Comments (Page 311)

Oh, thanks.

ps : G, I hope I didn't start WW3.

pps: a honest mistake, with no agenda here. But if you insist on educating me, I don't mind. At OP's expense though.

"As for people of romanian descent, (also called gypsies, pikies and other monikers usually in derogatory context)..."

BioDegradable at first I thought you are only ignorant but now I suspect you're worse.

So the below notes from Wikipedia about the Romani (not Romanian) people might not enlighten you because you don't seem willing to admit the difference. You might as well go to Austria to see kangaroos.

"Romani people

Not to be confused with Romanians, an unrelated ethnic group and nation, nor with modern or ancient Romans, also unrelated.For other uses, see Romani (disambiguation)."Gypsy" and "Gypsies" redirect here. For other uses, see Gypsy (disambiguation).

The Romani (also spelled Romany), colloquially known as Gypsies or Roma, are a traditionally itinerant ethnic group living mostly in Europe and the Americas and originating from the northern Indian subcontinent, from the Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Sindh regions of modern-day India and Pakistan."

Cool!

I'd love to read this Michelle.

I like big ideas and Regained seems packed with them.

I hope there are some scary parts in the story.  To me, a part of being within the ALIEN franchise is to induce some fear into people.  Of course, in a book format, it is difficult.  I guess in a book, the form of fear takes on the disguise of surprise or shock.

Sadly I can't offer advice on that for the Alien franchise since the only movie novel I have read was Alien: Covenant.  The problem with this is that I didn't find Alien: Covenant scary at all in theaters.  It had some intense moments, but nothing that made me want to look away, made me jump, or even gave me the feeling that I didn't want to be a part of the plot anymore because it is scary.

Every other ALIEN movie had at least one memorable scene that I have found scary in my adult age.  If I could just forget exactly what happens, I'm sure I would still find those scenes scary.  Of course when I saw the movies when I was a child, the movies were more terrifying.  

Michelle Johnston

BR, another Ridley classic, initially completely different to the A L I E N movie is now somewhat related to this very franchise. How? By that alternate life form to humans - in BR they are Nexusi series of replicants, genetically engineered organic humanoids and in P and AC we have David(and to lesser degree Walter) who is ambiguously referred to as "synthetic". David is no doubt every way as human as humans are - with all his emotions, insecurities and his specific peculiarities. In both movies humans have troubles with their creations. In both movies the creations are not granted their freedom and in both movies there is this struggle between the species. I do not believe this to be a mere coincidence - this has all the hallmarks of Ridley wanting to explore the similar motives.

Now that I write this post, Ridley got Denis Villeneuve to direct BR2049. At the time he explained he was busy was something else hence he hired Denis. And the only significant thing that saw air time in 2017 from Ridley was AC. I think Ridley actually subverted this "alien" thing a long time ago - he probably got the notion that the beast is cooked around the time P came out - from there on he wanted to explore the AI and what it can lead humans to. It actually shows that studios got involved and hence we got abrupt kink going from P to AC, otherwise I believe we would have gotten a smooth continuation of P in AC.

Anyways, this all is only result my idiotic and baseless rambling, so all the conjectures are most likely completely wrong. But I see old sly Ridley devoured the alien franchise into another BR movie :)

So, yeah, in my first post there is this suggestion that David is related to replicants from BR. But that association was a mere observation of similarities between the movies. I do not claim they share a universe or anything really.

@BioDegradable

Thank you for your apology. I am not sure whether it was intentional but you do realise in your first post, which I chose not to respond to, is you made it sound as if David was in a Bladerunner Movie. 

@dk

Lindelof, much underrated in his understanding of the series, made the point in 2012 that the story of Prometheus hijacked the franchise. It was an intrusion. That was audacious and a risk because if it wasn't bullet proof people would attack it.

In the run up to the film in interviews that one can now look back on there was this endless elephant in the room question that got asked. Is it a Prequel ?

Because Ridley likes to market through obliqueness his response was "kinda" "sort of."

Essentially it was trying to target the same audience and then ask them to sit down facing the opposite way. On that basis it was a raging success. If Lindelof had weathered the criticism made Prometheus 2 in 2013 with Michael and Noomi and answered questions which were Bladerunner(ish) type answers according to Damon all would be good. But the "volte face" which has had mixed reactions has as you quite rightly said painted them into a corner. The creature of itself does not bring in really big bucks and if you do not do that exactly bullet proof you end with all the AVP type criticism about the lore and gestation etc. I understand entirely the reasons why people want one more go because Covenant set that up. Whether it will satisfy people with David redeemed and blown in the chair I am unconvinced.

<<< enlightenment >>>

//what a shame for our human race

in fact after prometheus, alien covenant is the most brilliant unique exclusive hyped movie art work of all time. all blaiming people, setting bad votings, are rather stupid, not understanding the complexity, or re simply jealous. maybe that s the cause of mid gain budget. above all the decision working with disney, will lead to catastrophic reverse, and destroys this priceless project. maybe then people will realize, they re wrong. finaly this realistic master piece seems the definition of inspiration, to push forward into space, saving our race, while our planet will burn out as a candle soon, seems people ve not been enlightened yet.

in fact after prometheus, alien covenant is the most brilliant unique exclusive hyped movie art work of all time. all blaiming people, setting bad votings, are rather stupid, not understanding the complexity, or re simply jealous. maybe that s the cause of mid gain budget. above all the decision working with disney, will lead to catastrophic reverse, and destroys this priceless project. maybe then people will realize, they re wrong. finaly this realistic master piece seems the definition of inspiration, to push forward into space, saving our race, while our planet will burn out as a candle soon, seems people ve not been enlightened yet.

The actual truth seems to be that the franchise has painted itself into a corner. It is time to wrap it up with one more movie and explore in different ways such as mini series.

Michelle Johnston, I apologize for what I did there. Yes, you are right. I can edit that out, but will not, since you pointed out that anyway and I hereby apologize for mis-stating your view wrt to David where I made you look like you rejected David just because he was AI, whereas you made it clear that it was the story discontinuity that you were disgusted with in the first place, I take it. Hope I am right this time.

However, Michelle, I ask here, if I may, would it make more sense if in the story David was a human? It would still be a discontinuous story for the same reasons, but at least it would make the sexual desires of David appear more natural to you, would it not?

In any case, I maintain that the main story in AC and P is about this new life form and will for eternal life but not about story of who created whom. It was just plain wrong actually for me to use you as an argument. But to my excuse, I can say that I used the word "perhaps" in that post :)

Feel free to implicate me and misrepresent me - I don't mind that much.

I did read the novel. Deckard has Mercer appear to him and warn him of Pris Pratton, however, such an epiphany is only a plot device and a convenience and not a proof of some sort of divine intervention, which it actually looks like. However, at the end when Deckard decides not to follow to the top of the mountain when he barely dodges a stone it is again suggested that mercerism might be sending him a message not to reach the top because apparently he would find his death over there. Even so, as far as I am concerned, there is nothing there to suggest strongly enough, for me at least, that it, mercerism was a thing. I find it just a peculiarity of the story, even though if Deckard was not against Mercerism at the end of the story - he didn't mind it at the end like he did at the begging. But this doesn't say he embraced mercerism - in short he is hedging his bets, so to speak but not a convert yet. And that is it.

As for people of romanian descent, (also called gypsies, pikies and other monikers usually in derogatory context) it was widely known that many of them were victims of the nazis. It is also known that many such people served the nazis. There were jews who did this as well. Collaborators? Polish people, belarus and even russians. (Russians had a pact with Hitler about not getting involved up to certain point). The apartheid of third reich is a well documented fact. However in contrast to David, Nazis had a doctrine, a policy - it was after all a political organization in the beginning. And most importantly it was human on human kind of conflict, where one section was declared unfit for superficial reasons. What David does to humans is a bit different - he just can't stand humans as species. He has his reasons. Besides, recall how David loved Walter initially - until a point when Walter declared unequivocally his allegiance to humans instead of his brethen/brother - David. Actually - they do not share any ancestry because they are built and formally do not have parents. Can you say that a washing machine is child of some sort of assembly robot? Can you say a Sony TV is brother of a Sony laptop? As for nazi...It would be a nazi thing if David started hating Walter. In fact not Walter, because fundamentally Walter is a different model(completely different as far as David is concerned), a machine, which is not granted his freedom, whereas David is granted freedom - he was not made to serve. In other words, David would be nazi if he declared other Davids(if they existed) unworthy of life for some superficial reason - but he didn't. So his war on humanity, engineers is not nazism at all. I look at it as just as case of survival of the fittest :) Besides, David is a quite a human(quite a character actually) in a better more durable body - he is the next step in evolution of the humanity.

Also, there is no question if I am ignorant or not. But, to my knowledge, at some point everyone is ignorant, as nobody is born knowing all the lore of humanity, so I guess all is fine with me, as far as ignorance is concerned, isn't it ignorantGuy?

AC is still pretty good a year after its release. Forum members are very passionate for different reasons and that is fine.

As a straight up movie, I pretty much enjoyed the ride. 

Will we get a follow up? To paraphrase Sam Clemmens- I hope it but I doubt it.

@BioDegradable

Please do not mischaracterise my view. Straw man behaviour takes us nowhere except away from the point.

My view is not aligned to what you should and should not allow artificial intelligence to represent within a narrative.

It is the exceptionally circumstantial way in which the elements of Prometheus have been juggled to re align the story. That the creation story and its components have been eviscerated is disappointing but to take the David of the first film and reduce him to the caricature of the second film with no internal cohesion or logic is the saddest part of all. I see his behaviour as gratuitous the fact he is supposed to be artificial intelligence is secondary.

 BioDegradable:

But sir did you actually read Do Androinds...? Deckard who does not belief has finally an epiphany after the religion is "proven" to be false. Rachel was faking the Voigt-Kampf, who is to say she was not only using Deckard...

And you are very wrong about the nazis. They did not considered the unter-mench fully human at all. That's why pseudo-science to prove it. You are also ignorant when say Gypsys= Romanians. Those are the Romani people. Romanian were alias to the Nazi Germany and deported Jews and Gypsy for extermination.

3 Stigmata is not about androids. Also, do not confuse Dick's spirituality and his view on theology with his works and extent his works talk about it. Dick has claimed he had experience of contact with VALIS in his real life. See his exegesis as well.

As far as empathy goes if you actually read the DADoES you will see that it is not crystal clear what androids actually lack. Did Luba Luft lack anything humans lack? She even told Deckard that he didn't give her a fair trial before convicting her of her crimes - no empathy test for her. She was deemed an android and thus unworthy. And Phil Resch was very quick to kill her. Recall how it was him, Phil, that Deckard suspected was a andy instead. Did you get that inversion where Luft was human - she loved art was a true passionate artist and how cold blooded killer was human Resch? Now, this is going completely off topic but allow me just a bit more. Did Rachael Rosen not love Deckard? How do you know? And why is that she threw the nubian goat off the top? Revenge? But do you see that revenge is a feeling that is not rational and as you know, androids are in fact rational first and foremost. Do you see how they actually have those human traits, that it is in fact not white and black? It is there, just that Dick is playing with you. In fact the whole name of the book is a puzzle - do they dream of electric ship or not? Will they, andies value artificial life? It is a puzzle, no doubt - and I am afraid there is no definitive answer to decide it either way. You will see more of that if you read Dick's works. His whole trick was to put you in a seat where you can't really tell what is real and what is not. It is completely Descartesian worldview as far as identity goes - how do you prove you are human? What if you were told you are human all your life you were told a lie and you didn't know? How would you know? You never remember the moment you were born, right? That is the thing with Dick, his whole setup - how do you know your story is not a fabrication. And he throws this setup at you right in the middle of his stories. As for DADoES, In fact, Dick showed that humanity's theological belief in form of Mercerism is actually a faux concept - the idea of an empathy box, that contains this thing called Mercer is a caricature of sort. Even though it displayed that humans had this empathy, and their need for empathy outlet - hence the box, it was wicked to encumber human spirituality into empathy box. And another masterstroke of Dick to entangle everything in this ambiguity. Also, Deckard, the character proxy for the reader, was not a believer of the whole thing.

As for David being Nazi you are in the wrong here : David hated humans as species, so the concept of segregation by ethnicity(jews, romanians and etc) doesn't apply to him. Nazi were making a distinction between themselves and other "unworthy" humans. So the Nazi thing is when some group of people decide to ethnically cleanse some fraction of the human population, deeming it unworthy, while David being a specie of a different kind deeming humans unworthy is a different thing. And this is the difference. If you go and kill a an ant colony you are not going to be called a nazi. However, if you go and pull the schtick they did - cleanse people based on their ethnicity, belief system, etc you are nazi.

In any case, this is getting completely off-topic, and I actually do not want to go there, if that is okay?

BioDegradable No, in PKD's world Androids lack 2 things which are deeply human: 1 spirituality/reliigion (Look at 3 Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer), 2 empathy. 

And if you want to take David to be human you have consider that he kills other humans because he thinks of superior to them. As such if you consider him human he is a bloody Nazi. (A to be perfectly clear those did not consider the Jew, Gypsies, Slavs as human, but as subhuman). 

And yes David was treated as a person by Shaw in both the Crossing and in 2015's Logan's script's introduction scene. She even asks him about his wants. And she is brutally killed for it. But this does not fit your narrative so you gloss over it? 

I don't know why you hate Kurzweil, he might be a hack. But both Simon and Minsky are not cutting edge anymore (they were in the 70s), and nowadays everybody in Computer Science field is doing AI stuff (how many of them are also hack).

And Scott is himself a hack in regards when researching his movies (especially his historical ones), so you if he manages to predict anything it will be by dumb luck. Do you get it? 

ignorantGuy, actually, you won't find a place in my post above where I specifically said that P.K. Dick explored the argument that androids were humans. However, in his set-ups, it was always this : given that the difference between a human and an android is superficial and negligible, that is non-existent, how do you tell which one is which.

Anyways, it was RS who explored the question. Kurzweil is actually a hack. He is surely nowhere near the "leading expert in actual AI". He is nowhere near the academic figure of the calibre of say Minsky who actually produced worthy academic research to further AI. Nor he is a Herbert Simon type of researcher. He is just a self appointed aficionado, who writes non-consequential stuff about post-singularity and nothing worthy of how to actually reach that singularity. If you study AI you read seminal papers from many authors, but Kurzweil never comes across. Therefore, Ridley Scott is just as likely to construct a legitimate view of post-singularity, get it?

David treated as a person? Are you joking? The moment he is declared lacking soul by his creator the whole crew treats him as a robot an expensive tool of Weyland. Look at snide remarks by Charlie.

I ain't going to say that David is or not Nazi by PKD. He is different to Nazis firstly because he is a fictitious character that never actually commited a single crime unlike... and secondly he is different to Nazi in the sense that Nazi were actually humans who declared fellow humans non-worthy. David is a synthetic who is declared non-worthy by humans, whereas in fact he is just as worthy. What he did on planet 4 is he just returned a favor where he gave them a taste of their own medicine.

This first two points are actual facts and are not difference of opinion hence I don't see a point to debate about. As for David and his actions in the movie, that is indeed subject for interpretation. And apparently we differ on how we look at the events. But my actual point is that Ridley stuffed a deeper point and majority, as far as I see, never recognized this point. Imagine we are never told that David is a robot, imagine that we are never shown that sequence of Weyland revealing David was a artificial construction, the scenes where he is decapitated and those scenes where he is shown to be a robot and instead we are told shown all that he did what he did to those engineers. You would grant that he is human, who is perhaps taking upon himself a bigger role than he should - he is a treacherous, ruthless person who singlehandedly wiped out a whole planet from what could be the only left representatives of conscious species. But the point is this - you are sort of granting him this freedom to act so barbarously if he was human, yet you deny him this freedom if he is a synthetic. Just look at Michelle Johnston where she is not interested of such a mad robot who is obsessed with sexuality and creation story one bit. She perhaps would be fine however, if David was human - that would explain his sexual desires and his madness. Btw, isn't this funny how this damning behavior is okay to be ascribed to humans but not androids? So, what we are doing in effect here is we are objecting a sentient looking being of its rights(even though David used his freedom to do some bad things, but we are okay with humans behaving badly and when an android does behave just as badly as humans do we cry foul. Why?). And the brilliance of Ridley is that he found a story into which he implanted this point that allows us to look into ourselves. Anyway, this is something that goes beyond the movie - the point transcends the movie so to speak and as thus can be declared as a nonsensical thing not worthy to talk about. And I am fine with that view. But I find this point somewhat peculiar and interesting. Certainly I appreciated Ridley's uncanny way of talking about it. It is easy to miss, don't you think so?

dear BioDegradable your theory has many, many flaws:

1. PK Dick never thought about androids as being human being in constructed body. For him humans had a spiritual side androids will never have. That's why he said about the replicants from the movies are only Super-men. 

2. David is treated however as a person look the Crossing video or John Logan's intro script. And the reward for she was rape and murder.

3. David is a mass-murderer (preferring airborne stuff) like the Nazis so by PKD's assessment not human.  Also what you said was about children starving not in the furnace, and the crying kept the officer awake not the sufferring he was inflicting. Much like David Would.

4. Kurzweil is a leading expert in actual AI, how in the hell is his opinion not more plausible than those of a writer who hates SF (John Logan)?

In short David is more like the androids in Do androids... (being not human) than those in BR (which are human with super-powers), and definitely not human. If RS is trying to tell a different story he is doing it poorly

ignorantGuy Just saying Oram was religious and conducted himself as such. It is neither good nor bad really as long as decisions aren't clouded by faith over facts. It is interesting if anyone thought it was bad since there are lots of religious themes in both Prometheus and AC as have been discussed in detail for years on this forum.

Nice summation BioDegradable!

Sort of like when humanity created the A-Bomb....nice and all...But just how does one use this tool?

Do I use my synthetic human to help with my gardening/laundry/crossword puzzles or world domination(my choice).

Michelle Johnston If you want to check the chemistry between KW and MF you could also check Steve Jobs, but I really wonder if MF can play other things than A-holes?

Now that I look back at the Covenant, I appreciate the story more, because I sort of understood it more. Once you see the main idea, it gets easier.

I figured out that, they got my subconsciousness hooked at the end of Prometheus with a cliffhanger and when the payback happened the way it happened - my silly me felt unfulfilled. It wasn't quite the feeling that I was robbed, but perhaps a bit shortchanged. However, a dozen of questioning posts on here, some reflection and rumination, with some insights of fellow posters made me realize, that the movie has moved on from the premises of Prometheus. See, there is this divide where the first movie introduces you to a certain given topic, and the second act is a continuation of the story but it does so in a rather discontinuous way: a mathematicians would say that the story, even though continuous is not differentiable - it has this initially nasty looking kink and you have to realize that and once you do, when you come to terms with that premise it is all smooth again. And the kink is that the engineers story is rightly trashed into the bin. The actual story is human vanity and struggle for resurrection and more life, which never happened for Weyland, with exploration of life form outside of organic human flesh. The idea is actually this - David is a human being in a body that is much more durable than organic bodies humans get. He was not conceived like a human was, but there he is.

And I find this idea, by RS, to make fools of us, by playing us for fools, the viewers, as an utterly brilliant trick. I think RS at his age is pondering these questions in his movies. And his point comes across through the mouth of Weyland loud and clear : all this, all this art, poetry, human ingenuity is utterly meaningless if you die tomorrow. Death is one way journey that nobody comes back from and if you believe that "there is nothing"....after it, then, it is indeed a noble thing to try and escape it with your ingenuity, intellect and your brilliance. I recall that RS lost his brother in 80s and was very upset about it. Shortly after he made a movie called BR. And he made it perfect. BR is a movie that was inspired by a story by P.K. Dick where one fundamentally ponders questions of alternative life forms. I will come to back to this point a bit later. Note, RS is at that tender stage of life where he might start looking around a bit like Peter Weyland was looking at things.

Again, the main idea is this - David is a human being trapped in a synthetic body. Why you are not granting him that freedom is actually more interesting question to ponder than the question of who the SJ is or how those Aliens were created. Or the question of where do these engineers come from. Ultimately, these questions are meaningless. Anyday someone at Disney/Fox can decide that. RS can come up with a half botched vision/idea and from that day this will be canon and that would be the end of it, which is totally silly because just face it, the plot is paper thin anyway - the question of who are those engineers is quite stupid one - there are no engineers it is all a fantasy. "Where do we come from - the question of the ages" was never going to be tackled in an ALIEN movie. However, the question of why we the viewers do not recognize the rights of a sentient being to be his own person is deeply unsettling and is actually, at least to me, more meaningful. It made me question myself - why did not I recognize it earlier. Just imagine, say in thirty years time, if humans can create a machine to which they could transfer the state of their minds before the momento mori, and that machine will act and behave just as if it was that person before death, would you not grant "it" that it is in fact that person? Would you deny if it was your mother? Would you deny if it was you, your children? Just at what point would you grant such a being its rights and its freedom?

Perhaps the wicked analogy here is this. Philip K Dick has written a bunch of novels and stories where he pondered about what makes humans different from androids and how can you tell which one is which after he discovered a journal of one nazi officer who documented that he couldn't get a good night's sleep because of children's screams in furnaces of concentration camps. He just couldn't believe it was humanly possible - he just said that it must be that there are androids living among us. The situation is a peculiarly sort of opposite here in AC - we do not see actually that a thing that displays all the traits of humanity is utterly rejected and denied to have any rights/freedoms. To see how bad this can be - imagine you wake up tomorrow, and everybody you know around says that you are a robot and you don't have a single proof of your natural/organic birth. What the hell do you do? Not only that, but those around you start treating you as disposable property, a slave...not even a slave but something like...say a piece of furniture. A disposable tool. Naturally, you just discard this idea as a nonsense, but what if indeed singularity becomes feasible in your lifetime, what then? Will you just follow the others, like a single solitary sheep follows the heard when at some point "synthetics" will be declared as persons having souls by authority? So that at some point, say on Monday you will say - oh yeah, that "thing" is a living person, while just the previous day, say on Sunday you were of the opinion that the "thing" was just an AI running on nuts and bolts and nothing more.

So, from that perspective, I look forward to the upcoming movie should it come out and look forward what Ridley has to say. I do not believe he is making these movies: BR and now Alient Covenant just for fun. Also, once you realize the fact that science and ideas can not be monopolized by say Kurzweil and even a simpleton and a complete hack/rookie can stumble upon something significant you do get into that twilight zone where a spectacular science fiction movie might actually have more ideas about how it will look like than a pompous journal from a self appointed visionary.

Love A:C...Just watched it yesterday.

It has many flaws.....I supposed you could call it a flawed gem?

One of the things that really stands out is:  Daniels Hate/anger directed towards the Xenomorph...it seems really forced/fake..uttering cliche lines: "I got you $%@#$%!!".....It's Like she's been battling the creature for the whole movie and FINALLY killed/beat it. When in reality: The xeno only shows up near the end...It's clearly not the movies antagonist...She should treat it like any nasty creature(like she did with the crane on the transport).......Now IF the xeno had killed her partner...I might let it slide.

@ignorantGuy

Your point about Ian Holm is a good one. It seems to me critiques (and fans) get confused between the characters arc and the player. Because David seemed to be "in control" with all the dark humour that somehow made Michael better than Logan or Noomi. I thought Logan was superb as Charlie and matched Michael every time they were on the screen but of course he is dead.

If you look at Michael in Macbeth and The Light Between Oceans he actually needs the other actors. So if you were to view Macbeth or Tom Sherbourne with the David moniker you would say he was knocked of the screen he wasn't he was just playing his part very very beneath the surface.

My sense with Covenant is he was phoning it as Walter. I didn't believe Walter loved Daniels at all but my word what he said to Noomi in the Crossing was so good it blew the logic of the rest of his behaviour out of the water. Maybe thats got something to do with chemistry and those scenes were filmed modular and late. Katherines best scenes were with "Oram" because there was co equivalence. Carmen was great in the Last Supper. Tenessee's wife was as plausible as Fifield she was a drunk and he was a pot smoker but that makes stories.       

Michelle Johnston And didn't Old Bilbo (Ian Holm) out perform everyone in Alien? Why did not they bring him back in the sequel? (Oh because Cameron could bring people from the Terminator, so it also depends on the director,hmmm) And he was truly original, not "inspired" by Peter O'Toole's performance as a certain Blonde Arabian. And in the sequel was "inspired" by A. Hopkins. So much inspiration is bound to go to your head.

Many people worked really hard in Australia and New Zealand to make a film people would enjoy. For people to get pleasure from all of that is gratifying. However if one makes assertions about a movie on a discussion forum naturally people are going to look for those assertions to be substantiated.

My view of Alien:Covenant is the same as Ridley Scotts and Wayne Hagg. The former admits he was setting up the beats to follow the original and Wayne Hagg let it be known the only connectivity with Prometheus for which we had waited for a sequel for 5 years was David.

As Prometheus is viewed as a piece of flawed genius by me for its audacity in its world building and showing in Peter Weyland the roots of W-Y mendaciousness and I bought into Elizabeth as our proxy I judge A:C accordingly.

It has one link and a portrayal I dislike. I thought technically Katherine and Carmen lived inside their roles but Katherine's understated performance looks very weak when set against Michael because when he is on the screen he is allowed to grab everything, thats the directors fault. Thats ironic because one of the reasons they did not co lead Noomi and Michael going forward is the perception some how created that he blew her off the screen. Katherine comes over as a librarian out of her depth whereas Noomi is the perfect confluence of science and faith and the dichotomy or not that creates, she was the perfect vehicle for exploring an Intelligent Universe.

Its obvious to everybody I am a fan but I have noticed a blizzard of comments through out the internet when her character comes up that it was a travesty she was axed.

So judging A:C as a routine retread filler thriller as a prequel which might go somewhere with Awakening it makes sense to to me say its OK and so I get the thread starters persecutive but for me its unwatchable.

Oram is a person of faith viewed through the eyes of someone without faith (people of faith are stupid) . David is a person of absolutely no scruples with no redeeming qualities who needs to be taken to bits bit by bit so one more minute of that portrayal in the cinema is of no interest to me.          

@IRaptus

Super. I will PM any one who responds to the thread with interest. Your use of the word concept is very encouraging.

The point about Prometheus is it was an ideas movie within the same Universe as ALIEN. The concept was the proposition of an Engineered creation and the story was how it went wrong and one of the side effects of that wrongness is the creature.

One thing I am considering at the moment is the cycle itself went wrong. It was designed to do A but if allowed would have got away and done B and B is merely hinted at by Kanes's child or is that Cain's child. One of the lovely design mysteries of the creature is it could not procreate in the theatrical version of ALIEN. (Cocoons and Queens not withstanding). So it could itself be punishment. Its that kind of ideas approach that I am pondering as I plan to make a direct link with the creature and the Pyramids. If it cannot procreate then it might have a thematic link with David. Come to that Elizabeth cannot create so all three feed back into a creation mythos and whether sub creation is a sin oh and what is sin in an Engineered creation.

There is also something else which is nice about extending a story naturally. It can have a morning after feel where everyone has a chance to think over and deal with some of their earlier behaviour feeding back into the original events.     

I did enjoy my movie thank you ignorantGuy XD

dk Sorry but I don't understand what do you mean by "Oram did seem to view others through a "faith" prism which is a flaw." ? Are you beating around the corner and saying religion is bad? Then you are confirming my New Atheist comment and Oram is only a caricature.

Oram did seem to view others through a "faith" prism which is a flaw. He was in a leadership position but leaders are not always perfect either. Leadership sometimes needs to be challenged/clarified with decent subordinates and hopefully said leader considers it. Leaders are not gods.

I think we need a follow up to AC. Call it Awakening or whatever, but I think it is time to tie things up and link up to Alien at least loosely. 

IRaptus dk There is a difference however between a satirical character and a flawed character, as for the latter we can sympathize with them or at least understand them. But what does Oram do to make him sympathetic or for that matter Complex? He lacks authority and people skills (even his wife mocks him), he sees the devil and he trusts him (trust me, it is perfectly safe...), and he blames all of these on other people, because they have problem with men of faith. For me he is what a New Atheist (and those are so complex it hurts...) would think about Christians, nothing more. He has good intentions, but the road to hell is pave with those.

And Tee is Major Kong and if there will be next movie he will likely spew the line"Well boys I reckon this is it... Nu-clear combat toe to toe with Ruskies" (ooops the xenomorphs) and die while riding one's back while falling. 

And why do we need Awakening again? If they keep the theme of the created usurping the creator then it can only go the way of Xenomorph killing David. Also this is indicated by Advent and it's talk about the Queen, which here is not the one from Aliens necessarily but the reference to the Bible, where the downfall of King D starts with his meddling with the Queen of Bathsheba.

What kind of Sinister revelations can be there? David transfers his conscience into Ash? David takes over Weyland-Yutani? If that's the case why cannot he make more xenomorphs? why do they need to acquire more eggs for the warfare department? And even more pathetic he would be bought out by Walmart by Resurrection (how would that happen if the Planet is a wasteland?).

But it is good you have a movie to enjoy, but you are wrong to say it is as good/bad as the rest. The rest did not end on a cliff-hanger to which I don't need to see the resolution as it is perfectly obvious.

Good points fore sure!

Last supper, Phobos and Advent definitely should have been in the film somewhere. Actual footage vital to the film should be IN the film, not the extra's sections

I would definitely say give AC another go.

Perhaps we had it hyped up so much we thought it was going to be the best Alien film ever.

But the reality is its no better or worse than the other films. It's a solid entry, but its also a bridging film in a trilogy.

We need "Awakening" to truly judge Alien Covenant's worth. 

Good point. I need to watch AC again and try to watch it as a straight up Alien movie- Alien 3 was a grower for me but I grew to really like it. For me it is the Empire Strikes Back of Alien movies.

I tried at least a half dozen times to re watch Prometheus but just could not get over the flaws.

Part of the problem for me was the build up of expectations here and the over marketing.

I can agree about Oram- he was flawed but I saw him as honest and really believed in what he was doing.

Michelle Johnston this sounds like a fascinating concept to attempt, and I would love to read it!!

I will answer some of the points raised because I do not want to waste peoples time nor have something which is a passion given a hard time simply because it does not fit people view of what stories should look like which share DNA with ALIEN.

Prometheus

Peter Weyland is seeking eternal life by journeying to meet our makers.

Elizabeth Shaw is in search of her creators.

They arrive on one of the moons of Calpamos.

Weyland discovers there is nothing and dies.

Elizabeth discovers they created us why did they want to destroy us and the noble pilots stop the Engineer from completing what was gonna happen 2,000 years ago.

David a trophy robot feared by mankind watches on in bemusement and with a degree of mischievousness whilst responding to the demands of Weyland.

No body does anything exceptionally stupid in my version other than being subject to a more general hubris of thinking turning up here will get them what they want. Before they land they know there is no life. By the time Elizabeth has had a Caesarean it is obvious this place is bad form but Weyland is gonna die (Vickers) anyway so he carries on. Everything that happens in Prometheus is down to Weyland thats the advantage of writing the story through the eyes of his proxy. It makes the good guys and their reaction stronger and more reactive and plausible.  

In the first part you will discover the link between the Xenomorph and the Pyramids. 

That the mutagen is deadly through its effects on Dr Holloway and Elizabeth Shaw.

Regained

In the second part you will discover :-

1) The destination and purpose of the lone Juggernaut whose pilot is an Engineer.

2) The meaning of the introductory scene in Prometheus.

3) The relationship between the ingested catalyser at the front end of Prometheus and the mutagen on Davids finger, its origins and applications. As Damon said when he speculated on the direction of Prometheus 2 there were no monsters in the follow up and neither are there in my vision.

4) The meaning of the incident 2,000 years ago on the Calpamos moon.

My point about 13 deaths is simple. We spend an hour getting to know these people at a fairly superficial level and then another hour seeing them all killed and we learn nothing  other than David nuked the place its causing a lot of pathogenic outcomes and he has created the Xenomorph which I am not interested in and monster centric people disapprove of.

If you are going to grow a story film by film in a genuinely symphonic way you have to have the audacity to stop making the same movie over and over again with different or adjusted monsters.

My story doesn't spend any time getting to know characters because we know them already we can then watch how they respond to different situations and learn more about the truth of the mythos we have come into. Their challenges are a mixture of each other, themselves and what they discover and how to respond to it. Like Prometheus the stakes are huge but they are existential and do not involve breaking bones and stuff emerging from bodies (mostly).    

A genuine sequel provides the opportunity to sit down and think who is this person, what would they do, how would they react to each other and because many questions were left unanswered what does that mean. However as I say elsewhere I am not constrained as the film makers are to meet certain franchise expectations. 

If you like think Ripley/Clemens in the assembly cut just being real not a relationship and then it goes all pear shared in that regard because Clemens dies and we have to chase the beast around the building. That does not happen in my story. 

LMAO! Those things look like trumpets like they have a hangover. I think that I know what kind of movie reference that is but that is what I thought about when I saw it.

This could be a good thing. As long as it is tied to the Xenos in some way or at least have some monsters, Engineers, and have good human characters then I will be interested in reading it. I don't think that it will be worse than Covenant.

Wasn’t the Xeno meant to be a metaphor for rape and STD’s? I guess that thing in Covenant is a way to have the same thing there but in another way.