"Ridley Scott's Alienverse"

[Benjamin Haines]

[Dr Kain]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

I just got back from Covenant and I thought it was a great movie. I have no qualms with what happened with the fate of the characters from Prometheus and eagerly await the next prequel.

[jellydonut25]

Not only is Covenant a movie devoid of characters, where things just happen, just....because reasons, Ridley Scott has collapsed the Alien Universe in on itself. With Prometheus, he expanded things: Who are the Engineers? Why did they create humanity? Why did they then seek to destroy humanity? What was their culture like? What was the black goo? Prometheus left a lot of good questions to expand on and take this universe into a totally different place.

With Covenant, Ridley Scott says, "F*** you. They're all dead. Shut up. Black goo." And ensures that there will be no more Alien movies that open the universe, and the franchise will henceforth stagnate into "Aliens killing people." This is a franchise-killer.

Beyond that, it's a BAD movie. Like, even if you strip away the Prometheus-killing nonsense that has retrograded this series into just being the same thing over and over for the rest of time, it's a bad Alien film. Who are the characters? What are their purposes? What arc does ANY character in the entire film have? This thing is devoid of characterization or dramatic thrust. Stuff just happens.

I to this day still enjoy Prometheus (though it seems utterly pointless now), but I think I'm out on this franchise.

[Dr Kain]

[klen7]

I had some time off from work today so i caught this... i unfortunately agree with Jelly-D. This does more damage to the Alienverse than the much criticized AvP films.

I do think you could kind of salvage this as a Prometheus sequel if It also felt like the over-corrected for a lot of the criticisms on Prometheus (which i mostly disagree with) so a lot of the references and nuance are replaced with explicit exposition, kind of like Scott said "Oh you didnt get Prometheus, here let me spell it out for you" - then it all becomes a bit too on the on-the-nose...well except for the flute scene, i'm not sure i followed the talk about fingering holes correctly, theres probably some nuance there that i missed.

[Benjamin Haines]

[jellydonut25]

[klen7]

^^ i discussed this pretty heavily on my tumblr at one point, but one of the things i prefer about japanese giant monster movies is that western movies tend to have a very humanistic perspective. In Japanese films typically the monsters were treated as something bigger than humanity, whereas in most western films giant monsters were something that could inevitably be overcome by the indomitable human spirit, ingenuity and firepower.

The Alien franchise (with the debatable exception of Resurrection) maintained that same spirit, that there was something much greater than humanity in the galaxy. Even the versus films didn't violate this. Prometheus actually took this further than the first film expanding on it and showing the insignificance of humanity in the expanse of the universe, and i absolutely adore it for that. Alien Covenant betrays this fundamental philosophy by making the xenomorph another byproduct of human meddling by making David the architect of the species. If the film had stuck with neomorphs, that would have at least kept the cannon with what had been previously established in the first two acts of the film and Prometheus, but instead they felt the need to pander to audience by bringing back the xenomorph, unfortunately in their execution they collapsed the universe into something very human-centric. Which i guess is fine, but it's generic and safe.

[Benjamin Haines]

[Dr Kain]

[Dr Kain]

[jellydonut25]

Tennessee becomes the ranking officer? I thought he just wore a cowboy hat.
Oram is reassured that he's needed? And his faith? When? I remember a couple one off lines about him having faith, but then that was dropped because this movie ain't giving no sh**s about arcs.
Fake Ripley didn't even have an arc. She's just a strong willed woman who becomes a...strong willed woman who killed an alien? Wait. Not alien. They're not aliens: they're Engineered Organisms.


As for the Rogue One characters: I literally couldn't name two. I have to say two because I can name Darth Vader.

[lhb412]

[klen7]

[Gwangi]

Well, the movie plummeted on its second weekend by approximately 71%.



The question now for Fox execs, is will they continue with this trajectory? Will they let Ridley Scott do a third one, to perhaps finish his "Prometheus" trilogy? Would it had been wiser and let Neill Blomkamp do his Alien movie which supposedly would have brought back Ripley, Hicks and Newt, negating what happened in "Alien 3" and Alien 4"? The sure bet is that there will be LOTS of board meetings going on to discuss the future of this franchise.

[Dr Kain]

[Benjamin Haines]

[Dr Kain]

It matters because the movie has no payoff. You don't leave something TBC and then not actually continue it. It's lazy writing. Just accept that this movie ruined Prometheus for me and I have no desire to ever watch it again. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that I will need to review it, I wouldn't even bother watching Covenant again.

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

While I respect your opinion Kain I do have a question for you. Do you ever get that upset about the Godzilla movies since the Millennium series is basically one big reboot after another?

I have to agree with Ben on Covenant, it does have its issues but if you look at it more as a Prometheus sequel than yeah you aren't going to like it. I don't think it's ruined the Alien universe quite yet though do to it's under performance my guess is they're going to go ahead and make the next movie lead into the events of Alien, rather than do another two movies like the original plan was.

[Dr Kain]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

The aliens had an amibiguous origin to begin with Kain, in what movie did it state that the aliens where a natural organism and not an engineered one?

[klen7]

^ In the title

[lhb412]

Abhorrent
Lifeform
Impeccably
Engineered
(for)
Nastiness

[Benjamin Haines]

The term "alien" is totally ambiguous as to the origins of the creature. In the context of the original film's title, it really just means "life from beyond Earth." It doesn't denote whether the species evolved naturally or was created by someone. I think this point is rather moot, though. Remember the beginning of Prometheus? The premise of this entire Alien universe is that all animal life on Earth and countless other planets evolved as a result of Engineers seeding planets with their own reconfigured DNA.

There were two obvious xenomorph origins that they could have gone with, either they were consciously created by the Engineers or they evolved from reconfigured Engineer DNA like every other animal, and I was expecting them to go with the former. I like how they instead came up with an origin that's much more complex and impactful, one that organically ties into elements of the original film while exemplifying the themes of these prequels.