Alien: Covenant (2017) (1 Viewer)

[MarkMel]

Awesome, thanks for all of the awesome explanations. I tried googling but nothing I found made as much sense as what you guys wrote here. It's been awhile since I have seen Prometheus and I forgot some of those plot points

 

[dpippel]

Finally got around to watching the 4K UHD release last night. I never saw Covenant in the theater so this was my first screening of the movie. While I found it less groan-inducing than Prometheus, and Fassbender's double performance was a standout, the film didn't really work for me much. The writing was lazy, once again we had supposedly intelligent people doing stupid things, and the whole "David creates the xenomorph" angle simply didn't work IMO. After watching Covenant, I've come to the conclusion that Scott's Alien prequels just aren't for me. I wish I could like them, but instead I find them tedious and unnecessary. Too bad.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Awesome, thanks for all of the awesome explanations. I tried googling but nothing I found made as much sense as what you guys wrote here. It's been awhile since I have seen Prometheus and I forgot some of those plot points

No problem. To be honest the writing in these films is about as convoluted as it gets but I believe that is because when they wrote Alien it was in the 1970s and we were not in a period of movie making where sequels and franchises were the focus. So, they wrote a great stand alone film which did not require sequels, prequels or convoluted explanations. Back then the challenge for a writer was to create a great self contained picture that did not require further films to explain things to the audience. Now the challenge for a writer of a screenplay is to create a film which can birth other films.

The writing teams working on these pictures are reacting to whatever happened in the other films and trying to retrofit their stories to somehow attach them to the other pictures. So, it all becomes a goofy fan fiction type mess and in the end each team of writers does not care much about how they connect the stories they are more concerned with just completing their portion of the franchise. It is the problem of the next writer to solve whatever mess you made. Or it is the problem of the audience watching the films to try and create their own stories that explain what happened or what may be happening. Once this was known as bad writing...now it is the standard.

The issue with this "Alien franchise" is there is no guiding hand that plotted all this out and was careful how things would work in each chapter so there was a coherent flow and arc. Instead we have different writing teams and filmmakers working over many years just screwing around with attempting to create one more picture. So, they are just letting the "fans" decide how things fit together.

So, fans are going to take all the films into consideration, I think, and attempt to play connect the dots with them even if the writers and filmmakers don't.

So, going with that here is the huge mess we have at the moment...

Covenant revealed David created the eggs and facehuggers and introducing Oram to the egg eventually got the type of Xeno we saw in Alien.

So we know that to create the "egg" you need human body parts (this provided initially by Shaw) and Engineer "black goo" and however many years it took David to get to perfecting that egg/facehugger combo. Then to make the Xeno, as seen in Alien, you need a human host to come into contact with the egg/facehugger and be impregnated allowing the Xeno to be born by bursting out of the host's chest.

This does not suggest that the Xeno seen in Alien would really be something born very often because of the set of circumstances that appear to be necessary to create one. You need an evil robot scientist, human body parts, Engineer goo, several years to "breed the eggs", another live human being to come into contact with the egg, the facehugger attack and impregnation, then and only then can we get the Xeno as seen in Alien.

OK, so the egg and facehugger are not some natural occurrence they are a laboratory invention...according to Covenant. This conflicts with what we see in Aliens, a "queen" Xeno that lays the eggs which seems to indicate a more naturally occurring life cycle. And it conflicts with the fact that in Alien they find the "fossilized" remains of the Space Jockey indicating he had been there a very, very long time and his ship has a hold full of David's eggs.

So, are these films a "reboot" of the Alien "universe" ignoring what took place in other films to create a new myth? Or are they actually looking to create more films that explain how the fossilized Space Jockey ship full of David's eggs came to be where it is when the Nostromo crew finds it? Is Ridley only concerned with tying his films together somehow and could care less about Aliens and the films that came after his 1979 original? Is David's next adventure on the Covenant to figure out how to breed a "queen" that can lay the eggs? Is this what he will spend the next several years in space doing? If it is then that really calls into question how his newly created "queen" gets on the fossilized Space Jockey ship that the Nostromo crew finds in the original Alien...that is if the "queen" exists at all in Prometheus/Covenant/Alien universe as the queen was an invention of another writer and filmmaker and occurs only outside of Ridley's films.

My feeling is we are in full "reboot" mode with Prometheus and Covenant and really the shift is this is now the "David" story as he has now become the key player in the "Alien Universe" as creator of the eggs, face huggers, Xenos (sort of) and the one responsible for the Nostromo crew coming into contact with the Xeno and their eventual fate.

So, we know David in this new reconfigured "Alien universe" is the main character and the driving force behind all that happens. What we are waiting to see in any future films is what he does next. I suspect that all films that take place after 1979's Alien(meaning the ones not made by Ridley Scott) do not matter to this "timeline" if that is what we call it.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

The writing was lazy, once again we had supposedly intelligent people doing stupid things, and the whole "David creates the xenomorph" angle simply didn't work IMO. After watching Covenant, I've come to the conclusion that Scott's Alien prequels just aren't for me. I wish I could like them, but instead I find them tedious and unnecessary. Too bad.

To me it seems they set out to make these without a good idea of what they wanted to accomplish. Prometheus was meant to address the Space Jockey and explain who he was. Then Covenant was essentially a response to Prometheus to address certain things that seemed not to work or that people did not like...so they changed course and decided to go back to the Xeno.

Now when they did this they decided to take David and make him central to the whole Alien "universe" and so they made him the "creator" of the eggs and the face hugger. In the time between when David and Shaw sail off into space in search of the "Engineer home planet" (because for reasons unknown the ridiculous map and "invitation" they left did not point to their home but instead toward their lab full full of dangerous goo) and when the Covenant finds David he has spent years developing the egg and the face hugger. The focus seemed to become less the alien creatures and more about David because I think Ridley likes working with Fassbender.

I definitely found Covenant more fun and a better yarn than Prometheus. I did not find anywhere near as much "stupidity" in the characters in Covenant as I did in Prometheus. Prometheus is an epic storm of outrageous contradictions. Covenant is sort of just a crazy tale of an out of control robot.

I am curious though, what are the stupid things you think characters did in Covenant?
.

 

[dpippel]

Two examples. One has already been mentioned a few times - the Covenant landing party walking out onto a brand new world, a world that some of them thought they shouldn't even visit at all, with ZERO protection. Super-dumb idea and they paid the price for it. Scott had the crew in Prometheus make the same stupid move. Of course, if they'd had suits on we wouldn't have had a movie. This is sloppy writing IMO.

Another example is Billy Crudup's character in the David with the eggs scene. After all the shit he'd seen he walked right up to the damn thing, like an idiot, and let himself get grabbed by a face hugger with David leering at him the whole time. Another example of lazy writing to reach a desired outcome IMO.

All of this done by a crew given the responsibility of delivering thousands of hibernating colonists to a new planet after a long journey through space. Does. Not. Compute.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Another example is Billy Crudup's character in the David with the eggs scene. After all the shit he'd seen he walked right up to the damn thing, like an idiot, and let himself get grabbed by a face hugger with David leering at him the whole time. Another example of lazy writing to reach a desired outcome IMO.

OK, I can't really defend the lazy writing. I see it and I know why it is there. I did find that scene with David and Crudup funny. I admit I laughed because they set it up, everybody knows what's coming but I don't think that should be mistaken for the character knowing what is coming, and the dialogue in the scene is very amusing.

Crudup says something odd about having seen the devil, I think, which I found pretty interesting and David as Crudup is hovering around the egg (while the audience is likely thinking OMG he's going right up to the thing!) says to him "Something to see there..." which totally cracked me up and felt like it could have been something Fassbender improvised.

 

[dpippel]

Crudup's character had already had multiple run-ins with the Neomorph, and he killed the big one that was "communicating" with David, yet he walks right up to a big leathery egg with something moving inside and doesn't think anything of it. Please.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Crudup's character had already had multiple run-ins with the Neomorph, and he killed the big one that was "communicating" with David, yet he walks right up to a big leathery egg with something moving inside and doesn't think anything of it. Please.

I know but I think Mystery Science Theater is a huge influence on these two Alien prequels and they have made me laugh.

 

[dpippel]

 

[Johnny Angell]

So Reggie used a lot of digital bits to say that Prometheus and Covenant have only the barest of connections to Alien. All three films have: 1) An android or synthetic. All three movies have an evil synthetic; 2) Creatures that are at least reminiscent of the Alien; 3) Weyland/Yutani is involved; 4) Covenant has the "Alien", perhaps there are minor differences; 5) Prometheus reveals who the Space Jockey is; 5) Perhaps this is a cheat to include. On the Covenant extras there's a deleted scene (not in the deleted scenes section) where we see David communicating with Earth about his creature designs, which could explain why the Company in Alien rerouted the Nostromo. This at least shows the director's intent; 6) The Alien's blood in Covenant eats thru everything, just like in Alien; 7) I'll think of something else later.

So Reggie says one item connects the movies and I've just mentioned 6. Just thought of number 7) Prometheus, Covenant, and Alien all have STRONG female leads.

These movies are Strongly connected and if Ridley gets to make more, I'm confident the connections will become stronger. Prometheus and Covenant ARE prequels to Alien, IMHO.

 

[Nelson Au]

I know I cant successfully defend the sequence when Oram walks up to the egg with no seeming fear. But to be fair, these characters had never seen an Alien egg before. My sense it's the first time an egg is ever going to attack a human. It's like when Kane was peering into the egg on the Alien ship, he had no idea what was coming. And the way David seems to be acting in the film, he's has not outright forced anyone as far as we knew yet, except attack Walter. I imagine he could have grabbed Oram and pushed his face into the egg. It's up to our imagination to wonder how Shaw was killed for David's experiments too. That was a gruesome an end for her after her kindness to him.

 

[WillG]

Another example is Billy Crudup's character in the David with the eggs scene. After all the shit he'd seen he walked right up to the damn thing, like an idiot, and let himself get grabbed by a face hugger with David leering at him the whole time. Another example of lazy writing to reach a desired outcome IMO.

I pointed this out before, but it not really like he put his face right up to the thing. Who expects something to fly out and grab their face? He probably didn't expect David to be murderous. Also it's not much different from what Kane does in the original.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

So Reggie used a lot of digital bits to say that Prometheus and Covenant have only the barest of connections to Alien. All three films have: 1) An android or synthetic. All three movies have an evil synthetic; 2) Creatures that are at least reminiscent of the Alien; 3) Weyland/Yutani is involved; 4) Covenant has the "Alien", perhaps there are minor differences; 5) Prometheus reveals who the Space Jockey is; 5) Perhaps this is a cheat to include. On the Covenant extras there's a deleted scene (not in the deleted scenes section) where we see David communicating with Earth about his creature designs, which could explain why the Company in Alien rerouted the Nostromo. This at least shows the director's intent; 6) The Alien's blood in Covenant eats thru everything, just like in Alien; 7) I'll think of something else later.

So Reggie says one item connects the movies and I've just mentioned 6. Just thought of number 7) Prometheus, Covenant, and Alien all have STRON female leads.

These movies are Strongly connected and if Ridley gets to make more, I'm confident the connections will become stronger. Prometheus and Covenant ARE prequels to Alien, IMHO.

Well, I was talking in terms of story not that they recycle a lot of stuff from other films. I do think you are correct they do that but (and yes, I know Ridely intends/intended two more films) as of now in terms of the actual story being told they have nothing to do with Alien...and in reality they don't need to because they are telling David's story which has nothing to do with the 1979 Alien unless you want to say he created what killed them.

 

[Johnny Angell]

I know I cant successfully defend the sequence when Oram walks up to the egg with no seeming fear. But to be fair, these characters had never seen an Alien egg before. My sense it's the first time an egg is ever going to attack a human. It's like when Kane was peering into the egg on the Alien ship, he had no idea what was coming. And the way David seems to be acting in the film, he's has not outright forced anyone as far as we knew yet, except attack Walter. I imagine he could have grabbed Oram and pushed his face into the egg. It's up to our imagination to wonder how Shaw was killed for David's experiments too. That was a gruesome an end for her after her kindness to him.

Yes. It's not fair to expect a character to know or even imagine what that egg is capable of. Oram has not seen the movies. Perhaps he thinks the egg (he may not even think of it as an egg) has something dangerous in it, but can we expect to think it can leap out at him?

 

[Johnny Angell]

Well, I was talking in terms of story not that they recycle a lot of stuff from other films. I do think you are correct they do that but (and yes, I know Ridely intends/intended two more films) as of now in terms of the actual story being told they have nothing to do with Alien...and in reality they don't need to because they are telling David's story which has nothing to do with the 1979 Alien unless you want to say he created what killed them.

It's obvious, to me, that David created the Alien. The story telling is leading up to Alien. I'd say the creation of the Alien is just that.

What got me to write the previous post was your assertion that only one thing, Weyland/Yutani, connected the movies. Clearly that is wrong. These are prequels, but it's a free country, I'll let you be wrong.

 

[dpippel]

You guys can try to rationalize Oram's actions with David and the egg all you want, but I maintain that after the events of the film that he was involved in up to that point, even getting close to such a sinister looking object was a hugely illogical action. He didn't have to know anything other than the fact that deadly creatures were running around loose killing his crewmates, creatures that David had some involvement with. So of course, let's go stick our face in that nasty looking thing David is so keen on getting us close to.

The HR Department at Weyland-Yutani Corporation must have had a mandate to only hire people that are guaranteed to do something stupid on one of their expensive missions. That way they could make sure that almost all of their employees get killed, and that most if not all of their expensive spacecraft and equipment gets destroyed as well.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

You guys can try to rationalize Oram's actions with David and the egg all you want, but I maintain that after the events of the film that he was involved in up to that point, even getting close to such a sinister looking object was a hugely illogical action.

I won't try to rationalize it but I will say I think the scene is meant to be funny...and it is...and so I think they actually achieve what they were going for. Do you see any humor in that scene, Doug?

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

It's obvious, to me, that David created the Alien. The story telling is leading up to Alien. I'd say the creation of the Alien is just that.

What got me to write the previous post was your assertion that only one thing, Weyland/Yutani, connected the movies. Clearly that is wrong. These are prequels, but it's a free country, I'll let you be wrong.

Yes, I mean in terms of what the story is in these two prequels the only thing that is important to the original film in 1979 is Weyland Corporation created David and is the company that sent all of these ships into space. Other than that though nothing in these films really matters at all to the 1979 Alien except David apparently created the eggs and Mr. Facehugger. So, he is responsible for the Alien existing. What else do you think matters to the original film?

 

[dpippel]

I won't try to rationalize it but I will say I think the scene is meant to be funny...and it is...and so I think they actually achieve what they were going for. Do you see any humor in that scene, Doug?

Sure, I thought that Fassbender's line was wryly humorous to some extent. It would have worked a lot better if they'd set up a circumstance for Oram to get infected that wasn't so groaningly stupid.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Yes, I mean in terms of what the story is in these two prequels the only thing that is important to the original film in 1979 is Weyland Corporation created David and is the company that sent all of these ships into space. Other than that though nothing in these films really matters at all to the 1979 Alien except David apparently created the eggs and Mr. Facehugger. So, he is responsible for the Alien existing. What else do you think matters to the original film?

Go back to my numbered points. I think they're all important. The androids, the aliens, the acid for blood. They're all part of an Alien movie, at least these three movies. I think your dislike of the two prequels is not allowing you to see the forest because you don't like the two trees in front. I also think think prequel/not a prequel has been beaten to death. I've said my piece and I'm satisfied.