Comments (Page 701)

Amazing, thanks Kethol! This part of the movie is the most interesting to me, and shows that, even when Scott's overall movie isn't top notch, or gives too much time to other (fan-pleasing - be careful what you wish for) stuff, he packs a whole other movie in there, within the visual world. He is a world-builder, and there's a whole load of meaty business to enjoy in this lab, whatever the disappointments and omissions in the story-line.

I love the inspirations on show here - Renaissance, Vesalius, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Damian Hirst, that Van Huygen 'Bodyworlds' plastination guy, Darwin, Victorian botany and taxonomy culture. All that feeds into the imagination surrounding the neomorph/xenomorph origin and biology. I dunno if it diminishes the horror of the otherness/alienness of the xeno in the original Alien - I think I compartmentalize these movies in my mind, and don't fully connect them - but it gives me hours of enjoyment thinking about it all.

No movie was ever going to please everyone, or match the peerless Alien. With all its irritating gaps and its obvious distortions that lie in fan-internet-producer pressure, A:C is still a beautiful movie to look at and unpick at one's leisure (when blu ray is out) - and I'm happy with that.....

I thought it was just part of the "I'll go after the men in the audience" trope of Alien movies, it's made to make CIS men uncomfortable. If the lines like "You blow, I'll do the findering", "Whistle and I'll come" or "No one will love you like I do" didn't work then people wouldn't be quoting it all over the place.

Wow, Alien: Covenant is getting so much hate here but in other places it's thriving. I can't wait for the book, it will feature Hideo Yutani and give us a glimpse into the inner workings of Weyland Yutani after the disappearance of Sir Peter Weyland and Meredith Vickers.

It just looks like the original space jockey to me

Kethol The pressure suits are like the Prometheus crew's pressure suits, skin tight. It was part of the costume design, Janty Yates goes into detail on the The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus.

Fox has to stop pressuring Ridley to put things into his movies that weren't part of the plan, it mucks things up and leaves a whole lot of people upset and it's dividing the franchise.

I hope they give us more information on the engineers and there's some sort of flash back to give some of us fans some closure on David x Shaw.

I really disliked Alien: Covenant the movie but I found the book wholly satisfying I have it in 4 formats, I have re-read it probably more times than I have watched Prometheus.

I think what they did, has a lot of long time fans wanting to leave the franchise and a bunch of new blood being pulled into the fandom. In the end that makes them more money because those new fans will want to watch the Alien-Alien:Resurrection and probably buy the new anthology to catch up.

Everyone is regaling stories of doom and gloom for the franchise but I think that's just missing what they were familiar with. Prometheus was starkly different yet had all the ideas that were previously not used in other alien films and same with Alien: Covenant.

Prometheus was about creation, Lawrence of Arabia in space. And Alien: Covenant was about couples, Frankenstein in space. My guess is Alien: Awakening may be about the engineers because of the Origae=Waggoner=Wagner=Charioteer=Space Jockey=Chariot of the Gods.

Everyone need to remember that there is an alien and queen floating in space. They can breath in space thanks to the ridiculous ending in aliens where ripley fights the queen. the queen hitched a ride to the main ship. And of course the alien from the 1st movie is floating around also. Those 2 creatures can be used for a reboot. Its been pretty much established that the company knows all through transmissions. No more Ripley and no Blomkamp. And AA needs to have the continuing story but there needs to be more horror and suspence

David is a character far more interesting than Roy Batty from Blade Runner. He started to hate his creator and the faulty human nature (I want more life father -- to realize that Roy's father was mortal), he found compassion by the same species (Batty - Deckard in the last scene) that created him and stayed loyal to Weyland in the scene with the engineer even though he hated Weyland, it was revealed that he said to him exactly what was asked by Weyland although he could have pissed the engineer off by saying other things offensive i.e. we came here to kill you. Also his obsession with Lawrence of Arabia is not a coincidence,  maybe he believes that he is living the same same scenario with other players

1. Lawrence although an English man he was different than his peers (Walter) more independent and deviated many times from the English crown's will although he stayed loyal to it.

2.  Arabs - the scattered human nations which need guidance to be united against a common enemy.

3. Engineers like the powerful Turks who oppress other nations they do the same thing to their creations and like the Turks who had advanced weapons to do so (advanced artillery, guns etc) they used bio-weapons to force their will.

Michael is a great actor by the way!

i will be getting it. Perhaps there is some information about WY we would love to hear. Also life on Earth at that time has always been a question of mine, how advanced are we ?

Few more months !!

What is strange however, is Fox changed the A:C poster for its BR release. Possibly after reaction to it not being relevant to the story. Now we have a Xeno and Daniels on the poster for this book.

Perhaps Daniels is in training and that is why she is in a suit with a gun. Perhaps the Xeno is a reminder that it is an Alien universe. I dont see any possibility of a Xeno in the book but i will be examining every page !!lol

I feel it strange though that a prequel novel covers the Colony mission preparations and we have a 10 year gap in the main story. So whle David and Shaw are doing whatever they did, this story will cover an entirely different part of the universe.

Does that mean we will get flashbacks in A:A and that is why it wasnt covered? keeping the mystery alive ?  Who knows

Either way i will be checking it out

A prequel for the sequel to the prequel. Give me break!

Ati is expressing his opinion as you are. His opinion, whether you agree or not, is valid. 

The Art and Making of Covenant stated that Covenant, even though it's the sixth film in the franchise, was the first canonical appearance of the Xenomorph in this franchises history.

Can't wait to get this!

The Engineers created the Deacon, that is what is in the mural. Steve Messing, the guy who did the mural, stated it as such in 'Furious Gods'. The Xenomorph is descended/variant of the Deacon created by David. Joylitt, I respect your opinion, but that is fact.

auximenes Hopefully that is the case.

I'm not sure why so many people are hung-up on the thought that David created everything we know from the original movies. He's had access to the material most important to creating a creature, the Black Goo. The Goo is pre-loaded with all the Xenomorph DNA you'd ever need. Given the Goo, some time ("idle hands"), and the drive to create a monster, it's going to eventually resemble the base creature who's DNA is infused into the Goo. Every time you cross the results of your work together the stronger the imprint of the Goo on the result. Proof is shown on the Mural in Prometheus that a Xeno existed long before David was even built. Also, David himself says that he found an Egg and Facehugger, so they were not a new creation by him (see: http://www.alien-covenant.com/topic/45460).

JonesRules Indeed. I thought the movie was fine all by itself. I eventually bought the whole thing with COR, Riddik and I think there is an animation link in there too. I did not care for COR- it seemed too grandiose to me. Riddik was just OK- worth watching once. I think the animation was pretty good actually, but forgettable. 

I feel a similar way about the Quadrilogy. 

BTW- due to lapses of memory or laziness, I have 3 copies of Pitch Black!

Valid point.

Let me conduct a highly and well tested experiment lol!

Which is more disturbing:

For the un initiated:

A- The enterance to the Derelict is an oval shaped entrance

B- Describing that entrance as a bald, blue, dry and cold vaginal opening?

I believe that quote was from the Empire Online podcast with Ridley Scott back in May. You can google it.

If you translate all these examples into art, I guess the answer would be that if the art piece is realistic enough, probably a picture will be more disturbing than the description.

dk you hit the right spot with bringing up Pitch Black! I treasure my DVD version of it and consider it a stunning film, a modern classic, a low-budget mind-blowing masterpiece, a rare gem among most of the modern [huge-budget] sci-fi movies. And I do not know its ratings and box office figures. But what happened - studio took notice that it was well-received by the fans and gave birth to a sequel - a glossy super-expensive pile of garbage and nonsense, a cartoon in more than one meaning of that word. And after seeing [half of] that sequel, I did not care about that franchise continuing, even if it made a bundle of money (it did continue, I think). And Pitch Black will live on for me as a great stand-alone (as what original Alien may be for some).

The Giger fellatio pic? Cool that you actually conducted a field test of sorts!

Persoally, I am reminded of Judas Priest when I see that pic. That's just how it is.

Interesting- I suppose it could go either way. I can say from experience that as a kid, I accidentally saw some autopsy photos while helping my dad clean out his desk. They were black and white and stark. I have yet to see something that tops it.

The hyena birth itself was not shown and YT searches gave no videos of the occasion itself. So I imagined what I thought it would look and sound like. I imagined a lot of pain and writhing. 

As stated OP, this is subjective, but we can have discussions and it might be interesting. 

Thanks again for the video!

Out of curiosity I showed the image in question to some work colleges, without any reference to the context of where it came from.

Most felt it was "non-offensive soft-porn" simply because it depicted "sexual intercourse" and had "exposed anatomy".

They were more concerned as to why I was looking at said image lol.

I'm all for expanding the story and things of that nature. And no one is disputing fassbendsers performance. He's brilliant as David. I just hate that the alien we've come to know comes from an android. The facehugger is made by an android. The eggs they come from is from an android. It just seems so far fetched and lazy. Now if he was some android created by the engineers then maybe. But no. He was created by weyland. If that's the case ash, hell even bishop should have had a better understanding of the alien being that they were more up to date androids and had a more direct objective coming from weyland industries. Especially bishop.

I have already alluded to the WHYs, on their apparent lack of both defensive and offensive measures, in my point 8.

Given the timescales they are operating in, the Engineers, as a whole, probably have very different conceptions about:

- Creation & Destruction

- Life & Death

I intentionally used ampersand rather than vs (versus) because as mentioned these are not opposing concepts. One implies the other as highlighted in David's quote.

That is why they may not necessarily be engaged in any sort of organized warfare, the way humankind understand it or does it.

The other possibility I indicated is in point 9, whereby their core civilization could have scattered too thin or degraded to the point where they are a spent force. All empires and cultures rise and fall, so likewise with the Engineer's galaxy-spanning civilization. Give or take a billion years, and even the most resilient civilizations will run down with the clock. The Paradise planet that was wiped out by David, could be one such example of the state of their galactic civilization.

They may be great at bio-engineering and can circumvent or toy with evolution, but they still cannot override the laws of physics and the second law of thermodynamics.

Next, on the idea that the Engineers could be suppressing or somehow "slowing down" the development of those planets they seeded, seems incongruent with their observable activities. It does not make logical sense to "seed" planets to accelerate the evolutionary process and then want to slow it down later. If so, why undertake to "seed" planets in the first place? Furthermore, the Engineers (or some group/race/faction of them) clearly instructed many early humans to make an effort to travel to LV-223. Pointing to the stars in cave drawings means to encourage technological development of these nascent species to make spaceships and fly there eventually, correct? Otherwise, why even bother to keep repeating to these primitive species over long time spans, about LV-223 or some star formation.

In all likelihood, the Engineers probably "seeded" many other planets, besides Earth, if the "Canon" is to make sense. The Engineers obviously wanted to speed things up with their black goo invention. Maybe they got tired of waiting billions of years for interesting things to happen on their experimental planets?

The other point about Earth-based spaceships not having weapons is more so due to our primitive capability now. The Russians did equip their cosmonauts with pistols in the early days of the space race (not sure if they do so now or not). The official reason was that they might have to defend themselves against wild animals should they crash land on some inhospitable geography.

If human nature does not change for the better, you can be sure we will eventually bring weapons with us and build spaceships with weaponry. I'm willing to bet 100 bucks with anyone on that. lol. Perhaps, that may partially answer Dr. Shaw's question on why the Engineers wanted to wipe out us. We might have become a rising threat to them with our increasing space-based capabilities coupled with our propensity for warfare.

Yes, I agree AVP is not strictly Canon. And you could be right on the low incidence of meeting with warlike space-faring civilizations, leading to the Engineer's nonchalant attitude towards weaponry for their spaceships and/or facilities. Well, in our short 60+ years of space exploration, we have yet to see any evidence of advanced space-faring civilizations out there. Not officially at least and again disregarding Ufology.

Even sci-fi "Canon" has to adjust to reality to be deemed plausible, not the other way around. Hence, I'm approaching this from a statistical standpoint. There are now just too many confirmation on planets within the habitable regions of many star systems, the mathematical probabilities would tell us the likelihood of us being the first few or even in the sci-fi Alien-verse, the handful ones with space-travel capabilities is very low. Of course, no hard evidence to date from NASA scientists.

https://www.cnet.com/news/the-milky-way-is-flush-with-habitable-planets-study-says/

IF we do eventually find strong evidence of many other space-faring civilizations out there, I find it difficult to imagine that humans will be the only warlike species or one of those "rare"  species that loves to shoot at things. I could be biased since I'm obviously talking about this from our anthropomorphic (i.e. human) perspective. Other alien species evolving in differnet environments may have very different experiences and opinions in comparison to our "human condition".

Well, in this case as you say, a description may be disturbing since you have to fill in the blanks with your imagination. For instance, in the video they tell you that 60% of the offspring dies from suffocation because they are delivered through a tiny conduct. Then your brain makes associations, maybe you remember the agony of a relative who couldn't pass a stone and just the thought of it is enough to make you squirm...

On the other hand, in the case of pictures of real crime scenes, suicide victims and gruesome accidents, no matter how good the description is, it cannot compare to what you experience by looking at the pic. Maybe you can forget about something that you imagined, but you cannot unsee a pic.

 joylitt Thanks for the video- I did not know that until now! I love nature videos and documentaries that delve into things we might not think about.

The question is this- do you think it would be more offensive to show the video or describe it? Granted- the describer would have to be competent.

I'll use Arrival. Was not my cup of tea and the stereotype of the "dumb soldiers listening to right wing radio" was off-putting. The rest of the film did not insult my intelligence so I look favorably on that director. The icing on the cake is that it did well at the box office. This all correlates to a director runniñg on all cylinders. Out of eight Alien films there is only one I think of when flushing the toilet. It just so happens that word of mouth murdered it's (AC) reception among regular people or (earth chimps to Ridley). I wouldn't trust Scott to sell girl scout cookies now. Yes, box-office matters when there is only one franchise I can watch on dvd loop running 249 days a year at eleven hours a day. Will Covvy be purchased for the loop, maybe in three years at a pawn shop for dirt cheap.

Nature is more offensive than Giger. I bet not too many know that hyenas give birth to their babies through penises.

http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/10/worlds-weirdest-giving-birth-through-a-penis/

Lawrence of Arabia I do like Fassbender; I am highly anticipating "The Snowman" which seems to be the next "Silence of the lambs". I was just bugging ati who is so openly trolling Ripley fans haha

Nature is so fascinating. Right now I am binge watching a David Attemborough documentary series called "Natural Curiosities", and in each episode you can find so many cases where the evolution of creatures defies any common sense. Nature seems to be this inextricable brain capable of intertwining different species with a cruelty beyond imagination, and even displaying a twisted sense of humor. I think that is where Dan O'Bannon found the inspiration for the original Alien. And that's where we need to head back. We already know all we need to know about David, It is time to explore other mysteries. 

joylitt I get it that you don't like Fassbender but both him and Sigourney are fantastic actors. Neil's idea would erase half the franchise for a silly shoot em up appealing to nostalgia. I'd rather a creative idea that propels the entire saga.

I just hope someone doesn't do something to really push the boundaries such as getting "excited" and making a member resemble a xeno head or making a vaginal area look like the entrance to the Derilect. I know it sounds sick- but if I can imagine it, someone has probably done it. 

Well, time for dinner!

I got ya lol I believe Ridley did intend for those scenes to be humorous as he's stated getting the viewer to laugh opens them up to being scared easier. He also said he likes to have a little fun in his script. I really enjoyed it lol "you blow and ill do the fingering"  That sh*t was the funniest. I see how people are using it to the films detriment but I thought it added to it, but that's my opinion.

Disgusting joke! :D :D

Ati LOL! I remember on a thread before DB found out- a couple staffers merely posted stuff like- "Well, BigDave, that little girl seems to enjoy that shower" or some such teasing!

By sexual innuendo i mean the Scenes that could imply Sexual  Moments but are not.... The David "you blow and ill do the fingering" part especially  You dont know if its intended as such or it simply was not...

The Ash Scene is not really sexual innuendo but a actually kind of Rape Attempt.... and i swear the first time i saw AC when David had caught Daniels looking at the Pictures he had drawn.. i was just expecting David to roll one of them up and try and choke Daniels with it... in another Nod/Easter Egg to Alien.

I wonder if they did consider that.

Oh if you like sexual innuendo this is one of my Favorites... those from the UK will remember this Show ;)

I felt some dialog between David was a bit like this, whether it was intended or not.... i felt it was not suited to a Alien Movie, but i could see the funny side of it.... but i know it did upset some lol

 Edit after watching it lead me to Rainbow for Adults Video.. i wont post it here because its well very harsh language lol...

'Get out of here!' - by joylitt

Relax, joylitt, it's just an article from another site, with a question mark in the title. :)

I will never say to you: 'Get out of here!'

My answer is love. :)

LOL yeah i remember...

I never noticed until a few had pointed it out to me... only then i noticed and informed Chris lol

If i was going to go that route i would have used some of HR Gigers Stuff instead ;)   Funny thing is now we have all seen the Movie, it kind of was like the Flute Scene.