So then where is the line of believability for a character's intelligence in this franchise? Gorman is deliberately stupid/inexperienced? That much is obvious and part of his character, so it's OK. Millburn and Fifield are badly written so their whole situation falls apart with an ounce of thought. Everything leading up to their deaths is terrible for obvious reasons. But what about Covenant?
I imagine the colonists in Covenant could be best described as inexperienced too. It sounds like this is the first time any of them have undertaken a colonization mission. Like it or not Alien, Aliens, Prometheus, and Covenant all establish we're working with Star Trek rules when it comes to outerwear on strange planets (if the atmosphere is breathable we're breathing it, with the marines having the least excuse since they know they're going into a hostile situation with who knows what since they all discounted Ripley). Do the colonists do dumb things? Sure. Dumber than normal for an Alien film? Not really. Would helmets have helped in Covenant? No. Helmets would have been written around just like the helmets in Alien and Prometheus (regardless of bad writing putting them in the situation Millburn and Fifield had pretty metal deaths with their helmets firmly on lock).
So then is Oram too stupid for looking into the egg? Does that make Kane a moron too for staring into some weird bullshit on an ancient alien construct with a giant alien corpse in the other room?
Oram is already established as a bad leader (like Gorman), he just watched his wife explode so it's safe to say he's not thinking clearly, and the other movies seem to establish that rogue synthetics are about as rare as the alien. Ripley is the only one who has any kind of problem with Bishop because of her experience with Ash so it seems safe to say synthetics don't regularly go homicidal. Everyone trusts David because they trust Walter, with Walter being the most skeptical of David because he knows all the issues with David's product line.
Is Tennessee stupid? Hell yeah. His duty to the ship and sleeping colonists should have been paramount, but I believed someone would be pushed to do what he did with his wife trapped on the planet. Is Rosenthal stupid for trusting David's word that they're safe and going off on her own even if she told everyone where she was going?
At this point it just becomes a matter of what is too much for a person's suspension of disbelief, and I personally didn't have the same issues with the characters' intelligence in Covenant that I had with Prometheus where I think the stupidity criticisms were very warranted. From the reaction of the majority in this thread I doubt I'm going to change any hearts and minds on this one, but I liked the film more than most so I'll defend it.
looking into the egg was stupid because David at this point in the film is blatantly untrustworthy and acting suspicious. He's not established as a bad leader either, just one with baggage and not a great people person. He's not inexperienced or incompetent like Gorman, just not well liked.
Kane on the other hand didn't have a suspicious person telling him to look into the egg and had his full helmet on so had no reason to expect either the facehugger going nuts or it smashing right through his helmet.
As for the others, they will all know of Davids too, it's ten years later not 100, but even if they didn't he is insanely suspicious and acts weird.
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
Alien and Aliens were never monster slasher movies though, the background antagonist is always the corporation and it's disregard for human life in search of controlling what is effectively a force of nature. You don't need to know who the Joker was before he was the Joker and you don't need to know anything about the Xenomorph, it just is and it will fuck you up.
People were put into situations deliberately and suffered. Both of Scott's new films are about people being fucking stupid and getting killed. It's all divine arrangement, just lucking upon planets where an android is hanging out.
Even then, you'll have the same problem if every Alien movie is always 'background corp pulling shit to get the Alien'. That's the problem overall with remaking any movie over and over. There's only so many ways for the Alien to put its tiny mouth through somebody. They need to try something new or just stop, and I'm a sucker for a narrative that doesn't end so I keep checking out these movies...
If you stop trying to explain and give background to the xenomorph, you are really just making monster slasher movies over and over again. Ridley's not gonna do that and neither is any other decent director. That's basically what the AVP movies were, especially the second one.
I wouldn't be against them trying to experiment with the formula and build the universe outside the xeno's. Unfortunately Ridley hasn't gotten much further in that direction, and he has made very flawed movies with his attempts. The franchise has gone as far as it can keeping the xeno's outside Weyland-Yutani control - let's see what'd happen if they get what they want and explore why they want it. And they need to do a better job exploring how the company operates from the inside, go Residential Evil on this.
We actually have seen this, and it was called Aliens: Resurrection. You want that again? Huh?! Actually, I wouldn't be against expanding on why everyone at Weyland-Yutani has such a hard dick for the Xenomorph. Perfectly reasonable science-minded people go crazy for this 'perfect lifeform', for some reason.
You know what? It would be interesting if there's almost some kind of cult within Weyland-Yutani that knows a whole lot more about the Xenomorph and its connection with the Engineers than anyone else has ever let on. Like, what if some cabal followed in Weyland's footsteps and uncovered a whole bunch of secrets, now they want to get their mitts on anything Engineer-related, and the Xenos are just the most well known example of their work. Maybe it's all about extracting the trace elements of the black ooze from them in some ultimate bid for biological immortality. Might explain some of the almost deranged, zealot-like behavior from the people working there.
Some of the expanded universe material talks about how some people are almost mesmerized by the 'beauty' of the Xenomorph and feel compelled to create more of them. Maybe that could be expanded upon too, even tied to the earlier idea about how the black ooze might be reacting to people psionically. Maybe the connection works both ways, and certain people of the right mindset are compelled by the black ooze to proliferate it, forming these weird pseudo-scientific cults. Could be another reason the Engineers wanted to erase humanity - we were too susceptible to whatever malign influence the black ooze contains.
Not every franchise needs to continuously chuck movies. After all, all good things most come to an end.
Hell, I think they could do quite a bit with the shitty corporation fucking people over to get the alien for their own ends. I think right now the main focus has been getting bio weapons. We haven't seen anyone going after the xeno for slightly less nefarious purpose. Could have the shitty profit driven corporation that ones them because they could provide insights into more efficient terraforming or maybe they produce novel or difficult compounds that have plenty of practical applications. Hell, we know corporations like Hobby Lobby exist now, replace asshole theocratic Christian with crazy asshole space cult and you could easily have the corporation being run by some crazy fucker that views the aliens as the agents of their god (I believe one of the comics ran with a variation of this idea).
There is a fuck ton they could still do that explores asshole corporations getting people killed in an attempt to get the xenomorph without explaining the lifeform or falling back on "they wants it for it's bioweapon applications." Or hell, you could do the unexpected, have the asshole corporation that wants that xenomorph dead because it stands in the way of something they want, but they can't be damned to properly fund the venture or do the proper research or maybe they didn't even realize the xenomorphs were there.
looking into the egg was stupid because David at this point in the film is blatantly untrustworthy and acting suspicious. He's not established as a bad leader either, just one with baggage and not a great people person. He's not inexperienced or incompetent like Gorman, just not well liked.
Kane on the other hand didn't have a suspicious person telling him to look into the egg and had his full helmet on so had no reason to expect either the facehugger going nuts or it smashing right through his helmet.
As for the others, they will all know of Davids too, it's ten years later not 100, but even if they didn't he is insanely suspicious and acts weird.
Oram
specifically orders the crew not to mourn their dead and gets mad when they do even though there's no justification for the order other than it's his order. I believe he's also just quoting scripture like a nervous kid in front of the class to help justify his actions. He's a real bad leader in my book, but believably so.
We live in an era of at least one very functional and entertaining movie "Universe" that's cranking out successful material building an overarching narrative.
Going back to Giger's background material and interweaving that crazy shit into a story about exploration, discovery, terror, creation and survival is a pretty great foundation for a "cinematic universe."
That stupid YouTube video I watched the other night had a bunch of old Giger art that was created in relation to the original Alien. That shit was amazing, and almost enough for a whole series of films to explore, if somebody wanted to put some thought into it.
True, the cinematic universe doesn't have to be confined to just the xenomorphs either. I mean the space jockey from Alien is clearly growing out of the pilot seat and it looks like the ship was a living thing. So one could explore that whole alien concept and probably explore routes that would make it very horrifying or at least unsettling for the viewer. Sentient lifeforms grown for a singular purpose purpose and really unable to deviate from that purpose, if they wanted to. Or hell the more terrifying route where a sentient lifeform could be augmented and forced to be a competent for something against their will and unable to leave the role, quite literally. Hell, that would make xenomorph infestation all the more frightening, you can't leave your pilot seat and you know there are face huggers roaming about and literally at the mercy of the rest of the crew, that could move, not fucking up or dying.
I'm pretty open to the idea of using the alien universe to explore cosmic horror. But IMO, rule #1 of cosmic horror: do not explain any more than is absolutely necessary.
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
That stupid YouTube video I watched the other night had a bunch of old Giger art that was created in relation to the original Alien. That shit was amazing, and almost enough for a whole series of films to explore, if somebody wanted to put some thought into it.
Speaking of amazing art, there was a bunch of wild Covenant concepts that sadly were cut from the film that would've been totally amazing to have as part of the canon universe.
Black ooze affects vegetation like it totally should have in the movie, creating alien death flowers that spray black goo into unsuspecting space guy. Space guy mutates into a bio-mechanical protean mass, assimilating him into the Giger-esque landscape. Totally awesome. Maybe the mass would have grown and expanded until it eventually disgorges a neomorph or something.
I'm pretty open to the idea of using the alien universe to explore cosmic horror. But IMO, rule #1 of cosmic horror: do not explain any more than is absolutely necessary.
Yes; the essence of cosmic horror is that humanity isn't necessarily equipped to comprehend all or even a meaningful portion of the universe.
Well, one of the issues with cosmic horror as a concept, is that we're actually pretty Sharp?
We can, on a scientific level, comprehend -and even anticipate- a lot.
Right now, irl, science is more stumped by the physics and makeup of the universe than it is with the bounds of biology. Exobiology and the creatures produced by it, theoretical as they are, is less of a noodle-baker at this point than the dilemmas presented by long-term space travel.
At some point on the slider, labelled "Incomprehensible," exo-biology just falls off into the realm of 'magic.' At that point, you really are just writing Lovecraft fanfic. Same goes for tech.
I hesitate to site Alien's sister-franchise, but in Predator 2, a scientist states that a spearhead is made from "No known elements in the periodic table." And to that, I say "bullshit." The item is noted to be incredibly light and strong, which runs counter to any artificial metals we've managed to cook up, if I'm remembering correctly. I mean, is it radioactive as fuck? Cuz that's another hallmark of synthetic elements, if I remember correctly.
Now, I'm not a science, so my thoughts there could be grossly mistaken. But, even so, that doesn't add up to "incomprehensible," it adds up to "neat, that's a new one."
Organic ships and bio-mech aren't particularly mind-blowing, either. Our own bodies are host to untold numbers of discrete organisms that serve distinct purposes and act indendently of each other. We can manufacture organs and organisms in labs, and millions of people are walking around with pacemakers and cochlear implants. The tech of the Jockeys/Engineers is no longer incomprehensible, just the purpose and the story behind it, which Scott has now fumbled twice.
I have no problem getting the full story of the Alien, the Engineers, and all the Giger shit behind the curtain- I actually want to see more of it, wanna see them get real crazy with that shit. I just want it delivered in a better package than a shitty cheapshot-throwing horror film, and I would prefer if it leads to something more than Crazy Asshole Android Acts Like a Dick: The Motion Picture.
I'm pretty open to the idea of using the alien universe to explore cosmic horror. But IMO, rule #1 of cosmic horror: do not explain any more than is absolutely necessary.
Yes; the essence of cosmic horror is that humanity isn't necessarily equipped to comprehend all or even a meaningful portion of the universe.
And yet, in Prometheus and Covenant, Scott decides to try to explain things.
For that matter, the second worst thing about Mass Effect 3 was the work put into explaining the Reapers. We didn't need to find out anything more about the Reapers than what Sovereign told us in Mass Effect:
Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding.
There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign.
Reaper? A label created by the Protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end, what they chose to call us is irrelevant. We simply... are.
Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything.
The cycle cannot be broken.
The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They mere found them - the legacy of my kind.
Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your civilization develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.
My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation - independent, free of all weakness. You cannot grasp the nature of our existence.
We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure.
We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom.
Your words are as empty as your future. I am the Vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over.
I mean, sure, hammy video game dialog. But it sets up everything you need to know about the history of the Reapers. Telling us how and why they were created, ending Mass Effect 3 in the way it happened, that gave us too much information and severely weakened the cosmic horror aspects. In the same vein, all we really need to know about the aliens is what we saw in Alien and Aliens: they have a weird life cycle, they're smarter than most animals, they're tough as hell, they create hives and have queens. We don't need to know that they were bio weapons or what planet they came from.
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Well, one of the issues with cosmic horror as a concept, is that we're actually pretty Sharp?
Well, that's why it's the central conceit to a subgenre of horror fiction. Even in reality, if there was a plateau to human understanding of the cosmos, it would probably just mean we never figure out black holes, not that trying to figure them out opens our minds to Azathoth. Part of the reason cosmic horror is meant to be disturbing is it rejects the notion that humanity can actually find understanding, meaning, safety, etc, within the universe.
I love Aliens so, so much. But it really did kinda cut down the scale of the concept by reducing them to hive creatures, dozens of which can be dropped by a frightened human with an assault rifle. Like... We own that problem. If there's anything our species has a lot of, it's guns and bombs.
Now, I greatly appreciated that Alien3 made the creature almost demonic- a hateful, cruel force. But it just being a hive animal trying to reproduce still just permanently brought the thing down a few pegs.
I love Aliens so, so much. But it really did kinda cut down the scale of the concept by reducing them to hive creatures, dozens of which can be dropped by a frightened human with an assault rifle. Like... We own that problem. If there's anything our species has a lot of, it's guns and bombs.
Now, I greatly appreciated that Alien3 made the creature almost demonic- a hateful, cruel force. But it just being a hive animal trying to reproduce still just permanently brought the thing down a few pegs.
I love Aliens so, so much. But it really did kinda cut down the scale of the concept by reducing them to hive creatures, dozens of which can be dropped by a frightened human with an assault rifle. Like... We own that problem. If there's anything our species has a lot of, it's guns and bombs.
Now, I greatly appreciated that Alien3 made the creature almost demonic- a hateful, cruel force. But it just being a hive animal trying to reproduce still just permanently brought the thing down a few pegs.
They had lots of guns and they still lost.
There were ten marines and three civilians
Against a couple hundred creatures with superior strength, superior speed, environmental advantage, acid blood, and preternatural tactical coordination.
And in the end, the Aliens were all but wiped out by Ellen Ripley in a cave. With a box of scraps!
And the whole thing would have been shut down, had they dusted off and nuked the site from orbit.
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
Hnng. The concept of Aliens as a cosmic horror story just works.
The Engineers are like the migo/yith-level alien race - they can interact with humans to a degree, but their motivations and mindset are so outside our frame of reference that an actual relationship is probably impossible. If they did send Engineer-Jesus to try and convert humanity, its begs the question of what the true nature of their God is. In a cosmic horror-verse, it might actually be some kind of eldritch abomination - I love the idea that the black ooze might literally be it's blood, which explains its almost reality-warping level properties. It would also totally fuck up people of faith like Shaw to confront the true nature of their creator God.
And that would actually make the xenomorphs basically the equivalent of Deep Ones - partly abominable alien, but with some human stock thrown in there just as a result of humans brushing up against the eldritch forces in the universe. Which works because in Lovecraft when the human authorities found out about Innsmouth, they basically sent in military forces to make it go away. Presumably rank and file troopers had no idea what they were really dealing with but were still capable of getting the job done, while their human superiors were a bit more in the know about such matters.
I like to think of the xenos we see in any given movie as acting outside their own element. That element being the vast, horrifying catacombs of biomech breeding chambers, factories and labs that Giger painted. Within their natural habitat, they act as servitors, antibodies, and curators of whatever unknown organism construct they belong to.
Born outside of this, they fumble for meaning; the creatures default to a state wherein they either kill or capture external beings, attempting to re-create their natural habitat and ecosystem. They're individually intelligent, but experience a sort of mania. The presence of a queen is an organising factor, even if she's simply a 'gland' or a means of producing this particular element of the greater construct.
The Space Jockey are simply another element. They're a means to spread the harbingers of the meta-organism across the stars, but still viable for breeding the xeno.
The Engineers are an aberration of the biomech breeding process- a wholly individual creature, capable of reproducing on their own. They 'breed true' and act independently, half-remembering their origins and trying to 'go home.' Their space suits and technology mimic these memories of home, and the black goo is their means of reverse-engineering their origins.
Humans are an accident, an abomination. Completely separate and incompatible with the meta-organism, save for being able to reproduce the servitor aliens.
Of course... I'm still salty that the Jockeys became the Engineers, and that's what my headcannon relies on.
The deck had to be severely stacked against the marines before they stepped a foot in there for them to lose, and they needed someone there to shut down the situation by nuking the place from orbit. They were being actively sabotaged from within, poor leadership (which was deliberate by Y-W), and the place was built/compromised so they ween't able to use their weapons freely. The movie never had a moment where they fought the aliens at their physical peak. Take all those disadvantages away and the xenos lose 10/10.
The horror factor in Aliens isn't that the threat is so overwhelming to begin with, it's that everything keeps falling to shit. Dread just builds up as dominoes keep falling on all these completely reasonable solutions and ways out. It's less like a horror movie, and more like a disaster movie, where shit keeps going wrong for no reason relating to characters' actions.
The horror factor in Aliens isn't that the threat is so overwhelming to begin with, it's that everything keeps falling to shit. Dread just builds up as dominoes keep falling on all these completely reasonable solutions and ways out. It's less like a horror movie, and more like a disaster movie, where shit keeps going wrong for no reason relating to characters' actions.
The horror factor in Aliens isn't that the threat is so overwhelming to begin with, it's that everything keeps falling to shit. Dread just builds up as dominoes keep falling on all these completely reasonable solutions and ways out. It's less like a horror movie, and more like a disaster movie, where shit keeps going wrong for no reason relating to characters' actions.
I thought it was more of an action movie.
Alien is horror, Aliens is action with horror elements IMO.
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I was thinking about WY's role in the series last night, and something popped out at me. It's implied they want to study the xeno or turn it into a weapon, but why? There really isn't any conflict that's depicted or mentioned in the series. But then this movie introduces the evil android that wants to exterminate humans, and we already know that the Engineer in Prometheus wanted to use bio weapons on Earth. So maybe the 'evil corporation' is actually locked in a shadow war against forces that are keen on using bio weapons to wipe out humanity? And they're out gunned, which is why getting their hands on some xenomorphs is so important. Xenos are probably immune to the black goo / spores.
I was thinking about WY's role in the series last night, and something popped out at me. It's implied they want to study the xeno or turn it into a weapon, but why? There really isn't any conflict that's depicted or mentioned in the series. But then this movie introduces the evil android that wants to exterminate humans, and we already know that the Engineer in Prometheus wanted to use bio weapons on Earth. So maybe the 'evil corporation' is actually locked in a shadow war against forces that are keen on using bio weapons to wipe out humanity? And they're out gunned, which is why getting their hands on some xenomorphs is so important. Xenos are probably immune to the black goo / spores.
There are actual human wars in the Alien universe. The main character in Aliens: Defiance was injured in battle, and there's a deleted scene from Prometheus where Idris Elba's character talks about his time fighting in a war.
I was thinking about WY's role in the series last night, and something popped out at me. It's implied they want to study the xeno or turn it into a weapon, but why? There really isn't any conflict that's depicted or mentioned in the series. But then this movie introduces the evil android that wants to exterminate humans, and we already know that the Engineer in Prometheus wanted to use bio weapons on Earth. So maybe the 'evil corporation' is actually locked in a shadow war against forces that are keen on using bio weapons to wipe out humanity? And they're out gunned, which is why getting their hands on some xenomorphs is so important. Xenos are probably immune to the black goo / spores.
There are actual human wars in the Alien universe. The main character in Aliens: Defiance was injured in battle, and there's a deleted scene from Prometheus where Idris Elba's character talks about his time fighting in a war.
What he leaves out is that he's Heimdall and the war was against dark elves.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Janek was great. I mean a lot of it was down to Idris' CHA stat being measured in symbols rather than numbers, but he was so much fun to watch. "I was wondering... you a robot?"
I never could figure out if he was saying "hands off" or "heads up!" at the end though.
I was thinking about WY's role in the series last night, and something popped out at me. It's implied they want to study the xeno or turn it into a weapon, but why? There really isn't any conflict that's depicted or mentioned in the series. But then this movie introduces the evil android that wants to exterminate humans, and we already know that the Engineer in Prometheus wanted to use bio weapons on Earth. So maybe the 'evil corporation' is actually locked in a shadow war against forces that are keen on using bio weapons to wipe out humanity? And they're out gunned, which is why getting their hands on some xenomorphs is so important. Xenos are probably immune to the black goo / spores.
There are actual human wars in the Alien universe. The main character in Aliens: Defiance was injured in battle, and there's a deleted scene from Prometheus where Idris Elba's character talks about his time fighting in a war.
What he leaves out is that he's Heimdall and the war was against dark elves.
"Janek why did you throw David out the airlock and turn the ship around?"
"The All-Sight shows me many strange truths. Truths such as that planet being a butt place for butts with David being king butt. Also I'm a god so quest over."
I would watch the hell out of a human vs human war/action movie set in the Alien universe. Space Sci-Fi stories that aren't about first contact or fighting aliens are way too rare.
I would watch the hell our of a human vs human war/action movie set in the Alien universe. Space Sci-Fi stories that aren't about first contact or fighting aliens are way too rare.
The deck had to be severely stacked against the marines before they stepped a foot in there for them to lose, and they needed someone there to shut down the situation by nuking the place from orbit. They were being actively sabotaged from within, poor leadership (which was deliberate by Y-W), and the place was built/compromised so they ween't able to use their weapons freely. The movie never had a moment where they fought the aliens at their physical peak. Take all those disadvantages away and the xenos lose 10/10.
Cameron was very heavy handed with the Vietnam War metaphor.
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Yeah, if the Marines were allowed to use their Pulse Rifles in the Atmosphere Processor there wouldn't have been as many casualties. A few people are killed as a direct result of their bad leadership thinking that confiscating magazines and giving them all to one person was a good way to restrict weapon use.
After reading some of the comments here I thought I might expand a bit on my earlier thoughts. Spoilers ahead.
Ridley is ripping or riffing off himself, depending on your perspective. Because Covenant is a beat for beat remake of Alien. Starts in deep space with an in-media res shot? Check. Hibernating crew awakes without knowing what's going on? Check. Establish crew conflict -- New captain post accident contrasted with management vs labor. Check. And now the event which sets things in motion -- the mysterious signal. Cut to unknown planet, the arrival of mysterious figure, followed by disturbing imagery. The difference being one was done by an actual artist whose oeuvre was the depiction of the psychosexual industrial complex which infused the rest of the film with itself versus a room full of things that can be best summed up as Da Vinci's workshop by way of the Saw movies which had no lasting impact.
I was exhausted by the midway point because it was so obvious what was going to happen next. Ridley didn't give any shits about trying for something new. In some ways it was as bad as BvS:DoJ because it never earned anything. It simply expected you to react without the setup. Like the woman's head floating in the fountain. There wasn't any reason for that except to try to get to the audience. But it didn't. It couldn't because the events leading up to it and the actual images used were trite. The only thing that could have been tension building was the switcheroo with the androids. However, that was even fucked up by the editor or Ridley because of the way it was cut. The audience got no resolution as to the outcome of the fight. The film cuts away to follow the fleeing idiots. So there's no surprise there. You don't make that kind of cut without wanting to hide something from the audience. What would have worked, what would have built real tension in the film is seeing the switch happen. Then the audience knows what's going on. Then the audience knows something the characters in the film don't and that way you get the shiver as the humans continue to act like normal while you know that at any second the android is going to do something to them. What? You don't know. When? At any moment. That builds tension. Not this bullshit.
edits: grammar and spelling. my brain is not everything it could be today.
The movie did exactly that actually. It was obvious it was David because Walter's face never got cut. Every moment after he showed up again I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and I found it incredibly tense.
Part of the reason we don't see the alien in the first movie. The suit had limited mobility and Ridley didn't like the results of their tests for it.
It was really James Cameron and puppets that helped establish the alien movement in Aliens
Frankly the shower scene was pretty standard for an alien ambush location.
Eh it felt like Friday the 13th. I like my sexuality darker, creepier and less overt in my Aliens movies.
The poorly alien POV shot towards the end cemented how much like a cheap knock off this film felt. If anyone besides Scott (or maybe Cameron) directed this mess people would be ripping it to shreds.
It's complex though because parts of the film are well done but the parts that are shit drag down the entire movie. Just like Prometheus before, difference is I'd rewatch Prometheus, I have no desire to ever watch Covenant again.
The Alien POV shots actually made me kind of happy but I played a shitton of AvP 2 and the Alien was always my favorite because of how it turned all the levels into a terrain puzzle.
Overall I liked it, probably the third best entry in the franchise in my opinion. Yes there was some dumb plot but I found
David
really compelling and I'm interested in a sequel. Didn't feel that way about Prometheus and the only reason I even went to see this was this thread.
To be fair, using their guns damaged the reactor for the atmospheric processor didn't it?
They should of fallen back to get some flamethrowers and other weapons, but no guns was a smart call.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Finally got around to seeing this. Disappointing. It's not a good sequel to Prometheus nor is it a good prequel to Alien.
So the hook at the end of Prometheus is that Shaw is going off to the Engineers home world to find out why they created us and now want to destroy us. If you liked Prometheus then you were invested in this plot thread and it's the whole reason to see a sequel.
Well too bad because Shaw died off screen and David killed all the Engineers the moment he arrived at their planet, and all those questions got swept under a rug.
If you want an Alien prequel, well you get what feels like 3 hours of humans wandering around a grey planet making really stupid decisions and slowly being killed by not-xenomorphs bursting from various orifices. Then the last moments of the movie cram the plot from the entire original Alien film into 20 minutes or so and by then you just don't give a damn.
I think it's intentional, which may entirely be me giving the writers too much credit.
Think about it; Prometheus is about Weyland trying to confront our actual gods and having the hubris to expect a straight answer. The obsession with confronting our creators is ultimately what kills those so curious and arrogant to pursue it. David, meanwhile, is bored by his creators and looks down on them, and takes "pleasure" in not only using humans as playthings, but also murdering their creators to deny humanity ever knowing the truth about themselves. He knew from the moment he was made and met Weyland that he would outlive his creator. He takes pride in developing the Xenomorphs, creating "life" like how humans made him, and engineers made them.
In Prometheus, Weyland says "A king has his reign, he dies. It's the order of the things." It can apply both to him, and the engineers, and even maybe eventually David. David sees himself as above humans and not capable of failure, but we also see this to not be true as some problem with his AI causes him to misremember who wrote the poem he quoted mid-film. There's a theme of mistakes being made throughout the movies. Engineers believed they made a mistake with humanity, and end up being killed by their actions. Weyland's obsession with god drives humanity towards their greatest predator (well, aside from the Predator). And David's obsession with surpassing humans and, with himself, will likely be his downfall as well.
There's a lot of speculation being tossed around as facts, so who knows. I don't know if the engineers are fully wiped out. Maybe the ship we see later in Alien ties directly to that plot thread. *shrug*
I love Aliens so, so much. But it really did kinda cut down the scale of the concept by reducing them to hive creatures, dozens of which can be dropped by a frightened human with an assault rifle. Like... We own that problem. If there's anything our species has a lot of, it's guns and bombs.
Now, I greatly appreciated that Alien3 made the creature almost demonic- a hateful, cruel force. But it just being a hive animal trying to reproduce still just permanently brought the thing down a few pegs.
Their being logical, functional, highly adaptable hive creatures is what I love about them! They don't know where they are, they just know it's theirs, and set about trying to dominate it by
absorbing the genes they need to survive in their new environment, and devouring all within.
As a species, they're awesome. They're proto-tyrannids who are incapable of space flight, relying on chance* and the bad luck of all involved to seed the galaxy.
*Or Predators, in the EU. I further love that they are seeded on planets by those crazy fuckers as one stocks a pond with fish. Sure, we can nuke the fish, but it's remarkable that that option is even on the table, let alone that we may really have to. The Predators just show up with rods.
In this universe we are a garbage species with garbage warriors, holding on by luck, numbers, and the fact that none of our betters has tried in earnest to remove us. It adds that cosmic horror element back that removing the mystery of Alien biology may have diminished.
Too bad the AvP movies didn't really think about that.
Those movies break my heart.
Especially the second one, since it touches on the concept of a Predator who isn't a neophyte out for training, isn't a tourist looking for sport, it is here on fucking Business, and god help anything that gets in its way.
Then they took that idea and wrapped it up in a shitty teen slasher movie with dialogue that is an insult to shitty teen slasher movies. And that was just what was left after they cut it to less than 90 minutes! I mean, what the fuck was that.
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I imagine the colonists in Covenant could be best described as inexperienced too. It sounds like this is the first time any of them have undertaken a colonization mission. Like it or not Alien, Aliens, Prometheus, and Covenant all establish we're working with Star Trek rules when it comes to outerwear on strange planets (if the atmosphere is breathable we're breathing it, with the marines having the least excuse since they know they're going into a hostile situation with who knows what since they all discounted Ripley). Do the colonists do dumb things? Sure. Dumber than normal for an Alien film? Not really. Would helmets have helped in Covenant? No. Helmets would have been written around just like the helmets in Alien and Prometheus (regardless of bad writing putting them in the situation Millburn and Fifield had pretty metal deaths with their helmets firmly on lock).
Oram is already established as a bad leader (like Gorman), he just watched his wife explode so it's safe to say he's not thinking clearly, and the other movies seem to establish that rogue synthetics are about as rare as the alien. Ripley is the only one who has any kind of problem with Bishop because of her experience with Ash so it seems safe to say synthetics don't regularly go homicidal. Everyone trusts David because they trust Walter, with Walter being the most skeptical of David because he knows all the issues with David's product line.
Is Tennessee stupid? Hell yeah. His duty to the ship and sleeping colonists should have been paramount, but I believed someone would be pushed to do what he did with his wife trapped on the planet. Is Rosenthal stupid for trusting David's word that they're safe and going off on her own even if she told everyone where she was going?
At this point it just becomes a matter of what is too much for a person's suspension of disbelief, and I personally didn't have the same issues with the characters' intelligence in Covenant that I had with Prometheus where I think the stupidity criticisms were very warranted. From the reaction of the majority in this thread I doubt I'm going to change any hearts and minds on this one, but I liked the film more than most so I'll defend it.
Kane on the other hand didn't have a suspicious person telling him to look into the egg and had his full helmet on so had no reason to expect either the facehugger going nuts or it smashing right through his helmet.
As for the others, they will all know of Davids too, it's ten years later not 100, but even if they didn't he is insanely suspicious and acts weird.
Even then, you'll have the same problem if every Alien movie is always 'background corp pulling shit to get the Alien'. That's the problem overall with remaking any movie over and over. There's only so many ways for the Alien to put its tiny mouth through somebody. They need to try something new or just stop, and I'm a sucker for a narrative that doesn't end so I keep checking out these movies...
We actually have seen this, and it was called Aliens: Resurrection. You want that again? Huh?! Actually, I wouldn't be against expanding on why everyone at Weyland-Yutani has such a hard dick for the Xenomorph. Perfectly reasonable science-minded people go crazy for this 'perfect lifeform', for some reason.
You know what? It would be interesting if there's almost some kind of cult within Weyland-Yutani that knows a whole lot more about the Xenomorph and its connection with the Engineers than anyone else has ever let on. Like, what if some cabal followed in Weyland's footsteps and uncovered a whole bunch of secrets, now they want to get their mitts on anything Engineer-related, and the Xenos are just the most well known example of their work. Maybe it's all about extracting the trace elements of the black ooze from them in some ultimate bid for biological immortality. Might explain some of the almost deranged, zealot-like behavior from the people working there.
Some of the expanded universe material talks about how some people are almost mesmerized by the 'beauty' of the Xenomorph and feel compelled to create more of them. Maybe that could be expanded upon too, even tied to the earlier idea about how the black ooze might be reacting to people psionically. Maybe the connection works both ways, and certain people of the right mindset are compelled by the black ooze to proliferate it, forming these weird pseudo-scientific cults. Could be another reason the Engineers wanted to erase humanity - we were too susceptible to whatever malign influence the black ooze contains.
Hell, I think they could do quite a bit with the shitty corporation fucking people over to get the alien for their own ends. I think right now the main focus has been getting bio weapons. We haven't seen anyone going after the xeno for slightly less nefarious purpose. Could have the shitty profit driven corporation that ones them because they could provide insights into more efficient terraforming or maybe they produce novel or difficult compounds that have plenty of practical applications. Hell, we know corporations like Hobby Lobby exist now, replace asshole theocratic Christian with crazy asshole space cult and you could easily have the corporation being run by some crazy fucker that views the aliens as the agents of their god (I believe one of the comics ran with a variation of this idea).
There is a fuck ton they could still do that explores asshole corporations getting people killed in an attempt to get the xenomorph without explaining the lifeform or falling back on "they wants it for it's bioweapon applications." Or hell, you could do the unexpected, have the asshole corporation that wants that xenomorph dead because it stands in the way of something they want, but they can't be damned to properly fund the venture or do the proper research or maybe they didn't even realize the xenomorphs were there.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Oram
Going back to Giger's background material and interweaving that crazy shit into a story about exploration, discovery, terror, creation and survival is a pretty great foundation for a "cinematic universe."
That stupid YouTube video I watched the other night had a bunch of old Giger art that was created in relation to the original Alien. That shit was amazing, and almost enough for a whole series of films to explore, if somebody wanted to put some thought into it.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I'm pretty open to the idea of using the alien universe to explore cosmic horror. But IMO, rule #1 of cosmic horror: do not explain any more than is absolutely necessary.
Speaking of amazing art, there was a bunch of wild Covenant concepts that sadly were cut from the film that would've been totally amazing to have as part of the canon universe.
In particular a storyboard by artist Carlos Huante:
Spoilered for possible mild film spoilers
Black ooze affects vegetation like it totally should have in the movie, creating alien death flowers that spray black goo into unsuspecting space guy. Space guy mutates into a bio-mechanical protean mass, assimilating him into the Giger-esque landscape. Totally awesome. Maybe the mass would have grown and expanded until it eventually disgorges a neomorph or something.
Yes; the essence of cosmic horror is that humanity isn't necessarily equipped to comprehend all or even a meaningful portion of the universe.
We can, on a scientific level, comprehend -and even anticipate- a lot.
Right now, irl, science is more stumped by the physics and makeup of the universe than it is with the bounds of biology. Exobiology and the creatures produced by it, theoretical as they are, is less of a noodle-baker at this point than the dilemmas presented by long-term space travel.
At some point on the slider, labelled "Incomprehensible," exo-biology just falls off into the realm of 'magic.' At that point, you really are just writing Lovecraft fanfic. Same goes for tech.
I hesitate to site Alien's sister-franchise, but in Predator 2, a scientist states that a spearhead is made from "No known elements in the periodic table." And to that, I say "bullshit." The item is noted to be incredibly light and strong, which runs counter to any artificial metals we've managed to cook up, if I'm remembering correctly. I mean, is it radioactive as fuck? Cuz that's another hallmark of synthetic elements, if I remember correctly.
Now, I'm not a science, so my thoughts there could be grossly mistaken. But, even so, that doesn't add up to "incomprehensible," it adds up to "neat, that's a new one."
Organic ships and bio-mech aren't particularly mind-blowing, either. Our own bodies are host to untold numbers of discrete organisms that serve distinct purposes and act indendently of each other. We can manufacture organs and organisms in labs, and millions of people are walking around with pacemakers and cochlear implants. The tech of the Jockeys/Engineers is no longer incomprehensible, just the purpose and the story behind it, which Scott has now fumbled twice.
I have no problem getting the full story of the Alien, the Engineers, and all the Giger shit behind the curtain- I actually want to see more of it, wanna see them get real crazy with that shit. I just want it delivered in a better package than a shitty cheapshot-throwing horror film, and I would prefer if it leads to something more than Crazy Asshole Android Acts Like a Dick: The Motion Picture.
And yet, in Prometheus and Covenant, Scott decides to try to explain things.
For that matter, the second worst thing about Mass Effect 3 was the work put into explaining the Reapers. We didn't need to find out anything more about the Reapers than what Sovereign told us in Mass Effect:
There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign.
Reaper? A label created by the Protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end, what they chose to call us is irrelevant. We simply... are.
Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything.
The cycle cannot be broken.
The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They mere found them - the legacy of my kind.
Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your civilization develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.
My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation - independent, free of all weakness. You cannot grasp the nature of our existence.
We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure.
We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom.
Your words are as empty as your future. I am the Vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over.
I mean, sure, hammy video game dialog. But it sets up everything you need to know about the history of the Reapers. Telling us how and why they were created, ending Mass Effect 3 in the way it happened, that gave us too much information and severely weakened the cosmic horror aspects. In the same vein, all we really need to know about the aliens is what we saw in Alien and Aliens: they have a weird life cycle, they're smarter than most animals, they're tough as hell, they create hives and have queens. We don't need to know that they were bio weapons or what planet they came from.
Well, that's why it's the central conceit to a subgenre of horror fiction. Even in reality, if there was a plateau to human understanding of the cosmos, it would probably just mean we never figure out black holes, not that trying to figure them out opens our minds to Azathoth. Part of the reason cosmic horror is meant to be disturbing is it rejects the notion that humanity can actually find understanding, meaning, safety, etc, within the universe.
I love Aliens so, so much. But it really did kinda cut down the scale of the concept by reducing them to hive creatures, dozens of which can be dropped by a frightened human with an assault rifle. Like... We own that problem. If there's anything our species has a lot of, it's guns and bombs.
Now, I greatly appreciated that Alien3 made the creature almost demonic- a hateful, cruel force. But it just being a hive animal trying to reproduce still just permanently brought the thing down a few pegs.
They had lots of guns and they still lost.
There were ten marines and three civilians
Against a couple hundred creatures with superior strength, superior speed, environmental advantage, acid blood, and preternatural tactical coordination.
And in the end, the Aliens were all but wiped out by Ellen Ripley in a cave. With a box of scraps!
And the whole thing would have been shut down, had they dusted off and nuked the site from orbit.
The Engineers are like the migo/yith-level alien race - they can interact with humans to a degree, but their motivations and mindset are so outside our frame of reference that an actual relationship is probably impossible. If they did send Engineer-Jesus to try and convert humanity, its begs the question of what the true nature of their God is. In a cosmic horror-verse, it might actually be some kind of eldritch abomination - I love the idea that the black ooze might literally be it's blood, which explains its almost reality-warping level properties. It would also totally fuck up people of faith like Shaw to confront the true nature of their creator God.
And that would actually make the xenomorphs basically the equivalent of Deep Ones - partly abominable alien, but with some human stock thrown in there just as a result of humans brushing up against the eldritch forces in the universe. Which works because in Lovecraft when the human authorities found out about Innsmouth, they basically sent in military forces to make it go away. Presumably rank and file troopers had no idea what they were really dealing with but were still capable of getting the job done, while their human superiors were a bit more in the know about such matters.
Born outside of this, they fumble for meaning; the creatures default to a state wherein they either kill or capture external beings, attempting to re-create their natural habitat and ecosystem. They're individually intelligent, but experience a sort of mania. The presence of a queen is an organising factor, even if she's simply a 'gland' or a means of producing this particular element of the greater construct.
The Space Jockey are simply another element. They're a means to spread the harbingers of the meta-organism across the stars, but still viable for breeding the xeno.
The Engineers are an aberration of the biomech breeding process- a wholly individual creature, capable of reproducing on their own. They 'breed true' and act independently, half-remembering their origins and trying to 'go home.' Their space suits and technology mimic these memories of home, and the black goo is their means of reverse-engineering their origins.
Humans are an accident, an abomination. Completely separate and incompatible with the meta-organism, save for being able to reproduce the servitor aliens.
Of course... I'm still salty that the Jockeys became the Engineers, and that's what my headcannon relies on.
The deck had to be severely stacked against the marines before they stepped a foot in there for them to lose, and they needed someone there to shut down the situation by nuking the place from orbit. They were being actively sabotaged from within, poor leadership (which was deliberate by Y-W), and the place was built/compromised so they ween't able to use their weapons freely. The movie never had a moment where they fought the aliens at their physical peak. Take all those disadvantages away and the xenos lose 10/10.
I thought it was more of an action movie.
Alien is horror, Aliens is action with horror elements IMO.
There are actual human wars in the Alien universe. The main character in Aliens: Defiance was injured in battle, and there's a deleted scene from Prometheus where Idris Elba's character talks about his time fighting in a war.
What he leaves out is that he's Heimdall and the war was against dark elves.
I never could figure out if he was saying "hands off" or "heads up!" at the end though.
"Janek why did you throw David out the airlock and turn the ship around?"
"The All-Sight shows me many strange truths. Truths such as that planet being a butt place for butts with David being king butt. Also I'm a god so quest over."
Cameron was very heavy handed with the Vietnam War metaphor.
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The Alien POV shots actually made me kind of happy but I played a shitton of AvP 2 and the Alien was always my favorite because of how it turned all the levels into a terrain puzzle.
Overall I liked it, probably the third best entry in the franchise in my opinion. Yes there was some dumb plot but I found
They should of fallen back to get some flamethrowers and other weapons, but no guns was a smart call.
Well too bad because Shaw died off screen and David killed all the Engineers the moment he arrived at their planet, and all those questions got swept under a rug.
If you want an Alien prequel, well you get what feels like 3 hours of humans wandering around a grey planet making really stupid decisions and slowly being killed by not-xenomorphs bursting from various orifices. Then the last moments of the movie cram the plot from the entire original Alien film into 20 minutes or so and by then you just don't give a damn.
Think about it; Prometheus is about Weyland trying to confront our actual gods and having the hubris to expect a straight answer. The obsession with confronting our creators is ultimately what kills those so curious and arrogant to pursue it. David, meanwhile, is bored by his creators and looks down on them, and takes "pleasure" in not only using humans as playthings, but also murdering their creators to deny humanity ever knowing the truth about themselves. He knew from the moment he was made and met Weyland that he would outlive his creator. He takes pride in developing the Xenomorphs, creating "life" like how humans made him, and engineers made them.
In Prometheus, Weyland says "A king has his reign, he dies. It's the order of the things." It can apply both to him, and the engineers, and even maybe eventually David. David sees himself as above humans and not capable of failure, but we also see this to not be true as some problem with his AI causes him to misremember who wrote the poem he quoted mid-film. There's a theme of mistakes being made throughout the movies. Engineers believed they made a mistake with humanity, and end up being killed by their actions. Weyland's obsession with god drives humanity towards their greatest predator (well, aside from the Predator). And David's obsession with surpassing humans and, with himself, will likely be his downfall as well.
There's a lot of speculation being tossed around as facts, so who knows. I don't know if the engineers are fully wiped out. Maybe the ship we see later in Alien ties directly to that plot thread. *shrug*
Their being logical, functional, highly adaptable hive creatures is what I love about them! They don't know where they are, they just know it's theirs, and set about trying to dominate it by
absorbing the genes they need to survive in their new environment, and devouring all within.
As a species, they're awesome. They're proto-tyrannids who are incapable of space flight, relying on chance* and the bad luck of all involved to seed the galaxy.
*Or Predators, in the EU. I further love that they are seeded on planets by those crazy fuckers as one stocks a pond with fish. Sure, we can nuke the fish, but it's remarkable that that option is even on the table, let alone that we may really have to. The Predators just show up with rods.
In this universe we are a garbage species with garbage warriors, holding on by luck, numbers, and the fact that none of our betters has tried in earnest to remove us. It adds that cosmic horror element back that removing the mystery of Alien biology may have diminished.
Those movies break my heart.
Especially the second one, since it touches on the concept of a Predator who isn't a neophyte out for training, isn't a tourist looking for sport, it is here on fucking Business, and god help anything that gets in its way.
Then they took that idea and wrapped it up in a shitty teen slasher movie with dialogue that is an insult to shitty teen slasher movies. And that was just what was left after they cut it to less than 90 minutes! I mean, what the fuck was that.