Fievel wrote:Wow....I had completely forgotten about that.
The [xenomorph] is done. Cooked. I got lucky meeting Giger all those years ago. It's very hard to repeat that. After four, I think it wears out a little bit. There's only so much snarling you can do. I think you've got to come back with something more interesting. And I think we've found the next step. I thought the Engineers were quite a good start.
Ribbons wrote:Fievel wrote:Wow....I had completely forgotten about that.
From Ridley Scott's 2014 interview:The [xenomorph] is done. Cooked. I got lucky meeting Giger all those years ago. It's very hard to repeat that. After four, I think it wears out a little bit. There's only so much snarling you can do. I think you've got to come back with something more interesting. And I think we've found the next step. I thought the Engineers were quite a good start.
Scott finds himself stuck between two constructs — the action-horror beats of an Alien film, and the weighty, ponderous themes of a Prometheus movie — and by indulging both, he never fully satisfies either.
caruso_stalker217 wrote:Scott finds himself stuck between two constructs — the action-horror beats of an Alien film, and the weighty, ponderous themes of a Prometheus movie — and by indulging both, he never fully satisfies either.
So it's basically PROMETHEUS then?
Bill Higgins wrote:In the late '70s, Fox had two big reasons to love sci-fi: 1977's PG-rated Star Wars and, two years later, the much more violent, R-rated Alien. Darth Vader looks almost cuddly compared to Alien's implacable star, designed by the Swiss surrealist painter H.R. Giger. "We used to say they were The Beatles and we were The Rolling Stones," says Alien producer Walter Hill of the blockbusters. "Our film had something people hadn't seen up to that point: the artifice of a B-movie done in an A-movie style."
THR called Alien "extremely effective and scary as hell," which is what director Ridley Scott wanted. "It's much harder to really frighten people than to make them smile or laugh," he says. "The two great films for that are The Exorcist, because possession by the devil has a certain credence to it, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which has flat-out horrendous violence that shocked the hell out of me. My goal was to take the audience to the edge of stress."
Scott, then 41 and with only one feature on his résumé, was fifth in line to direct Alien — behind Robert Altman. ("I could not see Bob doing this," he notes.) When Fox finally offered Scott the job, he declined to make any script changes. "You can easily give notes and turn a 'go' film into a development deal," he says. "I just said, 'I love it, I love it.' And we made it." He revisits the material in Alien: Covenant, a prequel out May 19.
Ribbons wrote:What did you think it needed to be, just out of curiosity?
Fried Gold wrote:Ribbons wrote:What did you think it needed to be, just out of curiosity?
Having concluded Prometheus with Shaw recovering David, taking charge and demanding that they visit where the Engineers are from.
If they're making a follow-up to Prometheus it seems plausible for the audience to expect that the movie will involve going to visit the home planet of the Engineers and discover the meaning of the concepts raised in Prometheus (and perhaps see how we get from Prometheus to Alien).
So perhaps I found it slightly unsatisfying because it didn't scratch that itch. The Engineers are put to one side and appear to be of no consequence. Shaw's arc is completely ignored.
Instead, David is revealed to really be the main character of interest. Which kinda makes you wonder if Ridley Scott's attention hadn't been diverted by the Blade Runner sequel (since David is so very much reminscent of Roy Batty in this movie).
So I think it needed to be more "Covenant" and less "Alien: Covenent".
Peven wrote:what if they are including that prologue clip as canon?
caruso_stalker217 wrote:Is it a spoiler if no one actually cares?
Peven wrote:if you don't care about what happened to Dr Shaw and her trip to the engineer planet than you really have no business watching Alien movies. after all, if no one cares about what happens to the main characters of a story then what is the fucking point of watching the story to begin with?????
Peven wrote:if you don't care about what happened to Dr Shaw and her trip to the engineer planet than you really have no business watching Alien movies. after all, if no one cares about what happens to the main characters of a story then what is the fucking point of watching the story to begin with?????
Harry wrote:While no shit exited my ass during the first screening, I’m thinking of having Taco Bell before tonight’s screening, just to give Ridley every chance he can to actually scare the shit out of me.
Chris Hartwell wrote:Scott came close to doing what the best sequels and prequels have accomplished: daring to explore something different.
As the marketing for Alien: Covenant ramped up, the studio seemed bent on communicating one, simple message: "this is the Alien film that you've been waiting to see!" There will be face huggers. There will be chest bursters. And of course there will be Xenomorphs. And everything from the title — which unlike its predecessor, Prometheus, opted to include the word Alien — to the posters to the trailers have communicated that message.
It's interesting then to flash back to 2012's Prometheus and recall how differently the studio and filmmakers approached that installment — its marketing, narrative, and visuals — and how distinctive of a film that we got because of it.
With that film, director Ridley Scott and writers Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof openly declared that they were making something other than the "alien film that we'd been waiting to see." And many fans were not pleased, accusing Prometheus of being drawn out, boring and too exposition heavy.
And while it wasn't without its glaring flaws — some thinly drawn motivations, some rather irrational characters, and some undeniably contrived plot turns — I would argue that Scott and his screenwriters, because of that fresh focus, were able to craft a new chapter in the Alien franchise that came close to accomplishing what the best sequels and prequels have accomplished.
Part of the reason that Aliens, The Empire Strikes Back, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day were such fantastic sequels was they dared to do something narratively and thematically different, while still remaining visually and aesthetically comparable to what had come before. In those sequels, it would be an all-out war with the Xenomorphs, Luke would spend half the movie training with a green Muppet, and the ultimate baddy would become the protagonist. Even so, the aliens would still be performers in latex suits, the Millennium Falcon remained practical model, and the terminator exoskeleton would be full-size puppets.
And so it was with Prometheus. Scott was hell-bent on constructing, in reality, as much as possible, quite literally extending the largest soundstage in Europe — found at Pinewood Studios — by an extra third, to maintain the same sort of texture and realism found in his 1979 original.
For similar reasons, many of the creatures and gore effects were done in camera as well — the infamous med-pod scene featuring a fully realized animatronic alien.
And even while no other Alien film had been shot in 3D, Scott's compositions and camera moves on Prometheus imitated those seen in his past films, which themselves highlighted their environments' depth.
But having laid that foundation and established that connective tissue visually and aesthetically, the most fantastic aspects of Prometheus — like the aforementioned sequels — were what it then did differently.
In Charles de Lauzirika's documentary The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus, director Scott stated — and I would say accurately so — "you really wrung it dry [with those] four films." We'd gotten the sci-fi horror film with Alien and the straight-up action film with Aliens and, more or less, variations of the same with Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection. They were humans in confined spaces, battling Xenomorphs.
Consequently, what the director wisely chose to do with Prometheus was open up the world, visually, narratively, and thematically.
Looking at the designs of the ship interiors or planet exteriors, for example — especially as compared to those found in the 1979 Alien — they were so distinctly open and vast. The Nostromo in Alien was this cramped, worn down mining vessel that happened upon a crashed ship on the dim and atmospheric LV-426. And the Prometheus was this extremely well-funded exploration craft that embarked on this adventure to the vast and clear LV-223.
And those visuals appropriately connected to Prometheus' very daring and grandiose philosophical explorations. That story wasn't just about monsters chasing humans — even as it did feature such sequences — it was about who created those monsters and why and whether we, as a species, were just a destructive and vile.
It's a shame then that Prometheus received as much flak as it did, that negativity seeming to have pushed the filmmakers, with Alien: Covenant, back towards something more akin the first four Alien films. But even while Scott — who now openly considers the de-emphasis on the actual alien in Prometheus to be a mistake — ended up repurposing a number of the same beats found in previous installments, he's still too inventive of a filmmaker to throw all of Prometheus' boldness and diversity out with the bathwater.
As actor Michael Fassbender — who played synthetics Walter and David — said in the aforementioned documentary, "[with sequels] you've got to maybe sort of upset people, or take that risk." And Alien: Covenant does that, maintaining a few of the ideas that made Prometheus so fresh and interesting, while also delivering the thrills and chills fan have come to expect from this franchise. So in the end, even as it's neither the most original nor most balanced film, Alien: Covenant may still be "the Alien film that you've been waiting to see."
For more from Alien: Covenant, take a look at why the Xenomorph remains horrifying to audiences decades later and this handy primer for what you actually need to know before seeing the latest sequel/prequel.
ALIEN: COVENANT
SCOTT WAMPLER wrote:To answer your question: yes.
Yes, Alien: Covenant is better than Prometheus. Yes, it largely does away with the often incoherent actions undertaken by that film's characters. Yes, it delivers a fair amount of classic xenomorph action. Yes, it is violent to a degree I would characterize as "gnarly". Yes, it is worthy - worthy of the franchise, worthy of the fanbase, worthy of the director (Sir Ridley Scott) who seems positively on fire with ambition, even at the ripe old age of 80. Regardless of what some may tell you, yes: Alien: Covenant is actually good.
But is Alien: Covenant right for you?
Chris wrote:Back in February of this year, we exclusively shared an Alien: Covenant rumor which had been presented to us which involved a battle between the film's new Neomorph aliens and the iconic Xenomorph. Obviously, if you've seen Covenant you will know that (unfortunately) no such scene exists in the film. However, we exclusively learned through trusted individuals who worked on Covenant that a confrontation between the Xenomorph and Neomorph was at one point a planned scene for the film!
According to our sources, the scene was originally going to play out when Daniels, Walter/David and Lope are running towards the lander, which Tennessee boarded to rescue the surviving Covenant crew.
In the film, the last Neomorph was killed shortly after David attempted to "tame" it, with the newly born Xenomorph chasing down Daniels and Lope, attaching itself to the lander.
However, originally the Neomorph was going to be the one chasing Daniels and Lope and during that chase scene the Xenomorph would have revealed itself, attacking the Neomorph and asserting itself as the dominant Alien lifeform.
The scene was meant to convey just how much larger and nastier the Xenomorph was compared to the already aggressive Neomorph. But according to our sources, the scene kept encountering issues, primarily with the practical suits the actors wore during the battle sequence. Apparently the spikes on the back of the Neomorph suit kept catching on the elongated head crest - causing all kinds of issues and frustration.
Ultimately the scene was not included, or even completed and we're not sure if it will ever be included in a future Director's Cut of the film. But, for the sake of confirmation, it is nice to know this rumor almost came to fruition. A clash between these two Aliens would have been an epic spectacle to witness.
Fried Gold wrote:I think the audience wanted lots of things from Alien: Covenant:
- a Prometheus 2 (conclusion to/continuation/resolution of) of Prometheus story)
- another Alien (more Ridley Scott tense and suspense thriller)
- another Aliens (action and guns and aliens)
- something a bit different
...and the filmmakers knew this. They both tried to tick all those boxes while failing to tick all those boxes.
So it was a bit pointless in the end and nobody was satisfied.
If they are to continue making Alien movies, they should limit the budgets and hire up & coming directors (like they used to).
Peven wrote:the audience knows what it wants when it sees it. sometimes they think they know what they want then change their minds when they see it, other times they don't realize what they want until they see it. basically, the audience is like a 3 yr old at the dinner table
caruso_stalker217 wrote:It's as if the filmmakers made a list of things people DIDN'T want from an ALIEN film or a PROMETHEUS sequel. I hated PROMETHEUS, but even I was a bit intrigued by the prospect of a (hopefully better made, more interesting) sequel. And then they just crammed all that potential into a 45 second flashback. And the rest of the film was a bunch of dumb assholes wandering around a lost episode of the original Star Trek series.
caruso_stalker217 wrote:I still marvel at how much dumber the characters in ALIEN COVENANT are compared to the fucking idiots in PROMETHEUS. Billy Crudup's character is, by far, the dumbest fucking asshole in the universe.
so sorry wrote:Holy crap on a cross was this a bad movie. If I had an hour it would be enough time to write down what was wrong with this film. As with all Alien movies, I go into them with the sincere hope that I'll like it (one of my favorite franchises). I reasoned with Prometheus...the sheer stupidity of the characters was a bitter pill to swallow, but I thought it looked incredible. This one though... there's not a single redeemable quality in this movie. What a fucking waste.
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