Nitpicking Alien Covenant

- Right off the bat, the very idea of staffing a ship, any ship, with a crew comprised entirely of married couples is a monumentally dumb idea. So dumb it’s almost admirably fitting in the context of it’s Promethian universe.
Surely a colonizing mission requires a little more to it than a load of people who like fecking each other a lot? Surely someone has to build stuff, and catalogue stuff, and cook stuff, and actually run stuff? Surely you don’t want to dramatically expand the population before you have the infrastructure to do so? Were all the brilliant but single candidates turned away? Were even the useless, bitchy, unfaithful partners of the best terraforming architects afforded a free space ticket, on the basis that constructing a new world from scratch is merely a precursor to the real goal of rampantly over-populating a barren rock?
Okay, it’s a dramatic narrative device, sure, but they have a gay couple, and mention a cache of stored embryos, so clearly even in this stupid universe "sinless baby making" isn't the sole requisite of this expedition. And even if it was, and transporting a gaggle of horny frozen couples is the sole primary objective of this bonkers jaunt, why would you ensure that the flight crew – the select elite group, responsible for flying the ship and required to make important objective decisions about the missions - are all similarly coupled up, guaranteeing they'll be emotionally compromised enough* to needlessly risk the entire mission because their lover’s Com cuts out for a bit.


- When the entire point of your set up relies on the emotional impact of all your characters being couples, it’d probably help a bit if the audience had at least some inkling of who was coupled with whom. Whilst it was admittedly fun trying to guess, based on which non-descript white 30 something seemed most upset by each death, not knowing anything about anyone’s relationships did somewhat lessen the presumably intended pathos.

cont.
- Why is Billy Crudup being a "man of faith" a thing? What does that ad to anything? It seems to exist purely as a nod to the empty 6th form philosophy of Prometheus, but without even trying to make it relevant to the character. He mentions it, apropos of nothing, because it’s apparently the reason his crew don’t respect his decisions. Despite the one and only decision we ever see him make being one that’s overwhelmingly supported by the entire crew… Apart from the one *clearly emotionally compromised crew member, who just happens to be his 2nd in command - Because when choosing someone to be the emergency 2nd in command in the event of the Captain’s death, the one crew member who will be irrevocably traumatized by the death of said Captain/husband, is obviously a brilliant, full proof choice, in the logic of this bonkers universe.

- Hey, remember that oft criticised bit in Prometheus where they all recklessly take off their helmets? Hahahahaha, feck you audience, we don't even have helmets. Try criticising that!


- When they first meet David, he’s wearing a dramatic Hobbit hood, presumably to hide the fact he looks identical to their own, smaller hooded android. I wonder how they’ll react when they fin…Oh, no, he’s taken it off, and no one cares. Because finding a clearly recognisable Earth-made android model on a crazy evil alien planet is patently unworthy of comment. Possibly because he has longer hair. Oh, yeah, apparently his robot hair grows, cos, hey, why not? If he can fly a ship by breathing into a random alien navigation flute, his hair can definitely grow to conveniently grungy Kurt Cobain length in a decade. Just long enough to distinguish himself initially, before he cuts it off expertly for an entirely innocent and not at all narratively convenient reason.

cont
- Oh, you cut away from the Good Fassbender vs Bad Fassbender fight before we get to see who won? What a quirky and presumably unimportant editing choice. Oh, and now the good Fassbender has turned up, having obviously won the big central thematic duel off screen. Good for him. I mean, If I’m honest, I thought they’d have shown that, but since this is the first movie I’ve ever seen, being born yesterday and all, I’ll just casually take it at face val….OMG IT WAS DAVID ALL ALONG!?? HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT COMING!?


- The shower scene. I could write a whole separate post about how pointless, incongruous and cliché that shower scene was, but since I didn’t even know who either of the people in the shower were, it seems rather pointless. You could literally cut ¾ of the cast out of this film and just have Michael Fassbender teach himself to play various primary school instruments they've already established he shouldn't be able to play, and it wouldn’t affect the story at all.


- The chestbuster scene where the lil' CGI alien stretches his arms out to bizarrely uplifting music. That was supposed to be funny, right?

- Where did David get pens and paper from? Were the 9ft+ magic flute hologram loving Engineers just super fond of A4 on the sly?

- Has there ever been a duller opening to an Alien film than 5 minutes of Guy Peirce and Michael Fassbender having a trite Tumblr philosophy convo on the abdandonned set of the Blur Universal video? I know the idea was that really rich people can afford to keep one paining, a huge sculpture and a piano in one impractically large empty room, just 'cos, but it looked like he'd been cleaned out in a nasty divorce, and was reduced to living in his vast space-age garage with his 3 remaining possessions, passing the time by teaching his sex robot to play Wagner.

cont

- Worst of all, by some considerable margin, is that it completely ruins the entire otherworldly mystery of Alien. A masterpiece of a film that doesn’t deserve, and never needed this kind of convoluted backstory to begin with. But I mean at this point, who cares anymore? I'm calling it now, the next one will reveal David is the Space Jockey. Just Stop. Stop Ridley, It’s already dead.


- That said, I did kinda like how they killed Shaw off screen in the most horrifically gruesome way possible. I mean sure, it ruined the entire point of Prometheus, and shat on its teasing cliffhanger that implied they were going to explain one of the main reasons we watched that story in the first place

The couples were pretty clear.
Daniels - Captain
Tennessee - Maggie
Chris - Karine
Upworth - Ricks
Hallett - Lope

The only ones that confused me were the 3 other people, but apparently those were security guards or something.

4minutes of backstory wasn't good enough

Was James Franco's character always supposed to die early or did he bail out?

Also why would you design a stasis pod that can burn you alive?

So, how is the xenomorph an improvement over the neomorph? Neomorph just needs you to inhale some spores and an hour later it burst out ready to kill, no need for some long ass egg chestburster cycle...

agreed. they should've just sent over a bunch of gay men to reproduce and colonise. that makes a lot more . I think we can both agree on that

Nasa has had plans to put married childless couples on one way missions. It makes sense if there is no return trip.

>Don't talk to me or my son ever again

Also this neomorph looks like an Albino version of Nemesis

You're just a butthurt virgin that is spazzing out because even in a fictional setting you'd be left behind by normies.

Why does everything have to have one of these ugly Funko Pops now?

I don't know who the fuck the names are supposed to represent but two of the guys were gay together.

Neomorph dies easier.

I wished Maggie lived longer

They pulled a prometheus and put out a couple of prequel shorts before the theatrical release.

Seriously, who the fuck wrote these movies? Prometheus was written by some guy from Lost, and it showed. Was this one too?

Ridley Scott is such a good director, and it shows. But why does he keep working on films with such shitty writing? This is the guy who made Alien and Blade Runner. Come ON, surely they'd get better writers for this guy.


I think we just have to accept the Alien has just been shambling money-making corpse of the masterpiece it used to be like 40 years ago.

Mfw autists on a Japanese English shitposting forum put more thought into alien covenant than the fucking writers, Ridley Scott and everyone else involved.

Seriously this movie makes Prometheus look good

Jesus fucking christ.

You stupid, fucking niggers still haven't learned how to watch a movie properly.

You illiterate pieces of shit do not deserve his work.

LMAO

>the Alien has just been shambling money-making corpse of the masterpiece it used to be

Ridley himself has said this countless times. Like when he ran into one in Disneyland or wherever.

>the very idea of staffing a ship, any ship, with a crew comprised entirely of married couples is a monumentally dumb idea

It cuts out a lot of initial drama bullshit and ensures better compatibility. Sorry your parents got divorced when you were 12yo, OP.

>normies
reddit is that way

Lindelof didn't write this one

Yep, even the Mars Direct mission was planned to have six people, as 3 married couples with no kids, so that there would be stability on the one way mission.

>just turn ur brain off :^)

>Why is Billy Crudup being a "man of faith" a thing? What does that ad to anything?
Humans have in a sense "destroyed" God if it's so incredibly rare for someone to believe in God as to be a point of contention. It fulfills the theme of creators being destroyed by the creation of their creation.

Funny thing is atheism as a percentage of the human race is dying rapidly.

embrace Islam

I can't, I'm Mormon

This movie retconned all the previous movies, the books and video games

How anyone can defend this shit writing is beyond me

It took me all of 2 minutes to think of a logic that still keeps Alien and Aliens and prob ALien3 and 4 working without issue.

Black goo is the source of Aliens.
Engineers developed it as a weapon/genesis device. A failure of containment caused the Engineer society to fail, leaving small pockets. One of which David eliminated. David while thinking it is his creation, it is the natural result of the black goo. Thus we still have the fossilized Jockey in Alien as valid.

You put more thought into it than the covenant writets did

>A failure of containment caused the Engineer society to fail, leaving small pockets. One of which David eliminated.
woudl explain why it seemed so cut off from the rest of the planet

It is quite plausible answer for the stuff that still is unanswered. Still fits what we saw in Prometheus and Covenant.

And also why they seemed rather low tech. This was a little mountain temple or such.

they survived being shot multiple times when dog sized (as ridiculous as that is)

I am just going to answer your first question for now. It is a thing in scifi going back for decades that married couples woulf be better for space travel. The idea is that they qould be more mature and would play nice with one another. A famous example is in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. No serious spoliers ahead, this is in like the first 10 pages.
NASA psychologists figure that the best way for a crew to make it to Mars and back is of they are made up of 4 married couples (who obviously would also be qualified astronauts). Since they could only find 3, one astronaut proposed to another so he could get to go to Mars. Because this marriage is bullshit, the mission ultimately fails due what I would call "personality conflicts" between the astronauts that flair up.

>the mission ultimately fails due what I would call "personality conflicts" between the astronauts that flair up.
One of the shittiest tropes in sci-fi desu.

Damn Ridley, no need to get hostile

dude humans fuck everything up lmao

Things about the movie I'd like to discuss:

The gay/phallic aspect of the David character. David "pours/pisses" in one shot into his master's cup, and teaches his brother to blow his pipe, in a scene which hardly fails to get titters from the audience. David also models himself after T.E. Lawrence esp. the movie, historical (strongly suspected) homosexual.

The presence of the Bocklin image in the film; the importance of Bocklin and Francis Bacon (look at the neomorph) to the Alien franchise in general. According to Giger himself, the chestburster was originally based on pic related.

The direct ripping of several things from Alien, especially during the third act. New Ripley literally says "blow this fucker off into space", directly repeating a line of Weaver's. When New Ripley discovers the killed man and woman in the shower (a wet, dripping room) and quakes with horror, the cinematography of the whole scene directly references the discovery of Parker and Lambert by Ripley in the original, right down to the implied tail rape-kill.

The characters are all stupid as fuck of course which docks the thing major points, but it's an excuse to refer to my favorite film and vindicates certain things about it, so this flick is rather more interesting for me than Prometheus (it also fleshes out the David character very helpfully). Slightly better than I'd expected, albeit I had no expectations to begin with.

pic related.

>still haven't learned how to watch a movie properly.
Baked?

Synths have been shown to have sexuality (Ash For example and his attempted rape by magazine of Ripley)

And yes, it is getting clear that David is gay.

>get hired to fly 2000 people to a selected colony world
>decide to just land on an uncharted world because, "hey why not?"
>instead of just noting it in the logs and going on with the job they were supposed to do.

Can't ignore distress beacons

Didn't Ash try shoving the rolled up mag into her mouth? I saw that as more him trying to shut him up. By that point she was just repeating the same things at him ad nauseum because he was standing his ground. I took that more as an autistic revenge on her voice and where it shits from, as her words, not exactly her actions made him snap.

The tail rape was definitely rape. The Ash thing though, nah. Still rooted in messed up psychology, but not in a sexual sense this time. Just my take though.

That's another one, good catch, I forgot that.

When David forces himself on the woman, the area is filled with scrolls and detritus - which again directly reference the rolled-up magazine of Ash, and the tinkling ornaments/softcore porn that he blithely disregards as he breaks bad.

Ash ALSO DOES MENTION that "there is a reasonable explanation for all this, you know." But they literally refuse to hear it, and it isn't even told to them. Perhaps, now, there really is such a thing. Perhaps instead the company of 2122 needs a specimen so badly because they understand that a David is out there in the universe somewhere, or the organism is - and so in order to keep going, they must have a specimen at all costs, so that they at least have some concept of what they're up against.

The Ash magazine sequence is very obviously sexual and if you can't see that then there's just no helping you. The walls are covered with titty pictures (these may have triggered/aroused an already agitated Ash), a male figure forces himself on a female figure while the two are alone, until forced apart by just-arrived help.

It's perfectly fine to suppose otherwise but it's a child-tier idea; the scene is sexual in nature. This is directly confirmed by Scott in a DVD commentary, where during the sequence playing he mentions playing with the idea of android sexuality, and sexual frustration over not being human yet being supposed to be human. The very obvious implication of the context of the remarks being heard during the scene that the directorial intent was to have a weird sexual scene, which is what it is.

>upgrade vs prototype
>upgrade more designed for combat
>prototype wins
>how? Fuck you its offscreen
Ok

>Ridley makes a cheap B movie flick
>dipshits come out of the walls to make pseudo intellectual theories about how deep the movie is

Every time

Why is it called the NEOmorph when it predates the other aliens?

If anyone in this thread collects Pop Toys you should kill yourself ASAP

Here's the thing with your expounding on authority from Scott (same man that put out Prometheus and Covenant) and why it just fails and falls flat:
Ash, being an android, and being "frustrated" over his lack of comprehension into the act of human sex, shoving the magazine into Ridley's mouth isn't replicating penetration in an attempt to figure it out. Not as a man, a human man, he isn't. To me he was literally clogging her mouth, shutting her up.

This is all to me, why I saw it the way I saw it. Scott just knows how Giger is remembered in the meme sense. Its creepy sexual overtones, so he says its everywhere. It downplays how similar the androids are to people by making them insane sex autists. Maybe thats a part of the man's genius, he ruins something good, then leaves us to polish the turd for eternity until we make a better vision than he has, then he uses the best of it to mold his work. I feel the creepy oedipus complex craziness the androids have is more forced on the part of Scott than it is a natural thing within the story, even how its portrayed on screen. The obsession seems to manifest itself in the later movies and then are told by Scott to know about it to pronounce the tenuous links in previous movies.

The guy is non-Euclidean as fuck.

>people won't stop giving me this garbage as gifts

I think the married couple thing could be that the human population is big enough that there are simply enough engineers and scientists to have that kind of requirement. Future education would probably make knowing that kind of stuff not as big a deal as it is now.

>>Ridley makes a epic B movie flick
>>dipshits come out of the walls to make stupid questions and shitpost about how bad the movie is
Every time

I really never liked how they only had one android on board, the mission would be so much easier with multiple androids.

Prometheus and Covenant would be much better if it was combined into one movie.

By acts..

1. We start off in orbit over LV-223 where we're introduced to the scientists who are studying and mapping the surface. They find a structure and we are explained that they're on a mission for Weyland to "contact our creators". They start exploring the structure but it becomes obvious something bad happened there.

2. David manages to find and wake up a lone surviving engineer and through fragmented dialogue we find out we are a failure race and scheduled to be exterminated. The engineer manages to commandeer a ship and start to leave the surface when he rammed and destroyed by the Prometheus. In the resulting bio-weapon explosion the human crew is horribly mutated, showing us how the engineers plan to defeat us.

3. David is revealed to be patterned after Weyland himself, in an effort to achieve immortality by whatever means necessary. He disables and kills off the remaining crew and uses another engineer ship to leave the planet.
The final sequence of the movie is similar to the first one in Covenant where he bio-nukes the engineer homeworld after bypassing their defenses. In the end he is left alone on the ship and we see that he might be rampant since he has some crew-members preserved in stasis and is planning to experiment on them. It is also revealed that the black goo bioweapon is merging with his own mechanical components.

No mention of xenomorphs or anything related to the Alien franchise.

The magazine is a porno mag.

The director has been quite clear it is Ash best attempt at Oral rape since Ash does not have the equipment to do so normally.

Why didn't he just finger her ass or something?

Since Oral rape was a major theme of Alien (You know, the whole alien who shoves it cock down your throat to lay a egg)

an ass is fine too
just ask Lambert

this is a good pushback as Scott also misremembers exactly why Jon Finch was unable to continue acting as Kane (diabetes vs. respiratory issues or such), and also conflates other things with himself. You are quite right to take anything Scott says with a grain of salt.

But it didn't serve my above argument as linch-pin gospel, but as a /strong supporting argument/. Deciding exactly how to construct and shoot that particular scene is exactly the type of thing that WAS in Scott's direct purview during production. Moreover, directorial intent is not even necessary to draw an appropriate conclusion about what the scene really is, but instead strengthens my straightforward point.

anyone who willingly buys a pop should be lined up and shot.