Comments (Page 686)
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That's Cameron's Aliens, which I'm not discussing, and also that's a plot detail that's happened offscreen. What's important is the way in which a character functions within the narrative flow, and within the economy of ideas, events and images that happens in real-time. A movie is like a dream, made by many hands of course, but all involved belong to the same moment in history and (mostly) to the same culture, which means they will make something that either reflects or, more rarely, challenges the values of the culture within whose forces it is made. Personal issues, such as the agressivity I've been talking about, belong to the individual, yes, but are also shared by many others since we are all human minds/bodies with shared impulses and psychologies. These impulses make the culture around us too, and so cultural themes are often personal ones, and vice versa.
Good point though! In Aliens the threat is to the nuclear family. In Alien the threat is darker, wilder, more obscene and more erotic. That's what makes it horror, while Aliens is action, and satire, and adventure. Damn fine action, oh yes, but a different beast to Alien.
@daliens, Quite right. Even Oram's curiosity (as head of Life Sciences) is there, to the extent that he's willing to follow David into his cave and have a nervous peek inside the Egg.
As you say, most of the movie was about reaction to life-threatening events. I'd have liked to have seen an extra half hour, similar in length to the Aliens Special Edition.
joylitt I remember Karine taking samples for research and even Hallet thought he might be credited with an important discovery. So scientific curiosity is there, let alone the science freak David. Most of the time the crew was on the run and after you've been attacked by a Neomorph bursting out of one of your security guy's mouth you might be less impressed by the ruins scattered with bodies. Just looking for shelter. No time to think about anything else. Prometheus was less consistent in matter of scientific curiosity but it brought something new and visually impressive. I watched frame by frame all the Neomorph attacks and they are so good, no idea how they did it but it looks real. I like Covenant for what it is and I don't fell the need to compare it with other movies. Give the script to any other director and I'm pretty sure they cannot make it into a better movie.
However I'm glad you are a Ridley Scott fan too, it's more important than the canon. Didn't RS write down the canon himself?
This deleted scene is great, I wonder why they choose to cut it out.
daliens I really want to like it, I just can't. I am a big Ridley Scott fan too, if it would depend on me he would have several Oscars already. Blade Runner is the movie I've seen most times. But in Covenant I think he is not being himself, something seems to be off in this movie in one way or another. So many off-putting stuff, all those familiar insects on another planet and the lack of scientific curiosity of the characters... nobody ever wonders why?. As for the reasons why I watched it more than once, I would say it is because I will give every Ridley Scott sci-fi movie the same treatment. The only difference is that I will continue to watch Blade Runner, Alien and Prometheus on a regular basis, but not Alien Covenant. I want to watch the deletes scenes though...
joylitt did you watch Covenant more than any other alien movies? That's the case for me. I don't remember watching a new movie so many times, except maybe for Gladiator and Prometheus, although there must have been many other good movies around. I even un intentionally learned a lot of lines from the script (except from Prometheus that I watched mostly for visuals and novelty, sometimes frame by frame). I don't deny that I am a Ridley Scott fan, but there has to be something special about these movies.
What made you watch Covenant repeatedly, except the visuals which I get you are not thrilled with? Don't tell me that you were only looking for reasons to criticize it, I don't buy it.
@David 7
I think you have a point about David in that it "adds mystery and more darkness to David, he was waiting...". In the novel we only have David's words (and we know that we can't trust him) that the engineers disabled the ships in order to stop the virus from spreading to other worlds. He could have done it himself (perhaps to prevent Shaw from escaping)? He counted on that there would eventually come a ship that would pick up the distress message made by Shaw. He needed victims to complete his creation . . .
Yes, I think its Spectral. It is my favorite movie and you can check it here
And Capt Torgo I think the direction you liked was not dumped along the way, it is part of the big plan to make a stop first on Paradise. We may not see Shaw again but Shaw and Daniels are not vital to the story, as was with Ripley. Now they opened a whole alien universe to discover. What's eating me is the Engineers on Paradise. What was their place within the Engineer civilization? For me their welcome of the Juggernaut was like welcoming the returning troops from battles, if they returned safely must be with the good news. The Juggernaut might be their military craft, while the discoidal ship from the beginning of Prometheus might be their research/exploration craft. What about the scorpion ship?
Even if we don't get all the answers in the next movie, it has to be by Ridley Scott. I would be really disappointed if Fox would decide otherwise.
Covenant didn't get better with repeat viewings for me at least. Even if we forget about the plot's assault on the audience intelligence and on the Alien canon, I found it to be visually lackluster. Even the props (the eggs for instance) look cheap, and the spaceship design is very uninspired, both on the inside and on the outside. The film is also lacking the layered cinematography of previous installments. To me, even lesser sci-fi movies like Event Horizon, Life and of course Prometheus, have much more visual appeal than Covenant. I hope in future movies they hire a better set designer. The absence of artists like Moebius is sorely missed. Honestly I don't get those who say Covenant is a "beautiful mess"... this has to be the ugly duckling in Ridley Scott's filmography!
Capt Torgo imo Alien Covenant is level with Alien3 with regards to quality human interaction, it has a very good script, tells a story and it is action packed. At that pace and in only 2 hours it is hard to imagine a better quality human interaction. Faith is touched in both movies, as well as in Prometheus. I don't believe Ridley Scott considers the religious folk as fools. Remember how valuable was the cross pendant for Shaw, how David tried to strip her of faith, same thing between David and Oram. Oram, on the other hand, was raised as a religious person but he was not quite a believer as opposed to Shaw, his curiosity and awe to a luciferic David playing God were stronger than his faith. Oram was the perfectly chosen type for portraying a captain who would wreck his mission. I loved as well Prometheus, the quest for origins, the search for answers, the hope we are left with when the movie ends. But Alien Covenant I found to be much more complex and unsettling, haunting as Prometheus never was. You said yourself you watched it 20 times.
Thank you Kethol for the link. The screen shots were from the Alien: Covenant advertisement before the extended scene.
Well they didn't have the nerve to have Shaw being experimented upon while living (RS being the "great" feminist)... How the hack did he used her necrotic reproductive system. Well they don't care, so why should I.
He wanted to make her immortal? Then why bomb the Engineers, I was living we the impression after Prometheus that they have the answer.
Sorry for me the biggest Idiot in the whole series it's David (not the humans), as an idiotic Prometheus from Greek mythology who stole the fire and not knowing how to use it. Of course he will finally set himself on fire.
One of the first ones that come to my mind as being so F^cK!n9 scary is "Dark Skies". I watched it at my house and I turned it off because I just couldn't take it anymore. I watched it later to finish the story, but that movie took something that I usually take for granted (and, most of the time, don't even think about) and just played with that fear throughout the whole movie. I primal desire that all humans want and need. If we didn't have this desire, we wouldn't be human. I have never seen a movie take that primal desire (especially in a everyday environment); plus, just toy with it the whole movie. Like a maniac that just wants to f^cK you. The primal fear being that fact that you are safe in a place you call home. We all need a place where we can feel safe (especially when we sleep). We think we can protect ourselves, but the reality is, you can't and someone knows that. Plus, that someone wants you to know that before they show themselves. The movie was amazing! There were some other things in that movie I liked, but I am not going to reveal to much just in case you go and see it.
I hope I didn't say to much...
I love that movie, even though I couldn't watch it all the way through during my first and only viewing.
Wow! Like things you have written before- very descriptive with details so the reader can use all senses and even smell the environment. I like how you gradually reveal Emile and give background to why she acts as she does. I was not expecting the twist near the end- that was frigging awesome!
As an aside, the whole encounter somehow reminded me of Luke meeting Han Solo in the bar in a twisted way!
Thank you kindly joylitt! Haha nice to see those influences shine through :)
Oh you bet there will be monsters coming!! I was tossing up what excerpt to post first. And although I wanted to post something a little more exciting, this chapter is kind of important to set up the context of the story.
I have (hopefully) a very exciting twist to the Engineer mythos, tech and intergalactic purpose.......
I also promise this is not a Weyland-Yutani heavy story. They have little to do with the bulk of the story and are actually not that evil or nefarious....
IRaptus Nice. I can most definitely see your Firefly influences here :-) Are you planning to introduce some monsters soon? :-)
Starlogger lol and I like you too. I appreciate the fact that you can keep a critical mindset about things.
@joylitt I knew i liked you for SOME reason, lol. Carrie is one of those movies that freaked me out and haunted me for eternity. Mulholland is a movie that has always been one of my faves. There are few movies that stick with me forever, but those two, especially Carrie, are two of them.
As a psychological horror I enjoyed "Don't Look Now" very much. Of course it is a movie of its time. But the two movies that almost made me had a heart attack at the movie theater were "Carrie" and "Mulholland Drive". The last one is not necessarily an horror film but that jumspscare in the diner scene is crazy. The fascinating thing about it is that what you are going to see is described by one of the characters before it happens, and still it gets you. BIG TIME. And after that scene the state of unease while you are watching the rest of the film has increased considerably.
David 7 No worries. You announced you were gone for awhile. I noticed that missing a couple weeks seems like a couple real world months around here.
This what happens when I take a sabbatical from the website...I miss all the forum topics.
@dk Congrats! You guys will not be disappointed. Make sure you keep in touch with agoodmovietowatch.com . That website will not steer you wrong with their recommendations, promise.
Kethol I second this!
Kethol I saw that too but cannot remember where. I think Walter was trying to fix a ship and figured if David couldn't figure it out in ten years, he was unlikely to either. I think it may have been fan fiction from another member?
It has already been answered here a few times, but in the book it is explained that the Engineers shut down all ships after the bombing to contain the virus. I assume there is a deleted scene in the movie where David explained that as well.
I want to re-decorate my house like this. I thought I had acquired the art for most of the drawings that have been posted online, but in this video I see that there is twice as much art on the set.
Fox needs to publish a book of ALL David's art!
Well, there was ZERO "horror" in Aliens. ZERO "jumpscares" either if you're gonna go that way on it, so "Alien" itself was the ONLY one in the whole series that had any at all.
@joylitt and I TOTALLY agree with that last paragraph you wrote above. However, do you REALLY think "Don't Look Now" was a great horror film? Sorry...it doesn't do it for me.
I agree with you 100%. Actually I created this topic in part after reading some of your posts were you wish the xenomorph was made scary again. Actually I don't agree with the idea that the beast is cooked. It might seem like it, but that is only because after Aliens, the movies in the franchise have been drifting away from the need of evoking the primal fear of the unknown, and from a suspense fueled narrative, and started to focus on other themes and in world building. The Alien films need more of those heart stopping jolts that movies like "Don't look now", "The Shining", "Carrie" "The Thing" and the first "Alien" had.
Also, after analyzing every jumpscare in "Alien" (1979) I realize that the reason why they are so effective is because they signal important plot points and because the occur in moments where the release of tension was needed. This is the opposed to a completely gratuitous and ineffective scene like the shower kill in Covenant.
There are a lot of comments here and I don't have time to read them all at the moment. This is a good topic. I wonder why I didn't think of it? This is one of reasons that I love the Alien franchise. I don't love scary movies, I just love that the Alien franchise is scary, or at least supposed to be when I remember what A:C was like. I like how the Alien franchise has an actual story to it and is not just a horror flick. There is depth, which is another reason why I love the Alien franchise (not as much as I used to after seeing A:C's lack of "jumpscares").
To answer the question, which it is an easy one, I experienced ABSOLUTELY NONE!!!
Let's say there aren't any "jumpscares" in the movie, then it should be scary enough where I don't even want to finish the movie. There was none of that either for me.
There was also no moments where I just wanted the movie to stop doing what it is doing because I just can't take it anymore. I don't want to turn the movie off, but I just can't handle what it is giving me. Usually during those moments, which I had in Prometheus, I just "hold on to my butt".
During A:R, I said at one point in the movie to myself, "This is a scary movie." I never thought that in A:C.
During Alien, I uncontrollable screamed after not watching for a long time a few weeks before A:C came out. None of that happened in A:C.
In Aliens, after not seeing it for a long time, I wanted to turn the movie off in one part (and one part is all I need). I didn't because the person I was watching it with didn't want to. I am glad we didn't in the end.
I need to rewatch Alien3 because I don't remember it very well.
I got so excited and scared when Ridley Scott said in an interview before A:C came out, "This movie is going to scare the $h!t out of people." Well, it wasn't even close.
A:C maintained a level of fear for me almost throughout the whole movie, but it just wasn't near enough of what it should have been. So, A:C did a good job holding a level of fear, but the level of fear wasn't even high enough! Some parts that I guess were intended to be scary were more just good visuals that look scary, but don't actually induce in the viewer (or at least in me). It's like someone painted a picture to look scary, but I don't think a picture could ever scare me. Well, it would be VERY RARE for a picture to be so scary that I just have to stop looking at it and walk away from it. An example in A:C is the shower scene. IT'S NOT SCARY RIDLEY SCOTT!!!!
Prometheus had some parts there were scarier than all of A:C, but A:C maintained that level. I would have to say A:C is the least scariest Alien franchise movie that exists! I enjoyed Prometheus's fear much more and I wish I could watch it again without knowing what I know now. I really wish I could watch Alien again without knowing what I know now. I don't remember my first Alien viewing very well either...
I had those "gripping the armrests of your chair" moments a few times in Prometheus, but not once did I ever even think of doing that during A:C.
David 7 Welcome back. This is good to hear as it will be on the blu ray too!
"Big things have small beginnings."
I knew David still had some way to go before perfecting his baby!
The Advent Video does fill in some answers....and where it is going. It provided more insight into David's end game...to perfect his "Perfect Organism" and I think Daniels will be the queen as well according to what he said in the video.
I really wish I had bought this on Vudu as opposed to Amazon :/ I have to wait till the Blu-ray for the cool featurettes!
So David did indeed love Shaw but in his own twisted way. I'm pretty sure we aren't going to see Daniels in the next film, at least not as a human. I believe he'll use Daniels to make the Queen ;)
That was a beautiful segment. Ridley has such an eye for detail. David's lab is gorgeous, I want to walk around in it lol
@Vivisected Yes I agree, Daniels WAS whiney, lol...
Starlogger and joylitt All right- between the two of you I took the Netflix plunge. It is also a gift to my wife who has wanted it for a while so it works out nicely. Now I have to wait until Aug 18th to see What Happened to Monday but at least I can view whenever I feel like it after that!
We watch Hulu+ and DVDs and use internet and antenna for news. Got rid of cable years ago.
@Capt Torgo yes you do. If the movie replicated the book exactly, we would've gotten a MUCH better A:C movie. The editors ruined that, however. I think Ridley was trying to tell a different story in a different way but got bored or pushed during the editing stage...
