New Replies (Page 608)
I think the John Denver song was a lovely choice in the trailers. However, I wish it had been used in a different way in the movie.
I think it is just a filler. There was simply not enough "stuff" or detail in that part of the script. By the way, the xenomorph running like crazy on the corridor was not even included in the film, and that was in the script. I think they swapped one thing for the other.
I agree, it wasn't needed. We shouldn't get to see how the Alien 'thinks' about the world. It would be like creating a movie of bat vision or cuttlefish vision - these creatures sense the world, but in alien ways to ourselves that don't really map with the way we see things.
I understand juxtaposition of dark imagery against a happy sounding song, but I just don't feel it in this case tbh. I might be for NIN The Day the World Went Away but that is just my opinion.
God no, Coldplay are atrocious!
IRaptus That is part of my attitude and maybe it is a generational thing. I like to have a physical copy. I have noticed that streaming can vary- sometimes I could have an entire season of something or a movie and come back later to watch and things are gone due to what seem to be contractual agreements and such.
I normally stream but for something I really love like Alien films etc Ill go and buy a physical copy :)
This idea that you judge the film or bracket it according to how much blood or gore is in the movie is to miss the point. I attended a performance of Titus Andronicus yesterday evening and it was a riveting examination of violence driven by feuds and how we loss our humanity the deeper in we go. Death and blood was everywhere but it was driven by a narrative which explained the who what why.
A L I E N only offered the what, in a completely innovative way. You cannot do that again. When Riders said nobody asked the question about the Jockey and more recently the who and why he was, as a man who understands story, stepping outside of a fan base that is pre occupied by the texture and mechanics being repeated endlessly and looking at the why and who.
To answer those questions in a really engaging and interesting way is much more important than how much blood and gore is in. My understanding of the reaction to Prometheus is it wasn't scary enough on that calibration. I thought the high tech smugness and lazy thinking driven by a deluded billionaire felt very on point and to interact with the Alien Pathogen and all it represented was utterly chilling.
So I am not really interested in what you call it. I do accept anything to do with the ALIEN franchise is dark but unless we get behind Ash's remarks in an authoritative way I am not interested. When I consider the threads started here a handful zoom in on the subtext, on AVP Galaxy 48% polled want Ripley and the Queen back.
Curiously I believe Ridley knows where he wants to go but the fan base and test screenings and feedback drag him back to the tick sci fi blood and gore and leave all that "thinking bullshit" out.
There isn't a big segment of the audience that wants someone to answer Ash's observations and Ridley judged that making the answer character centred (David) rather than philosophically centred (Punishment for Paradise Lost) was more relatable but what he also forgot is that fan bases tend to be very conservative and obsessed by literalness which is kind of funny when probably the real science of space flight and pathogen behaviour is completely out to lunch in these films. I am also sensing that the suspension I witnessed last night is receding with the modern generation who want all their helmet protocols etc (why not just assume these people have done their stuff and follow the story).
Prometheus posed questions and hinted at answers, unless you parse all the Covenant elements very closely those answers are missing from the core story and even when you parse most of it is based on an unreliable narrator. The analogy I would draw is we are taking a journey through fog where we can only just see whats in front of us but have no idea of what we are actually travelling through. The get out is, well we will get our answers next time. We have had two movies over 5 years and this thread was begun with a script which gave us some clear cut answers, John knew what he was doing though he would still have got a reaction on Shaw with that script. Her healing David, what he found and their fall out and her being overcome should have been in the movie as the great revelation and could have been riveting and the popcorn munching on blood and gore without context audience would have got their third act.
I have watched the recent Star Wars movies they actually pass off a really neat trick its a very simple space opera with the vestiges of profundity but actually because that profundity is skin deep it never distracts from what it really is, Saturday Morning cinema presented expensively. The franchise never faces the challenges that this prequel sequence has because the latter really has tried to offer something thoughtful in a tentpole context.
I have read a couple of reviews here which completely contradict each other (we got our answers it was great, I really looked hard at Prometheus and feel I got no answers). That only goes to show it depends what questions you are asking. Many of the debates here are how we calibrate our expectations. Several people who were involved in the discussions here in 2015 and our speculations have concluded the ideas we came up with were a damn sight more interesting than what we got and consider Covenant very poor, thats the polite view. We can try and answer what the audience want until the cows come home but what is clear is if you start reacting to audience and designing a film based on focused groups and who shouts the loudest.....your lost.
John was clearly given a brief to write an Alien Prequel movie which would use an absolute minimum of the narrative investment of Prometheus. As Wayne Haag said David is the straight line from Prometheus. Once they began tampering with the connectivity and layering in more of Prometheus particularly Shaw they clearly as Pietro alluded could not make their mind what to put in or leave out they shot 12 minutes and then left all of it out in the second test screening and then just the briefest segment the bombing for the next screening. Thats the kind of thing that happens when you lose the original vision. The best example I know of that is the Hobbit Duology shot over 266 days with a two film script and then recast as a Trilogy with a 13 week pick up session to refashion, what happens your key themes and crescendos are subverted and you add elements which subvert the original vision which itself was recast when the original director resigned.
The only way they have managed to refashion the Prometheus investment into an Alien Prefix movie is give the story to a robot who will do anything say anything be anything. Last night the characters in Titus Andronicus did appalling things but it all meant something there was a progression a reason, with David replacing the Alien as the antagonist he needs to be more than Ash's view of the Biomechanoid horror (unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality).if you want to stop the films simply being generic sci fi blood and gore.
Take this for what it is worth. A quote from Jello Biafra- "The dumbest buy the mostest, that's the name of the game."
Timmy the ultramorph haha nice work! Not childish at all
its "in the interest of fairness" & "exposing the masses to material outside the Top 40 pop culture"....that's how I see it anyway XD
I was about to give Sanity (Australian retail chain) a good wrap for nicely displaying Covenant so prominently in store when i bought in on Day 0, but I see they have fallen for the Guardian of the Galaxy white washing as well :(
joylitt That is my fear. I once had more than 300 CDs on an external HD so I could dump on an MP3 player. The problem was I did it all with Vista. I later upgraded to Win 7, plugged in the HD and everything started to reconfigure and delete automatically. All I could do was sit and watch.
dk Be careful with that. Because if you damage your hard drive everything will be gone at once. If I ever do that again I would probably try solid state hard drives because the regular ones are not forever.
hox I am about where you are. I have more than 400 dvds and blue rays and most are stored away but take up a good amount of real estate. I wonder if it is possible to put at least dvds on an external hard drive.
hox Where do you store the media.
I stream, for a few reasons.
1. I have about 600 movies and 50 TV series. This would take up a huge amount of space in my relatively small house.
2. It's really easy to find what you're looking for.
3. They never get lost.
I'm sure it is. I really don't worry much about that because I have another drive installed that plays blu ray, cd and even the defunct HD DVDs.
joylitt Is 4K backwards compatible with blue ray or DVD? I could research but figure here it is more conversational.
I bought the 4k combo from Walmart because it was a little bit cheaper. But I ordered an internal 4k drive for my multimedia PC from Amazon because not even Frys sells it in the stores. Now crossing my fingers to see if I can get it to work because it needs very specific hardware specs.
At least we saw the Runner die. With the other movies- they always get sucked into space and we can't ever be sure. Well, except for the Newborn.
DK - I greatly prefer "Brick and Mortar" stores! They might not always have what I desire - however, when they do, it is such a treat! :)
alien 3 I think had the best death.
surprised you didn't include the queens death from avp.
LoL (gagging noise.)
Lol! They probably just moved AC back to where it was. Not illegal. I imagine that many GOtG discs will go on sale soon or eventually wind up in the bargain bin.
I don't even bother with brick and mortar stores for movies or music and I imagine many others don't. We get stuff online.
from then on, I convinced every person that i knew to watch the whole series. now, I think it would be safe to say that Our school has the largest blade runner/terminator/alien fan base of children in the state of wisconsin. witch, again is not saying that much.
I applaud you
also, some of the time, the xenomorph was completely covering the piolits veiw of his surroundings. imagine driveing a car with a xenomorph on the hood. i imgine that you wouldent be driving perfectly.
Thank you for the responses. I never considered the xeno "attacking" the claw. I will re watch scene. I suppose I never considered it because I figured it would bypass the metal claw to go after the meat of Daniels. Thanks again!
saw alien when I was nine. loved it.
I think David did upload himself into Walter's chassis. He had the same facial abrasions as Walter from their fight. No need to fake those, as Daniels never saw them.
Walter's neck did heal after David plunged the recorder into it; but the sealing of near lethal damage may be a safety protocol that does not apply to other injuries.
David (now in Walter) did know Walter's security code; so he probably also remembered the cabin, and was just messing with Daniels--letting her know who he was, after it was already too late for her to abort the cryo-sleep cycle. David would do that.
On the other hand, David and Walter could share the body; with David being able to manifest himself anytime he likes. Like dissociative identity disorder, with David as the dominant personality. When Walter is allowed to exist, he would not remember what he had done or said while David was dominant.
Uploading himself into Walter would also fit the Paradise Lost mythos; if David is supposed to be the devil, makes sense that he would possess somebody. Even pretend to be the "good guy," getting humans to place their trust in him, while he is planting the seeds of their doom.
Looking forward to seeing how this plays out. I hope the next Alien movie is a direct sequel to Covenant. I'd really like to see what happens next with Daniels, David, Walter and the embryos.
I fear David will do to Daniels exactly what he did to Shaw (as he promised), but I hope somehow she dodges the bullet. Might be nice to see Walter reassert himself somehow, perhaps with Daniel's help.
wait. you guys are all adults? i am in eighth grade. no joke.
DK - I agree. If war was not so impersonal - forced combatants to behold what they have wrought with their hands - perhaps our appetite for battle would abate to a degree.
"Freindship definitely over". I can't let you out to contaminate the ship even though I got sprayed in the face with his blood and am out here.
That's a lot of homework- thanks for sharing.
Nice job Ati :)
Cool. All of this information being thought of and worked on but not added directly to the movie really stings of a missed opportunity to me. Prometheus was the same way. I'd rather sit through a 3 hour movie that is full of detail than a 2 hour edit rush-job.
Better than the scary things i see on the news.
drucea, thanks for sharing that.
That's funny because when I was in second grade... everybody and I mean EVERYBODY knew about and/or seen Alien Vs Predator. That's the power of that movie
IRaptus Alien 3 Xenomorph was tough af to nail down. It was like it knew what they were trying to do. Even then, after having hot metal poured on him he was still rearing to go.
The Runner in Alien 3 was another good one. It never really got to show how physically resilient it was, but it proved an elusive, cunning, and aware hunter. Coupled with its speed and agility, it was damn hard to kill.
That's awesome, I've been watching these movies (Predator included) since I was like 7 or 8, and I've a couple of friends who like em as well, I'm sure I'm one of the younger ones around, if not the youngest one in here btw, I also had an argument with one of my teachers about how good Prometheus really was lol.
