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That’s an interesting opinion…I’m more worried about Joyce character going forwards than Winona as an actress. I don’t see much growth to be had with her unlike the rest of the characters and outside of Season One she isn’t essential for the overall plot of the series to move forward.
Westworld
I honestly don’t even know what to say about this one.
1 It seemed like David had created the face hugger eggs, but that cant be right because queen and eggs are frozen in Antarctica in AvP.
If AVP was ever canon it surely isn’t now.
2 if he killed lady dr. And experimented on her why have a grave marker. If Dr lady hero was dead before he infected the planet, why plant the wheat.
When discussing David the first thing that must be noted is that he is going insane. The novelization plainly states this so the grave along with the picture of her is his twisted ways of remembering her.
As for the wheat…curiosity I guess. Maybe it has something to do with the spores that appear on the planet.
3 did Walter join David or did David kill him? Mother recognized David’s codes, but he was also doing stuff as walter, so did he have Walters codes?#
No idea.
4 was It just me or was the end a clusterf###
A wee bit. The film would have benefited from having one Protomorph that’s framed a little more like the classic Xeno. Besides it’s the second Protomorph sequence that essentially gives away the Walter is David plot twist.
5 david puts face hugger embryos in the drawer at the end, where did he get the capsules that match.
I remember the face hugger embryos being of a different slightly shape and not being flat.
Why was walter taking them out at the beginning?
One of them was broken.
I prefer this version of the Space Jockey:
and even if you’re not a fan of this design at least it accounts for the size of the Space Jockey unlike the Engineers in Prometheus who are like half the size
Kylo is not playing around this time so she better be.
I still cringe at the memory of that entire GoT spoilers fiasco.
Alien Covenant general score: 8/10
Alien Covenant as an Alien film: 6/10
I hate to have to rate it on two different levels but the Space Jockey being fossilized doesn’t mesh with a plot revelation that happens in Covenant.
Darth Kylo Brat of Ren/
A whole trilogy revolves around this guy and just such a halfbaked trainwreck of stupid.I’m predisposed to agree with you, but I won’t know for sure until I see The Last Jedi.
This.
Let’s give the kid some time…He’s just now fully embracing the Dark Side.
I’m excited for Benecio’s Little Finger/Githany type character. Characters like that often bring big changes to the conflicts their meddling in and through their actions and rationales certain truths we hold can be challenged. Implying they’re not solely motivated by acquiring power that is.
The Aluminum Falcon said:
— SPOILERS FOR FILM CURRENTLY IN THEATER —In terms of Alien Covenant, I figure an ideal cut would just remove the 3rd act Alien throwback stuff on the spaceship near the finale, and better edit the Walter/David fight so the “twist” wasn’t so obvious. Hopefully, there’ll be deleted footage to play with here.
I wish that were possible but the 3rd act is oozing with the Protomorph so there would surely by a myriad of plot holes and inconsistencies made by removing it. Trimming the crap out of it is still an option though.
Also a Prometheus/Covenant fanedit fixating on David would be dope. After Covenant I feel as though he is the core of these two films and that’s why he is by far the most interesting aspect of both films.
Aliens (Special Edition)
Alien (Theatrical Cut)
Alien Covenant
PrometheusYou’ve never seen 3 or 4?
No I have not and I take pride in that. Even though I’ll probably never watch it how do you feel the Assembly Cut? Just curious.
The theatrical is mostly better. You should check out Resurrection, that’s awesome.
Either way if I do end up watching Alien 3 it will certainly be a fanedit of it. As for Resurrection the prospect of a horny clone of Ripley (ironically) turns me off to the film.
Aliens (Special Edition)
Alien (Theatrical Cut)
Alien Covenant
PrometheusYou’ve never seen 3 or 4?
No I have not and I take pride in that. Even though I’ll probably never watch it how do you feel the Assembly Cut? Just curious.
Alien: Covenant
My first impression after watching Prometheus was that it felt like a prelude to revelations in the next film. After watching this, I can conclude that neither Prometheus or Covenant are worth the bother. Covenant, though it has a fascinating villain, still fails to provide any answers and ends illogically.
What the Alien franchise has desperately needed is a new type of alien. We know the life cycle of the Xenomorph, so there is no longer any dread in the face of this threat, only momentary shocks due to jump scares. Also, Prometheus was a more interesting movie than Covenant for me because at least there was some nominal change in the plot structure of ‘ship gets a signal and investigates’.
Here’s an idea, Scott: Have a ship with a bunch of competent scientists and soldiers get lost in deep space, crash landing on a planet far from Earth and encountering a threat that is entirely different than the Xenomorphs or the Engineers. It’s pretty simple.
I think a shift in storytelling would make these films better than just making a new threat. Covenant tried to balance action, horror, and the philosophical elements of Prometheus to somewhat lackluster results as the latter two don’t feel nearly as present in the film. If the film had just been scarier and answered a few more questions I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.
That it’s not scary is a structural problem though.
Not only is it a structural problem but it’s a problem of the film makers making them seem a lot scarier than they actually were. For me this has to do with them showing the Neomorph and the Proto Xenomorph too often and showed too much of them. I prefer my my Xenomorphs to be obscured by shadows most of the time and not shown in good lighting for most of its screen time. With how good the CGI is they could strike a perfect balance in which we we see it fully and moving super fast in select moments but have it lurk in the shadows most of the time. That would give the future films a truly unnerving feeling that’s akin to Alien.
As I said, there’s negligible mystery in the Xenomorph life cycle, so we’re all just waiting for the hapless redshirts to catch on before they all bite it. We’re not learning along with them the dangers of this threat.
I actually think that the negligible mystery are the engineers as we still don’t know why they created humanity, why they changed their minds when it pertains to destroying humanity, what their civilization was like etc. In terms of the Xenomorph’s origin we have seen considerable strides as we have a fleshy version of the being we all know that is born from a facehugger both of which have acid blood. There are certain things that aren’t there like the bio-mechanical nature of the Xenomorph but we have a prototype so the film succeeds on that front in my eyes.
The other problem is the lack of answers. It’s not that we are given few answers to Prometheus, but that the person who demanded these answers is gone and with them the drive in the story to provide those answers. Therefore, the answers it does provide it provides to the audience and not to the characters in particular, making it explanation heavy while failing to satisfy our desire.
Shaw didn’t need to be in the film to provide us with answers as in the Prologue David says he learned of the Engineers ways. Sure it loses that emotional charge that stems from that primal need in humanity to ascertain the nature of all that surrounds us but as it pertains to giving your audience information about the story it’s more than sufficient. I just wanted more answers period no matter where they came from. I would have been fine with text on the end credits filling me in on whats up with the Engineers rather than being left here in a state of confusion.
Aliens (Special Edition)
Alien (Theatrical Cut)
Alien Covenant
Prometheus
Alien: Covenant
My first impression after watching Prometheus was that it felt like a prelude to revelations in the next film. After watching this, I can conclude that neither Prometheus or Covenant are worth the bother. Covenant, though it has a fascinating villain, still fails to provide any answers and ends illogically.
What the Alien franchise has desperately needed is a new type of alien. We know the life cycle of the Xenomorph, so there is no longer any dread in the face of this threat, only momentary shocks due to jump scares. Also, Prometheus was a more interesting movie than Covenant for me because at least there was some nominal change in the plot structure of ‘ship gets a signal and investigates’.
Here’s an idea, Scott: Have a ship with a bunch of competent scientists and soldiers get lost in deep space, crash landing on a planet far from Earth and encountering a threat that is entirely different than the Xenomorphs or the Engineers. It’s pretty simple.
I think a shift in storytelling would make these films better than just making a new threat. Covenant tried to balance action, horror, and the philosophical elements of Prometheus to somewhat lackluster results as the latter two don’t feel nearly as present in the film. If the film had just been scarier and answered a few more questions I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.
Alien - 8.5/10 (Theatrical Cut)
Enjoyed this quite a bit more the second time around and a lot of that had to do with the fact that it wasn’t the Director’s Cut. I’m definitely never watching that version again.
Alien Covenant - 7.5/10
So much to say but I’ll just give semi spoilery bullet points:
- Felt like an Alien film much more than Prometheus did
- Characters acted like idiotic horror movie characters but I definitely liked a few of them
- David is even more interesting than he was in Prometheus and is now one of my favorite villains though I shouldn’t really call him that considering I’m not privy to what his long term machinations are.
- A lot of questions have yet to be answered and it’s starting to really frustrate me
- The horror elements of Alien and the philosophical aspects of Prometheus were somewhat lacking in my opinion; the former being the least shown element of the three present in the film
- The philosophical elements that are present are executed far more efficiently than Prometheus and since my viewing last night I can’t stop pondering about the esoteric nature of intelligent life and how literal perfection could be crafted and how that would effect the environment these beings would inhabit
EDIT:
Another thing that has crossed my mind since I watched Covenant is the question of who is worthy of life. Most people certainly aren’t in the context of Earth but on a cosmic level where would we rank in terms of intelligent beings? I very much doubt humans who are blinded by emotions, morality and a self destructive nature would be close to what the apex of life is like beyond our small corner of the universe. That’s not even factoring in the short life spans and frail bodies we have.
I’m not working on Thursday so I’ll probably go see it again if I’m feeling up it.
Which doesn’t pertain the the actual quality of the films but it’s his list so he can do with it as he pleases.
I love this man.
All I want to do is pre order my tickets for Alien Covenant and the AMC website is essentially telling me to fuck off. Why? And this isn’t a rhetorical question; I really want to know what I did to deserve this.
Ratio Tile said:
Phasma doesn’t make sense towards the end of TFA. Why would she give up just because she has a blaster pointed at her head? If she’s some sort of hard core Stormtrooper she would have shown a little more resiliency. It doesn’t make sense for her character. She should have said screw you guys, shoot me, I’m not helping you.
Admittedly that would have been surprising and would have shown how devoted the people who serve the First Order are. Showing that she would needlessly die so that the Resistance had no chance would be a nice way of showing that these guys are of a more serious mindset than the beings who made up The Empire. As is I don’t have a problem with it because she hasn’t shown the same type of fanaticism that Hux has showed but I would have preferred some type of struggle.
A five year old could follow the plot of Rogue One. I know they don’t like the film but damn…
I’ll admit my first couple times through I didn’t understand why they had to blow a hole in the shield gate when Bodhi could get a signal to the Rebel Fleet no problem, but there is an explanation. If you have it on Blu-Ray, you can take the time to rewatch a given scene to get a better idea of what’s going on for your commentary.
(The data files are too big to get through the shield, or something, but the smaller communications from Bodhi wasn’t big enough to be blocked. I don’t like that explanation, but it exists.)
Admittedly I was projecting so I apologize if my comment upset you in any way. As it pertains to the chain of events during the Battle of Scariff I found the whole thing with the shield to be unnecessary. The pacing of the battle would have been so much smoother had Jyn and Cassian taken the floppy disk we see in STAR WARS to Leia. The best way to do this of course is to have them travel to Coruscant which would kill two Mynocks with one blaster shot. I don’t even want to know the explanation for why Leia was at that battle.
They had to BEAM the transmissions to her ship to line up with ANH.
Yeah…about that. But weren’t the plans beamed to some other Rebel ship then brought aboard the Tantive IV via ATM Floppy disk?
Regardless of what happened the fact that these events are somewhat hazy in my mind means I need to watch Rogue One again. But then again I’d use any excuse to see Rogue One again 😉
A five year old could follow the plot of Rogue One. I know they don’t like the film but damn…
I’ll admit my first couple times through I didn’t understand why they had to blow a hole in the shield gate when Bodhi could get a signal to the Rebel Fleet no problem, but there is an explanation. If you have it on Blu-Ray, you can take the time to rewatch a given scene to get a better idea of what’s going on for your commentary.
(The data files are too big to get through the shield, or something, but the smaller communications from Bodhi wasn’t big enough to be blocked. I don’t like that explanation, but it exists.)
Admittedly I was projecting so I apologize if my comment upset you in any way. As it pertains to the chain of events during the Battle of Scariff I found the whole thing with the shield to be unnecessary. The pacing of the battle would have been so much smoother had Jyn and Cassian taken the floppy disk we see in STAR WARS to Leia. The best way to do this of course is to have them travel to Coruscant which would kill two Mynocks with one blaster shot. I don’t even want to know the explanation for why Leia was at that battle.
A five year old could follow the plot of Rogue One. I know they don’t like the film but damn…
When the Death Star, under command the command of Grand Moff Tarkin, followed the Millennium Falcon to Yavin via tracking device and was subsequently destroyed, it is almost certain that they did not keep the location of the Rebel Base a total secret from the rest of the Imperial Navy. As such, even though the Death Star was destroyed, the Base’s location was no longer secret. How, then, did the Rebellion have time for an awards ceremony before evacuating? Surely the arrival of some portion of the Imperial Navy was imminent.
Depends on exactly when the ceremony is…if it’s the day after I can see them maybe squeezing it in the morning.