#44

PSA: I’m posting this without having read the thread because I’m crazy like that (or just very tired, you decide)

I saw this Friday evening at a massive outdoors screening which was really cool. And I’d managed to not read anything about it or even watch the trailer or anything, although I did catch on that a critic I know had given it really good marks and said that this was taking the entire franchise back to its sci-fi/horror roots etc ehich got me pretty excited.

But I was not a huge fan of it overall. Sure, there were some things I enjoyed, like how you get more of the backstory and the missing links etc. And also, fair play to them for including a touch of comedy in a few scenes.

In the first scene aboard Covenant I was really sceptical that they jumped right into the action without any build-up at all. Like, the suspense is what makes Alien so great! But I was like, ok, there might be a perfectly good reason for this approach and there’s still more than 90 minutes left of the film etc.

Sadly, it never really did much for me though - apart from the backstory stuff, as mentioned. I didn’t think it was awful but maybe rather just another of a million examples of why franchising of this kind is almost never a good idea.

It did actually make me want to watch Prometheus again, though.

#45

I’ve not seen Prometheus but was kind of wowed by how po-faced and shit this was, should I watch Prometheus?

#46

Yep!!

6 Likes
#47

What I like about the Alien movies most is the frequency in which not only they come out now, but have always come out, if you include the AvP movies, the first of which was a good craic

#48

I prefer quantity over quality also. NOT!!!

1 Like
#49

All I like is the frequency of their releases; I’m not concerned about their quality. I don’t even have to watch them when I don’t want to.

1 Like
#50

Check her out in the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film, and also Norwegian thriller Babycall if you feel like it. She’s a decent one for sure.

#51

Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Ridley Scott prefers to fleece loyal fans instead. OOF!

2 Likes
#52

An example of the sheer self-sabotage: why would you not include this scene in the film itself? There’s more of a sense of the characters here than there is in the film itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkXgRlRao5I

#53

Prometheus did this as well, with the expectation that you would watch the bonus materials in order for the film to make sense.

#54

yeah well that’s just complete daftness in my opinion. do the film properly. not everyone nerds out over bonus material, especially if they’ve lost interest because the actual film was so shit. people are going to go see the film, see a nameless actor get burnt alive and then later - oh wait, that was James Franco? why not give it a bit of an impact by including the prologue where he gets a couple of lines and then bang, you’ve immediately fucked with the audience’s expectations, in a good way. imagine the gut-punch. it just illustrates the complete idiocy of Scott and co.

#55

Even though i pretty much agree, i cant imagine the sheer levels of focus testing, marketing panels, exec interference etc. they must have to put up with to make films on this scale in this era.

#56

By which i mean… ridley is a dick but it’s probably only partially his fault.

1 Like
#57

Was completely unremarkable.
At the end when it’s David on board, not Walter, didn’t Daniels stab him on the underside of his chin before escaping the temple? If so, wouldn’t he have had a massive wound there which would be a dead giveaway as to which android he was? Are we to assume that David swapped heads with Walter before escaping himself? I just don’t think he’d have the time to do that all by himself in the 5 minutes he had to get to the ship. Was established that he didn’t have the tissue healing power that Walter had, so… Gaping plot (/ chin) hole?

#58

Also that David on the ship was missing a hand, like Walter. Possibly David had somehow taken over Walter’s body?

Overall impressions: didn’t hate it, but wasn’t very good. No real reason to care about the characters - would have been better if they’d included scenes like the one no-class linked to. I actually kinda enjoyed the flute scene, seemed like an attempt to do some character-building, even if it was unintentionally hilarious (lot of snickers in the cinema at “i’ll do the fingering”).

Not at all scary - I’m the sort of person to hide behind my couch when the daleks appear, and I walked home in the dark without being freaked out at all. David’s first appearance was hilarious - did they decide that because they’re filming in New Zealand they had to do a LoTR scene, with Aragorn showing up in his cloak?

#59

was disappointed I quite liked it, was looking forward to the numerous prometheus style threads

#60

I don’t know how to reply to threads

#61

reckon it might be walter persuaded to go bad, he was messing with embryos at the beginning and end

1 Like
#62

Saw this for nowt on Saturday night. Would have waited till I’d seen more reviews if I was paying but as it was I knew next to nothing about the responses so far.

What I did have to go on was that the previous effort was an exquisitely beautiful turd of a film so I really didn’t expect very much.

I liked it. It looks great, has decent dialogue and proper characters. Genuinely tense at times, even scary and with good performances (loved Danny McBride). Stupid story, obviously, and a denouement that you can see coming before you arrive at the cinema but it’s so much better than Prometheus (by a factor of maybe a hundred) that I could forgive it a huge amount of plot cliches and tropes.

The film takes a nosedive shortly after the point that we meet David when it becomes little more than a wait for the inevitable but until that point I was really enjoying it. Who knows, with better writers and perhaps just ditching the Alien premise (which is getting very long in the tooth now) this could actually have been a good film. As it stands it’s a perfectly acceptable SF romp but with no great lasting merit.

#63

Can’t tell why there’s a highlight in there.