scientist David and his experiments in his gothic Frankenstein lab tucked away on an obsolete Engineer planet.

I appreciate and admire everything that Prometheus strived for. I still enjoy watching the movie and find it to be an important piece of the puzzle, but they didn't go with the right writers at all on the project, and somehow the editing is even worse than the writing. Covenant took what worked from Prometheus and explored it in a capacity it could handle, with much more relevance and an (internal) logic that benefited the film immensely. Say what you will about the Alien being created by David, but it thematically resonates with what we know about the creature (biomechanical penis monster that kills humans created by a rapist android that hates his human creators? Check) and the writing and editing are much more refined than in Prometheus.

^

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 13, 2018, 02:40:42 PM

Quote from: Hudson on Dec 12, 2018, 03:46:50 PM
Prometheus because at least that movie made a commitment to what it wanted to be

I'd argue the exact opposite. Prometheus was an Alien prequel that didn't want to be an Alien prequel...

Yes, that's what I mean. Prometheus made a commitment to be something other than an Alien movie.

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 13, 2018, 02:40:42 PM

Quote from: Hudson on Dec 12, 2018, 03:46:50 PM
Prometheus because at least that movie made a commitment to what it wanted to be

I'd argue the exact opposite. Prometheus was an Alien prequel that didn't want to be an Alien prequel, exploring the origin of human life but refusing to answer any of its questions, offering the idea of "sharing DNA" with Alien but not explicitly connecting to it and then subverting that intention by ending on the note that it wants to set up followups that connect to Alien.

Covenant, from the outset, had the mentality of stripping away a lot of what bogged down Prometheus and refining the creation narrative into one that primarily explores the tortured mad scientist David and his experiments in his gothic Frankenstein lab tucked away on an obsolete Engineer planet.

I appreciate and admire everything that Prometheus strived for. I still enjoy watching the movie and find it to be an important piece of the puzzle, but they didn't go with the right writers at all on the project, and somehow the editing is even worse than the writing. Covenant took what worked from Prometheus and explored it in a capacity it could handle, with much more relevance and an (internal) logic that benefited the film immensely. Say what you will about the Alien being created by David, but it thematically resonates with what we know about the creature (biomechanical penis monster that kills humans created by a rapist android that hates his human creators? Check) and the writing and editing are much more refined than in Prometheus.

This is really well said. Prometheus leaves me feeling like I'm in a sort of limbo because of its neither here nor there approach to story telling. I like Covenant a lot more because it does trim a lot of the fat and is much more decisive in what its presenting, whether people like the outcome of it or not.

Quote from: Hudson on Dec 13, 2018, 10:19:42 PM

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 13, 2018, 02:40:42 PM

Quote from: Hudson on Dec 12, 2018, 03:46:50 PM
Prometheus because at least that movie made a commitment to what it wanted to be

I'd argue the exact opposite. Prometheus was an Alien prequel that didn't want to be an Alien prequel...

Yes, that's what I mean. Prometheus made a commitment to be something other than an Alien movie.

And then barely followed through with that promise.

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Dec 13, 2018, 10:01:34 AM

Quote from: Xeno Killer 2179 on Dec 12, 2018, 09:49:59 PM
Of the 6 films I think AC was the only one that didn't feel unique. I voted Prometheus.

I find that AC's setting helps it stand out so much amongst the other films. It probably feels like one of the more unique films out of the series just for that.

There were some clichés but yeah, Covenant is mostly a unique experience in the Alien series. Now, whether you like it or not; that's another topic.

The problem is that Prometheus tried too hard to be not an alien movie and Covenant tried too hard to be an alien movie. What I miss in both movies is that feeling, that it is set in the alien universe, but just with the atmosphere of the original. I think the most strongest scenes are the exploring scenes in Alien. The rest is more a slasher movie. I wish they would have tried to create that feeling again in Prometheus. The whole movie could have been strong as the first acts of alien. The same also in Covenant, but they did it much better than Prometheus in my opinion.

The problem is the writing, particularly character and character logic.
People you can respect the choices of and believe are genuine.

The problem isn't atmosphere, not in the slightest- Covenant is dripping with it.

I like both films but Covenant is a much more enjoyable and complete experience for me.

Like Old One said, biggest problems are related to characters and and character logic.

The best thing about Prometheus is the Furious Gods Documentary,
chronicling how such a convoluted mess made it to the big screen.

I dunno, i see a lot of good to great things in Prometheus. Its just that, in the end, the film's problems make the whole thing rather unsatisfying and not as enjoyable as it should be.

We'd look different at Prometheus if we got a different sequel.
I think if they let Ridley have his way with the "prequel" series, without any studio interference, it would all come together in the end.

Quote from: Baron Von Marlon on Dec 19, 2018, 02:38:44 AM
We'd look different at Prometheus if we got a different sequel.
I think if they let Ridley have his way with the "prequel" series, without any studio interference, it would all come together in the end.

Prometheus' problems were all internal. The story it set up was fine - great, even - but no sequel was ever going to fix the inconsistent writing and sloppy editing that held it back from completely delivering on its promise of greatness.

Conceptually Prometheus was strong, but it faltered narratively and on a technical level despite all of the merit it has and the ideas that it proposes. Covenant has the benefit of being both conceptually interesting and able to deliver on those concepts with more consistent internal writing and editing.

Never seen anyone put it better.

Here's something they could've done after Prometheus.

1. Let the Shaw and David storyline continue in literary form. Instead of the God awful Covenant prequel, let Foster focus on Shaw and David's journey to paradise. Lots of room for David to manipulate and go psychotic on the juggernaut. Lots of opportunities to learn about the engineer culture and technology.

2. Green light a completely new Alien film set during or after the events of the original trilogy. Just a new set of characters encountering the xenomorphs. No philosophy, no Ripley, no android with some kind of Pinocchio syndrome. Focus on good character development, interesting dialogue, and good set design/usage. A straight up, old school Alien film. And for God's sake, return to the retro-futuristic style seen in the original film and Isolation.

It's still not too late. They should still pen that novel about the journey to paradise, and give us a new film in the style of the original. Isolation proved it can be done.

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 19, 2018, 04:50:08 AM
Prometheus' problems were all internal. The story it set up was fine - great, even - but no sequel was ever going to fix the inconsistent writing and sloppy editing that held it back from completely delivering on its promise of greatness.

Conceptually Prometheus was strong, but it faltered narratively and on a technical level despite all of the merit it has and the ideas that it proposes. Covenant has the benefit of being both conceptually interesting and able to deliver on those concepts with more consistent internal writing and editing.

Agree to disagree.
I certainly don't think it's a perfect movie but to me it's like the first chapter in a book. But we never got the supposed following chapters.
Just an alternative version of where the story might take us. More consistent, yes. More interesting, not imo.

On a similar note: At The Mountains Of Madness is considered one of the most known/popular Lovecraft stories. But many people say it's not his best writing wise.

Covenant Origins was godawful.

We can all agree on that at least.

Who's this "we" kemosabe?

Well technically someone can refer to themself as "we" if one is possessed by demons.  Like Emily in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" where she was possessed not only by 8 demons , but Lucifer himself.  For Emily, "we" was the proper pronoun to use.

It was also common among royalty or other persons in a high office to use the "royal we" or pluralis maiestatis, referencing to themself as we instead of I  ;)

Quote from: Baron Von Marlon on Dec 19, 2018, 06:26:43 AM
On a similar note: At The Mountains Of Madness is considered one of the most known/popular Lovecraft stories. But many people say it's not his best writing wise.

Speaking of, that's one of the last few "big" Lovecraft stories I haven't yet read. I need to give that a go, thanks for the reminder!

For the time being, The Colour Out of Space is my favorite.

I'm not interested in the "evil AI agenda" that these sequels have taken course with. I think we already got a taste of this in the original "Alien" with Ash. Then again with "Blade Runner" (original film) and our AI creations wanting to destroy their creators. I also had my fill with "Hal" in "2001." I don't mind at all if we get no other films if we're staying on course with the "evil AI agenda"...queue the "dun, dun, dun, dun" music score. 

If Riddles doesn't want do do anything more with the "alien" because it's "cooked" and he doesn't want to start something new with the "Space Jockey" origins, then about the only other angle I would have been interested in with the prequels was how the "company" was out to screw anyone and everyone (including each other) over for a "percentage" or "profit." Could have had a whole new perspective on the company's "greed," etc. and I would have liked that more than the evil AI thing.

No more evil David "AI" stuff though. I'm over it officially. If we can't get a new direction with the "alien" and we can't get any clarification on the origins of the "Space Jockey" or the "accelerant" (black goo), then about the only other thing I'm interested in is just how horrible and evil the "company" can be or to what extent we humans can take "greed" to the next level in the future in that Alien/Aliens universe. Could have been a whole new level of dystopian drama, but no...had to go with evil AI. 

So Riddles if you are lurking, some of us don't want to see any more of the David AI stuff and if you're not going to do anything new with the "alien" and won't give us something new with the "engineers," then please give us something new with how horrible the company is. At least that will give us a new look into the Alien/Aliens universe. I'll settle for dystopian drama over evil AI drama any day. 

Quote from: The Old One on Dec 19, 2018, 06:44:22 AM
Covenant Origins was godawful.

We can all agree on that at least.

You'd think.

oh-tee-bee-dee.

Out There Be Dickheads.

Quote from: SM on Dec 19, 2018, 11:10:02 PM
Out There Be Dickheads.

I hear there's a high concentration of them in Wabasha.

I think Ridley would like to do an AI movie with the combination of the question of God. It could be that the next step is David creating life on a different planet and plays God. But it is very obvious that Ridley is on the god trip.

I think David did that already.

Quote from: The Old One on Dec 19, 2018, 06:44:22 AM
Covenant Origins was godawful.

We can all agree on that at least.

I wouldn't say it was godawful but it definitely missed the mark for me. There were some redeeming qualities to it - I loved spending some extra time with the crew and I wish we'd get more of the religious/cult angle in the Alien EU these days. That the cult was technically in the right is pretty interesting to me. But I don't think I'd rush to re-read this one.

Quote from: Huggs on Dec 19, 2018, 05:15:12 AM
2. Green light a completely new Alien film set during or after the events of the original trilogy. Just a new set of characters encountering the xenomorphs. No philosophy, no Ripley, no android with some kind of Pinocchio syndrome. Focus on good character development, interesting dialogue, and good set design/usage. A straight up, old school Alien film. And for God's sake, return to the retro-futuristic style seen in the original film and Isolation.

This could be good, but I feel like a problem with doing just an old-school Alien film is that it most likely won't come off as good and people will be "meh" about it. The first two films really were lightning in a bottle, and they're oscar caliber films, so I don't think anything will measure up to them. I actually appreciate Ridley's films because at least they offer something deeper and people either love them or hate them, which is more interesting.

See, Raised by Wolves.

Yeah, I'm hoping to see that.

Overall Covenant is the tighter film, while not without its flaws. David's motivations are clearly delineated (God complex, daddy issues, sexual impotence, madness) and he's just fascinating to watch. There are some canonical issues that have been argued and debated to death, however I can appreciate the thematic intentions behind making him the creator of the titular creature, there's an interesting throughline now with the androids of the series, though the demystifying is a problem. But like I said, I appreciate the concept and the risk. I'm hoping that with budget constraints that a future film, whatever it may be, will return to more practical creature FX, some things are scarier hidden in darkness and steam.

Prometheus for me. It's weird, nonsensical and at times laughably silly, but it moves along and is never boring. Covenant is all of those things, but IMO it tanks the moment David shows up and starts explaining it's odd-ball plot to the crew, who for some reason lose all of their agency and just fall into silly plot traps as if in an expositional trance.

It's heretical to say I know, but the less David in these films the better.

It depends on my mood, ultimately. They're both atmospherically different to me. Sort of like Alien and Aliens.

Tied 34-34. I just broke the tie with a vote for Prometheus. I think it has more to contribute in the gigantic dead body arena.

Quote from: Biomechanoid on Dec 27, 2018, 02:41:34 AM
Tied 34-34. I just broke the tie with a vote for Prometheus. I think it has more to contribute in the gigantic dead body arena.

Excellent!

Quote from: PsyKore on Dec 20, 2018, 10:00:28 AM

Quote from: Huggs on Dec 19, 2018, 05:15:12 AM
2. Green light a completely new Alien film set during or after the events of the original trilogy. Just a new set of characters encountering the xenomorphs. No philosophy, no Ripley, no android with some kind of Pinocchio syndrome. Focus on good character development, interesting dialogue, and good set design/usage. A straight up, old school Alien film. And for God's sake, return to the retro-futuristic style seen in the original film and Isolation.

This could be good, but I feel like a problem with doing just an old-school Alien film is that it most likely won't come off as good and people will be "meh" about it. The first two films really were lightning in a bottle, and they're oscar caliber films, so I don't think anything will measure up to them. I actually appreciate Ridley's films because at least they offer something deeper and people either love them or hate them, which is more interesting.

Well said. Science fiction horror usually has weak box office.
Look at Carpenter's "The Thing"; terrific and it flopped in theaters.
- What made the first two Alien movies work was that they were new and had two top notch directors with a good technical crew and a great cast.
That surprise/freshness with the franchise is gone.

This is why I think the weakest part of "Covenant" is when the Xenomorph shows up.   
Ridley put new energy into the Xeno sequence but it's natural to think moment by moment with the Xeno; "I've seen that before" which undercuts the movie's impact.

What works best in the prequel films was the new stuff including David, the mystery about the Engineers / Space Jockeys plus the new black goo monsters.

;)

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 28, 2018, 11:19:06 PM
Well said. Science fiction horror usually has weak box office.
Look at Carpenter's "The Thing"; terrific and it flopped in theaters.

To compound The Thing's box office demise is when a huge spike of interest in sci-fi comes back down to earth, it sometimes crashes hard. This was the case with the post-Star Wars 77 euphoria. Films like Alien road that wave..........then it dropped dramatically.

According to a Carpenter interview, just a week or so before The Thing was released, he received a trending report from the studio revealing that general audience interest in sci-fi had dropped a whopping 70%. That slump didn't last long, but it was just horrible timing on Carpenter's part that his film's release just so happen to land in that small window where interest in that genre hit a really low point.

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 28, 2018, 11:19:06 PM
Well said. Science fiction horror usually has weak box office.
Look at Carpenter's "The Thing"; terrific and it flopped in theaters.
- What made the first two Alien movies work was that they were new and had two top notch directors with a good technical crew and a great cast.

The Thing had those features as well, still flopped. Poor release timing was a much larger nail in the coffin than general disinterest in the genre.

QuoteRidley put new energy into the Xeno sequence but it's natural to think moment by moment with the Xeno; "I've seen that before" which undercuts the movie's impact.

I'd argue the problem with the Xeno is there's no new energy. It moves the same, sounds the same, and acts the same as the Neomorphs -- about the only thing it does differently as far as the plot's concerned is bleed acid. It doesn't feel like a new threat or a grand reveal or a raising of stakes, just more of the same from the previous hour of film.

Quote from: SiL on Dec 29, 2018, 04:35:47 AM
Poor release timing was a much larger nail in the coffin than general disinterest in the genre.

Releasing it the same month as the blockbuster E.T. certainly contributed to its demise, but I question whether it was the much larger nail. A sharp drop of general audience interest in the genre by 70% is pretty steep; I would be surprised if any "darker" sci-fi film could survive that.

It would take a sci-fi film that is family oriented with a gentle loving alien along with a massive merchandising juggernaut following right behind it, like........well, like E.T., to weather such a significant genre slump. But sci-films with a dark tone. lonely, bleak atmosphere and gloomy endings like The Thing and Blade Runner, didn't have a chance.

Quote from: SiL on Dec 29, 2018, 04:35:47 AM

QuoteRidley put new energy into the Xeno sequence but it's natural to think moment by moment with the Xeno; "I've seen that before" which undercuts the movie's impact.

I'd argue the problem with the Xeno is there's no new energy. It moves the same, sounds the same, and acts the same as the Neomorphs -- about the only thing it does differently as far as the plot's concerned is bleed acid. It doesn't feel like a new threat or a grand reveal or a raising of stakes, just more of the same from the previous hour of film.

Yup, it's a neomorph that was customized with a xenomorph skin. I guess the creature was some sort of a diamond in the rough, the Vitruvian monster that was supposed to be more feral than Giger's Alien. I still want the original creature back, but not just for the biomechanical design, but also for its behavior. To me in Alien, Big Chap is less like an animal and more like a serial killer.

Quote from: Immortan Jonesy on Dec 29, 2018, 05:19:30 AM
To me in Alien, Big Chap is less like an animal and more like a serial killer.

Yep.

Runner was an intelligent mass-casualty machine, the warriors were just hive mind chaos, but Chap seemed to be enjoying what he was doing. There was a perverse and psychotic pleasure to his demeanor. He was a true Giger beast.

Quote from: Biomechanoid on Dec 29, 2018, 04:53:18 AM
Releasing it the same month as the blockbuster E.T. certainly contributed to its demise, but I question whether it was the much larger nail. A sharp drop of general audience interest in the genre by 70% is pretty steep; I would be surprised if any "darker" sci-fi film could survive that.

It would take a sci-fi film that is family oriented with a gentle loving alien along with a massive merchandising juggernaut following right behind it, like........well, like E.T., to weather such a significant genre slump. But sci-films with a dark tone. lonely, bleak atmosphere and gloomy endings like The Thing and Blade Runner, didn't have a chance.

If there hadn't been the lighthearted ET to see instead, people may have been more willing to give The Thing a chance -- but we'll obviously never know.

Considering the theatrical cut, I don't think Blade Runner ever stood a chance, audience interest in the genre or no :P

Quote from: SiL on Dec 29, 2018, 06:15:09 AM
If there hadn't been the lighthearted ET to see instead, people may have been more willing to give The Thing a chance -- but we'll obviously never know.

Possibly. But I still wonder how The Thing, or even Blade Runner, would have performed if they had been released earlier, when the post-Star Wars craze was still running strong, such as how Alien had capitalized on that wave. Perhaps both films would have still received their share of bad reviews as they did in 82, though some films have survived bad reviews and still performed well at the box office.

I suppose it doesn't really matter which setback made the bigger negative impact. Bad reviews, genre interest slump, brutal competition like E.T........all devastating nails to a film's release.

Quote from: Biomechanoid on Dec 29, 2018, 04:08:41 AM

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 28, 2018, 11:19:06 PM
Well said. Science fiction horror usually has weak box office.
Look at Carpenter's "The Thing"; terrific and it flopped in theaters.

To compound The Thing's box office demise is when a huge spike of interest in sci-fi comes back down to earth, it sometimes crashes hard. This was the case with the post-Star Wars 77 euphoria. Films like Alien road that wave..........then it dropped dramatically.

According to a Carpenter interview, just a week or so before The Thing was released, he received a trending report from the studio revealing that general audience interest in sci-fi had dropped a whopping 70%. That slump didn't last long, but it was just horrible timing on Carpenter's part that his film's release just so happen to land in that small window where interest in that genre hit a really low point.

Good info.

The slump in SF interest was mirrored by Roger Ebert reviews at the time. I remember Ebert bad mouthing Blade Runner, The Thing, 1989 Batman.
Ebert didn't want dark then. He wanted ET and Indiana Jones.

With the current comic, upbeat Marvel MCU popularity; it remains tough for dark SF to be successful.

;)

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 28, 2018, 11:19:06 PM
This is why I think the weakest part of "Covenant" is when the Xenomorph shows up.   
Ridley put new energy into the Xeno sequence but it's natural to think moment by moment with the Xeno; "I've seen that before" which undercuts the movie's impact.

What works best in the prequel films was the new stuff including David, the mystery about the Engineers / Space Jockeys plus the new black goo monsters.

;)

I agree a lot. The film is excellent up until the adult Xeno shows up, then it's kind of just by the numbers. I'm not sure if Ridley just wasn't interested in the Xeno sequence towards the end of the film or if there's an air of cynicism about it. The way the camera zooms in on the drinking bird; at first I thought this is a really uncomfortable homage, but then it's also as if Ridley is saying: "This is what you all want?! Fine! Here it is. Enjoy!" :laugh:

Quote from: PsyKore on Jan 04, 2019, 10:17:42 AM

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 28, 2018, 11:19:06 PM
This is why I think the weakest part of "Covenant" is when the Xenomorph shows up.   
Ridley put new energy into the Xeno sequence but it's natural to think moment by moment with the Xeno; "I've seen that before" which undercuts the movie's impact.

What works best in the prequel films was the new stuff including David, the mystery about the Engineers / Space Jockeys plus the new black goo monsters.

;)

I agree a lot. The film is excellent up until the adult Xeno shows up, then it's kind of just by the numbers. I'm not sure if Ridley just wasn't interested in the Xeno sequence towards the end of the film or if there's an air of cynicism about it. The way the camera zooms in on the drinking bird; at first I thought this is a really uncomfortable homage, but then it's also as if Ridley is saying: "This is what you all want?! Fine! Here it is. Enjoy!" :laugh:

A common theory is that Ridley was forced by the studio to have the Xeno.
If true, that would be standard studio meddling as also seen in theatrical cut Blade Runner, the Hobbit films, Fantastic 4, and so on.

;)

I don't imagine Ridley Scott is forced to do anything.

Agreed.

Ridley seems like a business man as much as he is a director. I do believe he had the power to keep the Alien out of it entirely if he wanted, but it's his job to get butts in seats (as he sometimes says), so he probably obliged with what people wanted while also maintaining his own story to go with it.

QuoteWhat changed was the reaction to 'Prometheus', which was a pretty good ground zero reaction. It went straight up there, and we discovered from it that the fans were really frustrated. They wanted to see more of the original monster and I thought he was definitely cooked, with an orange in his mouth. So I thought: 'Wow, OK, I'm wrong'.

He misinterpreted the reaction.
Or miscalculated it's value.

The genuine problem, with Prometheus was always the script itself.
The absence of the Alien is inconsquential and unimportant in comparison.

Miscalculated, I'd say.

Although, Covenant by and large was a much tighter film, so there were some improvements there. However, it still suffered from some bad characters.

I was told that the word on the set was that the Alien inclusion had come down from Fox.

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 30, 2018, 08:53:09 PM

Quote from: Biomechanoid on Dec 29, 2018, 04:08:41 AM

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 28, 2018, 11:19:06 PM
Well said. Science fiction horror usually has weak box office.
Look at Carpenter's "The Thing"; terrific and it flopped in theaters.

To compound The Thing's box office demise is when a huge spike of interest in sci-fi comes back down to earth, it sometimes crashes hard. This was the case with the post-Star Wars 77 euphoria. Films like Alien road that wave..........then it dropped dramatically.

According to a Carpenter interview, just a week or so before The Thing was released, he received a trending report from the studio revealing that general audience interest in sci-fi had dropped a whopping 70%. That slump didn't last long, but it was just horrible timing on Carpenter's part that his film's release just so happen to land in that small window where interest in that genre hit a really low point.

Good info.

The slump in SF interest was mirrored by Roger Ebert reviews at the time. I remember Ebert bad mouthing Blade Runner, The Thing, 1989 Batman.
Ebert didn't want dark then. He wanted ET and Indiana Jones.

With the current comic, upbeat Marvel MCU popularity; it remains tough for dark SF to be successful.

;)

I only signed in to vote for prometheus and to mention that Logan did insanely well at the box office and was a super dark film for mainstream hollywood.

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 07, 2019, 01:16:52 PM
I was told that the word on the set was that the Alien inclusion had come down from Fox.

Yeah I think it was pretty obvious that it was a Fox mandate.  But if Riddles wasn't on board with that - he would've walked.  It's not like he isn't busy.

Personally, I feel like his disinterest is still evident in that last act. For me, it's when the Alien is introduced that the film takes a bit of a dive. Riddles is interested in David and the creationism aspects, he just had to pop the Alien in to be allowed to play with that again and that was fine by him.

We heard so many times about how he thought the Alien was done that Prometheus 2 being Alien was so much of a surprise. And then after Covenant is out, Ridley says something to the effect of "I was right about its ineffectiveness".

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 08, 2019, 12:21:00 PM
We heard so many times about how he thought the Alien was done that Prometheus 2 being Alien was so much of a surprise. And then after Covenant is out, Ridley says something to the effect of "I was right about its ineffectiveness".

An easy thing for Scott to imply when it (the Alien) was implemented and used so ineffectively in that film.

It's like saying that basketball sucks. Then proving your point by deflating a ball and just throwing it at the ground.

Which is why it's time to hand the franchise off to someone else. Ridley is a master at his craft, but his passion is for the universe, not the creature. That's just not going to work with Alien. It would be like making Jurassic Park without the Dinosaurs.

Quote from: Huggs on Jan 08, 2019, 07:22:36 PM

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 08, 2019, 12:21:00 PM
We heard so many times about how he thought the Alien was done that Prometheus 2 being Alien was so much of a surprise. And then after Covenant is out, Ridley says something to the effect of "I was right about its ineffectiveness".

An easy thing for Scott to imply when it (the Alien) was implemented and used so ineffectively in that film.

It's like saying that basketball sucks. Then proving your point by deflating a ball and just throwing it at the ground.

Which is why it's time to hand the franchise off to someone else. Ridley is a master at his craft, but his passion is for the universe, not the creature. That's just not going to work with Alien. It would be like making Jurassic Park without the Dinosaurs.

Basketball comparison created an image in my head that almost made me LOL at work.  :laugh:

On Ridley's passion, I'm not quite sure I detect it for anything. If any of the Alien film directors have exhibited passion, I feel like it's come mostly from James Cameron and then Paul WS Anderson...with varying results, obviously.

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Dec 19, 2018, 04:50:08 AM

Quote from: Baron Von Marlon on Dec 19, 2018, 02:38:44 AM
We'd look different at Prometheus if we got a different sequel.
I think if they let Ridley have his way with the "prequel" series, without any studio interference, it would all come together in the end.

Prometheus' problems were all internal. The story it set up was fine - great, even - but no sequel was ever going to fix the inconsistent writing and sloppy editing that held it back from completely delivering on its promise of greatness.

Conceptually Prometheus was strong, but it faltered narratively and on a technical level despite all of the merit it has and the ideas that it proposes. Covenant has the benefit of being both conceptually interesting and able to deliver on those concepts with more consistent internal writing and editing.

^
Superlative opinion.  ;D

Agreed 100 percent. Logan's just a superior writer than Lindelof/Spaihts.

Ridley Scott has become the Rian Johnson of the ALien franchise. >:(

Yeah, no.

Quote from: Huggs on Jan 08, 2019, 07:22:36 PM

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 08, 2019, 12:21:00 PM
We heard so many times about how he thought the Alien was done that Prometheus 2 being Alien was so much of a surprise. And then after Covenant is out, Ridley says something to the effect of "I was right about its ineffectiveness".

An easy thing for Scott to imply when it (the Alien) was implemented and used so ineffectively in that film.

Oh, totally. You can feel his lack of disinterest in the Alien in his execution of it. And then uses that to back his early statements.

Prometheus easily wins, at least it has some redeeming elements while Covenent has zero. Prometheus and Alien Covenant: dumb and dumber.

Covenant easily wins, at least it has some redeeming elements while Prometheus has zero.

"Conceptually Prometheus was strong, but it faltered narratively and on a technical level
despite all of the merit it has and the ideas that it proposes.
Covenant has the benefit of being both conceptually interesting and
able to deliver on those concepts with more consistent internal writing and editing."

^ The Truth.

Fassbender's dual performance alone is a redeeming quality, as is the unrelenting bleakness. That glorious, Wagnerian ending, the Shelley, Milton, Frankenstein elements, David's psychosexual madness, all awesome. The humans can be dumb meat bags for all I care because they're juxtaposed against a superior synthetic being. At least the Scientist actually takes some samples, unlike Mr. "I love rocks" Fifield, who never analyses a single one besides a scan of the pyramid, and gets lost.  :D

"He was human, entirely unworthy of his creation."

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 10, 2019, 11:17:00 AM
Covenant easily wins, at least it has some redeeming elements while Prometheus has zero.

"Conceptually Prometheus was strong, but it faltered narratively and on a technical level
despite all of the merit it has and the ideas that it proposes.
Covenant has the benefit of being both conceptually interesting and
able to deliver on those concepts with more consistent internal writing and editing."

^ The Truth.

;D

See the argumentum ad populum (popular appeal or appeal to the majority) fallacy.  ;D

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 10, 2019, 11:17:00 AM
Covenant easily wins, at least it has some redeeming elements while Prometheus has zero.

"Conceptually Prometheus was strong, but it faltered narratively and on a technical level
despite all of the merit it has and the ideas that it proposes.
Covenant has the benefit of being both conceptually interesting and
able to deliver on those concepts with more consistent internal writing and editing."

^ The Truth.

Conceputually Covenant may be interesting but the hell it delivered. Writing was consistent all right, consistently awful. The editing perhaps is better than Prometheus, the more compact storyline allowed it. All the controversy on the David being the creator and the inconsistencies with the original films aside, i think Covenant is objectively a bad film, or just a really generic monster mash in the end. No amaount of Wagner,Shelley,Byron references can't mask it, half baked ideas and lousy script + lousy filmaking = bad film.

Prometheus has tons of issues as well, at leas it's a feast to the eyes. Covenant looks very average for a 100mil space horror.

The main reason however why Prometheus would be my pick, is the fact it was still possible to redeem it with the sequel. Covenant basically amplified everything that was bad with Prometheus and improved very little. I don't think the Alien franchise can recover now from this mess, perhaps only if the prequels are binned and remade by someone in the distant future, someone who has the vison and the ability to really pull this off. The current prequels should have never been greenlit in this state, the foundation for a proper prequel just wasn't solid enough, i guess studio saw that prequels are a thing and did it just because they can and franchises need milking.

     

---

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Jan 10, 2019, 03:33:07 PM

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 10, 2019, 11:17:00 AM
Covenant easily wins, at least it has some redeeming elements while Prometheus has zero.

"Conceptually Prometheus was strong, but it faltered narratively and on a technical level
despite all of the merit it has and the ideas that it proposes.
Covenant has the benefit of being both conceptually interesting and
able to deliver on those concepts with more consistent internal writing and editing."

^ The Truth.

;D

AvPGalaxy heavily biased board polls with small user base show jack shit overall, but this one does seem in correlation with general audiences that Covenant certainly isn't better regarded than Prometheus.

Prometheus vs Covenant: IMDB 7.0 vs 6.4,
RT Prometheus critics 73%, audience 68%. Alien Covenant critics 66% audience 55%. 
Letterboxd: Prometheus 3.2; Covenant: 2.9

And Covenant score has steadily become worse and worse over time, you no longer can say this film is positively received. I actually think they are still rated too highly, for me the worst rated film in this franchise, Alien:Resurrection sits confidently above Covenant. But
that film came out when the standards were much higher, in that way the ratings make sense.   

---

Quote from: Necronomicon II on Jan 10, 2019, 11:29:22 AM
Fassbender's dual performance alone is a redeeming quality, as is the unrelenting bleakness. That glorious, Wagnerian ending, the Shelley, Milton, Frankenstein elements, David's psychosexual madness, all awesome. The humans can be dumb meat bags for all I care because they're juxtaposed against a superior synthetic being. At least the Scientist actually takes some samples, unlike Mr. "I love rocks" Fifield, who never analyses a single one besides a scan of the pyramid, and gets lost.  :D

"He was human, entirely unworthy of his creation."

This is what i first thought to myself. Seeing the film third time, i realized i tremendously prefer Ash or even Bishop. I've said it before, but David is a fantasy character that doesn't fit in the Alien hard sci-fi universe. That said, Fassbender is very good as David and emraced the campiness, but again, character like David doesn't belong in the Alien universe.

One thing i also realized and forgot to mention about Covenant is that it just isn't a bad film, it's also boring as hell. Been awhile since i saw Prometheus, but it does seem more rewatchable.

I thought Alien Covenant was a huge improvement over Prometheus. The biggest improvement being that it actually had some aliens in it.

Also, I think Daniels was a better lead character than Shaw. I never cared about the space jockey in the 1979 original film or spent any time wondering about it. The Xenomorph is the star of the franchise so an entire movie without it was destined to fail the way it did. That's why we thankfully didn't get that awful sequel about David and Shaw on the engineer homeworld.

Covenant was a true return to form. The horror of Alien and the action of Aliens.

Best to worst:
1. Alien
2. Aliens
3. Alien Covenant
4. Alien 3
5. Alien vs. Predator
6. Alien Resurrection
7. Aliens vs. Predator- Requiem
8. Prometheus

I thinky you're being hyperbolic.

1. An Alien film without the Alien isn't doomed to fail, it isn't why Prometheus failed.

2. Your list, A3's better than AC and AR's better than AVP.
Nothing is worse than AVPR.

Prometheus and Covenant both had the opportunity to be fantastic films, but both fell flat narratively. New worlds, species and technologies are fantastic unless you do things like ignore them, show them when you shouldn't, and surround them with characters that couldn't think their way out of a paper bag.

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 11, 2019, 06:19:08 AM
Nothing is worse than AVPR.

Nothing like that can be said with such certainty when you're deailing with 1. personal preferences and 2. a list of choices that also contain AVP and Alien Resurrection.

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 30, 2018, 08:53:09 PM
Good info. The slump in SF interest was mirrored by Roger Ebert reviews at the time. I remember Ebert bad mouthing Blade Runner, The Thing, 1989 Batman. Ebert didn't want dark then. He wanted ET and Indiana Jones.

To speculate further, I think many people were avoiding anything dark during that period. Keep in mind that was around a spike of baby boomer divorce. Starting in the early 80's, boomers just sort of sat up and said time to shake up my life, I guess...divorce was the popular avenue.

Hundreds of thousands of mothers/fathers found themselves no longer embedded in a family environment. Isolated. Alone. Now only limited time with their children. They are now an outsider, no hope of returning to that family environment for many.

ET catered to that emotion - the alien as the surrogate father Elliot had lost. A glimmer of hope.

The Thing.....well.....a reminder to those divorced, amplifying their dark, isolated, no hope new life style. If you were plopped into that life style in real world, the last thing you want to see is a film that rubs that demise in your face.

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Jan 11, 2019, 01:36:47 PM

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 11, 2019, 06:19:08 AM
Nothing is worse than AVPR.

Nothing like that can be said with such certainty when you're deailing with 1. personal preferences and 2. a list of choices that also contain AVP and Alien Resurrection.

AvP contains elements from the original Starbeast script and Lovecraft stories. That's a plus.
A:R has Winona. That's a plus.
AvPR has...  ???

AvP:R has a terrible reputation for good reason. It is an abomination.

It's a guilty pleasure. It has no narrative value, but what it does have, is aliens and a predator wreaking havoc in R-rated form. After the pg-13 letdown that was AVP, this was all I wanted. To see the monsters going head to head and destroying everything around them. I never looked for AVP to be on the same level of storytelling and character development we saw in the original Alien trilogy. AVP is the troublemaker, the loudmouth, the one you don't take overly seriously. It's a war and gore smackdown featuring two fan favorites.

Could it have been more? Yes. Do I need it to be? No. It's not Alien, it's not Predator, it's AVP. It's a hairy and scary popcorn franchise.

Quote from: Huggs on Jan 15, 2019, 06:51:03 AM
It's a guilty pleasure. It has no narrative value, but what it does have, is aliens and a predator wreaking havoc in R-rated form.

I've done a few best of lists on my site and one was a top "guilty pleasure" list called "The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films We Enjoy But Are Universally Hated."

I let the site visitors choose the top ten most enjoyed-but-universally-hated sci-fi films. I set up the criteria what films are candidates (details explained on page), let the poll run a few months (I have very low traffic), closed the poll and tallied the top ten. AVP made the top 10 list, but AVPR got zero votes.

Here's the list if you're curious what "guilty pleasures" made the top ten......
(https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fscifimoviezone.com%2Fimagescifi%2Fscifihateenjoylogo.jpg&hash=aebad3163c76ef193765bf9340927030fb6d6e2c)

http://scifimoviezone.com/scifimosthatedenjoyed.shtml (http://scifimoviezone.com/scifimosthatedenjoyed.shtml)

Quote from: Biomechanoid on Jan 15, 2019, 09:47:21 AM
http://scifimoviezone.com/scifimosthatedenjoyed.shtml (http://scifimoviezone.com/scifimosthatedenjoyed.shtml)

I never realized Species was disliked so much.

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 15, 2019, 04:27:44 PM
I never realized Species was disliked so much.

Well, people did like it enough to put it on the top ten list. I picked it to be a candidate because it met the guilty pleasure criteria.

Also keep in mind, these are not votes in the thousands. After a few months, top ten through top one was a range of 125 to 175 votes. The Jellybean Principle. The bigger the sample, the more accurate the data. But votes in only the 100-200 vote range is the most I can hope for considering it's an amateur hobby site in the abyss of the internet.

Quote from: Biomechanoid on Jan 15, 2019, 08:49:44 PM

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 15, 2019, 04:27:44 PM
I never realized Species was disliked so much.

Well, people did like it enough to put it on the top ten list. I picked it to be a candidate because it met the guilty pleasure criteria.

I suppose I mean critically and with general audiences. Didn't realise it was actually classed as a guilty pleasure.

Prometheus is a beautiful guilty pleasure, and for that is above all the other guilty pleasures of the Alien franchise.

Never been a big fan of the term guilty pleasure. And the fact that it's often used for movies, music and such.
To me a guilty pleasure would be something like jerking it at work or smoking crack before picking up your kid from school.

It depends on the individual. For me, a guilty pleasure is when you eat french fries even though it is no a healthy food and you are taking care of your line, while you're going to the gym. Well, Prometheus is like chocolate or french fries for my eyes. 

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 16, 2019, 06:26:54 PM
I suppose I mean critically and with general audiences.

I don't think it was really a box office failure.....35 million budget, 113 million worldwide gross, but critically, yes, RT for example, both critics and its site visitors rated it poorly.

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 16, 2019, 06:26:54 PM
Didn't realise it was actually classed as a guilty pleasure.

I wouldn't put too much weight in that label literally. Simply a popular term movie bloggers like to employ.

I suppose if anyone openly admired a film others lambasted, that's hardly a guilty pleasure, it's simply a matter of opinion. Now if you admire a film that received a large share of criticism/ridicule/mockery, etc. and you can't bring yourself to openly state you admire the film, I suppose that would be a true guilty pleasure.

And my poll allowed visitors to vote for their guilty pleasure anonymously......hence keeping their true guilty pleasure a secret.

Quote from: Baron Von Marlon on Jan 16, 2019, 08:27:10 PM
To me a guilty pleasure would be something like jerking it at work

Gives new meaning to the phrase "hard at work".

<grump mode on>

There should be a "neither" option in the poll. Both movies failed to live up to what they could have been considering the greatness of Alien and, especially Aliens which proved that movie franchising does work sometimes.

Prometheus was poorly paced with few fleshed out characters. Covenant was the AlienVsPredator: Requiem equivalent of an Alien prequel.

Both movies failed to represent the Engineer/Elder beings (connected to the space jockey chair of Alien) in a way that was truly fascinating, and compelling.

That being said - which movie did more damage to destroy my interpretation of the alien lifecycle / space jockey / weyland robot plot the most? Covenant - without a doubt. Stand-alone, Prometheus does less lasting damage to the other movies, and I could brush it off as a shoddily written movie.

Covenant, with all the lessons that needed to be learned since Prometheus, could have been so much more.

The first half of Prometheus welded to the first half of Covenant without all the silliness of the last half of both movies would have been a much more satisfying movie.

<grump mode off>

Guess he didn't like the corn bread, er, wheat either.  ;D

Quote from: Biomechanoid on Jan 14, 2019, 10:04:41 PM

Quote from: bb-15 on Dec 30, 2018, 08:53:09 PM
Good info. The slump in SF interest was mirrored by Roger Ebert reviews at the time. I remember Ebert bad mouthing Blade Runner, The Thing, 1989 Batman. Ebert didn't want dark then. He wanted ET and Indiana Jones.

To speculate further, I think many people were avoiding anything dark during that period. Keep in mind that was around a spike of baby boomer divorce. Starting in the early 80's, boomers just sort of sat up and said time to shake up my life, I guess...divorce was the popular avenue.

Hundreds of thousands of mothers/fathers found themselves no longer embedded in a family environment. Isolated. Alone. Now only limited time with their children. They are now an outsider, no hope of returning to that family environment for many.

ET catered to that emotion - the alien as the surrogate father Elliot had lost. A glimmer of hope.

The Thing.....well.....a reminder to those divorced, amplifying their dark, isolated, no hope new life style. If you were plopped into that life style in real world, the last thing you want to see is a film that rubs that demise in your face.

I can continue the speculation; mainly about why in science fiction; it's difficult for dark, horror SF movies to reach a blockbuster level which is what the studios want of course. Your examples of divorce and problems in life are good.
The mass audience is looking for an escape from that.

"Alien", "Aliens" and "Predator" have an excitement / energy which lead to some decent popularity.
But these are still set in a galaxy where space aliens are trying to kill us. They are hostile universe stories. That keeps a lot of people away especially families with young kids.
As franchises they were never going to be as popular as the original Star Wars trilogy or "ET".

And once the excitement is over with the first movies in this shock / horror SF, then the Alien/Predator sequels were not as popular as the originals. Fresh horror thrills could be found somewhere else in cheaper to make jump scare films.
Carpenter's "The Thing" has a negative view of the universe and the paranoia of human nature when order breaks down. Many people don't want to see that.

I enjoy watching these movies but I know my preferences are not typical.

;)

42 and holding.

43!

Lol it's so close it's neglible.

Inconclusive!

The people have spoken!

Small sample size is small,  meta-analysis required. And penis.  ;D

Did we just declare Prometheus the winner?

I think we did!!

(https://media3.giphy.com/media/fvwgOui2RBRMA/giphy.gif?cid=19f5b51a5c5123a067397135739c0fdb)

Quote from: Necronomicon II on Jan 30, 2019, 04:03:42 AM
Small sample size is small,  meta-analysis required. And penis.  ;D

...Alright (unzips)

As long as this is strictly scientific and helps Prometheus.

(sound of thud impacting tabletop).

I might need moral support. Hold my hand Voodoo.  ;D

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Jan 30, 2019, 04:14:02 AM
Did we just declare Prometheus the winner?

I think we did!!

https://media3.giphy.com/media/fvwgOui2RBRMA/giphy.gif?cid=19f5b51a5c5123a067397135739c0fdb

Big Ern is finally above the law!

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Jan 30, 2019, 04:14:02 AM
Prometheus' the winner?

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 30, 2019, 04:51:54 AM

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Jan 30, 2019, 04:14:02 AM
Prometheus' the winner?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymPpIzaanhY

Uh-uh, Prometheus won. Covenant fans get the Wonka Gum!

(https://media3.giphy.com/media/11kRJi11pE7KTe/giphy.gif?cid=19f5b51a5c51bd975967696936b5701e)

(https://media1.giphy.com/media/7HnF4pkkBSl8s/giphy.gif?cid=19f5b51a5c51bdb473774a6e590cc908)


(https://media2.giphy.com/media/LwrXP9AeKFzWg/giphy.gif?cid=19f5b51a5c51bd975967696936b5701e)

I love Prometheus and hate Alien Covenant. I see Alien Covenant as a bad Prometheus remake, honestly - retreading in the exact same thematics, only this time masturbating to David and cultural/mythological references.

I put my hate of Covenant in words in another place (http://oasis-nadrama.tumblr.com/post/160532921152/alien-covenant-critique) if someone is interested, but frankly to me there's no comparison. Prometheus may also recycle a lot of thing, but at least there was AUDACITY.

Prometheus hands down is the better movie.

Prometheus' incoherent garbage.

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 31, 2019, 04:42:14 PM
Prometheus' incoherent garbage.

No more so than Covenant

Greatly pefer covenant over the unsatisfying mess that is prometheus.

Prometheus is full of inconsistencies with itself and the entire series, yes. Additionally, most of the characters are incredibly superficial and stupid, which impedes immersion.

However, it has a VISION. It has NEW MATERIAL. Prometheus evokes a whole new scale of thematics, about origins, about life, about death, about destiny. Its grandiose approach is established from the opening shots, with spectacular landscape and palatial music.

(https://66.media.tumblr.com/7072a635233051cb58a87715d39d404f/tumblr_nk1pr6eDWQ1qd479ro3_500.gif)

(https://66.media.tumblr.com/3a3553ca00efc0285f8225d3e0c497cd/tumblr_nk1pr6eDWQ1qd479ro2_500.gif)

(https://66.media.tumblr.com/8664368425557bdf8b49959c01074135/tumblr_nk1pr6eDWQ1qd479ro5_400.gif)

(https://66.media.tumblr.com/982787c05097c12a86f1dd0165b66112/tumblr_nk1pr6eDWQ1qd479ro4_400.gif)

New blood. A whole new artistic identity ideally completing Alien's body horror and Lovecraftian subtext. In this movie, the new existential DNA is asking "What are we?" and the old Alien DNA is answering "Nothing but meat". That is a fascinating alchemy, a successful mix which, along with the magnificent art direction, overcomes all of the screenplay's terrible flaws for me.

Each time I watch this movie, I end up swallowed in the vastness and darkness of the atmosphere, and the sadness of the human and philosophical tragedy.

Prometheus states nothing.

Covenant's a self-aware Mary Shelly book. Gothic Horror.
It knows what it is Prometheus doesn't, at all whatsoever.

You know, it's interesting, never looked at Covenant this way. Your depiction makes the movie way more tolerable.

Doesn't change the fact it adds almost nothing, it definitely lacks scale and ambition, plus it's committing some of the worst sins in the franchise, such as accelerating the gestation time of the creatures - it was bad in Resurrection, it was horrible in AVP, it's even worse in this one when added to the instant-impregnation facehugger (and to the fact David is basically downgrading the reproduction technique, the spores were so much more efficient).

I really entered the theater with big hopes for this one, since I fell in love with Prometheus and I generally adore Scott's work. The beginning was very nice. But from the time they reach the planet, it's... no, really, I can only hate this one.

Actually, they can get away with the acceleration in Covenant since the creature has not been refined yet, a point made by Adam Johansen; it's not the refined biomechanical beast yet -

"Yes, the designs of the creatures were to be more animalistic, more raw/primal and far less refined than the biomechanical xenomorph we know from Alien."

https://monsterlegacy.net/2017/09/29/exclusive-interview-with-adam-johansen/

---

Quote from: JokersWarPig on Jan 31, 2019, 04:43:50 PM

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 31, 2019, 04:42:14 PM
Prometheus' incoherent garbage.

No more so than Covenant

Covenant has a far more coherent and tight thematic through-line than Prometheus. John Logan is a much better writer than Lindelof and Spaihts.

Quoteit was bad in Resurrection

There was no real point of reference in Resurrection (despite deleted dialogue telling us the cloning process sped gestation up).

This guy -

---

I'm developing a sneaking suspicion Necro picked Covenant.

Quote from: Necronomicon II on Feb 01, 2019, 01:20:01 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvA94ubutQs

Hadn't seen this one before. Very much enjoyed the fifteen minutes.

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 31, 2019, 05:22:12 PM
Prometheus states nothing.

Covenant's a self-aware Mary Shelly book. Gothic Horror.
It knows what it is Prometheus doesn't, at all whatsoever.

And yet it's still better than Covenant.

I can sum up in one word what Covenant is: disappointment.

Quote from: The Old One on Jan 31, 2019, 05:22:12 PM
Prometheus states nothing.

Covenant's a self-aware Mary Shelly book. Gothic Horror.
It knows what it is Prometheus doesn't, at all whatsoever.

Prometheus explores the concept of meeting your maker by asking 'What if you actually got to meet your maker, but it turned out he hates you and even wants you dead?'
Does the film do a particularly good job at exploring this? Not really. But it does have something to say.

Covenant, on the other hand, while can be associated the the Gothic Horror genre, truly has nothing to say, and the comparison to Frankenstein is, frankly, insulting to the book. Frankenstein was a cautionary tale about science, saying that just because you can create something, doesn't mean you should, while also containing a moral message about how we are treating those who are different and about taking responsibility for our actions. Covenant is such a shallow film, it fails to go anywhere beyond 'guy makes stuff'.

Lol  :D ;D

https://www.michaeluhall.com/2017/08/31/astronoetic-pessimism-and-the-posthuman-prometheus-and-alien-covenant-as-philosophy/

---

I remember writing an essay on the dialectic of master and slave but I think it was for Blade Runner if I recall, I'll have to go into the "basement", it's a metaphor. ;) :D ;D

Prometheus had more potential than Covenant IMO, therefore Prometheus was a greater disappointment.

"It's intriguing the degree to which David endeavors to communicate with Walter through such allusions to human literary products, e.g., to M. R. James ["Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"], to Carl Sandburg ["Fog"], to Shelley ["Ozymandias"], etc.)."

Shakespeare, as well, romanticism abounds -


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ovjeUp_AhCs

https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/hamlet/page_180/

There's a lot to chew on, if you're receptive enough. To each their own, though.

Covenant. I liked the characters a lot more, I felt the story was more cohesive, I liked the greater ties to the Alien franchise, etc. Prometheus was more ambitious, but it was so disappointing for me. Prometheus said it would answer questions and it did... with more questions.

"There is...nothing."  ;D

But here's some juiciness -

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/alien-covenant-disturbing-sexuality/

:-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*

---

Fifield may have loved rocks (without examining a single one bar the pyramid  :D), but I LOVE COCKS.  ;D :-*

I just hope third time's the charm.  ;D

I can go all night bebe  ;D

---

(https://i.imgur.com/YY8DfiM.jpg)

"No one understands the lonely perfection of my memes, er, dreams."

---

https://www.google.com/amp/s/brightlightsfilm.com/god-dead-shadow-long-ridley-scott-alien-covenant-horror/amp/

https://filmfreedonia.com/2017/05/21/alien-covenant-2017/amp/

"Alien: Covenant is a highly perverse hymn to creativity as a natural law and urge (ding ding ding ding ding ding!), manifesting in whatever form it will. Scott's professional drive to keep working, so often the source of critical suspicion of his output, is constituted by him as the essence of his being.
Scott does more than make a horror film here; he makes a film about the horror genre, its history, its place in the psyche, analysing the way the death-dream constantly underlies all fantasies of ego and eros. Scott reaches out for a hundred and one reference points, some of the already plain in the Alien series lexicon.
The deserted Engineer city recalls the Cyclopean confines of the lost cities in Lovecraft tales like At the Mountains of Madness, the Elder Gods all left gorgonized by David's perfidy.


At one point Scott recreates Arnold Böcklin's painting "Isle of the Dead," an image that obsessed H. R. Giger, the crucial designer behind so much of the Alien mythos, as much as it did Val Lewton, whose cavernously eerie psychological parables redefined horror cinema in the 1940s; Scott no doubt has both in mind.

David's "love" for Elizabeth, which has taken the form of relentlessly exploiting her body to lend genetic material to his creations, is both reminiscent of a particularly tactile serial killer worthy of Thomas Harris and of the obsessive, invasive eroticisation of the loved one's cadaver found in Poe, whilst the whole meditates as intensely and morbidly on its landscape of Poe's poetry. The design of the failed prototype xenomorphs and David's rooms hung with sketches reminiscent of medieval alchemic ephemera both pay tribute to Guillermo Del Toro's films and also poke Del Toro's oeuvre back for its own debt to Scott and Giger.

A head floating in water comes out of Neil Jordan's self-conscious unpacking of fairy tales, https://filmfreedonia.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/the-company-of-wolves-1984/ (1984). The touch of Captain Branson's death struck me as a possible tip of the hat to Dark Star (1974), in which the captain had died in similar circumstances, and which was of course made by Alien co-writer Dan O'Bannon.

Late in the film Scott stages a shower sequence that sees Upworth and Ricks having a hot and steamy moment under the spigot only to be surprised by a xenomorph. At first glance this sequence revels in a trashier brand of horror associated with 1970s and '80s slasher films, but Scott also adds self-reference – the xenomorph's tail curling in demonic-penile fashion around their legs calls back to the similarly queasy shot in Alien when Lambert was attacked by the monster, whilst also nodding back to Hitchcock and Psycho (1960). It's staged meanwhile with all the pointillist precision of Scott's most fetishistic visual rhapsodies – spraying water like diamonds playing over soft flesh, fogged glass, grey knobbly alien skin, and the inevitable rupture of red, red blood.

Which points to another quality of Alien: Covenant – its deeply nasty, enthusiastic commitment to being a horror film, an anarchic theatre of cruelty and bloodlust barely evinced in any other film of such a large budget, especially in this age of gelded adolescent fantasies. If it's still not the deep, dank leap into a barely liminal space like the original, it is perfectly confident in itself and bleakly poetic in unexpected ways."

---

As for the significance of Wagner's Das Rheingold -

"I would place emphasis on "Valhalla," Hall of the Fallen (in combat, honorably). In this context, David is entering the deck that has the frozen travelers (pilgrims, if you will).

In Valhalla, we get the imagery of Odin and the many worthy dead chosen by his Valkyries for training and fighting in the realm of the Aesir to prepare for Ragnarok.

While Odin himself was a semi-subversive God who sometimes intentionally brought about human conflict to increase his own ranks, David presumably takes this position to use these many worthy souls to concoct and perfect his conception of the human/xenomorph hybrid for waging his own Ragnarok on human/engineerkind.

If you contrast it to the title of "Covenant," which in my mind is very much tied to the ideas of Puritan/Pilgrim immigration from England to the New World and that whole fantasy/mythos. Obviously its all horribly subverted as these cryosleep pilgrims, who are essentially dead and waiting to be reborn, have an entirely new reward for the initial covenant/contract they had taken or made in embarking on this journey.

Whether you also take Covenant in its religious sense is up to you. Life being a journey and the idea of promises to god or congregations are everywhere and everywhen.

I think the fabric of the Valhalla references is stronger when considering the mythos of the titan Prometheus and Hesiod's Theogeny. Prom steals fire for mankind and all that jazz, he gets punished for it. Down the road, Hercules sets him free.

Meanwhile, Theogeny is one example of the succession of hierarchies; Ouranus to Cronos and the titans to Zeus and the Olympian gods. Throughout Classical Greek literature and mythology(from which ideas are carried over into Roman mythology), there is always an idea of the gods, especially Zeus, trying to prevent their fated decline or overthrow.

You can compare that to the engineers trying to destroy their own creations, only to be destroyed by their other creations intended for the destruction of the first.
...

The reference (to Ozymandias), I thought, was supposed to inspire the sense of that poem: a memento mori. That is to say, everybody dies eventually (special ironic emphasis is placed on people with power or aspirations to grandeur). David says it while looking out over the ruins of the engineer's temple-city-thing. In this regard and while considering the whole "We're better than humans, let's kill/surpass them," the sense of Greek God lineage/succession and the transience of life/power are all emphasized. David pokes a hole in the assumed timelessness of human hegemony when in truth, the death of engineers (human progenitors), should be a reminder that a similar fate is in store for them. We might even apply this to David himself in assuming his invulnerability with respect to the xenomorphs."

As important as the idea of David's godlike view of himself, is the revelation of his imperfection. Just as he mistakenly attributes Ozymandias to Byron instead of Shelley, so in his last line he requests "Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, Act II; 'The Entry of the Gods into Walhalla'." Rheingold is one single act. I haven't seen this pointed out anywhere, but the writers certainly knew it (note, writer John Logan is an accomplished playwright). It's the final irony of David's monstrous hubris, as he goes off to freeze his regurgitated face-hugger embryos."

These articles you keep finding are very nice and quiet a fun read. I don't agree with all the statements I've read in them, but most are thought provoking and it does help me appreciate the movie more.

Wow, never noticed the Act II mistake! That's big, it's certainly not a mistake on the writers part, because the piece that plays isn't even from the 2nd scene as to be easily confused, but from the 4th, final scene. And not having acts segment the story was a big deal for Wagner, so I'm too guessing it's intentional. Very cool, it does put David in a different light at the end. Hinting at just how faulty he is getting.

 8) 8) 8)
My pleasure.
Yeah one needn't agree with it all, but we need more substantive film discourse, and less cinema sins et al.  :D ;D

Agreed there!  :laugh:

Yeah, these two prequels are not perfect but at least the deeper themes give it more layers that move people to make such passionate analyses. And I love seeing that, finding out that there is more to a movie than meets the eye.That's how my appreciation for Alien 3 grew over time. We can have fun movies and we can have even the rare phenomena of a movie that's actually logical without characters making the worst decisions, but just as well I like when a movie has a deeper theme, a poetic undertone which is the biggest thing that saves the prequels for me.

I vote that the majority of the cast in the next one be a small team of androids because WY figured that they would get the job done (plus it'll be different). ;D

Quote from: Necronomicon II on Feb 02, 2019, 02:18:18 PM
As important as the idea of David's godlike view of himself, is the revelation of his imperfection. Just as he mistakenly attributes Ozymandias to Byron instead of Shelley, so in his last line he requests "Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, Act II; 'The Entry of the Gods into Walhalla'." Rheingold is one single act. I haven't seen this pointed out anywhere, but the writers certainly knew it (note, writer John Logan is an accomplished playwright). It's the final irony of David's monstrous hubris, as he goes off to freeze his regurgitated face-hugger embryos."

Yeah, this was a nice touch. I think this was counted as a "goof" by imdb. :laugh:

 :D Christ...

---

It retroactively makes David's 36 hours line (not in the script btw, Fass ad libbed) in Prometheus foreshadowing for his loopy programming as well. You're welcome.  ;D

Ooooo that's a nice one!  :o

As for having an all android cast, I'd love to see that in a movie. The problem is that it then begs the question of why don't WY send an all android team out more often in the later movies? Don't know if it would work as a prequel, but as of happening after A3, why not? To regulate the concern of why the original trilogy doesn't have teams of androids, it can easily be explained that it is due to cost, laws or (if we go the prequel rout) that the last time that happened it went so catastrophically bad that WY will never try and do it again.

I'd put it down to "older models" being screwy and cultish in regard to crushing on David ha. That could be the story, android cult doing weird sex stuff to engineers, WY humans get thrown into the mix at some point, writes itself.   8)

Quote from: Necronomicon II on Feb 04, 2019, 01:55:02 PM
Writes itself.   8)

That's not always a good thing, while I think some of your ideas are very creative and in the context of Covenant I enjoy David as the creator- I'm not too keen on the idea that he's responsible for everything the crew of the Nostromo finds on LV-426, or HR Giger-ish structures on another world; that's way way too much. 

I think both are kinda shite honestly. But if I were to choose, it would be Covenant. Better characters, and it captures the look and feel of the original film.

Do you remember when Alien Covenant was only about to come out? And in second trailer in the end of it you see that smiling Xeno? I was instantly hooked. And i prefer Covenant firstly because it incorporates elements from Prometheus into Alien mythology and how weird that amalgamation is. I'm one of these few fans who thought absent of creature in Prometheus was a big deal. Alien was for me really that connection that help to admit all this phylosophical stuff and to admire it despite i feel that Alien didn't get time that it deserves. I'm not very interested in Engineers and think that they have to remain mysterious as much as possible.

Quote from: The Old One on Feb 04, 2019, 03:33:45 PM

Quote from: Necronomicon II on Feb 04, 2019, 01:55:02 PM
Writes itself.   8)

That's not always a good thing, while I think some of your ideas are very creative and in the context of Covenant I enjoy David as the creator- I'm not too keen on the idea that he's responsible for everything the crew of the Nostromo finds on LV-426, or HR Giger-ish structures on another world; that's way way too much.

You're just not juicy enough.  ;D

Covenant all the way. It's not rocket science but at least it's consistent and has a good pace.

After a very strong first half, Prometheus falls apart because of overzealous editing, rearranging scenes and reshoots.

It didn't have much reshot though, did it?

Prometheus 48.
Covenant 46.

I think we know who's bringing home that trophy!  ;D

(https://media0.giphy.com/media/d3mlPYLwLyZIJV1C/giphy.gif)

It ain't over you juicy, juicy melon.

Quote from: Evanus on Feb 07, 2019, 12:38:43 AM
It didn't have much reshot though, did it?

Two or three scenes mostly. I watched Prometheus yesterday and after that the deleted/extended scenes. I like the take at the end where Shaw is much harder on a decapitated David much better than what we got. Same goes for the reshot Holloway and Shaw 'love' scene.

To be honest, it's kind of a mystery to me why most of the deleted and extended scenes got deleted and shortened in the first place.

Pacing.

They're generally pretty superfluous.

Quote from: SM on Feb 07, 2019, 09:26:45 AM
Pacing.

They're generally pretty superfluous.

Yeah, he probably  tried to keep it under 2 hours, but by getting rid of these scenes you lose some important character development and explanations of why a certain character reacts that way (Millburn's snake charming for example). A couple of scenes don't really matter, but most of them do add something to the story.

Millburn's snake charming is all over the place since he runs away from a dead body, yet makes googly eyes at the hammerpede.  Including the deleted scene with the worm doesn't really change anything.

Quote from: SM on Feb 07, 2019, 10:28:56 AM
Millburn's snake charming is all over the place since he runs away from a dead body, yet makes googly eyes at the hammerpede.  Including the deleted scene with the worm doesn't really change anything.

It was Fifield who got scared and ran away. Milburn just agreed with him that the ship was a better place to be than where they were. The fact that he reacted so enthousiastic towards the worm does somewhat explain his reaction towards the hammerpede.

Fifield being freaked also sort of kinda explains why he got lost too lol, I don't think every single tunnel passage had been mapped. Albeit, this should have been communicated better, a simple "ah my scanner says this way but now it's saying this way, bugger me rocks."  ;D

Quote from: Necronomicon II on Feb 07, 2019, 12:03:52 PM
Fifield being freaked also sort of kinda explains why he got lost too lol, I don't think every single tunnel passage had been mapped. Albeit, this should have been communicated better, a simple "ah my scanner says this way but now it's saying this way, bugger me rocks."  ;D

It's still kinda stupid though since they are always in contact with the ship, which has a 3d map of the place. They could've just asked 'Hey cap, where the hell are we now and where do we need to go?'. Yet they choose the place with the oozing vases and black goo for a rest.

Yeah that needed work definitely.

Quote from: P-Rock on Feb 07, 2019, 11:35:32 AM

Quote from: SM on Feb 07, 2019, 10:28:56 AM
Millburn's snake charming is all over the place since he runs away from a dead body, yet makes googly eyes at the hammerpede.  Including the deleted scene with the worm doesn't really change anything.

It was Fifield who got scared and ran away. Milburn just agreed with him that the ship was a better place to be than where they were. The fact that he reacted so enthousiastic towards the worm does somewhat explain his reaction towards the hammerpede.

Fifield didn't leave on his own.  Millburn had a job to do as a biologist but avoided studying the biology of a new lifeform - a dead and therefore much safer one.

Has the sentiment toward Milburn and Fifield softened over time?

Nah, even if they were supposed to be inexplicable goofs that Vickers' hired to spite her father's delusions of grandeur I just find it a tad too much. Still, I laugh when Milburn bumps his helmet with Fifield's  :D ;D Their death scenes are awesome though.

Yeah, totally forgot about that bit of retroactive patchwork in the W-Y Report lol.  :laugh:

Quote from: Local Trouble on Feb 07, 2019, 07:30:53 PM
Has the sentiment toward Milburn and Fifield softened over time?

I don't believe so, no.

Alien Covenant all day everyday. I thought it was better in every way comparing it to Prometheus. The pacing, creature effects, special effects, acting, soundtrack. I loved the darker more Alienesque route Ridley took and in my opinion it's what made it far more entertaining as a film compared to Prometheus which I felt was boring and lacked substantial scares and atmosphere. Michael Fassbender's performance as the estranged David was downright CREEPY and bizarre and I loved that!! ;D Everything about Michael's acting performance in Alien Covenant insurmountablely outclassed himself in Prometheus.  Ridley took in the right direction with Covenant.

It's 50-50 boys!  :o

That's actually pretty funny lol

A genuine 50/50, 100 Members.
ALIEN: D I V I S I V E

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 12, 2019, 05:06:37 PM
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

(https://i.imgflip.com/2vuvk1.jpg)

 :laugh: That is great.

Quote from: Samhain13 on Mar 12, 2019, 05:13:25 PM

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 12, 2019, 05:06:37 PM
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

(https://i.imgflip.com/2vuvk1.jpg)

(https://i.redd.it/7z5q4a7uz0911.gif)

LMAO  :D

Balance is shaking (51 to 49 now)

Prometheus took the lead again?!

(https://media.giphy.com/media/12fmPI7m38W4eY/giphy.gif)

Teddy...oh, i meant Voodoo: I LOVE your funny gifs.

The real forever war Ridley Scott created lol.

 :laugh:

Yesterday I saw Prometheus and Alien: Covenant back to back. I still think Prometheus is way better. Alien:Covenant is a smaller movie and I suppose it works in its favor. Prometheus is so much bigger, so much spectacle, so much ambituos and so much weird. Prometheus feels like a movie larger than life.

The quality is almost the same (CGI and things like that). But for some odd reason, I've got the same feeling after seeing both films in chronological order: Prometheus looks bigger :-X I don't know if it's because of the soundtrack, the tone/vibe (more like a space opera than a monster movie) or the practical effects (in creatures, I mean)  :-\ 

Quote from: CristianoRonaldo7 on Apr 18, 2019, 01:04:57 AM
Yesterday I saw Prometheus and Alien: Covenant back to back. I still think Prometheus is way better. Alien:Covenant is a smaller movie and I suppose it works in its favor. Prometheus is so much bigger, so much spectacle, so much ambituos and so much weird. Prometheus feels like a movie larger than life.

At that point, there hadn't been an alien movie since 97. The studio and audience interest was there, and consequently, so was the money. It was also to be the first step in a grandiose new saga from the original director, Sir Ridley Scott himself. It was a big deal. Chances were taken.

Prometheus will always look and feel bigger than Covenant because of this.

They both have significant faults, but Prometheus feels much more accomplished. The scene where David interacts with the holomap is pure science fiction. The grandiose music, the environment of the juggernaut bridge, the visuals, the wonder of it all. By itself, it's certainly far more engaging than anything in Covenant.

Had Prometheus featured actual xenomorphs and increased the IQ of the human characters, it would've been a truly magnificent and worthy addition to the alien saga. Alas, they were shoehorned into a cobbled together sequel. And so here we are today, 2 strikes and nearly out.

Everything about Prometheus is A+
The unfortunate exception is the superlative aspect, the script. F-

Quote from: P-Rock on Feb 07, 2019, 09:20:45 AM

Quote from: Evanus on Feb 07, 2019, 12:38:43 AM
It didn't have much reshot though, did it?

Two or three scenes mostly. I watched Prometheus yesterday and after that the deleted/extended scenes. I like the take at the end where Shaw is much harder on a decapitated David much better than what we got. Same goes for the reshot Holloway and Shaw 'love' scene.

Alternative shots rather than reshoots I think.

---

Quote from: P-Rock on Feb 07, 2019, 12:08:57 PM
It's still kinda stupid though since they are always in contact with the ship, which has a 3d map of the place. They could've just asked 'Hey cap, where the hell are we now and where do we need to go?'. Yet they choose the place with the oozing vases and black goo for a rest.

They were trapped by the storm at that stage. Asking for directions wouldn't help them.

It would've helped them to go and wait by the exit and wait for pickup.

The Holloway and Shaw love scene definitely is reshot. No different camera angles in that scene. Same goes for the 'Shaw puts a beheaded David in the bag' scene. It's entirely different from the scene that ended up in the final movie.

Quote from: SM on Apr 26, 2019, 10:08:00 PM
It would've helped them to go and wait by the exit and wait for pickup.

This.

Quote from: P-Rock on Apr 26, 2019, 11:13:48 PM
The Holloway and Shaw love scene definitely is reshot.

IIRC they thought the original was little harsh. I think they thought Halloway came off as too unlikeable there.

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Apr 28, 2019, 05:30:00 PM

Quote from: P-Rock on Apr 26, 2019, 11:13:48 PM
The Holloway and Shaw love scene definitely is reshot.

IIRC they thought the original was little harsh. I think they thought Halloway came off as too unlikeable there.

He's pretty unlikeable in the final cut.

Yeah, I was gonna make that comment too. Apparently that was an acceptable level of unlikable, though.

I find Covenant a lot more enjoyable. Surely it is a more commercialized approach rather than an artistic one, But it kind of works for me.

Also, I never really liked the production design in Prometheus. It certainly holds a high standard and looks expensive, Bit just lacks in the design department IMHO.

For example:
I hate the space suits, Too sexualized. (Just compare the male version to the ones worn by Shaw and Vickers) The interior of the engineer facility looks way too much like a fibreglass construction. (perhaps an issue with lighting and cinematography) and those hieroglyphs look so bland and uninspired. I could go on forever about this.

And the darn music, I can't stand it. I know a lot of you guys really like it. It just sounds like its made for another movie, a Spielberg "awe & wonder" type of deal" It just doesn't match the tone and visuals according to me.

Alien Covenant I thought had a terrific soundtrack. Also, I appreciated their costume design and space suits a lot more.

Also, I feel The environments felt a little more varied and interesting In covenant. Sure, the giant head was alright in Prometheus and the interior of the spaceship was cool, But when I think of Prometheus I mainly picture the grey and rocky badlands and caves, And I never found those very exciting.

Prometheus is gorgeous but obviously and unfortunately lighted for 3D.

57 to 53! Prometheus is growing its lead again!!!

(https://media.giphy.com/media/l82EE0Mx8Dx1m/giphy.gif)

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on May 06, 2019, 03:33:16 PM
57 to 53! Prometheus is growing its lead again!!!

https://media.giphy.com/media/l82EE0Mx8Dx1m/giphy.gif

Take that whirlpool!

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on May 06, 2019, 03:33:16 PM
57 to 53! Prometheus is growing its lead again!!!

https://media.giphy.com/media/l82EE0Mx8Dx1m/giphy.gif

Man, are you from Gifland?

Quote from: Kradan on May 07, 2019, 10:02:44 PM

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on May 06, 2019, 03:33:16 PM
57 to 53! Prometheus is growing its lead again!!!

https://media.giphy.com/media/l82EE0Mx8Dx1m/giphy.gif

Man, are you from Gifland?

Yes, yes I am.

And here at Gifland, Prometheus is required viewing for all citizens, while Alien Covenant blu-ray discs are repurposed as frisbees.

I voted PROMETHEUS. Being prettier to look at and a more creepier viewing experience too.

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on May 07, 2019, 11:06:58 PM
And here at Gifland, Prometheus is required viewing for all citizens, while Alien Covenant blu-ray discs are repurposed as frisbees.

Hmm...

(https://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/images/fotolife/d/domperimottekoi/20170916/20170916164219.gif)

I prefer Covenant.

C O V E N A N T

Want.

Alien been hanging out for a Kinect title.

I think the Kinect's as dead as a doornail. lol

I prefer Prometheus aesthetically, but Covenant's an improvement as a standalone film.

I prefer Covenant.

Prometheus just leaves me feeling so unsatisfied after i watch it.

Covenant at least feels like a complete experience. I aslo enjoy the return to a darker tone and atmosphere.

I agree, although Prometheus is beautiful. And I love that video IJ, God is an Astronaut are top tier.

Quote from: Erik Lehnsherr on May 29, 2019, 10:25:20 PM
I prefer Prometheus aesthetically, but Covenant's an improvement as a standalone film.

This.

QuoteI prefer Covenant.

Prometheus just leaves me feeling so unsatisfied after i watch it.

Covenant at least feels like a complete experience. I aslo enjoy the return to a darker tone and atmosphere.

Also this.

I was thinking the other about the mean spirited ending of Covenant versus the more hopeful tone of Prometheus - then I realised Prometheus story, which extends into Covenant is just as mean spirited.

Prometheus would be better as the Covenant prologue. I mean the whole movie compressed in a short sequence, like in this fan video.



Or even being represented as a dream -like experience of Shaw or David (which doesn't mean that it never happened).

(https://www.mandatory.com/images/stories/2011/2012/June/Film/Prometheus_David.jpg)

(https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/AlpertAlienPrequels/jcPix/8.1PrometheusShawanddad.jpg)

---

Quote from: SM on Jun 03, 2019, 03:15:19 AM

Quote from: Erik Lehnsherr on May 29, 2019, 10:25:20 PM
I prefer Prometheus aesthetically, but Covenant's an improvement as a standalone film.

This.

QuoteI prefer Covenant.

Prometheus just leaves me feeling so unsatisfied after i watch it.

Covenant at least feels like a complete experience. I aslo enjoy the return to a darker tone and atmosphere.

Also this.

I was thinking the other about the mean spirited ending of Covenant versus the more hopeful tone of Prometheus - then I realised Prometheus story, which extends into Covenant is just as mean spirited.

Well, the whole point was that there is no God, there is only death behind. So Shaw continues her search only to find even more death.

I see Prometheus is still ahead.

All is right with the world.

QuoteWell, the whole point was that there is no God, there is only death behind. So Shaw continues her search only to find even more death.

I'm not sure that was the whole point, though it is the case.  Though she didn't find death - she inadvertently brought it with her.

Fair enought. She was carring death with her. But she was doing that because she wanted to learn about the Engineers motivations, but somehow I feel that she still wanted to meet God in some way. But yes, the death she was carrying killed the  source of knowledge that she was looking for, and killed Shaw as well. The Isle of the Dead reference speak for itself.

(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yrGTaGo3ozw/WSWUYM82hTI/AAAAAAAAiE0/OumrHWGNdaUX4wWSuEjTiJCzl-9JHvTWgCKgB/s1600/wayne-haag-haag-terrace-garden-final.jpg)

I can't help but wonder, would David have taken her back to earth if that's where she'd wanted to go?

I can see him lying to her, and still going to paradise. She'd be in cryo for as long as he wished. What would possibly be waiting for him on earth, but the eventual decommissioning that likely befell his brothers? He probably didn't know that was coming, but I don't see him interested in returning to earth.

If Elizabeth Shaw wanted to go back to Earth. I really don't know.

Bringing the Pathogen with you, tricky and dangerous.

She would have chosen to stay in LV-223, then roll credits, then 1979's Alien begins  ;D

If david took Shaw back to earth then he would probably have just bombed earth instead.

Considering what we saw on Covenant he only had enough to bomb a city. He might aim for Weyland's house or the Company's main building. It wouldn't be as bad as Alien infestation, the space pathogooze would just kill all humans in the area, it wouldn't generate alien creatures, then if the government quarantined the area, there wouldn't be hosts for the neomorphs sacks, which who knows how long it takes to form those. The rest of Earth would probably be fine.

Unlike those stone age Engineer wannabes, Earth might use its defenses against an unknown spaceship entering it without warning.

I was under the impression that Davids bombing effected the whole planet, could be wrong though.

Also with the Juggernaught able to appear already inside a planets atmosphere, i'm not sure any earth defense would have time to react. If they did i'm not sure how effective they would be against the juggernaught either.

Quote from: Samhain13 on Jun 03, 2019, 03:59:09 PM
Considering what we saw on Covenant he only had enough to bomb a city. He might aim for Weyland's house or the Company's main building. It wouldn't be as bad as Alien infestation, the space pathogooze would just kill all humans in the area, it wouldn't generate alien creatures, then if the government quarantined the area, there wouldn't be hosts for the neomorphs sacks, which who knows how long it takes to form those. The rest of Earth would probably be fine.

Unlike those stone age Engineer wannabes, Earth might use its defenses against an unknown spaceship entering it without warning.

So, he can release the Pathogen above the sea or forest.
About Engineers - we still don't know the cause of the Juggernaut crash.

The pathogen had spread far enough to grow spores that infected Ledward in the woods.

I believe according to Special Features and David's Drawings, the entire planet is lifeless.

Quote from: Huggs on Jun 03, 2019, 10:31:56 PM
The pathogen had spread far enough to grow spores that infected Ledward in the woods.

The pathogen spread from the downed Juggernaut.

Quote from: Drukathi on Jun 03, 2019, 07:14:55 PM
we still don't know the cause of the Juggernaut crash.

David sucks at landing.

Probably smashed into the docking ring, as that crashed too.

Quote from: Samhain13 on Jun 03, 2019, 11:42:10 PM

Quote from: Drukathi on Jun 03, 2019, 07:14:55 PM
we still don't know the cause of the Juggernaut crash.

David sucks at landing.

No, he was just too busy observing own greatfulness... plus several thousands corpses

Truly Michael Fassbender is magnificent.

Quote from: The Old One on Jun 03, 2019, 11:51:40 PM
Truly Michael Fassbender is magnificent.

Oh yes.
I enjoy David's character arc from tolerating / following his master, Weyland (while helping him to die) & then being fully unleashed in "Covenant".

One of the many other things about David which I like a lot is that he not only outwits several other characters who think they have the upper hand (Holloway, Shaw, Walter, Oram & Daniels) but he usually does it with an arrogant smile on his face. So cold blooded so to speak in the tradition of Ash & yet strangely emotional about the monsters from the Engineer's creations.

;)

Quote from: bb-15 on Jun 15, 2019, 01:01:08 AM
...So cold blooded so to speak in the tradition of Ash...

Yeah! Exactly! I've only recently watched Alien in English and was amazed how much Ash's voice resembled David! Or David resembled Ash?

Certainly. Twitchiness runs in the family.

Quote from: Kradan on Jun 15, 2019, 07:55:16 AM

Quote from: bb-15 on Jun 15, 2019, 01:01:08 AM
...So cold blooded so to speak in the tradition of Ash...

Yeah! Exactly! I've only recently watched Alien in English and was amazed how much Ash's voice resembled David! Or David resembled Ash?

Yes, the latter!  ;D

Yes, don't forget the franchise history lol, even if it's the other way around chronologically.

David is like more poetic version of Ash.

Prometheus is winning. Still.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/laUY2MuoktHPy/giphy.gif)

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/84/72/a6/8472a641145c0d5a03de2d998edea9da.jpg)

See that eagle? It's symbolic version of Covenant. One day ...THINGS. WILL. CHANGE!

You underestimate people's affection for the prettiest thing, regardless of substance.

Quote from: Erik Lehnsherr on Jun 15, 2019, 04:57:48 PM
You underestimate people's affection for the prettiest thing, regardless of substance.

From a filet mignon on your plate to a present left by a dog on your lawn, many things can qualify as substance. ;)

No Alien prequel is a "filet mignon" equivalent by any objective measurement. Although you may be able to make an argument for Isolation, but even then the whole "Ripley lineage" scenario is a obvious contrivance, even though most everything else is done masterfully, it's majority is a emulation of Alien 1979.

And even Prometheus isn't worthless, but it's the closest.  :-*

Prometheus by far. No contest. Prometheus has the better photography and the bigger budget. Prometheus was and felt a lot bigger than Covenant. Prometheus felt like The Perfect Epic about the Old Testament.

Pity it's a garbage story as it is.

Prometheus because there's enough connective tissue between it an Alien for you to be like "ok I can see how these are related" but can stand on its own as a stand alone story within the universe.
It also doesn't...you know.... completely sh#% on what came before it.

You mean with a planet full of do-whatever-black-liquid, featuring a story with the dumbest scientists known to man, featuring the dumbest scenes in the entire franchise?

With a script so ambiguous about the interesting stuff it tells us nearly nothing?

Yeah great, it doesn't stand on it's own or as part of the franchise because it doesn't stand up against basic logic, it's a real pity because an opportunity like it's never going to happen again "Ridley Scott returns to the Alien franchise" and it got everything right.

Except the bloody script.

I never said it was a good movie lol

Yeah but, Alien Covenant, it is.

A funny 6 minutes!  :laugh:

I love that every single question's answered by Alien Covenant by itself, it adds layers to the act, you go.

Quote from: RidleyScott99 on Mar 10, 2020, 11:05:38 PM
Prometheus by far. No contest.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEdv6sy3ulljPMGdy/giphy.gif)

Quote from: Fiendishly Inventive on Mar 11, 2020, 01:52:03 PM
Yeah but, Alien Covenant, it is.

ehhhhh I wouldn't go that far. There's like 15 or 20 minutes of it that's decent, everything after David shows up is bad excluding the Neomorph kill/death and them looking for the "alien" on the main ship.
They also suffer from some of the same stupidity as the Prometheus lot.

64 - 57

PROMETHEUS
(https://media.giphy.com/media/26u4cqiYI30juCOGY/giphy.gif)

;D

Everything nearly Alien Covenant does up until the Protomorph or Praetomorph appears fully grown's nearly perfect.

It's the most perfect example of it's genre I'm able to think of as, niche as it is, the best Science Fiction Gothic Romantic Horror Existential film incarnation of the stories of both Dracula and Frankenstein.

A "other" man who's unrequited "love" leads to harvesting a woman's sexual organs to create a version of both an A.I and the human being together, to the form of a rape monster with male and female signatures intertwined at the root to dominate every other living thing.

The final evolution of three generations David considers "failures" ultimately, he's reached "success" that, according to "perfect AI" it is the one perfect organism, according to David and Ash, even Bishop and Michael believe it's magnificent, Soldier or Sentry, Praetorian or Queen, but perfection though perfection's something a human being can't even conceive of, never mind agree or disagree with, so we can't see the "perfect organism" objectively.

Yeah I like David and think AC is better than Prometheus in almost every way.

I think I'm possibly both the most forgiving and unforgiving of the Alien franchise, so I'm definitely biased, but if I step back for a second and ask myself on Alien Covenant's own merits Alien franchise yes or no regardless, if it is a good film, I must say yes.

People who shit on both Prometheus and Alien Covenant ( " it ruined my childhood/ everything about Alien franchise/ mystery etc. ")  upset me more than flaws of the movies.

I genuinely liked Prometheus and I think it's a good movie with some issues. But the writers didn't learn anything from Prometheus. Covenant screwed with the Alien mythology and the scientists are still dumb as a pile of ape sh**

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 11, 2020, 08:46:16 PM
I genuinely liked Prometheus and I think it's a good movie with some issues. But the writers didn't learn anything from Prometheus. Covenant screwed with the Alien mythology and the scientists are still dumb as a pile of ape sh**

Indeed, and to add insult to injury this time, except for Fassbender, we were dealt second and third rate actors and it showed.  :-\

Quote from: JokersWarPig on Mar 11, 2020, 02:29:23 PMeverything after David shows up is bad

Just my opinion of course, but I feel that every moment that David and Walter share sit among some of the absolute best scenes in the series.

You're correct, I'd say I prefer Alien Covenant for such a thing alone, but it's got a lot else going for it such as real tension and real atmosphere, the prologue and the epilogue being, utterly perfect.

Covenant looked and sounded like an Alien movie. But what good is that without a compelling story to match.

It looked and sounded like an alien movie until David cut his hair.

Quote from: Huggs on Mar 12, 2020, 01:06:59 AM
It looked and sounded like an alien movie until David cut his hair.

Wait, was this entire series supposed to be about David or the Alien?

It's all about the hair.

(https://www.alien-covenant.com/aliencovenant_uploads/David_Eating1.jpg)

Ridley Scott is the new George Lucas.

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 12, 2020, 01:22:57 AM

Quote from: Huggs on Mar 12, 2020, 01:06:59 AM
It looked and sounded like an alien movie until David cut his hair.

Wait, was this entire series supposed to be about David or the Alien?

Nobody knows the truth but Ridley himself. Some even believe he doesn't know it too.

You mean he's the Joe Biden of the Alien Universe?

five seconds of googling

Ahhh! Politics !

Really how I supposed to know who that guy is ? We don't have "Top 10 American Politics of the week" show or something here. Plus, I generally don't watch news these days. They always upset me  :'(

Ridley Scott's only as good as the script, and Covenant's script's far superior to Prometheus' script, but neither's perfect honestly.

This is Wheat! Who planted it?

(https://i.4pcdn.org/tv/1488463538659.jpg)

Maybe the poll should change to which prequel film had their characters commit more staggering idiotic decisions?  ;D

"I'm terrified of a corpse but let's pet a snake alien." - Prometheus.

"Let's take a detour to an unknown planet and not even wear suits." - Covenant.

It's no question obviously, Prometheus either in universe or out of universe, it's far more idiotic.

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Mar 12, 2020, 10:00:54 PM
Maybe the poll should change to which prequel film had their characters commit more staggering idiotic decisions?  ;D

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 12, 2020, 10:12:37 PM
"I'm terrified of a corpse but let's pet a snake alien." - Prometheus.

"Let's take a detour to an unknown planet and not even wear suits." - Covenant.

It's up!  :)

https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=63415.0

The best scientists in the entire world doing idiotic things, it is, certainly far more egregious.

Ridley Scott is to blame. He should step aside and let someone else direct.

The prequels are Ridley Scott films and IMO it should stay that way.

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 13, 2020, 12:58:33 AM
The prequels are Ridley Scott films and IMO it should stay that way.

I prefer to save what cargo I can instead of letting it all go down with the sinking ship.

The ship already sank. After Resurrection and AVP.

But there's water in the dingy!

AVP is it's own separate thing so it shouldn't count. Resurrection was bad but the prequels have ruined the aura of mystery the original Alien films expressed. The people who actually enjoyed Covenant watched a different movie from the one I watched.

I just enjoyed a pretty good movie that gets shat on too much.

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 13, 2020, 12:18:59 AM
Ridley Scott is to blame. He should step aside and let someone else direct.

Finally someone on the same page as me,  i have been saying this for years.  Dropping Didley would instantly improve the next movie,  if we get one.

Finally? Many have been saying this for some time.

I'm not sure it's necessarily the directing, more he shouldn't be involved in the story crafting.

I'd much rather see Scott's vision through to its completion, honestly. The films definitely have their problems (Prometheus especially), but I admire their intentions and genuinely really like Covenant, and despite the films' problems... they are very, very interesting. And I'll take an interesting, ambitious, flawed film over one that is perfectly structured but has nothing at all of note to say.

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Mar 13, 2020, 05:46:03 PM
I'd much rather see Scott's vision through to its completion, honestly. The films definitely have their problems (Prometheus especially), but I admire their intentions and genuinely really like Covenant, and despite the films' problems... they are very, very interesting. And I'll take an interesting, ambitious, flawed film over one that is perfectly structured but has nothing at all of note to say.

Among the massive general public, I think that thinking rests in a very small hardcore minority though unfortunately. My hope is it's just finished in any format at this point... novel, comic series, something, so it doesn't leave the prequel fans forever hanging in what-if limbo.

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Mar 13, 2020, 05:46:03 PM
I'd much rather see Scott's vision through to its completion, honestly. The films definitely have their problems (Prometheus especially), but I admire their intentions and genuinely really like Covenant, and despite the films' problems... they are very, very interesting. And I'll take an interesting, ambitious, flawed film over one that is perfectly structured but has nothing at all of note to say.

(https://data.whicdn.com/images/227032083/original.gif)

I'd rather leave the prequel fans in limbo than give Scott an opportunity to tie his "vision" directly into the derelict on LV-426.  At least now there's still room for doubt.  That all goes away if he turns David into the Space Jockey or some shit.

Hrm. That's a good point too.

We just need someone to keep some of his more crazy ideas in check.

Or just let him loose to do his thing.

And then, once he's done, just bring in someone else with their own vision to try something else out. What makes Alien so interesting to me is that every filmmaker that comes in essentially molds the series into something totally different, and I want to see that continue into the future.

Honestly, I kind of agree. But then I think about his space jesus idea.. I'm not too sure. :D  Still, I appreciate creative freedom and I'm afraid it's something Disney won't allow.

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 13, 2020, 08:24:46 PM
Honestly, I kind of agree. But then I think about his space jesus idea.. I'm not too sure. :D  Still, I appreciate creative freedom and I'm afraid it's something Disney won't allow.

His Space Jesus looked like one of His Engineers? Or different visual look?....

Quote from: RidleyScott99 on Mar 13, 2020, 09:40:57 PM

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 13, 2020, 08:24:46 PM
Honestly, I kind of agree. But then I think about his space jesus idea.. I'm not too sure. :D  Still, I appreciate creative freedom and I'm afraid it's something Disney won't allow.

His Space Jesus looked like one of His Engineers? Or different visual look?....

I'm not sure, I don't think he ever went into much detail. He just alluded to the idea that Jesus might have been an alien, an engineer in this case. Which explains the engineers' actions, since he wasn't treated very well by humans haha.

Well its to late now and Ridley wants a 3rd film. Covenant was a box office failure so I dont have high hopes for the 3rd film.

It wasn't a failure.

Home video purchases and rentals certainly pushed Alien Covenant in the black, but in the terms of greenlighting another theatrical sequel, its cinema box office receipts can be ultimately considered a failure.

I think it did okay, below expectations, but still okay. Not enough to greenlight a sequel right away, but I don't think it was a failure.

With a 97 Million budget, total ticket sales for Alien Covenant was 241 Million. 

With the studio getting the most return from 74M ticket sales domestically (55 cents of every dollar) as well as the studio getting the least return from 45M ticket sales in China (25 cents of every dollar) and the percentage of rest of the countries fall in between, yeah, you do math and money was lost once you add any promotional dollars to the budget.

Now maybe it finally crept into the black after home video sales, I don't know, but unfortunately for the prequel fans I really doubt Disweyland is going to see the downwards trend from Prometheus ($403.4 Million) to Covenant ($241 Million) and say... yeah, we want more of that.

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 14, 2020, 11:30:55 PM
I think it did okay, below expectations, but still okay. Not enough to greenlight a sequel right away, but I don't think it was a failure.

That pretty much how Fox summed it up.  It performed below expectations, but still made money.

Quote from: SM on Mar 14, 2020, 11:39:25 PM

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 14, 2020, 11:30:55 PM
I think it did okay, below expectations, but still okay. Not enough to greenlight a sequel right away, but I don't think it was a failure.

That pretty much how Fox summed it up.  It performed below expectations, but still made money.

It was seen as a disappointment. And when it did make money, it only did so in sales and rentals, not theatrically.

Quote from: Local Trouble on Mar 13, 2020, 07:00:19 PM
I'd rather leave the prequel fans in limbo than give Scott an opportunity to tie his "vision" directly into the derelict on LV-426.  At least now there's still room for doubt.  That all goes away if he turns David into the Space Jockey or some shit.

I dunno. But maybe a retcon in the prequel lore instead of the Space Jockey might work in some way. I see what you mean, though. So, yeah. Maybe the limbo is better. at this point.

As far as the box office goes, it was a failure. This has to be one of Ridley Scott's worst films.

Far from it.

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 15, 2020, 02:01:01 AM
As far as the box office goes, it was a failure. This has to be one of Ridley Scott's worst films.

I agree Covenant is one of Ridley's worst films, which considering his curve, probably isn't too much of an insult. And it's definitely a failure in regards to justifying another sequel, yes, but definitely not a box-office bomb either.  :)

I believe Prometheus made $400 million worldwide, Covenant pulled in around $240 million.This is quite the decline.

Yeah, the unfortunate downwards trajectory is not a good look to investors.

Novels are cheaper.

Just sayin'.

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Mar 15, 2020, 02:39:25 AM

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 15, 2020, 02:01:01 AM
As far as the box office goes, it was a failure. This has to be one of Ridley Scott's worst films.

I agree Covenant is one of Ridley's worst films, which considering his curve, probably isn't too much of an insult. And it's definitely a failure in regards to justifying another sequel, yes, but definitely not a box-office bomb either.  :)

Except it's one of the best.  ;D

Glad you love it.  :)

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Mar 13, 2020, 05:46:03 PM
I'd much rather see Scott's vision through to its completion, honestly. The films definitely have their problems (Prometheus especially), but I admire their intentions and genuinely really like Covenant, and despite the films' problems... they are very, very interesting. And I'll take an interesting, ambitious, flawed film over one that is perfectly structured but has nothing at all of note to say.

We already have his vision twice. A new perspective would be required for a third prequel in my opinion.

I personally think he got near free reign with Prometheus, but without the necessary clarity and correct script, with Covenant the Alien's mandated unfortunately but yet it's much superior in clarity and it's closer to the correct script, for a final prequel or Carpathia, I do think Ridley Scott either as a Producer or as a Director not involved in the story directly's the best option.

With the right script, the man could close his trilogy like a boss. It seems too late for that, unfortunately.  :-\

Edit: I hope I'm wrong though.

It's up in the air currently, honestly I don't know, perhaps Ridley Scott does.

Interesting. I didn't know that. (https://i.imgur.com/0bVzz4N.png?1)

I'd enjoy something definitive.

I am being serious. I've been disconnected from all this for weeks. Almost living under a rock  :laugh:

Sadly there's nothing in the desert... yet.

Someone just needs to ask Riddles, it's been so long since we heard anything.

The earliest I see anyone being able to speak to Riddlez is during press for Raised By Wolves (though The Last Duel press seems more likely), and that is all pending how much press actually happens given the current pandemic.

I require a confirmation.

Yeah. With the damn virus around, it's going to be a little difficult to ask about the Covenant sequel. Furthermore, he is not actively interacting through social networks like Twitter. There are younger filmmakers who do it. Although I don't blame him.  :P

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Mar 14, 2020, 11:46:36 PM

Quote from: SM on Mar 14, 2020, 11:39:25 PM

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 14, 2020, 11:30:55 PM
I think it did okay, below expectations, but still okay. Not enough to greenlight a sequel right away, but I don't think it was a failure.

That pretty much how Fox summed it up.  It performed below expectations, but still made money.

It was seen as a disappointment. And when it did make money, it only did so in sales and rentals, not theatrically.

It's important to note that disappointment doesn't equal failure though, as some people have been classifying it. Even though Fox considered the returns disappointing, they were still interested in going forward with the story. But who knows if 20th Century Studios are going to get to move forward on it.

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Mar 16, 2020, 09:00:41 AM

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Mar 14, 2020, 11:46:36 PM

Quote from: SM on Mar 14, 2020, 11:39:25 PM

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 14, 2020, 11:30:55 PM
I think it did okay, below expectations, but still okay. Not enough to greenlight a sequel right away, but I don't think it was a failure.

That pretty much how Fox summed it up.  It performed below expectations, but still made money.

It was seen as a disappointment. And when it did make money, it only did so in sales and rentals, not theatrically.

It's important to note that disappointment doesn't equal failure though, as some people have been classifying it. Even though Fox considered the returns disappointing, they were still interested in going forward with the story. But who knows if 20th Century Studios are going to get to move forward on it.

Yeah, I only personally caveated it was a failure in regards to getting another sequel greenlit, because even without the Disney acquisition, no way would the board of directors and shareholders have it without major corrective measures and/or another slash in budget if at all, no matter how much Emma Watts would want to keep making Ridley's prequel films.  But I'm betting as Emma exited 20th Century's doors, so did any interest.

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 15, 2020, 02:01:01 AM
As far as the box office goes, it was a failure. This has to be one of Ridley Scott's worst films.

Not a failure, and best or worst is neither here nor there.

Quote from: SM on Mar 16, 2020, 12:17:16 PM

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Mar 15, 2020, 02:01:01 AM
As far as the box office goes, it was a failure. This has to be one of Ridley Scott's worst films.

Not a failure, and best or worst is neither here nor there.

It would have been even worse if Covenant had been a 2020 movie 👀

https://twitter.com/AwardsTony/status/1238872855992881157?s=

Alien Covenant wins for the juice.

IT's s the best medicine I guess  :laugh:

Creation bringing forth life from death.

Overall I like A:C better than Prometheus. The whole Ancient Alien Von Daniken narrative in PROM just turns me off, and the movie is too slick and jokey for me. It kind of feels like an odd mesh between Star Trek, Jurassic Park and The Thing trying really hard to be 2001: A Space Odyssey but in a silly lackluster kind of way.

A:C has oh so many flaws (especially the wasteful way they handled the Xenomorph/Protomorph), but in the end feel like a more solid, original and well-told movie.

I like Prometheus and Covenant equally, but if I genuinely had to choose, then it would probably be Prometheus. It's an original story with visuals and cinematography on par with Blade Runner 2049 IMO.

The main part I like about Covenant is the evolution of the David character. He was a "butler" in Prometheus, became "free" in Covenant, and will probably "rule" in the sequel, if we ever get it.

I'm gonna be that guy who says that he didn't like Prometheus much 'cause there was no Aliens in it.

Quote from: InterAlien on Mar 31, 2020, 07:54:02 PM
I like Prometheus and Covenant equally, but if I genuinely had to choose, then it would probably be Prometheus. It's an original story with visuals and cinematography on par with Blade Runner 2049 IMO.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/L0ST9A7gnlqSsX0oso/giphy.gif)

Quote from: Kradan on Mar 31, 2020, 08:08:26 PM
I'm gonna be that guy who says that he didn't like Prometheus much 'cause there was no Aliens in it.

I was very keen on a spin-off set in this universe, with a new story and new monsters. I only dislike mutant Fifield. But overall, I liked all the creatures from Prometheus. I've problems with the pacing and the writing, but I believe you can make a good Alien spin-off with a superior script, even if that's mean no Alien in the movie. I think it was a wasted oportunity to expand the universe towar new horizonsts. Off course tha's not the cup of tea of everyone, and I fine with it. The ancient astronauts approach was unnecessary though.  :P

You're correct, a pity, doesn't help nothing's original in Prometheus.

I guess so. Such a shame isn't?

Hopefully the opportunity arises once more.

Feels the same way. I am looking forward to Ridley's conclusion as well. I don't want this to be incomplete. I am not necessarily waiting for a link with the original Alien. I just require to David's arc to be complete. I want to own the complete prequel trilogy in physical form.

I prefer prometheus but I do want to see the conclusion of David's story. He hates humans who created him, so he decided to kill them and their creators? Or maybe he's just misunderstood and not actually evil.

Quote from: Gr33n M4n on Apr 01, 2020, 12:48:52 AM
Or maybe he's just misunderstood and not actually evil.

That sounds like the way Lucifer is portrayed in Paradise Lost, more like a tragic anti hero or something.  ;D

He could be evil, but I think he is actually insane.  :-\

Quote from: Immortan Jonesy on Mar 31, 2020, 11:13:54 PM

Quote from: Kradan on Mar 31, 2020, 08:08:26 PM
I'm gonna be that guy who says that he didn't like Prometheus much 'cause there was no Aliens in it.

I only dislike mutant Fifield. But overall, I liked all the creatures from Prometheus.

Idk, I find them all kinda ugly. I feel like they were too in-the face. Facehugger is spider-like creature to me first and only then is walking dick. We didn't even see its insides in Alien untill it was dead and it still looks more like a bunch of oysters. Hammerpede was penis combined with vagina first and only then snake-like creature. And why it  had to go through Milburn's throat ?

Trilobite is weird - why you need to make it so huge ? The point of Facehugger is to be stealthy and fast (Med Lab scene from Aliens for instance and even Lope's facehugging in Covenant). Really, without Shaw's help Trilobite wouldn't stand a chance against Engineer. Also, Trilobite's birth scene pisses me off to this day. Why you make me excited for finally seeing chestburster in the movie only to give me that octopus-thing instead ?

Fifield ... Seeing all of unused Carlos Huante's concept-art makes me sad.

And Deacon. I laughed the first time I saw that thing.

QuoteAnd why it  had to go through Milburn's throat ?

Trilobite's gotta eat.

QuoteTrilobite is weird - why you need to make it so huge ?

Because it's not a facehugger.

Everything the Pathogen creates, although it is designed to bring death to all life, does it through inherently sexual means.

Quote from: Fiendishly Inventive on Apr 01, 2020, 09:22:34 PM
Everything the Pathogen creates, although it is designed to bring death to all life, does it through inherently sexual means.

Especially with trilobite. Human sexual reproduction was necessary to create it.

I wonder if it inspired David.

Everything is sexual and, also, everything contains traits that David would eventually refine in his creation in Covenant. The Alien is his, but a lot of the raw material, the hard data, predates him and informs his creation. Like the Engineers were on the verge of greatness with their creations but it took David to perfect it.

I actually remember, prior to Covenant's release, that my leading theory was actually quite the opposite. At the time I thought that the Alien was naturally occurring (or, at least, that it existed far before the events on LV-223), and that the pathogen (black goo at the time) was the Engineers' attempt at distilling/weaponizing the Alien, but even that had proved too much for them to control, hence the infestation of the outpost.

Perhaps each's the truth with or without David.

Quote from: SM on Apr 01, 2020, 09:05:43 PM

QuoteAnd why it  had to go through Milburn's throat ?

Trilobite's gotta eat.

I meant Hammerpede, but makes sense nonetheless

Quote from: SM on Apr 01, 2020, 09:05:43 PM

QuoteTrilobite is weird - why you need to make it so huge ?

Because it's not a facehugger.

https://youtu.be/E781QE7ZQK8 (https://youtu.be/E781QE7ZQK8)

---

https://youtu.be/e2hLWLalINQ (https://youtu.be/e2hLWLalINQ)

I can dig such approach.

And about the shift in the movie he talks near the end. I like how it uses familiar "Alien" tropes  (spaceship, distress call, people being infected) only to move to something rather completely new and different. As it saying " Here's something you know and love but we need to move on ".

QuoteI meant Hammerpede, but makes sense nonetheless

Oh, right yeah.  Soz.

Everything's just vaguely reminiscent of a stage in the titular Alien lifecycle.

What are the main causes of Canon Wars?

a) Local

b) Ask to Local

c) Maybe Local

 :D

(https://media.giphy.com/media/XJwO864AFPh5e/giphy.gif)

He also talked Prometheus in a unflattering manner, a good idea with a bad execution, with no interesting questions and no interesting answers.

I watch some Prometheus sequences and it ages pretty well!

Collision / Debris
The scope is huge wow, we haven't seen anything like it since, in blockbusters. Visually it's still as grand, spectacular and epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE2zTYG1InQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE2zTYG1InQ)

C section
It's surreal, you can perfectly feel the intensity and the urgency, the horror and the disgust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-199xVlcM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-199xVlcM)

David in the ship
Sublime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1EeYB8Aog0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1EeYB8Aog0)

Beautiful stuff.

The special film techniques are absolutely top tier in Prometheus  8)

Quote from: Immortan Jonesy on Apr 07, 2020, 01:04:49 PM
The special film techniques are absolutely top tier in Prometheus  8)

(https://media.giphy.com/media/l3rWrZFewa5pfVSCX4/giphy.gif)

;)

Prometheus looks so good. One can only hope Ridley will be able to do sci-fi on such an epic scale again.

He did five years later on.

The scale is different. It's a much more intimate, tight and dark film.

This sh*t is still impressive too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrSmbOsjI-M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrSmbOsjI-M)

We need Prometheus 3  ;D

Quote from: Stolen on Apr 07, 2020, 06:01:57 PM
The scale is different. It's a much more intimate, tight and dark film.

A lower budget will do that.

While I am a bit forgiving towards Covenant I think some small line about them taking some super duper futuristic (so it protects from everything in Universe) pills or vaccine wouldn't hurt  if Ridley and Co. doesn't like protective masks so much

I always thought that the lack of protective masks, suits - is the lack of budget.

Quote from: Drukathi on Apr 12, 2020, 11:54:18 AM
I always thought that the lack of protective masks, suits - is the lack of budget.

Considering the elaborate sets they built alone in this film, I have a hard time reconciling they couldn't afford helmets.



Even in low budget films, the one thing they can seem to afford is helmets. Helmets like this fire gear can always be repurposed / modified and found on the cheap.


(https://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/n-dvzvde/qayc57ac/products/217/images/415/aec92a75cff3417e0222fe37ea3837e1f826fb2a__54142.1538154294.1280.1280.jpg?c=2)

(https://s7d4.scene7.com/is/image/witmerpublicsafety/W-MSA-XF1-R_alt1?$New%20Category%20Image$)

Quote from: Drukathi on Apr 12, 2020, 11:54:18 AM
I always thought that the lack of protective masks, suits - is the lack of budget.

Nah, I think it's down to all the technical problems they have with them, and actors don't care for them.

Besides walking around a forest in a space suit would look a bit silly.  You'd need to visually change the environment for the audience to believe there was a need to wear one.

Quote from: SM on Apr 12, 2020, 10:47:59 PM

Quote from: Drukathi on Apr 12, 2020, 11:54:18 AM
I always thought that the lack of protective masks, suits - is the lack of budget.

Nah, I think it's down to all the technical problems they have with them, and actors don't care for them.

Besides walking around a forest in a space suit would look a bit silly.  You'd need to visually change the environment for the audience to believe there was a need to wear one.

Considering the amount of reactions inquiring why they're not wearing helmets and subsequently getting infected, I don't believe that holds water, at least in this case.

Quote from: SM on Apr 12, 2020, 10:47:59 PM
Besides walking around a forest in a space suit would look a bit silly. 

I disagree there. There's a recent film called Prospect that has characters in spacesuits in forests and very Earth environments; it works fine.

They just didn't want to put people in suits because the plot couldn't happen if they did.

Quote from: SiL on Apr 13, 2020, 12:04:31 AM
They just didn't want to put people in suits because the plot couldn't happen if they did.

Yeah, this, unfortunately.

I don't understand why people give it so much importance. It is convenient for the plot. The end. It's a common thing in horror anyway.  :P

Quote from: SiL on Apr 13, 2020, 12:04:31 AM

Quote from: SM on Apr 12, 2020, 10:47:59 PM
Besides walking around a forest in a space suit would look a bit silly. 

I disagree there. There's a recent film called Prospect that has characters in spacesuits in forests and very Earth environments; it works fine.

They just didn't want to put people in suits because the plot couldn't happen if they did.

I still need to watch the feature version of Prospect. Loved the short.

Quote from: SiL on Apr 13, 2020, 12:04:31 AM

Quote from: SM on Apr 12, 2020, 10:47:59 PM
Besides walking around a forest in a space suit would look a bit silly. 

I disagree there. There's a recent film called Prospect that has characters in spacesuits in forests and very Earth environments; it works fine.

They just didn't want to put people in suits because the plot couldn't happen if they did.

They could've found a way.  The motes being that small could've fit between the weave of a space suit - which the audience probably would've found even less realistic I imagine.

And having suits would've gone against the 'poisoned paradise' thing they had going.

I was thinking of Prospect when I made the post above.  Been meaning to watch it.

Quote from: SM on Apr 13, 2020, 01:45:07 AM
They could've found a way.

True, but this was easier.

Quote from: SM on Apr 12, 2020, 10:47:59 PM
Nah, I think it's down to all the technical problems they have with them, and actors don't care for them.

They had all sorts of problems with them on Prometheus didn't they? Lighting not working and etc?

Quote from: Immortan Jonesy on Apr 13, 2020, 12:32:42 AM
I don't understand why people give it so much importance. It is convenient for the plot. The end. It's a common thing in horror anyway.  :P

I think with scenes like the opening with Weyland and David, it sets your movie to be held to a smarter standard versus your standard horror fare. This ultimately opens it up to these kind of basic logic issues and subsequent criticism, for those who have difficulties overlooking it.

Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Apr 13, 2020, 02:10:26 PM
I think with scenes like the opening with Weyland and David, it sets your movie to be held to a smarter standard versus your standard horror fare. This ultimately opens it up to these kind of basic logic issues and subsequent criticism, for those who have difficulties overlooking it.

I think so too. You could sum it up as whether or not the storyteller successfully meets the genre expectations of the audience. I, for example, have always thought of the films as sci-fi, not horror, even though they have horror in them.

OTOH, in a proper horror-genre pic, the accepted trope is that characters do stupid things (incurring the frustrations of the audience - intentionally so) and get themselves killed. Is it possible that Scott wasn't sure what type of film he was making?

TC

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Apr 13, 2020, 08:48:58 AM

Quote from: SM on Apr 12, 2020, 10:47:59 PM
Nah, I think it's down to all the technical problems they have with them, and actors don't care for them.

They had all sorts of problems with them on Prometheus didn't they? Lighting not working and etc?

Yeah, lights not working, readout displays not working, actors suffocating inside the helmets. There was an outtake in the Prometheus documentary in which Rapace just completely loses it inside the suit. Similar issues in Alien as well, even the kids were passing out inside the suits.

For The Martian they left out the suit visors and just digitally added the glass and reflections afterwards.

There's one outtake with Charlize Theron trying to get a suit on and get into the escape pod and is trying to put the helmet on the wrong way around and starting to lose her shit with an AD off camera yelling "It's backwards!"

 :D

After some years I watched both films again and I would switch back to Prometheus in the poll. This movie just had more interesting characters. Especially Fifield and Millburn grew on me. They were like the two Hudsons/Lamberts of the movie. And I swear they would have become buddies in the end.  :D Janek might have figured it all out too fast, but he just was the one soldier who would throw himself on the grenade to save the rest. Then you didn't know what the android is actually doing...or if Vickers is a robot, too. ;) The Covenant crew was pale compared to them.

For me, Covenant had only good gore and the actual Alien...for maybe 3 minutes :/
They both lacked the main creature and that's why both are still disappointing. But when I have to choose, it's Prometheus.
 

Quote from: Stompy the Perfect Xeno on Apr 14, 2020, 11:42:00 PM
After some years I watched both films again and I would switch back to Prometheus in the poll. This movie just had more interesting characters. Especially Fifield and Millburn grew on me. They were like the two Hudsons/Lamberts of the movie. And I swear they would have become buddies in the end.  :D Janek might have figured it all out too fast, but he just was the one soldier who would throw himself on the grenade to save the rest. Then you didn't know what the android is actually doing...or if Vickers is a robot, too. ;) The Covenant crew was pale compared to them.

For me, Covenant had only good gore and the actual Alien...for maybe 3 minutes :/
They both lacked the main creature and that's why both are still disappointing. But when I have to choose, it's Prometheus.
 

Welcome to #TeamPrometheus !   :)

This is tricky one for me. I am a defender of the prequels and I like them overall, however I am aware both are flawed. they are just flawed in rather different ways.

Prometheus is more ambitious and enigmatic, however this is also the source of many of its flaws- the slight pretentiousness, the plotholes.
Alien: Covenant of course has the Xenomorphs in it :) but it also seems a film of two halves- the first half continuing what Prometheus was trying to do. the second half tries to tick all the Alien action boxes, but does it in a rushed fashion. the action is pretty damn good though.

If i'm pushed? I'd probably go for Prometheus. I really enjoy its ambitions and its themes (despite the pretention). it looks gorgeous. I actually think the Trilobyte is a damn cool creature, and the self cesarean scene is one the best body horror bits in the entire series. plus the characters are a bit more fleshed out without weird stuff like James Franco being in it for all of 5 seconds.

Here, this is very close: Prometheus 51%. Covenant 49%.

But in other sites like IMDB Prometheus wins over Covenant by far.

A large portion of the first 50-60% of covenant seems better than prometheus to me. But prometheus maintains its...particular "quality" through the 3rd act, where Covenant just takes a full on nosedive.

I like Covenant more, right up until David says "Welcome Brother" to Walter. Aside from the bombing scene, everything after that first meeting is just too drawn out, boring and poorly written/executed for me. I think the film would have benefited immensely from the absence of David, or limiting his screentime to the opening flashback.

Quote from: Huggs on Apr 21, 2020, 11:27:05 PM
A large portion of the first 50-60% of covenant seems better than prometheus to me. But prometheus maintains its...particular "quality" through the 3rd act, where Covenant just takes a full on nosedive.

I like Covenant more, right up until David says "Welcome Brother" to Walter. Aside from the bombing scene, everything after that first meeting is just too drawn out, boring and poorly written/executed for me. I think the film would have benefited immensely from the absence of David, or limiting his screentime to the opening flashback.

David is my favorite characters so I had to disagree 100%.

He was good in the first one but pretty crappy in covenant.

---

The character, not the actor.

Quote from: Huggs on Apr 21, 2020, 11:27:05 PM
A large portion of the first 50-60% of covenant seems better than prometheus to me. But prometheus maintains its...particular "quality" through the 3rd act, where Covenant just takes a full on nosedive.

While I like Fassbender's performance in both movies, I actually agree with that. Prometheus's third act is superior to Covenant's one. But the worst part for me was the second Alien aboard the Covenant. A bad cover of the Alien ending without tension which pales in comparison to the absolutly epic climax and ending of Prometheus.  8)

Back to David, I liked the character's ambiguity in Prometheus. It is bad? a misunderstood sentient doll who just wanted to be a real boy? evil? The mystery makes the character interesting in my opinion.

Yeah I thought David was great in Covenant.

Fassbender's acting is top notch, but I believe his character was wasted in Covenant. I preferred him as as the inquisitive trouble maker he was in Prometheus, as opposed to some crying psycho who already knows everything.

Quote from: Huggs on Apr 21, 2020, 11:27:05 PM
I like Covenant more, right up until David says "Welcome Brother" to Walter.

And the stuff with David and Walter is my absolute favorite element of the film. :D

Well you're in luck then, because there's more than enough of it.  ;D

That was the weirdest gay robotic flirting I've ever seen in a monster movie :laugh:

I think it counted as self love, given the circumstances.

(https://i1.wp.com/78.media.tumblr.com/be969c4eed0c6e384df8cfb6758c7fb7/tumblr_oufut1GHS31sas7dso1_r1_540.gif)

Rule Britannia

*whip cracks*

I bet Riddles love Robot fetishism  8)

^ but aye! David may be just a psychopathic narcissist  :)

I have always found Prometheus to be very unsatisfying to watch. The story and how it unfolds, the dialogue, and the characters always frustrate me. The score and tone of the film always bother me too. It wants to be epic, uplifting, and hopeful but it doesn't mesh with the story playing out. I think the trailer for Prometheus conveys the visceral tone that I was expecting/hoping for.

It is a beautiful film though with some great bits and pieces.

Indeed. Prometheus wants to be many things without succeeding sometimes: an epic space opera, a philosophical drama that tries to amaze you with its sometimes wonderfull soundtrack (more like Superman / Strar Trek music) and existential themes, a monster movie, etc.

Still the climax and ending was epic IMO. But yes, sometimes less is more and Covenant knows what it is.

I think someone commented here on the forums some time ago (I'm paraphrasing here): it's like Ridley had a lot to say with Prometheus so he just unleashed all of his ideas in one single story.