Alien: Covenant

Okay, put it this way, the ending pissed me off in the same way that the beginning of Alien 3 did.

I refuse to accept that the Engineers made humans.

And from I've read of this movie I'm glad I skipped it. It sounds hideously dumb based on what I've read.

I'll wait until it's on Netflix or something.....

Didn't mind the ending. I mean, you knew, but it was handled a bit more deftly than other films using the same trope.

I don't think that Alien 3 deserves the animosity it gets. It's not great but I enjoyed it.

Considered on its own merits, Alien3 is pretty decent.

But as an installment of the Alien franchise? It blows goats.

I saw it in the theater when it came out. Was really looking forward to it. And then it began and immediately took a great big shit all over the previous movie by unceremoniously killing off Newt and Hicks. Completely unacceptable, totally lost me at that point. Could've been Raiders of the Lost Ark after that and I still wouldn't have enjoyed it. If Alien3 is accepted, the ending of Aliens is completely futile. "Aw, what difference does it make if Ripley rescues Newt. Newt's gonna be dead in, like, 15 minutes anyway." Watch Ripley tuck Newt into the sleeping pod at the end of Aliens with the knowledge that these are Newt's last moments of consciousness, and it really puts a damper on things.

For me, there are no Alien movies after Aliens. The jury's still out on Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

Saw Alien: Covenant tonight.

Eh...almost.

Some good ingredients (Fassbender x2, two action set pieces, VFX, Waterston, Crudup, and [surprisingly] McBride), but it just doesn't gel. The pace is off, and the film continually gains but then loses momentum.

It suffers from an abundance of cliches: communications that fail at the right time, people who have important information but are slow about giving it, the good/bad twin, the crisis-over?-let's-have-sex bit, second-in-command's sensible protest against a bad idea are ignored, etc.

A simple scene involving Fassbender and a pipe (musical instrument) is astonishing in its technical artistry and narratively very successful.

I liked Prometheus much better, despite that film's flaws. This one is entertaining in fits and starts--and I liked the ending--but it ultimately fails to achieve anything memorable.

5.0/10

Re: The ending.

The flute scene was absolutely wonderful. Again, it reminded me of Data and Lore.

Speaking of Data and Lore.



It's only six minutes. You'll see....

Ssss, ouch!

http://www.darkhorizons.com/covenant-plummets-at-box-office/

Yeah, don't hold your breath for part 7.
Directors, you've gotta make the individual movies good on their own, stop leaning on these franchises that don't exist yet!


Lionsgate- We're gonna make 7 Power Rangers movies!!

Box-office- Hahaha! Nope!

Well, saw it tonight.

I know that this is one of those films that, the more I think about it, the less sense it's going to make. So I'll start with what I liked.

I liked the call-backs to the 1979 original, especially the musical motifs. I also liked the brief shots of the Covenant sailing through the incomprehensible vastness of space, evoking the beginning of Alien and the Nostromo crossing in front of a gigantic planet, tiny & insignificant.

The visuals are truly outstanding. Like Prometheus, Covenant looks gorgeous.

Fassbender is terrific. Every moment David is on the screen is riveting. David and Walter's interactions are a technical marvel.

Ummmm......I guess that's all.

Which probably makes it sound like I didn't care for the movie. But I thought it was o.k., I was reasonably entertained.

But I agree with pretty much everything Paladin says. The script is one, long slasher-flick cliche. People making stupid decisions and doing stupid things and becoming Alien-chow as a result. And while the film offers plenty of gore, there's nothing as unsettling as the squid C-section scene in Prometheus. And while there are some good jump scares, Covenant doesn't come close to the sustained dread & terror of Aliens, culminating in the cosmically awesome reveal of the Queen.

The Data-Lore parallel is pretty cool.

And....James Franco. O.K., here's my question about James Franco:

Saw it on opening day, other than the great scenes between David and Walter, the film was totally forgettable crap. Ridley Scott needs to stop making alien films...period. The last two were horrible with stupid characters we don't give a shit about, and moronic, boring stories. At least Prometheus had an interesting premise with the Engineers, but in this movie they chucked it all out the window. To think that Scott torpedoed Neil Bloomkamp's shot at making a direct sequel to Aliens for this shyte!!!

Hated it, hated it, hated it.

I was telling someone about this last night (without revealing who it was). My take:

I finally saw "A L I E N : COVENANT" Tuesday afternoon. After seeing it I don't really see what the point of it was. My Siskel & Ebert of Covenant is a thumb down! Thought it did have some good things about it, but overall a thumb down.

About to watch it in a few minutes... I already got spoiled on the ending. But still thinking I'll enjoy it, more or less.

@ed629

I look forward to your Siskel & Ebert of Covenant!

I saw it in IMAX Friday night. 2.5 out of 5. Not awful but definitely not great. Arrival was much better.

What did you think?

So why does a movie have 25 minutes of trailers before it?

As a movie, I found it to be decent, not a great movie but not a bad one either. If were to summarize the movie, I would call it another "Monster" movie.

Easily, the most standout role was the David/Walter by Fassbender. He did a fantastic job of playing the dual roles, with both distinct and subtle variations to portray the good/evil roles of the two synthetics. On the other hand, the character f James Franco wasn't needed at all. He didn't provide enough of a motivation or even enough of an emotional punch to add the story or his wife.

The good:

The bad:

As others have said, this one could take place at any time with the other movies, either in between them or at the same time. There wasn't anything about it that could make it a prequel to the entire franchise.

Overall, I give it a 7/10 as a movie, as part of the Alien franchise I give it a 6/10. My ranking of the Alien movies.

Aliens
Alien
Prometheus
Covenant
Resurrection
Alien 3

There really was no point to Covenant, was there? Some lingering questions from Prometheus are answered, and there is an attempt to fill in some of the mythology backstory of the Alien universe. Otherwise, we learn nothing more about the Engineers, their motivations, or their civilization. Are we also supposed to believe that their entire race lives within the confines of one city, and after David wipes out a few thousand of them, they're gone forever? Doesn't seem likely, since Prometheus showed that the Engineers had established outposts/facilities on other worlds.

Ultimately, we end up where we left off at the end of Prometheus, with a ship zooming off into the cosmos in search of a mysterious planet.