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Post by Lone Locust of the Apocalypse on May 21, 2017 3:44:21 GMT -5
Now that the movie's out, what are your thoughts on it. It seems like it's pretty divisive.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on May 21, 2017 9:08:04 GMT -5
I liked it. It's not as distinctive as Prometheus - kind of a midway between that and Alien (with a bit of Aliens) but it's a pretty good time at the movies and I left the cinema pondering the significance of its use of Wagner, which you rarely get to do with summer blockbusters.
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Post by Lone Locust of the Apocalypse on May 21, 2017 9:53:13 GMT -5
*sigh*
I don't want to say it's without merit. Michael Fassbender is a delight, the neomorph birth scene is appropriately grousome and the ending is effective, even though it relies on fridge logic, and, as a summer distraction, it's a perfectly fine way to pass the time. But for someone like me who loves those two Alien movies, that's not enough.
The biggest problem for me has to do with the aliens. The way they were shot in the movie just wasn't scary (the CGI didn't help either). It was so bad that I briefly began to question the effectiveness of the alien design. It's not a good sign when a sequel (or prequel) has you questioning the quality of the original work.
Scott seriously needs to hire a better screenwriter for the next installment. While we're on the subject: how many more of these does he plan to make?
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on May 21, 2017 11:00:34 GMT -5
I was entertained throughout and thought the sets were really amazing. There were in general some really fantastic visuals.
A lot of it drove me crazy, though:
1. Everyone is a fucking idiot. I especially wanted to yell at Tennesse for being willing to sacrifice almost 2000 lives for a handful of people, no matter how important they were to him. Also, it's bullshit that not everyone protested the decision to go to the planet in the first place, but I guess there wouldn't be a movie without that so I shouldn't complain. 2. I was promised gore and there really wasn't any. 3. The "twist" about Fassbender was obvious from the second they got back on the ship.
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Trurl
Shoutbox Elitist
Posts: 7,490
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Post by Trurl on May 23, 2017 18:16:42 GMT -5
It reminded me of Prometheus in one major way - for me, the most effective scenes in both those movies were the most like something out of the original Alien. In Prometheus, it was the scene where Shaw get's the emergency c-section and in Covenant it was when buddy gets taken back to the lander and put in the med bay. Both those scenes are well-paced, the panic ramping because the characters and us have no idea what the fuck is going to happen. It's also that sense of powerlessness - the characters are, at best, reacting to the situation and are basically trapped watching the horror unfold. The denouement of Covenant doesn't have that sense of chaos - the humans make a plan to get rid of the monster and it pretty much goes by the numbers.
I liked the movie well enough though but not Fassbender's American accent.
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Post by Celebith on May 24, 2017 19:39:17 GMT -5
I liked it, but man, if people just followed quarantine protocols, they wouldn't have these problems. Also, how does Daniels believe that David is Walter in the last sequence? You'd think she'd be super suspicious about it. But no, let's just assume that this isn't the madscientist rapebot.
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Post by Logoboros on May 26, 2017 19:20:20 GMT -5
I don't understand why Ridley Scott is using the Alien franchise to reboot Blade Runner.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2017 11:55:41 GMT -5
Watched it. And Im just numb to the disappointment. I dont think it is anywhere near bad as prometheus, the writing for that was atrocious. I also dont think people were that stupid in this one or making dumb choices, outside of two scenes (here look at this, and lock a useful person inside a room when they could have easily got out in time). There were rash choices made about seeing the planet and tennessee lowering the ship, but I can understand why those choices were made.
Ultimately what sinks the film for me is David. David is basically a comic book super villain in this film, and it goes against what I love and want the Alien universe to be. I also really don't like him being the creator of the titular Alien. That just torpedoes the mystique of the xenomorph, is it really something Alien if in the end it was created by a human creation? Where did the xenomorph come from is a question that should never have been answered. The obsession with explaining everything causes movies to bend over backwards to make things fit, and can just cause even more questions, as well as taint what can make a movie special. This is what happened here. Somethings are just better left unanswered.
Also the scene of david releasing the pathogen on the engineers was like one of the least Alien things ever, felt more at home in a more fantasical sci fi series, like star wars or star trek.
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on May 29, 2017 19:37:10 GMT -5
Also the scene of david releasing the pathogen on the engineers was like one of the least Alien things ever, felt more at home in a more fantasical sci fi series, like star wars or star trek. This not only sounds like something out of Star Trek, it sounds very on-the-nose like something out of bad Star Trek, like Scott said, “Okay, I want to make my version of Trek, and let’s make it like one of the classics—you know, Insurrection, Nemesis, or a second-season Enterprise episode.” I was somewhat interested in this but everything I’ve heard makes it sound even more frustrating than Prometheus, which was at least pretty and where a lot of the dumb stuff at least had some novelty value at the time.
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