Comments (Page 658)

I’m having a serious issue with trying to put things into an easy, and understandable perspective. So as best as I am able to keep up with current affairs, my simple mind has surmised the following.

Fox has not made lots of money because not enough people went to the cinema.

I think I can get my head round that bit without any difficulty.

Now for the bit I’m having a bit of trouble with.

Fox released Alien Covenant at the cinema, The movie was not a complete story and I have recently found out that if I had just waited for the blu ray with all the extras, I would get the full story without having to waste my money at the cinema in the first place watching an incomplete movie.

I’m confused, because I don’t know if Fox want me to go to the cinema in the future.

Is there a site to track how many preorders of a movie exist?

Just found this one on Deviantart by Iggy Designs (pukey82)

Sack the sources negative drivvle !!

We got A:C BR on the 15th and we are happy so f yall........

EDIT: dont forget A:C out monday on BR yee ha more like

On the 15th we will showfox. the hightest BR/DVD ALL YEAR so far. That is my prediction lets compare the crap it us up against ????

Nothing worth a mention

A:C ALL DAY LONG !!!!

My biggest problem with all the negative articles about Alien Covenant, is the way in which it is being portrayed as a John Carter. The word ‘scapegoat’ comes to mind, along with severe misdirection that is being used to provide ammunition to ill informed critics who take the approach of removing a mole hill with an atom bomb, and then start making mountains out of mole hills, in that order.

Critics, imo have been slating just about most films being released this year regardless of the quality. Fortunately, we can all treat critical reviews with the same level of seriousness as taking hair care product advice from Elmer Fudd. AC had a decent budget, but nothing out of spec for a film like AC. As soon as the box office numbers came in, it appeared to be open season on AC regardless of its performance.   

2016 was one of the worst years ever on record for box office takings, so it should come as no big surprise that 2017 was not expected to reach any dizzy heights in bringing in revenue. I bet if the critics could find a way to blame AC for falling revenue in 2016 they would.

I see that John Denver did not sell as much vinyl as he used to, so can we blame that on AC as well? The problem these days is that box office takings are not as representative of a movies success as they used to be. Technology is changing and so are peoples viewing habits.

The misdirection that is being perpetrated, is down to the art of creating a specifically targeted headline from a relatively general, non-specific one. Fox needs to review its budget for all films, turns into Fox needs to review AC’s budget. Fox needs to think about the future of its franchises, becomes Fox needs to think about the future of Alien franchise.

There is one small point that I do think is a concern. How much money does it take to make a decent Alien franchise movie ?

Well it cost me £20.25 to watch this at IMAX premium, that included ultimate popcorn and soda and free nachos with cheese :) 

Compared to the £24 I am paying for the 4k tin edition to watch when i like.

I dont think the film done bad but obviously something went wrong.

I do hope we get another film to finish off the story.

Starlogger honestly I have no idea. Its a friggin awesome image though, such a primal looking xeno

EDIT: John Bolton (1990) was the original artist. wow! I might do a thread on his artwork, he has some really dark images he did for the Alienverse

Lawrence of Arabia At first I was thinking it was your review and I started to get fired up lol! Thanks for posting- great example of how we haven't really changed.

"and after the tall lady utters a Schwarzenegger line at the bug"

imagine Arnie saying the famous "Get away from you b!tch" line

XD

@Timiteh - Aliens was NOT scary. Entertaining and fun, in a 1980s mindless Rambo action movie sort of way, but nothing in that movie scared me when I was a kid. Alien scared the crap out of me.

Lawrence of Arabia interesting post. Aliens is one of the most iconic sci-fi films of that era, and is still a classic today (love it or hate it).

This just goes to show XD

 appreciate it for what it is, not what you want it to be

I wish more fans were interested in the long story.  When Scott said he wanted to do 4 movies, that should have set the pace that not all questions will, nor need to be answered in one movie. For people that are not true fans of the whole Alien saga, they complain because the movie didn't link up to the original, or didn't have any Ripley eater eggs or something.  Most reviews I've read seem like they want the franchise to end with one movie to link it all together and call it quits.  I feel like exploring the rest of the universe would make for plenty of follow up movies that aren't the same story over and over again, but will be able to continue to expand and develop the universe and story much better than trying to squeeze a new xenomorph into each movie for the audiences that watch the original again.

This is such an interesting thread, heres my input:

sure the goo forms a mechanical type genome. But i still see the goo as being like a transmitter and amplifier of what the person using it is thinking or feeling. The sacrificial engineer wanted to disassemble himself, the goo did what he wanted. I think its more a supernatural substance, david being N android has tried to classify it scientifically.

when david drops the goo on the engineers, it exploded and became an aerosol, so anyone or anything it didnt land on could have survived, but if it was inhaled, they would have probably perished.

the engineers may have far better memories than humans so dont need as much written records. If they can command matter using their minds then that would make shipbuilding easy?

as for the space flight, they must have some sort of gravity distortion system or they can fold space and time somehow. Like the film dune, maybe its a chemical reaction within the ship that distorts spacetime?

on youtube, someone has put the full david labs clip on from the blu-ray. David states that he 'wiped the planet clean for shaw' and that he wanted to create an eden, but she refused.

its a shame its just 'mad android' (like blade runner?) and finding a cryosleep engineer and interrogating him, using him as the link to their world would have been very interesting, particulary after the bombing.

cheers guys

Ridley Scott has confirmed that it is David in the end, in his own body.  He said he cheated with time because people don't think David had time to chop off his hand, cut his face, change clothes, and get back so fast.  So he said he cheated about 20 minutes of that scene.

Didn't David touch ome of the goo in Prometheus and squeeze it between his finger tips so it contacted both finger tips, then the camera zoomed in on it and it kind of reflected or glistened like there was some type of electricity in it or tiny, nano particles?  Or maybe that was the residue left on the hologram activator thing.

Just tacking this on here, but did Ridley actually say they LOST the ability to procreate, or did he do one of those "The way I see it is that they lost the ability to procreate...or maybe they evolved beyond the need to procreate."  You know how he kind of ponders on these things as he explains them, using a lot of "I think..." and "Maybe they..."  But I thought there was a quote of him saying they evolved beyond the need to procreate sexually, and have moved up to seed entire planets.  This would make sense anyways, since sex and natural child birth can be pretty dangerous (STDs and all the life threatening things that come with birthing a child naturally).

Ultimately I didn't think it was a mind-blowing film though.. a bit of franchise fatigue perhaps?

@Walter, AC is not scary, it is gore but not scary.

Well, even though Aliens is my favorite, because it is a first i saw and to like some of characters a lot, it sure has flaws like any other movie of the franchise. (I personnaly find that both Alien 3 and Alien are the one with the less flaws. Though i find that Alien is a bit too slow, especially the xenomorph, for my taste.)

The worse flaws are effectively at the end of the movie with:

-Ripley stupidity which leads to the freedom of the queen when she can has just burnt the eggs and blown the xeno to protect her escape with Newt. Her inconsistent behavior is one of the most stupid moment of the whole franchise

-The fact, that they don't detect the queen before she gets into the Sulaco. Though one can wonder if Bishop was not playing a double game.

-The fact that Ripley was able to both resist the Queen pulling and the space vacuum suction unless of course she is a droid :),etc...

But Aliens flaws are insignificant compared to Alien Covenant flaws. Moreover Characters from Aliens are far superior to those of Covenant, whatever the way you look at it. I don't think that even hudson could be tricked in litteraly putting his head in a egg just to see what is inside. 

The story is more consistent and the movie itself is more scary and way more entertaining. 

This said the franchise as a whole has some flaws like for example:

- Why is the company so obsessed by getting Xeno rather than harvesting the Juggernaut technology or engineers technology in the prequels ? The black goo should be more appealing to them then the xeno

-Why the company even bother to send humans to some critical mission when they can send droids which are more efficient,smarter and can be made fully obedient ?

-How the xenomorph and especially the neomorphs manage to grow that fast without eating anything at least nothing we see ?,etc...

Some of the visual touches were astounding - like seeing the atmospheric storms from orbit - amazing. And the stuff they patched up wounds with..

I couldn't help feeling I'd seen most of the ideas before - crew awoken early, course re-directed, touch down on an alien world, find an a crashed alien ship, crew members infected, infection 'gets out' back at the ship, the android's a bad dude, blow the alien out of the airlock - but when I saw Alien I was, like, blown away cos I'd never seen anything else like it. I was gutted as I'd really wanted to enjoy this film! But I ended up feeling a bit let down overall. I did love some of the visual effects though, and I loved the alien embryos at the end :-)

They will play the recorders for the Engineers until they hit the brown note. Wait, that was a different show.

If I didn't follow any news of the A:C plot prior to the release, I can't imagine how different the movie would have been compared to what I was expecting lol.  You'll want to watch all of the viral videos, prologue/epilogue videos, and maybe even the deleted scenes that are popping up online to get more of an explanation on what you were expecting.  A lot of the David and Shaw timeline is explained through narratives in the extra shorts.

Could be Virtual Serial Number?  I usually think of Screen Name or Serial Number when I see SN.

Space JOC has summed it up below.

"There is nothing wrong with the franchise, we're still waiting for Awakening which is obviously going to explain more!"

YES! Love the post, Lawrence of Arabia! It is kind of spooky that this review is so similiar to the negative ones that Covenant has been getting...   

You forgot the seemingly endless supply of air that was sucked out of that massive airlock door at the end of Aliens. After a few seconds all the air in the hanger should have escaped into the vacuum, but that scene just went on, and on, and on...

Believe me - we picked apart the stupidity prominent in Aliens back in the day. I remember it well. But we did not have the internet hatefest we have today. That was exclusive to the 'professional' movie reviewers back then.

“Has the usual number of inconsistencies, improbabilities and outright absurdities characteristic of the sci-fi and horror genres. What is interesting, though, is its hostile critical reception, despite the excellent visual values, direction that is no more hokey than usual in such films, dialogue that (when it is decipherable) is par for the course, and acting that is generally superior. What earmarks it as a probable audience hit and certifiable critical flop is merely that the horror is more horrible than usual.”

“There is very little involvement with the characters themselves … A generally good cast in cardboard roles.”

“An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the inspired art direction and some handsome, if gimmicky, cinematography.”

"“An overblown B-movie… technically impressive but awfully portentous and as difficult to sit through as a Black Mass sung in Latin"

“A horrid film, skillful and studied in its nastiness, and there is little the cast can do to mitigate its manipulative horror … those with the stomach for indulgent nastiness may go and gibber.”

Those were all for the original Alien, in 1979, by the way.

I promise to contribute to the current quarter earnings with an Alien: Covenant Blue-Ray purchase.

I bought both novelizations and will eventually buy into VR so I can watch the Alien: Covenant and subsequent releases.

I don't fell like I will be the only one doing this. I believe the VR experience will be amazing regardless of expectations and this will only drive interest into Blue-Ray sales and the eventual followup cinema releases. 

Lambert is a great example Lawrence of Arabia.

The obvious "shown" horror is happening feet from Lambert with Parker having his face shredded and then the camera cutting away after showing the xenomorph tail approaching her.

Then, only her horrid screams are heard over the radio without seeing what happened. This made you imagine the unimaginable and more scary than dead nudity on the bottom of the shower.

Kethol makes a good point that the scene could have been more of a shock instead of a build up of Daniels and Tennessee trying to go rescue those in the shower. Show the couple relaxed and then introduce the xenomorph unanticipated. Very similar to the Ripley and Clemens scene in Alien 3.

@IRaptus isn't that a Giger painting? I thought it was...

@IRaptus you hit the nail on the head with your first quote. The film industry, at least the THEATER industry, is dying. Simply put. These numbers are indicative of the industry as a whole. They are going to close theaters substantially over the next several years, leaving only niche theaters like IMAX/7D,4d,super surround type experiences as the only places to go as MOST people are perfectly happy watching films at their own home theater.

Lawrence of Arabia - So funny! The same complaints and points. Thank you for adding this post.

Surprising but true - we see the same comments by the Covenant haters now:

'Dumb characters making dumb sucky decisions, implausible doo doo events sprayed all over the place, more than you could ever drop in a year, the movie sucked/was dumb!!'

Ingeniero I'm not trying to pick apart Aliens or I'm not saying that there weren't valid reasons for why things happened but it either wasn't explained in movie or not well enough. My point is how people were critiquing it at the time and how it echoes recent events.

Thanks for bringing up the classic review Lawrence of Arabia.

I was a teenager who just swam through the novelization of Aliens in '86 when I saw the movie. Back then, I would have let you give me an "Aliens" tattoo somewhere important because I was so excited.

Now, yes, there are elements I'm not too big on but I don't pick it apart as much as the review you post above. The story has missed out on so much by not covering the career of Michael Bishop. Also, the Engineer ship was masked by volcanic activity and not picked up in surveying (I know, weak reasoning).

LV-426

I posted this on a thread some months back regarding discrepancies in the Aliens story, see below.

Why hadn’t the colonists on LV-426 picked up the signal from the juggernaut in 2157?

“Although there are unsubstantiated reports that the beacon was deliberately turned off in 2135 (see Report REF#MARLOW58821). What could still be seen of the ship by 2157 was believed to be part of the Ilium Mountain Range, nearly 30KM from the terraformers’ compound."

Weyland-Yutani Report (page 83)

I'm sure this report above is in reference to Henry Marlow, the captain of the salvage vessel Anesidora around the year 2135.

This vessel discovered the juggernaut on LV-426 and Marlow said to his crew:

"I'll find the beacon and shut it off. Don't want anybody else finding this place."

(Source: Alien: Isolation)

Im Durp What I'm trying to say is at the time Aliens came out people were just as nitpicky and hard on Aliens as they are now with Covenant and instead of suspending disbelief and enjoying a good film they look for every little perceived fault. It's not just one review either but one of many I'm using as an example which echoes A LOT of what people are hating on Covenant for. I do see the years being kind to Covenant but right now it's the trend to hate and pick it apart cuz it wasn't what we thought we wanted. I'm not stretching but you can believe what you want man.

Great video and yea I did notice the female engineer sketch when the video was up on youtube.

A:C is the best.Then Alien because its scary the first time or after years not watching, then Prometheus.

Aliens crapped the franchise with this queen, hope eggmorphing or sometheing else returns

Ingeniero I understand you completely. The Xenomorph is a metaphor for rape and is vile. Remember how he did his tail thing with both Lambert and now Upworth? The nudity in humans is pure, hence the couple making love, and the Alien has come to defile it. I don't think nudity is out of place in the Alien franchise, I mean, in each entry there is some form of sexual frolicking that is either Ripley in her tiny panties and crotch shots in Alien or Ripley in her panties in Alien 3 and fornicating with Clements. I do agree more lines between Upworth and Ricks would have been appreciated in fleshing out the characters scene.

Nice video! I'll feature this awhile so it doesn't get buried.