Sci-Fi Alien: Covenant (2017)

Korinaz

Scout
Title: Alien: Covenant

Tagline: The path to paradise begins in hell.

Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Mystery

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Lorelei King, Goran D. Kleut, Andrew Crawford, Tom O'Sullivan, James Franco, Guy Pearce

Release: 2017-05-09

Runtime: 122

Plot: Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship 'Covenant' discovers what is thought to be an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world—which has a sole inhabitant: the 'synthetic', David, survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
Alien: Covenant (2017)

 
Hi guys!! Korinaz here with some facts on a movie that I can't wait for it to come out. I hope you like it!! Tell me what you think! :D

 
I watched this film last night, even tho I don't usually watch TS or CAM copies.
I was completely dissatisfied with the copy and the film.

The writers should never be allowed to write science fiction ever again.
Ridley Scott should check himself into rehab because he must have been really drunk to not only accept a project this stupid but to depict such a mess onto film.

Since the copy I watched was so poor I will end up watching it again, just in case I missed something worthy but that is wishful thinking on my part.

I have many issues with this film according to sensibilities and Alien cannon.
I'm going to spoil so I will use spoiler tags to keep them out of first sight but you can't really spoil such a bad film.


The Concept of Prometheus and Covenant Breaks the Alien Universe.

Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection maintained a flow of time where humans first came into contact with the xenomorphs and that timeline was established consecutively.
Predator and Predator 2 (even Predator 3 to some extent) also follows a timeline.

In Predator 2, it is inferred that xenomorphs and predators interacted sometime in the past.

AVP1 and AVP2 also follows a timeline. It reinforces the connection of Predators to xenomorphs.
In AVP2, the xenomorphs become known to humans.
While they may have been secret, it breaks the original timeline of Alien in that there is no knowledge of the xenomorphs prior to the Nostromo incident.
Given that humans exist in a corporation entity of Weyland-Yutani and Weyland lead the AVP expedition and Yutani Collected the Predator weapon at the end of AVP2, It is assumed that Weyland-Yutani knew about Predators AND xenomorphs before the events of the original Alien film.

Now we jump to Prometheus. That film tries to explain the origin of the xenomorphs and the pilot found on the craft in Alien. In and of itself, I can understand that as part of the timeline. The Prometheus film had other problems but it did make an attempt to stay cannon in that sense.

Now come the spoilers that really irritated me about Covenant.

First, The Cannon/Timeline Mess

The film was going along fine in this sense until it was revealed that David created the xenomorphs in their current state. Complete with egg pod and face-hugger.
Up until that point, any alien design on that planet could have been a evolution unique to that planet.
As soon as David designed/created the xenomorph as it appeared in all the other movies it collapsed the timeline. It broke the cannon.
The events in Covenant are past the events in Prometheus. This sets Covenant on an established time path.
For Predators to have evidence of xenomorph interactions in the distant past (as depicted in AVP 1) it implies that David's Creation had to have been teleported back in time for that to occur. None of the Predator films indicate that they have time travel ability. Nothing in Prometheus indicates that the "Engineers" have time travel ability. Nothing in the entire Alien franchise indicates that humans or xenomorphs have time travel ability.

What set my reasoning afire was that Covenant tries to get you to believe that David, a product of man, created the xenomorphs as they were in all the films except Prometheus.
It just doesn't work!

Now, lets look at the other writing problems

Scientific Methodology
What science based expedition decides to go off path to investigate a planet when their entire existence is geared to a planned outcome?
With the ability to detect a planet and its conditions to mount a settling expedition why must they actually go to a nearby planet to figure out if it would be a candidate for settlement?
Because they didn't want to go back into hyper-sleep? C'mon, really writers, that's the best you can come up with?
Why send 3/4 of your crew on a fact finding landing on a planet with questionable chances for survival?
Why expose all of your landing party to unknown conditions on an unknown planet?
Why bring a sick crew member back on your only means of escape without knowing the reason for his condition.

For the sense of the outcome of the events of this film, it makes no sense for them to be in any of the situations depicted. They should not even be in that sector of space in the first place. Lazy writing.

The Implied
The writers tried to imply that David created the xenomorphs in their current form as a way to become like his own creator by designing life.
At the end, they tried to illicit a reaction by revealing that David was Walter but I knew he was David the moment he started to run for the rescue ship with the others.
They implied a conflict between David and Walter because they needed a vehicle to make us believe that David was somehow evil now.
The whole "Bad David" idea is lame and lazy writing.
The writers also imply that a crew tasked with the responsibility of 2000 colonist and all the support needed to start a colony on a never-before explored world would jeopardize that mission for personal curiosity or comfort in a future society based on scientific methodology. It just doesn't work. If anything, they would complete their mission and mount a new expedition to this new found planet. The signal was not a distress call it was a song by John Denver? Who writes that stuff? They did, that's who.

The writers are asking you to remove common reasoning while watching their fantasy story. This implies that they wrote this and Scott signed off to direct it because they all feel we are too stupid to make any connections and will pay money to watch anything having to do with Geiger's Aliens. It not only slaps us in the face with stupidity it insults our intelligence.


This is becoming a common thread in today's movies. The film Life does the same thing. I can think of a hundred different ways this film could have went and not one of them is this stupid or lame. The only redeeming quality was that I got to see creatures. I loves me some monsters!
 
What I find amusing is the interwebs reactions to the past two movies, Prometheus and Covenant

Ridley Scott in interview after interview stated Prometheus isn't a prequel to Alien, eventually the connections will be made over a multi-movie story arc. Reaction, the alien ship didn't crash on LV426, sorry are people dense or simply looking for excuses to dislike a movie that was more about ideas and themes and less about xenomorphs.

Which brings us to Covenant, Fox listened to the fanbois throwing internet tantrums cause the previous movie didn't have xenomorphs, and demanded the new one should have the full life cycle, at this stage Ridley should have walked away cause every time Fox gets involved in movie decisions in this franchise it turns into a disaster, which Covenant is. But naturally David has destroyed the Engineer homeworld, really, so a space going alien race that builds honking big ships and has developed the ultimate biological weapon has one small city on an out of the way planet!?! Seriously, do people actually think before they make stupid statements on line.

Tom, would agree the latest movie is doing all sorts of damage to the mythos, David cannot have achieved what he did, witness the mural in Prometheus, but for mine it comes down to the Christian mythology focus Ridley has going down, and the concept of hell. There's a reason the movie has "Covenant" in the title.

You need to see a proper cut of this movie, some stunning scenery, which is just as well as everything else about the movie is rubbish, including the stupid Xeno design.
 
I didn't mind Prometheus. It had some factual flaws but I thought it was okay.
I've watched this one 3 more times since I posted the spoilers.
Its still filled with stupidity.
A bluray will be nice because I can see some nice cinematography going on but that's about it.
Prometheus isn't a prequel to Alien
I was aware of that - it is a backstory based future event from alien that tries to explain why the craft was on LV-426.
Ridley should have walked away
That, sir, is an understatement
I figure he must have been drunk while directing this bonkers script and play.
Either that or, He's using it as a resume for syfy originals with The Asylum.
one small city on an out of the way planet
This also irked me. A race of engineers that seeded Earth all that time ago and they only inhabit one planet? Of course, you could consider that Prometheus ended with them on their way to the Engineer Homeworld.
Christian mythology focus Ridley has going down, and the concept of hell. There's a reason the movie has "Covenant" in the title.
Which is another break from the Alien Universe.
Alien 3 had the religious inmates thing going on but it was limited to that facility and that movie.
Alien 3 tanked too.
The Alien franchise doesn't need or want religious overtones because Giger Aliens are simply bad as hell anyway.
David cannot have achieved what he did
Oh, I can see how he did what he did in this film and why he did it in the previous film BUT...
We don't need Fastbender as a Weaver contrast. Now we have a bad guy to hate instead of a heroine to follow. That is so broken. Bad guys are all over the multi-episode stories of TV shows too. I'm so sick of it.

I could write a better movie than Covenant. Anyone that understands the Alien Universe could too.
 
Tom I'm starting to agree with a number of Critics who are of the opinion we really don't need to know where the Xenos come from, I found that a big problem with Rob Zombie's Halloween, Myers simply is, any attempt to explain loses what made the original movie excellent.
 
I've recently realized that alien covenant and prometheus were prequels.
While that does make a lil sense it is still messed up to the alien original trilogy.
The final segment of this prequel stuff is still coming at us.
I imagine it will deliver the alien ship to LV-426 in some way.
Given the number of eggs in the hold in Alien and the number of colonists on the covenant I imagine david will infect those covenant colonists for the eggs in the hold on LV-426.

But: That still doesn't explain how the aliens in their present form occurred in the predator series.
The predator alien reference predates human space travel and involves aliens in contact with predators at some time/place in the past. Not prealiens, fully rendered original film aliens. To ignore the alien-predator connection is moot because the films are already there and have been watched.

Any writer worth anything would write in a predator-alien meet to a prequel.
Attempts to connect were made in AvP when they included Weyland-Yutani.
It was reinforced in AvP2 with Yutani getting the predator weapon.

I can forgive the backwards technology but not the ingnoring of significant history as depicted in already released films. Even Predators linked back to the original Predator with the girl. Remember it was Predator 2 that linked the predators to the aliens at the end. AvP had a segment of ancient Earth with aliens and predators plus the pyramid was said to predate all other pyramid types in one.

I don't like a human creating the current alien form - it makes the whole universe collapse and is just a bastardization of a once brilliant concept.
 
I think the original Alien series ended before Avp. I think of AVP as an alternate universe alien series. Prometheus was doing the intro ok in my view, but I saw its sequel, and I found it hard to believe David was the creator of the eggs, and all of the familiar Hans Richter Gieger's bio-mechanoids. I agree about the "space jockeys ship with eggs on Lv-426. I pretty sure it was fossilized long before Prometheus ever arrived. I myself wanted the space jockeys to remain bio-mechanoids, and not humanoid wearing a helmet. I also know that the space jockey was part of his seat and couldn't walk on his own. Oh well, at least the white aliens were cool. I was also hoping the planet was more mechanical and less human friendly, like this land shaft that Mr.Gieger illustrates here...
vUSXmwT.jpg
 
If Peter Wayland is the grandson of Charles Bishop Weyland. he might have designed David with knowledge of a possible ultimate race. David has all human knowledge programmed in his head. Peter would have crammed in all info salvaged from his grandfather expeditions and maybe went looking for what happend. and possibly found something to fuel his dream of the engineers and more powerful beings. not having all the info and having the power to create original thoughts David might have had an unconscious knowledge of the Xenomorphs accompanied with all human sciences made him essentially clone or recreate the species. David wasn't just the first model of his kind he was the only model, with more capability then his human creators he him self is a great story of AI.
 
If Peter Wayland is the grandson of Charles Bishop Weyland. he might have designed David with knowledge of a possible ultimate race.
If that is so then this film is even more off-track. It would require a time jump in a future movie. The very notion that David had knowledge of the xenomorphs also bastardizes Prometheus.
Prometheus was a quest to find the race of beings that seeded the Earth. They were not expecting xenomorphs and while David initiated the "bomb" he did not create anything.
In this film, They depict David as designing the xenomorphs in their current type. If he had prior knowledge passed down by Charles Bishop Weyland the xenomorphs would have existed prior to the events of this film.
For those 'types' of aliens to be present in the past, there are two possibilities; Either they existed before the events of this film or the somehow time traveled. However, the time travel is unlikely because the Predator species had knowledge of the xenomorphs in this form as well. A different part of the galaxy and a species David has no location data about. So, even if David sent the xenomorphs back to early Earth, he couldn't have sent them in contact with the Predators.

accompanied with all human sciences made him essentially clone or recreate the species
David is a construct. The personality depicted in the two films indicates he is able to and does exhibit precise behaviors. The film tries to depict David as making a series of trial and error experiments. There is nothing in either film that shows any type of progression towards a specific xenomorph form. It would make no sense for him to allow all the other 'failed' forms to exist. It wasn't depicted that he made one type then said, "Oh, that's not right", killed it and started over and over again till he got the one he wanted. Which is what any decisive entity would do.

I still feel that this film breaks the alien universe.
How much of the next film will have to be dedicated to fixing the damage done by this one?
 
i do not disagree. connecting imaginary dots is hard. I dont know why they had to make an origin story for a biological creature. i liked the idea of a alien creature that is able to mate with one of the humans and make an alien hybrid that attempts to take them out one-by-one. and i liked that the egg was found on a crashed ancient alien ship leaving the possibility endless but they had to mess it up by going back in time. A hole new original psycho alien would have been better.
 
Again, I still believe the space jokey on the planet lv-426, and his cargo was completely ancient, the exploded ribs on the space jokey was also ancient as was his cargo, the eggs. David would had to have been ancient before man knew of space flight, before man left the garden of Eden, to have "created" the black alien. So I'm disappointed in Mr. Scott, on that issue. I think they should have left the elephant head on the space jokey, showed his scary world and its monsters. Pass the pepto to the audience! LOL! and led up to the space jockeys crash on lv-426 in which he was enroute with a deadly cargo to somewhere.
alien-space-jockey-hr-giger.jpg
abragratis.jpg
 
I think there will be a sequil, called the baldies get back at dumb David! Hair club for men is the sponser. LOL:mirelly:
 

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