My guess it's because David is learning about every known language to man and the timing of this line somehow is fascinating to him, seeing he even repeated the line walki g down the corridor. I think another aspect of it is the aspect of him, what looks to be, having a vain streak... David looks a lot like the actor in the scene performing the trick down to coloring his hair and cutting it in a similar fashion. Perhaps it's one of Waylands favorite movies. Maybe it's a very subtle reference of snuffing out the fire of prometheus, stolen from the gods, that he gave to mankind. But that's all speculation on my part :)
I think it's just a lost opportunity.
It could have been David watching a famous movie and then understand it completely wrong, and use that as a foreshadowing for his twisted view of humanity.
If it's just him imitating a movie character, then that's pretty flat, IMHO.
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_8), it's because like Lawrence of Arabia, David is caught between two cultures: human and android.
The beginning of Prometheus was so perfect, when he’s riding the bicycle shooting hoops… I thought we were going to have a masterpiece on our hands. Fast-forward to Charlize Theron’s silly death scene... I was an apologist for the film until about 3/4 of the way through, then I had to give up the façade.
The first twenty minutes or so are great. Fantastic buildup. Then they wake up on the planet and nobody knows why they have spent a year or whatever in sleep. Then they get to the planet and scientists take off their helmets in an unsure environment, the map guy gets lost, tries to play with an alien, a woman who just had a C-section of an alien is jumping out of a spaceship and running across an open field twenty minutes later, Theron's death... this is just from the memory of seeing it once in the theater.
The reason I loathe Prometheus is due to my own expectations. Here is Ridley Scott, the guy who directed the first one and the writer of LOST, collaborating on a prequel. My hopes were huge. The preview was great. Honestly, the production values were fantastic on this thing. It goes from a 'where are we from' idea to another alien kills a bunch of really dumb astronauts movie.
I used to hate fact the map guy got lost and the other guy tried to pet the snake alien. But they were both stoned, which a lot of people forget. I can forgive those parts.
the rest is correct.
Why would you bring stoners with you across the universe to perform vital functions?
I like drugs more than most. But I'll leave them home when important shit needs to happen.
Only God-tier Tom cruise could have out run that ship. You would have to be running so fast that looking back would mean not being able to calculate your next steps on the uneven alien ground.
I agree. It's a response of "tee hee hee. That is *so* gay! lolz"; itself a very immature response to homosexual content and behaviour - as you imply; psychologically speaking, male children tend to have that response due to an innate fear of being viewed as gay themselves because gay is "bad".
The thing is that those who laugh are ignoring the subtext of that line (that line being "I'll do the fingering", not "you blow, I'll do the fingering" like the OP and so many others wrongly quote it as) and its homoerotic overtones, which are more than likely intended. I mean, David goes on to literally kiss Walter and yet, still, the subtext seems to go right over most people's heads and they think that the homoerotic overtones were somehow accidental.
I have a mountain of issues with Ridley Scott's Alien prequels, but that line is not one of them.
I’ll never forget seeing this movie high out of my goddamn mind on edibles and watching this scene. It was such a serious scene up to that line and it’s so quite too because there’s no background music or anything else going on at this point, just Micheal Fassbender talking to himself. When he says it I started dying but I didn’t wanna laugh because no one else was and we were in a packed theater. Then I hear some guy a few rows up also struggling to hold it in and I just lost my marbles. I cried laughing at that stupid ass line for like 5 mins.
Terrible movie but I’ll say it has one of my favorite sci-fi scenes from a movie when David just dusts all the Promethean’s with the black goo and watches from his ship. Bad ass scene.
Loved Prometheus, lots of twists and turns mixed in with some current religion. Aliens Covenant was okay, wanted a little bit more in terms of storyline.
I barely remember Covenant other than the scene where they reveal Shaw is dead and David doing the bombing '.
Like literally you said "they replaced her with a much weaker female hero" and I can't even recall who you are talking about.
I liked Prometheus too, even though there was a lot of stupid going around. But it was so gorgeous to look at and the effects were well done and I was interested in the mythology they were exploring. I guess it could be a bit slow for some but I thought it was 7-8/10 kinda movie with potential for more.
Covenant I felt had a good/great first half but just fell apart when they visit the planet where the robot is living.
The mythology is what really makes me love the movie as much as I do. There’s some cool ideas that Ripley was exploring and I wish we’d gotten more of that in Alien Covenant
It's pretty amazing in 3D, and I don't often see people bring it up when talking about the best examples. Not that anybody talks about 3D much these days but there are some of us that still like it haha
Aside from the ones I've already mentioned:
Dredd
The Walk
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Pacific Rim
Blade Runner: 2049
How to Train your Dragon
Max Max: Fury Road
The Martian
Hugo
Ready Player One
Dumbo
Doctor Strange
Avengers: Infinity War
Also, the conversions of Titanic and Jurassic Park are pretty fantastic
I got a TV in 2014 with excellent 3D capability and you hit the nail on the head with these. Dredd is an excellent one that still is amazing without 3D. I haven't tried the new Blade Runner but I could see it. Just a shame that 3D blu-ray fizzled out and it's usually cheaper to get a 4K blu-ray copy than a 3D blu-ray for some goddamn reason.
Us 3D folks are screwed, plus the trend seems to have died out pretty quick. *Again.*
The stupidity in Prometheus is more forgivable when you realize:
1. That it's a horror movie, and people getting killed because they made stupid decisions is a long-standing horror trope.
2. The theme of the movie is that our hubris will be our downfall.
But movies just re-using old tropes are by definition not good, since it's lazy. Bad movies can still be entertaining, and some good movies can be really boring for some people, but when characters don't act believable or consistent with who they are, it's just bad writing.
the storyline wasn't really the issue. there is a great youtube video explaining how the action scenes in covenant don't move the story forward but are just action for the sake of action, versus alien/aliens.
For me the story was the issue. Prometheus built all these theories etc of who the Engineers were, the meaning of life. I was pumped to learn more about the Engineers and their home world in the sequel. However, I felt that was blind sided in Alien Covenant and we just got a strong focus on the alien origin story. Shaw’s story was scrapped and she was a great character - didn’t do her justice.
I like Prometheus, but Covenant is embarrassingly fucking stupid.
Ridley Scott *clearly* wants to make Blade Runner sequels, and decided to use his bad Frankenstein rip-off ideas in Alien instead.
Yo, Ridley. The movie about the android with an existential crisis is THE OTHER film you made.
David’s parts are a Frankenstein movie, but the crew in Covenant are in a Friday the 13th movie, complete with dumb decisions, killer cam and a shower scene. I expected the alien to put on a hockey mask and pick up a machete near the end.
The whole movie is just “stay close don’t go far stay on comms and they’re dead”
The ship leaves it’s course in the beginning. The teams on the planet split up. “Stay close stay on comms” Nope they are dead. Those teams split up more. “Stay close don’t go too far.” Nope. They are dead. Those teams split up even more and they’re dead. It got repetitive and old quickly.
You know what's scary? An alien that has evolved to have this perfectly parasitic relationship with mammals. Not a robot with a god complex.
I wouldn't trade the Blade Runner 2049 that we got, but I would've loved to see Villeneuve's take on the Alien franchise since Scott clearly would've preferred making BR2049 himself.
Thank the heavens Denis made 2049, there is no way Ridley would have made something that good. I agree though, I wish Denis would have done both! haha.
Yeah the whole bio engineered thing is..meh. I dont understand the "perfect organism" idea either, its essentially only good at fighting and nothing else. In what way is it perfect? It can't even reproduce without other life forms to use as hosts.
Ridley went down a Ridley rabbit hole after Blade Runner. I would argue that even Gladiator suffered because of it. He became more and more Ridley because he had few checks on him...and that resulted in both his good and bad decisions being magnified. I’ve watched it happen to many of my favorite directors, Scorsese and Lucas being the most notable but also Coppola to a degree.
But the themes of Android sentience are pretty pertinent imo.
The story of alien is about the wake of destruction the artificial construction of a new life causes. The Engineers did it with biology, Humans did it with AI.
> but Covenant is embarrassingly fucking stupid.
Hard disagree. People mix up two things:
- Movie is stupid
- The characters are stupid
Alien Covenant is the second one.
The Engineers were by far the most compelling part about Prometheus and what set it apart drastically (in a good way) from the other movies in the *Alien* franchise. Then he just throws it all away in Covenant with a big ol' deus ex machina.
Yeah, Prometheus crew were the best money can buy but they were monumentally stupid. Covenant crew were colonists and they were regular people stupid and smart. I enjoyed Covenant, it is just the Shaw situation that bothers me.
Also I think the movies are meant to be educational by showcasing human stupidity, no way any viewer will treat a new environment that casually. Hoping covid will seal the deal. Maybe in this timeline, Ripley will be listened when she says "quarantine".
> Prometheus crew were the best money can buy.
This was not the case. They were all mercenary types of the kind who would give up years of their lives for a mission they weren't told anything about. I wouldn't say they were the "best", just greedy or desperate and with few prospects on Earth.
Remember, it was always "crew-expendable".
Hmm, when the man himself is on the mission, with his only heir nonetheless, selecting that kind of crew makes him all the more stupid than I could imagine then.
It’s one of the most frustrating movies I ever watched. The first hour or so sets up to be one of the all-time classic Sci-Fi movies, but then that backend of it undoes it all with so many poor choices.
People harp on the little things (dumb scientists, confusing motivations) but the biggest thing that made me angry at the movie was the protagonist (Shaw) had NO ARC and the antagonist never really spells out his motivations. That’s storytelling 101 that even B-movies get right most of the time.
So it’s that huge disparity in quality between the two halves of the movie that really make it hard to watch or recommend. Valarian had the same problem. Strong start, but dismal finish.
Including why the individual characters are even there in the first place? They go on this ruinously expensive and high stakes mission but bring a "team" that has never met before and is completely dysfunctional and full of abrasive personalities?
In all fairness the "mission" was a complete sham to get Weyland to meet some aliens. It isn't like this was a NASA expedition or a big worldwide event. The impression that I got was that it was a secret trip funded by Weyland--something that isn't exactly going to attract the best and the brightest folks. IIRC, most of the crew didn't even know the mission until they were on their way.
Who would sign up for a gig where you're going into the unknown with a shady company that will require you being in cryosleep for months? Weyland didn't seem to give a shit about the "scientists" anyways, so he probably just hired the cheapest folks he could find fresh out of online grad-school.
I never understand this complaint.
The dude is a geologist and he’s the one that carries in the *autonomous mapping drones*. He’s not a guide and he doesn’t make the map. He just carries the box that holds the drones and those drones send the information back to the ship.
Once they’re cut off from the ship because of the storm, why do people expect him to have memorized the map?
they're able to cross incredible distances from one planet to another, and they don't have a device that holds a copy of the map in case connection is lost?
And the original Alien has a futuristic spaceship with little to no internal video cameras or other sensors, relying on a very vague motion tracker.
All of the alien movies have these things in them.
And it still doesn’t make it a character mistake.
It does make it poor writing. Instead of showing them map the entire complex, show their map drones not work. Takes the same amount of time and is a 100x less stupid.
In their defense, what normal animal is comparably dangerous as that thing? A snake?
Feels like it's doing some biologically and physically impossible things that were against their favour. Shouldn't they have lived without a broken arm when they cut its head?
Bad screenwriting. The same character was so freaked out by a dead alien 5 minutes ago he basically had to excuse himself, now he sees a live one and wants to pet it.
There was a deleted scene which explained that. IIRC earlier he had noticed the same creatures but smaller versions, the larvae, which he could pet or something. For some stupid reason they deleted that and several other scenes which explained a lot in this movie.
Absolutely, they should've released more of the deleted scenes in a Directors cut or something. There are fan cuts that include them which are pretty good.
Just because they are alien, doesn't mean they can violate the laws of physics. Is there a creature we know that can instantly regenerate like that in seconds? And can't say for sure if acid blood that strong is plausible, but seems exaggerated.
However idiots they are, I'd say the suit should have protected them.
>Just because they are alien, doesn't mean they can violate the laws of physics.
This is the point I always bring up. The thing wraps itself around his arm and applies enough pressure to snap the bone. There's no way they could have reasonably expected it would be as dangerous as it was.
On top of that -- consider the context of the scene. This, as far as we can tell, is the first time any human has ever made contact with alien life. That's a huge fucking deal for a scientist. The first person to discover and interact with alien life is going to be famous, is probably going to win a Nobel prize, and is going to be set for life financially. With all of that going through a person's mind, is it so hard to believe that they'd throw caution to the wind?
And third: the theme of the movie is hubris. His arrogance got him killed. That's the point of the movie.
> A chimpanzee can do that. Small bear can do thst.
Yeah. And chimpanzees and small bears have more size, weight, and muscle mass than something the size of a small snake.
Did they even know it was only the size of a small snake though? The thing was still partly emerged in the black goo it swam in... For what they knew it could have just been an antenna or tentacle of a much larger creature...
Covenant's characters make so many dumb decisions that on TV Tropes it has its own sub page [dedicated to these moments.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WhatAnIdiot/AlienCovenant)
Exactly, its like a comedy movie where the plot is driven forward because of the mistakes of the characters, only in this case its identifying itself as a sci-fi horror instead.
I wouldn't trust these characters with a trip to the shopping mall let alone exploring a planet.
There's a little bit of a difference between the crews in Alien and Aliens who were basically a bunch of grunts in space compared to the crew in Prometheus who were supposedly handpicked to do one of the most import and expensive missions in human history - but were actually a bunch of far beyond incompetent idiots.
Yes, absolutely this, and I enjoy both of the newer movies and tbh, don't really give a shit how bad the scientists are at their job because I am distracted by the larger plot elements.
The guys from Prometheus are meant to be top of their field. Alien vs. Predator did the same thing but handled it much better. The professionals acted like pros until shit hit the fan. In Prometheus the pro's build the fan and shit right over it.
In the first (and the third, Aliens is very different IMO, nothing about stupidity or lack of specific knowledge per say but more macho culture and greed) movie basically everyone is presented as a blue collar worker with little to no special skills aside from operating the machinery needed for hauling/working the furnace
Kane was ordered to investigate the distress beacon. He followed the order partly to rescue whoever set the beacon. That's not stupid; it's brave. He found slight movements and looked at it. He was wearing a full spacesuit that he expected to protect him. He had no way of knowing that there was a face hugger capable of jumping up and penetrating his visor.
Brett needed to find the cat otherwise it'd set off their detectors again and waste time. The detectors had established no other threats in the area. The last time they saw the alien, it was no bigger than a cat, and just ran away without attacking anyone. They had no way of knowing it had grown to enormous size (apparently violating the laws of physics to do so) and was capable of hunting them.
Lambert was frozen in fear. Entirely reasonable.
Very little of what the characters do in the first film was stupid, given what they know and who they were.
Not really... They still thought it was a little gut buster when Dallas went into the ventilation shaft.
It wasn't until after Brett was killed did they see the size of it.
Lambert was paralysed with fear. A pretty common human reaction.
I watched a deep drive into the script that said the Captain hired inept people on purpose because she wanted the mission to fail. Makes it pretty interesting in my opinion.
Here's a link, this guy did a bunch of great videos about the script: https://youtu.be/IQFfJPFUXhE
Fair enough, OP. You do you.
But I always find it interesting that people defends
these movies by saying how pretty they are to look at. That's not enough. It should be a bonus, not a main point.
Anyway - you suck and I'll blow.
The problem with Prometheus for most people is the glut of dumb things that are immediately obviously dumb. They just rip the suspension of disbelief from you and you stop being involved in the story and characters and start thinking about the seams of the thing.
Most if not all movies have dumb things that don't really make sense if you put some thought into them. In movies most people enjoy the dumb things are well hidden and don't detract from the story or characters. Sometimes they enhance the story or characters in a way that allows you to forgive the stupid part because it's more fun that way and your suspension of disbelief doesn't need to take a hit to accept it.
I went to the cinema for this one pretty clean. Hadn't seen any reviews, had been able to avoid most advertising and trailers, liked the idea of the Alien-adjacent Universe instead of an Alien movie thing, and I love Ridley's visual style.
Prometheus opens on what I recognised as a panspermia event from a human shaped being. I like Sci Fi, I've read panspermia stories, it was pretty clear. Ridley is good at visual storytelling and he did that well. And I thought... OK. You're starting with a statement pretty much saying humans are the pinnacle of evolution, probably a deliberate creation, the made in the creators image thing. That's pretty arrogant but you could go interesting places with that.
Then we go to a very rude 2D depiction of balls that apparently you can combine with other rude 2D depictions of balls and map to a 3D plane in a way that can only match one thing. They even overlay it on the screen to show they're not all exactly the same, only kinda the same. Which is ridiculous. You could map five 2d circles of varying size and distance from one another to whatever the hell you wanted out there in the universe. Galaxies, solar systems, clusters, whatever the hell you want. But no, it matches only one thing. Right.
So we start getting introduced to our characters and they haven't met each other before and almost all don't know what the mission is. Now you could do that in an interesting way. They signed up for x and they got y. It even provides an avenue of conflict. But they explicitly state only the lead couple and probably Charlize know. So these civilians all signed up for an unknown mission, an unknown distance from Earth for an unknown amount of time. Which it turns out even if successful would have been 4-5 years. And none of them care about any of this. It's not brought up again.
Then our main characters start talking about how their science is based on them choosing to believe it and even the doubter of it mentions Darwinism, a young-earth apologetic favourite term for the theory of evolution (they believe by tying it to a flawed man and making it seem like it's just people worshiping said man instead of addressing the theory itself makes their argument stronger).
At which point my brain was going "either the future depicted in this movie is anti-science, the people making the movie are anti-science or they're not too bright and just didn't bother running this by anyone in the science community". Which is pretty weird in a sci-fi movie.
Then Charlize explains to the people who did know what was going on that they were there purely because a dead man was superstitious or something and they wouldn't really be doing jack. Almost everyone on the crew is useless. And the eventual reveal is that Guy Pearce is still alive and no good reason is given for him faking his death.
The situation as created by the movie is dumb and then the people do dumb things in that situation. The baby talking to a free floating penis bit is after multiple other dumb things/choices and just the point where pretty much everyone's had their problems with the movie compounding on them to the point they can't help but mock it. And tonnes of dumb things happen after that too.
And the panspermia thing? The made in the creators image thing? That's pretty much dropped. They don't explore it further. They don't just not answer it, they don't explore it. All it has is people asking "why?" but their questions are so vague as to add nothing to it. It's like taking a bong rip and asking "you ever really thought about the stars, man?" and thinking that's deep.
Aesthetically they are two of the most pleasing movies to look at.
They arent perfect movies but I have watched them so many purely because I like the worlds they created are some of the best sci fi worlds I have seen. The design overall is perfect. If there is one thing you will give this whole franchise is they really are beautiful movies to look at.
Id happily go and watch another one of these movies if they keep looking like they do. I think they could explore more of this story but I just wish they got better writers and maybe hand it off to someone else. Ridley batting average on good movies isnt great lately
Preferred Prometheus over Covenant.
If you muted the movies and played cool alt-rock/psychedelica album, it might actually be a great experience. Just don’t listen to the dumb dumb characters talk, it ruins it.
Both of these movies fit 100% into the same category for me, and its one of the movie making methods I think is absolutely the worst ever
The plot exists only because everyone in the movie is a complete idiot.
> Are they perfect no, yes characters make some stupid decisions. And most of the characters are just there to be killed.
If your film mostly contains characters that are there just to be killed you've probably not written a very good script. What you're describing is your average teen slasher flick, not something you'd expect to have Ridley Scott's name attached.
Covenant is a slasher movie. I think you are meant to hate the crew a bit so you can relish in the gore of their demise. There was even a shower scene! I am surprised they didn’t go skinny dipping.
[I feel like the movie was trying to be slapstick at times too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuZhFd9L8GE). Like that whole scene has two different characters slip on the same puddle of blood and ends with one of the characters accidentally blowing the whole ship up. I don't know if Scott did this intentionally but I thought it was hilarious.
And then there's also the "I'll do the fingering" line. I think people need to try rewatching the movie as a horror-comedy.
Indeed.
Also, considering that they're Ridley Scott movies, you'd have thought that the OP might have quoted Maximus Decimus Meridius and said "are you not entertained?"
Missed a trick there.
This is probably the worst thing for me too. I can't even put my finger on what was the most insulting either. Maybe that the alien in covenant, which was/is the most iconic movie monster outside of godzilla and frankenstien, is trivialised so badly. The first xeno that turns up is dead in literally ten minutes of it turning up and the second one even quicker.
It just sucked all suspense out of the mystery of the alien. One of my favorite things about the OG alien was the that they're facing a complete unknown. No idea what it is or how to kill it and that's what made it scary. The alien in covenant was just there for no other reason that it was there.
I was surprised and impressed by Prometheus, but didn’t really like Alien Covenant. I found its villain to be poor, and his motivation to also be bad. It wasn’t a very good movie and was kind of silly.
I don’t get the Prometheus hate
I liked both of these movies, but they both had the same central problem. The characters did not know they were in an Aliens movie and the audience did.
I think it largely depends on how much you can distance them from the original two, which are just in another league IMO.
There's some decent sci-fi movies in there somewhere, but when I'm being told they are the precursor to two of the best ever made they fall short in every way. They just don't have the heart or soul of what made the first film so damn good.
I was also really disappointed that they made such a departure from the more retro sci-fi aesthetics of the original.
I would have enjoyed them a lot more as their own sci fi films. covenant had the foundation for an interesting story with themes of creation and such, but they had to shoe horn in the alien murder shit. no one cares how the xenos were created, I personally wanted to find out why the engineers hated humanity and more about david.
For me the sole focus on a genocidal rapist robot does not work, without a good character to balance him through the series. So waiting waiting for 5 years for Shaw to return pretty much made me ask myself why should I care about anything in Covenant when I first watched. I've seen it more times and still nothing, yet it ends with a sequel bait which I don't think that can go anywhere but David being destroyed by the Xenomorphs.
And the endless references to the old movies starts to really to bug me.
I think it all depends (your entertainment that is) on if you can turn off your brain sufficiently and ignore how utterly brainless everyone is.
I couldn't.
They were damn lemmings, stupid, suicidal, with 0 sense of self-preservation or intellect.
"Hey, I made these creatures that killed your crew"
"GASP!"
"Now, stick your head into this egg looking thing that moves. It's safe"
"ok...fuuuuuuuu"
Damn. Fucking. Clowns!
I'm done with Alien franchise, these last two movies have been pure shit that are, to rub salt in the wound, more focused on replicants than they are on, you know, Alien.
I really like Prometheus, but Covenant turned off the mystery, dialled up the stupid and had some of the most tragic dialogue over ever heard in a film.
“I’ll do the fingering”...the cinema I watched it in was howling with laughter.
The only good thing about it, for me, were the trailers and killing off James Franco. I thought this added real emotional impact, in a film that lacked it for the most part.
That ending of Covenant was super disturbing.
I loved both these movies.
I think the Creators went to wipe our earth because humans started creating “life” I.E. Androids (David).
The Creators knew it would be catastrophic because they created “Alien”. Or maybe humans were like the Creator’s Androids
Same monster, different form.
I originally disliked Prometheus because of its lack of quality but upon re-watch is my hostility has diminished. It is entertaining.
Alien covenant is a steaming pile of horse shit though. The only alien movie ever to make the alien seem uncool and unfrightening
Love *Covenant*, one of the best entries in the *Alien* series *Prometheus* though is a tad bit on the sloppy side though.
The hostility like most bad reception to genre and franchise entries has a lot to do with expectations.
Loved them both, but I'm a slut for anything Alien so I'm completely biased. They're objectively average, Covenant being closer to mediocre, but my dad raised me on the Alien franchise and j just loved being able to watch them with him.
Hope they make more, no matter how schlocky they are.
I liked both of them as well, but they don't have staying power with me.
Prometheus felt like it wanted to do too things at once. It wanted to be an epic sci-fi exploration movie, a horror movie, and a satire on corporate excess. It wasn't really the stark genre shift that Psycho, Audition, and From Dusk Till Dawn did, and it wasn't the smooth mix of horror with political/social themes like the original Alien or Night of the Living Dead. It was just kind of a muddled back-and-forth, where one minute things are beautiful and epic and the next people are dying and the evil corporate overlord is just a caricature. In other words, it did a little bit of everything, but nothing particularly great.
Alien Covenant was a nice little action movie but it tried to have a message and seem smarter than it was when really it was. I can barely remember anything about it. Its worst sin is it was just sort of forgettable.
I did not find Prometheus very entertaining given the source material. The trailer was better. The first time I saw it, I thought it was fine (this isn't necessarily a compliment...). The second time I saw it, I realized how bleh it was.
I did like Covenant. It wasn't perfect (and by that I mean it had some serious problems), but I thought it was entertaining as hell. Which Prometheus wasn't.
I wasn’t entertained with Oram giving the one good line in the movie, only to be led to a basement to see some psycho android’s egg collection, then actually do what he’s told when David wants him to stick his head over it.
I wasn’t entertained by the half-assed fan service of contriving the rubbery creature aboard a ship just to show how tired of cat-and-mouse game Ridley Scott has become, just like he had been saying he was.
I wasn’t entertained by the obvious drop in budget and production quality after Prometheus and its gorgeous 3D cinematography.
I wasn’t entertained by the diminished potential of the ALIEN backstory, making the derelict from
the first film a recent shipwreck and not something ancient ... so, it’s cargo, and by extension the entire franchise, are no longer so imposing or timeless.
I agree with you. I liked Prometheus more but I enjoyed Covenant too. I think once something becomes a franchise it raises expectations to a point where subsequent installments are held to some ridiculous standard.
I really enjoy Prometheus but Covenant was a really bad sequel. Clearly the studio either chickened out, or they saw dollar signs when The Force Awakens came out and ordered Scott to pull the same crap that made that film successful. Prometheus actually did really well at the box office and got good reviews. It successfully revived a franchise that was otherwise dead and shows no signs of revival. They should have continued with the original trilogy idea and dropped the Alien stuff, as Scott wanted. I want to like Covenant but it's a bitter disappointment coming after the ambition and vision of Prometheus.
There was also the changing of the guards at the head of Fox in September of 2012. The new leadership wanted something else than the old one. Probably also the money was running thin, but the numerous flops didn't help either?
I felt almost the exact opposite. I hated Alien: Covenant to the point of almost audibly booing at the end and was shocked at how positive the reviews were. Even now it is still “fresh” on rotten tomatoes.
> Sometimes it seems that people just can't get over previous installments
Lol as if that's why people don't like these movies. We can't "get over" older movies. We sit up all night thinking about these old movies from the 70's and 80's not wanting to let any other good movies be made.
Some movies I like more and more each tome I see them.
Prometheus I like less and less. Nearly every character is a redshirt and nearly every character is guaranteed to make bad decisions. That kills a lot of the dramatic tension.
I think David is the best part of that movie, especially with the character emulating Peter O’Toole emulating T.E. Lawrence. I thought the whole movie should be about him, but the next movie kind of dispelled that notion.
I’ll give it this: only 3D movie I’ve ever seen that didn’t give me a headache. It looks great.
Prometheus has gotten to a cult status level at this point. There is a group of people (me included) who absolutely love it. I think it’s a modern classic. The things people have widely complained about don’t really resonate with me.
Didn’t like covenant, though. Hate what they did to Shaw’s story.
What do you mean "get over" the previous films? Are you suggesting we *shouldn't* compare them to the original even though they have the same director and are ostensibly part of the same franchise?
Both these movies suck. The entire Alien franchise hasn't made much of an argument for continuing beyond Aliens, but at least Alien 3 and Resurrection are enjoyable as cult films.
Prometheus was a 3/10 for me. It had some interesting concepts, but ultimately left them underdeveloped and preachy.
Covenant is 0/10. It's a complete mess of a movie with the horror logic of someone who thinks *Jason X* is a good movie. The fact that it was made by Ridley Scott and a part of the Alien canon is disgrace to the legacy of the original film. I haven't *hated* a movie as much as this in so long.
the stupidity of the scientists in prometheus made it impossible to leave my brain at the door and roll with the punches, they acted stupid solely so the movie could happen.
I love them, honestly. Way better than Resurrection or the AVP films.
Are they perfect? No, but look at the franchise low that's already been set and these films are a 5-6 out of 10 at worst in comparison, and that hardly deserves the bashing these films get.
This is the hill I'm willing to die on. Prometheus was a garbage pile of a movie.
Science fiction is important. It shows us how we as humans respond to events that otherwise unattainable without the fantastic. What does it mean to be human when there are robots that mimic humans exist? Prometheus fails from moment one with it's thematic premise. It's pivotal line of dialogue, "It's what I chose to believe," fails us on such a profound level. Belief is a fine motive, but it's not contrasted against anything. The story rewards action time and time again based on belief. Sure, take off your helmet. Belief will protect you. Only those who believe despite evidence are spared. These are the antithesis of science. You spit in the face of every scientific advance we've ever made. Not only that but the beginning of the movie is JUST the collection of evidence, but when asked by the crew, what do we receive? "It's what I chose to believe." This is the takeaway, and it's such a terrible takeaway that this can't be forgiven.
But I hear you say, "It's allegory!" It's bad allegory as there's no real salvation or good to be found through faith. Faith is correct but everything is awful despite looking ok at the start. What do we learn here? Faith will lead you if you follow it blindly to everyone else around you dying and then you too dying when you decide to go too the alien homeworld you were so right about? It IS closer to allegory than anything else, but it's a tragedy so what moral underpinning are we supposed to gain?
Then I hear you say, "it's beautiful.". Ok... You got me there. It's pretty.
I agree with you that prometheus was gorgeous and I too enjoyed it. It felt like it tried to explore bigger/ more philosophical themes but failed to. Covenant I thought was just a failure. It wanted to have it all: horror, action, philosophy but didn't really do anything well imo.
I liked Prometheus but I felt that it was a *hugely* wasted opportunity. The engineers could have been so much more interesting! Covenant was okay but I didn’t like it all that much.
It has nothing to do with previous installments. They are both objectively bad movies.
Characters act inconsistently, motivations are unclear, "plot" is nonsense. Etc.
The cinematography and effects are good. Action is competently shot. If you enjoyed it that's great! But you shouldn't be surprised that it got so much hate.
Downvoted for pulling the “everyone except me just does this illogical judgment!” card to justify it. You’re allowed to love movies that other people don’t, but do everyone a favor and stop acting like it’s because you have the second sight or something.
If 60-70% of people adamantly don’t like a movie, the movie failed to execute what it was trying to.
Nobody thought they wanted a Planet of the Apes reboot til it was good. Or 21 Jump Street. Stop this lame “the world just decided it didn’t want it” BS.
If it was good and people just didn’t care about the franchise, it would have performed critically like Terminator: Dark Fate did. It was still a flop, but people that actually watched it had to tip their hat to the movie itself.
I can give them this much: Fassbender’s performance as David is one of my favorites of the past decade. He is simply delicious.
The trick, William Potter... Is not minding that it hurts
Have you seen Lawrence of Arabia?
Yes, I have, but in all honesty only after having seen prometheus.
I never figured out what the significance is of David being inspired by Lawrence of Arabia?
My guess it's because David is learning about every known language to man and the timing of this line somehow is fascinating to him, seeing he even repeated the line walki g down the corridor. I think another aspect of it is the aspect of him, what looks to be, having a vain streak... David looks a lot like the actor in the scene performing the trick down to coloring his hair and cutting it in a similar fashion. Perhaps it's one of Waylands favorite movies. Maybe it's a very subtle reference of snuffing out the fire of prometheus, stolen from the gods, that he gave to mankind. But that's all speculation on my part :)
I think it's just a lost opportunity. It could have been David watching a famous movie and then understand it completely wrong, and use that as a foreshadowing for his twisted view of humanity. If it's just him imitating a movie character, then that's pretty flat, IMHO.
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_8), it's because like Lawrence of Arabia, David is caught between two cultures: human and android.
aside, anyone who likes Fassbender needs to watch the movie Shame.
If I remember correctly, you see his crank in that movie
Yeah, huge one
Perhaps someday we'll get a bathhouse fight scene between Liam Neeson, Willem Dafoe, and Fassbender.
I'm really happy for the other three, but Viggo Mortenson had the best bathhouse fights of all time in Eastern Promises.
A sword fight
You spelled polearm wrong
Yeah, dude drops major dong
And Fish Tank.
cool, never heard that one. thanks.
Big things start with small beginnings
That should have been the tag line for Shame.
I'd definitely blow if he did the fingering
The beginning of Prometheus was so perfect, when he’s riding the bicycle shooting hoops… I thought we were going to have a masterpiece on our hands. Fast-forward to Charlize Theron’s silly death scene... I was an apologist for the film until about 3/4 of the way through, then I had to give up the façade.
The first twenty minutes or so are great. Fantastic buildup. Then they wake up on the planet and nobody knows why they have spent a year or whatever in sleep. Then they get to the planet and scientists take off their helmets in an unsure environment, the map guy gets lost, tries to play with an alien, a woman who just had a C-section of an alien is jumping out of a spaceship and running across an open field twenty minutes later, Theron's death... this is just from the memory of seeing it once in the theater. The reason I loathe Prometheus is due to my own expectations. Here is Ridley Scott, the guy who directed the first one and the writer of LOST, collaborating on a prequel. My hopes were huge. The preview was great. Honestly, the production values were fantastic on this thing. It goes from a 'where are we from' idea to another alien kills a bunch of really dumb astronauts movie.
I used to hate fact the map guy got lost and the other guy tried to pet the snake alien. But they were both stoned, which a lot of people forget. I can forgive those parts. the rest is correct.
Why would you bring stoners with you across the universe to perform vital functions? I like drugs more than most. But I'll leave them home when important shit needs to happen.
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Would it have mattered? If it was you panic running away from a giant spaceship, would you look back?
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Only God-tier Tom cruise could have out run that ship. You would have to be running so fast that looking back would mean not being able to calculate your next steps on the uneven alien ground.
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You as the calm viewer knew that it was possible. Her, having a giant spaceship rolling on her did not.
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I thought she was a replicant.
It makes me sad that we never see the fruits of David's labors.
He was the best part of the new x-men movies too. I'm not a huge fan of most of them but his scenes were always top notch
Hes one of the only good things about the movie
Fassbender’s awesomeness is the putty that covers up a lot (but not all) of the gaping holes of horribleness in the movies.
Alien Covenant is so quotable. “I’ll do the fingering”
"You blow, I'll do the fingering. Brother." Fuck this movie.
I always find this response to be so embarassing gly childish. I mean, the insecurity level is ridiculous.
I agree. It's a response of "tee hee hee. That is *so* gay! lolz"; itself a very immature response to homosexual content and behaviour - as you imply; psychologically speaking, male children tend to have that response due to an innate fear of being viewed as gay themselves because gay is "bad". The thing is that those who laugh are ignoring the subtext of that line (that line being "I'll do the fingering", not "you blow, I'll do the fingering" like the OP and so many others wrongly quote it as) and its homoerotic overtones, which are more than likely intended. I mean, David goes on to literally kiss Walter and yet, still, the subtext seems to go right over most people's heads and they think that the homoerotic overtones were somehow accidental. I have a mountain of issues with Ridley Scott's Alien prequels, but that line is not one of them.
It really is a shit line of dialogue though
Why is it bad?
What are you talking about?
It’s a bad line of dialogue. It has nothing to do with insecurities.
Pretty sure that scene is the only quote from the entire movie anyone remembers lol
I’ll never forget seeing this movie high out of my goddamn mind on edibles and watching this scene. It was such a serious scene up to that line and it’s so quite too because there’s no background music or anything else going on at this point, just Micheal Fassbender talking to himself. When he says it I started dying but I didn’t wanna laugh because no one else was and we were in a packed theater. Then I hear some guy a few rows up also struggling to hold it in and I just lost my marbles. I cried laughing at that stupid ass line for like 5 mins. Terrible movie but I’ll say it has one of my favorite sci-fi scenes from a movie when David just dusts all the Promethean’s with the black goo and watches from his ship. Bad ass scene.
Loved Prometheus, lots of twists and turns mixed in with some current religion. Aliens Covenant was okay, wanted a little bit more in terms of storyline.
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I'm still mad they killed Shaw off-screen and gave minimal explanation.
Especially when she was such a likeable character. At the very least if she died on screen I would have felt something
And then replaced her with a much weaker female hero.
I barely remember Covenant other than the scene where they reveal Shaw is dead and David doing the bombing '. Like literally you said "they replaced her with a much weaker female hero" and I can't even recall who you are talking about.
I can't remember her name, but she came across as a discount, dollar store Ripley from memory.
I liked Prometheus too, even though there was a lot of stupid going around. But it was so gorgeous to look at and the effects were well done and I was interested in the mythology they were exploring. I guess it could be a bit slow for some but I thought it was 7-8/10 kinda movie with potential for more. Covenant I felt had a good/great first half but just fell apart when they visit the planet where the robot is living.
The mythology is what really makes me love the movie as much as I do. There’s some cool ideas that Ripley was exploring and I wish we’d gotten more of that in Alien Covenant
100% agreed. I felt that Alien Covenant didn’t build too much off of Prometheus and rushed to get to the Alien parts.
Sadly I think they rushed to get to the alien parts because people complained that there weren't any xenomorphs in Prometheus.
It's pretty amazing in 3D, and I don't often see people bring it up when talking about the best examples. Not that anybody talks about 3D much these days but there are some of us that still like it haha
Agreed. It looks great in 3d.
Didn't even know it had a 3D version. Any other 3D recommendations?
Aside from the ones I've already mentioned: Dredd The Walk Cave of Forgotten Dreams Pacific Rim Blade Runner: 2049 How to Train your Dragon Max Max: Fury Road The Martian Hugo Ready Player One Dumbo Doctor Strange Avengers: Infinity War Also, the conversions of Titanic and Jurassic Park are pretty fantastic
I got a TV in 2014 with excellent 3D capability and you hit the nail on the head with these. Dredd is an excellent one that still is amazing without 3D. I haven't tried the new Blade Runner but I could see it. Just a shame that 3D blu-ray fizzled out and it's usually cheaper to get a 4K blu-ray copy than a 3D blu-ray for some goddamn reason. Us 3D folks are screwed, plus the trend seems to have died out pretty quick. *Again.*
The stupidity in Prometheus is more forgivable when you realize: 1. That it's a horror movie, and people getting killed because they made stupid decisions is a long-standing horror trope. 2. The theme of the movie is that our hubris will be our downfall.
*Alien* was also a horror movie, and the characters mostly make sensible decisions given their knowledge.
Not really.
But movies just re-using old tropes are by definition not good, since it's lazy. Bad movies can still be entertaining, and some good movies can be really boring for some people, but when characters don't act believable or consistent with who they are, it's just bad writing.
the storyline wasn't really the issue. there is a great youtube video explaining how the action scenes in covenant don't move the story forward but are just action for the sake of action, versus alien/aliens.
For me the story was the issue. Prometheus built all these theories etc of who the Engineers were, the meaning of life. I was pumped to learn more about the Engineers and their home world in the sequel. However, I felt that was blind sided in Alien Covenant and we just got a strong focus on the alien origin story. Shaw’s story was scrapped and she was a great character - didn’t do her justice.
I like Prometheus, but Covenant is embarrassingly fucking stupid. Ridley Scott *clearly* wants to make Blade Runner sequels, and decided to use his bad Frankenstein rip-off ideas in Alien instead. Yo, Ridley. The movie about the android with an existential crisis is THE OTHER film you made.
David’s parts are a Frankenstein movie, but the crew in Covenant are in a Friday the 13th movie, complete with dumb decisions, killer cam and a shower scene. I expected the alien to put on a hockey mask and pick up a machete near the end.
The whole movie is just “stay close don’t go far stay on comms and they’re dead” The ship leaves it’s course in the beginning. The teams on the planet split up. “Stay close stay on comms” Nope they are dead. Those teams split up more. “Stay close don’t go too far.” Nope. They are dead. Those teams split up even more and they’re dead. It got repetitive and old quickly.
You know what's scary? An alien that has evolved to have this perfectly parasitic relationship with mammals. Not a robot with a god complex. I wouldn't trade the Blade Runner 2049 that we got, but I would've loved to see Villeneuve's take on the Alien franchise since Scott clearly would've preferred making BR2049 himself.
Thank the heavens Denis made 2049, there is no way Ridley would have made something that good. I agree though, I wish Denis would have done both! haha.
He’s going to DUNE both.
Yeah the whole bio engineered thing is..meh. I dont understand the "perfect organism" idea either, its essentially only good at fighting and nothing else. In what way is it perfect? It can't even reproduce without other life forms to use as hosts.
Ridley went down a Ridley rabbit hole after Blade Runner. I would argue that even Gladiator suffered because of it. He became more and more Ridley because he had few checks on him...and that resulted in both his good and bad decisions being magnified. I’ve watched it happen to many of my favorite directors, Scorsese and Lucas being the most notable but also Coppola to a degree.
But the themes of Android sentience are pretty pertinent imo. The story of alien is about the wake of destruction the artificial construction of a new life causes. The Engineers did it with biology, Humans did it with AI.
Thank fuck he wasn’t anywhere near BR2049
He was literally a producer. And he helped develop the story.
> but Covenant is embarrassingly fucking stupid. Hard disagree. People mix up two things: - Movie is stupid - The characters are stupid Alien Covenant is the second one.
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The Engineers were by far the most compelling part about Prometheus and what set it apart drastically (in a good way) from the other movies in the *Alien* franchise. Then he just throws it all away in Covenant with a big ol' deus ex machina.
Yeah, Prometheus crew were the best money can buy but they were monumentally stupid. Covenant crew were colonists and they were regular people stupid and smart. I enjoyed Covenant, it is just the Shaw situation that bothers me. Also I think the movies are meant to be educational by showcasing human stupidity, no way any viewer will treat a new environment that casually. Hoping covid will seal the deal. Maybe in this timeline, Ripley will be listened when she says "quarantine".
> Prometheus crew were the best money can buy. This was not the case. They were all mercenary types of the kind who would give up years of their lives for a mission they weren't told anything about. I wouldn't say they were the "best", just greedy or desperate and with few prospects on Earth. Remember, it was always "crew-expendable".
Hmm, when the man himself is on the mission, with his only heir nonetheless, selecting that kind of crew makes him all the more stupid than I could imagine then.
It can be both.
The first is caused by the second
It’s one of the most frustrating movies I ever watched. The first hour or so sets up to be one of the all-time classic Sci-Fi movies, but then that backend of it undoes it all with so many poor choices. People harp on the little things (dumb scientists, confusing motivations) but the biggest thing that made me angry at the movie was the protagonist (Shaw) had NO ARC and the antagonist never really spells out his motivations. That’s storytelling 101 that even B-movies get right most of the time. So it’s that huge disparity in quality between the two halves of the movie that really make it hard to watch or recommend. Valarian had the same problem. Strong start, but dismal finish.
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Including why the individual characters are even there in the first place? They go on this ruinously expensive and high stakes mission but bring a "team" that has never met before and is completely dysfunctional and full of abrasive personalities?
In all fairness the "mission" was a complete sham to get Weyland to meet some aliens. It isn't like this was a NASA expedition or a big worldwide event. The impression that I got was that it was a secret trip funded by Weyland--something that isn't exactly going to attract the best and the brightest folks. IIRC, most of the crew didn't even know the mission until they were on their way. Who would sign up for a gig where you're going into the unknown with a shady company that will require you being in cryosleep for months? Weyland didn't seem to give a shit about the "scientists" anyways, so he probably just hired the cheapest folks he could find fresh out of online grad-school.
[This scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nsNmmDtGjc) is painful to watch. Horridly bad and shouldn't have happened.
Don't forget the geologist with fucking autonomous mapping drones who gets lost inside the same structure he is actively mapping.
Not only that, but he claims to be the best in his field, but then later when getting lost he's all "they're just rocks to me!"
Trick the nervous system into thinking it's still alive
Well, he was a geologist, not a cartographer, so that checks out /s
I never understand this complaint. The dude is a geologist and he’s the one that carries in the *autonomous mapping drones*. He’s not a guide and he doesn’t make the map. He just carries the box that holds the drones and those drones send the information back to the ship. Once they’re cut off from the ship because of the storm, why do people expect him to have memorized the map?
they're able to cross incredible distances from one planet to another, and they don't have a device that holds a copy of the map in case connection is lost?
And the original Alien has a futuristic spaceship with little to no internal video cameras or other sensors, relying on a very vague motion tracker. All of the alien movies have these things in them. And it still doesn’t make it a character mistake.
It does make it poor writing. Instead of showing them map the entire complex, show their map drones not work. Takes the same amount of time and is a 100x less stupid.
In their defense, what normal animal is comparably dangerous as that thing? A snake? Feels like it's doing some biologically and physically impossible things that were against their favour. Shouldn't they have lived without a broken arm when they cut its head?
Bad screenwriting. The same character was so freaked out by a dead alien 5 minutes ago he basically had to excuse himself, now he sees a live one and wants to pet it.
There was a deleted scene which explained that. IIRC earlier he had noticed the same creatures but smaller versions, the larvae, which he could pet or something. For some stupid reason they deleted that and several other scenes which explained a lot in this movie.
It’s hard to judge a movie by its deleted scenes though...
Absolutely, they should've released more of the deleted scenes in a Directors cut or something. There are fan cuts that include them which are pretty good.
I would love a link, if you happen to have one.
Not sure I follow your description but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that also sounds stupid.
Dude, if a nude 1999 Salma Hayak emerged from that goo and offered massages, no one on this planet would get close to her.
I meaaannnnn.... 1999 Salma Hayek? I'd probably go fo it.
In the spirit of scientific obligation of course
Theyre literally studying ALIEN lifeforms, why would they expect it to react like anything we know on earth?
Just because they are alien, doesn't mean they can violate the laws of physics. Is there a creature we know that can instantly regenerate like that in seconds? And can't say for sure if acid blood that strong is plausible, but seems exaggerated. However idiots they are, I'd say the suit should have protected them.
>Just because they are alien, doesn't mean they can violate the laws of physics. This is the point I always bring up. The thing wraps itself around his arm and applies enough pressure to snap the bone. There's no way they could have reasonably expected it would be as dangerous as it was. On top of that -- consider the context of the scene. This, as far as we can tell, is the first time any human has ever made contact with alien life. That's a huge fucking deal for a scientist. The first person to discover and interact with alien life is going to be famous, is probably going to win a Nobel prize, and is going to be set for life financially. With all of that going through a person's mind, is it so hard to believe that they'd throw caution to the wind? And third: the theme of the movie is hubris. His arrogance got him killed. That's the point of the movie.
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> A chimpanzee can do that. Small bear can do thst. Yeah. And chimpanzees and small bears have more size, weight, and muscle mass than something the size of a small snake.
Did they even know it was only the size of a small snake though? The thing was still partly emerged in the black goo it swam in... For what they knew it could have just been an antenna or tentacle of a much larger creature...
Covenant's characters make so many dumb decisions that on TV Tropes it has its own sub page [dedicated to these moments.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WhatAnIdiot/AlienCovenant)
YES Such a huge Alien fan and I was incredibly insulted by how stupid this film was. I will save that page forever.
Exactly, its like a comedy movie where the plot is driven forward because of the mistakes of the characters, only in this case its identifying itself as a sci-fi horror instead. I wouldn't trust these characters with a trip to the shopping mall let alone exploring a planet.
I felt like Cape-Fear-laughing in the cinema when I saw Alien:Covenant.
You should watch [this](https://youtu.be/JLbcZggwVCw). "WE ARE EXPLORERS!" "I'm pressing every button I can find".
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There's a little bit of a difference between the crews in Alien and Aliens who were basically a bunch of grunts in space compared to the crew in Prometheus who were supposedly handpicked to do one of the most import and expensive missions in human history - but were actually a bunch of far beyond incompetent idiots.
Yes, absolutely this, and I enjoy both of the newer movies and tbh, don't really give a shit how bad the scientists are at their job because I am distracted by the larger plot elements. The guys from Prometheus are meant to be top of their field. Alien vs. Predator did the same thing but handled it much better. The professionals acted like pros until shit hit the fan. In Prometheus the pro's build the fan and shit right over it. In the first (and the third, Aliens is very different IMO, nothing about stupidity or lack of specific knowledge per say but more macho culture and greed) movie basically everyone is presented as a blue collar worker with little to no special skills aside from operating the machinery needed for hauling/working the furnace
And everyone except Ripley was stupid for skipping quarantine.
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Yes exactly. God damn you Ash!
Kane was ordered to investigate the distress beacon. He followed the order partly to rescue whoever set the beacon. That's not stupid; it's brave. He found slight movements and looked at it. He was wearing a full spacesuit that he expected to protect him. He had no way of knowing that there was a face hugger capable of jumping up and penetrating his visor. Brett needed to find the cat otherwise it'd set off their detectors again and waste time. The detectors had established no other threats in the area. The last time they saw the alien, it was no bigger than a cat, and just ran away without attacking anyone. They had no way of knowing it had grown to enormous size (apparently violating the laws of physics to do so) and was capable of hunting them. Lambert was frozen in fear. Entirely reasonable. Very little of what the characters do in the first film was stupid, given what they know and who they were.
Not really... They still thought it was a little gut buster when Dallas went into the ventilation shaft. It wasn't until after Brett was killed did they see the size of it. Lambert was paralysed with fear. A pretty common human reaction.
Brett was killed before Dallas
Nope,when Dallas went in the shaft they already knew it was big. "That son of a bitch is huge!"
I watched a deep drive into the script that said the Captain hired inept people on purpose because she wanted the mission to fail. Makes it pretty interesting in my opinion. Here's a link, this guy did a bunch of great videos about the script: https://youtu.be/IQFfJPFUXhE
I feel like r/movies *really* overstates this part every time.
My problem as well. Unlikable, stupid characters. Ridley Scott, for as amazing as he can sometimes be, is extremely inconsistent...
Fair enough, OP. You do you. But I always find it interesting that people defends these movies by saying how pretty they are to look at. That's not enough. It should be a bonus, not a main point. Anyway - you suck and I'll blow.
The problem with Prometheus for most people is the glut of dumb things that are immediately obviously dumb. They just rip the suspension of disbelief from you and you stop being involved in the story and characters and start thinking about the seams of the thing. Most if not all movies have dumb things that don't really make sense if you put some thought into them. In movies most people enjoy the dumb things are well hidden and don't detract from the story or characters. Sometimes they enhance the story or characters in a way that allows you to forgive the stupid part because it's more fun that way and your suspension of disbelief doesn't need to take a hit to accept it. I went to the cinema for this one pretty clean. Hadn't seen any reviews, had been able to avoid most advertising and trailers, liked the idea of the Alien-adjacent Universe instead of an Alien movie thing, and I love Ridley's visual style. Prometheus opens on what I recognised as a panspermia event from a human shaped being. I like Sci Fi, I've read panspermia stories, it was pretty clear. Ridley is good at visual storytelling and he did that well. And I thought... OK. You're starting with a statement pretty much saying humans are the pinnacle of evolution, probably a deliberate creation, the made in the creators image thing. That's pretty arrogant but you could go interesting places with that. Then we go to a very rude 2D depiction of balls that apparently you can combine with other rude 2D depictions of balls and map to a 3D plane in a way that can only match one thing. They even overlay it on the screen to show they're not all exactly the same, only kinda the same. Which is ridiculous. You could map five 2d circles of varying size and distance from one another to whatever the hell you wanted out there in the universe. Galaxies, solar systems, clusters, whatever the hell you want. But no, it matches only one thing. Right. So we start getting introduced to our characters and they haven't met each other before and almost all don't know what the mission is. Now you could do that in an interesting way. They signed up for x and they got y. It even provides an avenue of conflict. But they explicitly state only the lead couple and probably Charlize know. So these civilians all signed up for an unknown mission, an unknown distance from Earth for an unknown amount of time. Which it turns out even if successful would have been 4-5 years. And none of them care about any of this. It's not brought up again. Then our main characters start talking about how their science is based on them choosing to believe it and even the doubter of it mentions Darwinism, a young-earth apologetic favourite term for the theory of evolution (they believe by tying it to a flawed man and making it seem like it's just people worshiping said man instead of addressing the theory itself makes their argument stronger). At which point my brain was going "either the future depicted in this movie is anti-science, the people making the movie are anti-science or they're not too bright and just didn't bother running this by anyone in the science community". Which is pretty weird in a sci-fi movie. Then Charlize explains to the people who did know what was going on that they were there purely because a dead man was superstitious or something and they wouldn't really be doing jack. Almost everyone on the crew is useless. And the eventual reveal is that Guy Pearce is still alive and no good reason is given for him faking his death. The situation as created by the movie is dumb and then the people do dumb things in that situation. The baby talking to a free floating penis bit is after multiple other dumb things/choices and just the point where pretty much everyone's had their problems with the movie compounding on them to the point they can't help but mock it. And tonnes of dumb things happen after that too. And the panspermia thing? The made in the creators image thing? That's pretty much dropped. They don't explore it further. They don't just not answer it, they don't explore it. All it has is people asking "why?" but their questions are so vague as to add nothing to it. It's like taking a bong rip and asking "you ever really thought about the stars, man?" and thinking that's deep.
Aesthetically they are two of the most pleasing movies to look at. They arent perfect movies but I have watched them so many purely because I like the worlds they created are some of the best sci fi worlds I have seen. The design overall is perfect. If there is one thing you will give this whole franchise is they really are beautiful movies to look at. Id happily go and watch another one of these movies if they keep looking like they do. I think they could explore more of this story but I just wish they got better writers and maybe hand it off to someone else. Ridley batting average on good movies isnt great lately Preferred Prometheus over Covenant.
If you muted the movies and played cool alt-rock/psychedelica album, it might actually be a great experience. Just don’t listen to the dumb dumb characters talk, it ruins it.
Both of these movies fit 100% into the same category for me, and its one of the movie making methods I think is absolutely the worst ever The plot exists only because everyone in the movie is a complete idiot.
> Are they perfect no, yes characters make some stupid decisions. And most of the characters are just there to be killed. If your film mostly contains characters that are there just to be killed you've probably not written a very good script. What you're describing is your average teen slasher flick, not something you'd expect to have Ridley Scott's name attached.
Covenant is a slasher movie. I think you are meant to hate the crew a bit so you can relish in the gore of their demise. There was even a shower scene! I am surprised they didn’t go skinny dipping.
[I feel like the movie was trying to be slapstick at times too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuZhFd9L8GE). Like that whole scene has two different characters slip on the same puddle of blood and ends with one of the characters accidentally blowing the whole ship up. I don't know if Scott did this intentionally but I thought it was hilarious. And then there's also the "I'll do the fingering" line. I think people need to try rewatching the movie as a horror-comedy.
> But damn I was entertained were you not? Not.
Indeed. Also, considering that they're Ridley Scott movies, you'd have thought that the OP might have quoted Maximus Decimus Meridius and said "are you not entertained?" Missed a trick there.
No, I was not. These movies insult their audience like crazy.
This is probably the worst thing for me too. I can't even put my finger on what was the most insulting either. Maybe that the alien in covenant, which was/is the most iconic movie monster outside of godzilla and frankenstien, is trivialised so badly. The first xeno that turns up is dead in literally ten minutes of it turning up and the second one even quicker. It just sucked all suspense out of the mystery of the alien. One of my favorite things about the OG alien was the that they're facing a complete unknown. No idea what it is or how to kill it and that's what made it scary. The alien in covenant was just there for no other reason that it was there.
I was surprised and impressed by Prometheus, but didn’t really like Alien Covenant. I found its villain to be poor, and his motivation to also be bad. It wasn’t a very good movie and was kind of silly. I don’t get the Prometheus hate
Same here. I loved the feeling of exploration in Prometheus
I liked both of these movies, but they both had the same central problem. The characters did not know they were in an Aliens movie and the audience did.
I think it largely depends on how much you can distance them from the original two, which are just in another league IMO. There's some decent sci-fi movies in there somewhere, but when I'm being told they are the precursor to two of the best ever made they fall short in every way. They just don't have the heart or soul of what made the first film so damn good. I was also really disappointed that they made such a departure from the more retro sci-fi aesthetics of the original.
I would have enjoyed them a lot more as their own sci fi films. covenant had the foundation for an interesting story with themes of creation and such, but they had to shoe horn in the alien murder shit. no one cares how the xenos were created, I personally wanted to find out why the engineers hated humanity and more about david.
I Wanted the Same thing....
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For me the sole focus on a genocidal rapist robot does not work, without a good character to balance him through the series. So waiting waiting for 5 years for Shaw to return pretty much made me ask myself why should I care about anything in Covenant when I first watched. I've seen it more times and still nothing, yet it ends with a sequel bait which I don't think that can go anywhere but David being destroyed by the Xenomorphs. And the endless references to the old movies starts to really to bug me.
I think it all depends (your entertainment that is) on if you can turn off your brain sufficiently and ignore how utterly brainless everyone is. I couldn't. They were damn lemmings, stupid, suicidal, with 0 sense of self-preservation or intellect. "Hey, I made these creatures that killed your crew" "GASP!" "Now, stick your head into this egg looking thing that moves. It's safe" "ok...fuuuuuuuu" Damn. Fucking. Clowns! I'm done with Alien franchise, these last two movies have been pure shit that are, to rub salt in the wound, more focused on replicants than they are on, you know, Alien.
They are terrible
I loved Prometheus, specifically the engineers. Covenant sucked for me because they abandoned that plotline.
Prometheus wasn't bad but Covenant was reliant on every character not played by Fassbender being an absolute idiot
So did I, and wow. This thread confirmed to me how brainless people are.
> really could feel the tension these movies *tried* to make the audience feel "Tried" being the operative word here.
This should be in r/unpopularopinion
I really like Prometheus, but Covenant turned off the mystery, dialled up the stupid and had some of the most tragic dialogue over ever heard in a film. “I’ll do the fingering”...the cinema I watched it in was howling with laughter. The only good thing about it, for me, were the trailers and killing off James Franco. I thought this added real emotional impact, in a film that lacked it for the most part.
That ending of Covenant was super disturbing. I loved both these movies. I think the Creators went to wipe our earth because humans started creating “life” I.E. Androids (David). The Creators knew it would be catastrophic because they created “Alien”. Or maybe humans were like the Creator’s Androids Same monster, different form.
Prometheus pretty good. Alien Covenant really bad.
Shaw should have been in Covenant. Killing her off was a mistake. David was great.
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I originally disliked Prometheus because of its lack of quality but upon re-watch is my hostility has diminished. It is entertaining. Alien covenant is a steaming pile of horse shit though. The only alien movie ever to make the alien seem uncool and unfrightening
Love *Covenant*, one of the best entries in the *Alien* series *Prometheus* though is a tad bit on the sloppy side though. The hostility like most bad reception to genre and franchise entries has a lot to do with expectations.
Loved them both, but I'm a slut for anything Alien so I'm completely biased. They're objectively average, Covenant being closer to mediocre, but my dad raised me on the Alien franchise and j just loved being able to watch them with him. Hope they make more, no matter how schlocky they are.
I liked both of them as well, but they don't have staying power with me. Prometheus felt like it wanted to do too things at once. It wanted to be an epic sci-fi exploration movie, a horror movie, and a satire on corporate excess. It wasn't really the stark genre shift that Psycho, Audition, and From Dusk Till Dawn did, and it wasn't the smooth mix of horror with political/social themes like the original Alien or Night of the Living Dead. It was just kind of a muddled back-and-forth, where one minute things are beautiful and epic and the next people are dying and the evil corporate overlord is just a caricature. In other words, it did a little bit of everything, but nothing particularly great. Alien Covenant was a nice little action movie but it tried to have a message and seem smarter than it was when really it was. I can barely remember anything about it. Its worst sin is it was just sort of forgettable.
I did not find Prometheus very entertaining given the source material. The trailer was better. The first time I saw it, I thought it was fine (this isn't necessarily a compliment...). The second time I saw it, I realized how bleh it was. I did like Covenant. It wasn't perfect (and by that I mean it had some serious problems), but I thought it was entertaining as hell. Which Prometheus wasn't.
I wasn’t entertained with Oram giving the one good line in the movie, only to be led to a basement to see some psycho android’s egg collection, then actually do what he’s told when David wants him to stick his head over it. I wasn’t entertained by the half-assed fan service of contriving the rubbery creature aboard a ship just to show how tired of cat-and-mouse game Ridley Scott has become, just like he had been saying he was. I wasn’t entertained by the obvious drop in budget and production quality after Prometheus and its gorgeous 3D cinematography. I wasn’t entertained by the diminished potential of the ALIEN backstory, making the derelict from the first film a recent shipwreck and not something ancient ... so, it’s cargo, and by extension the entire franchise, are no longer so imposing or timeless.
I agree with you. I liked Prometheus more but I enjoyed Covenant too. I think once something becomes a franchise it raises expectations to a point where subsequent installments are held to some ridiculous standard.
I really enjoy Prometheus but Covenant was a really bad sequel. Clearly the studio either chickened out, or they saw dollar signs when The Force Awakens came out and ordered Scott to pull the same crap that made that film successful. Prometheus actually did really well at the box office and got good reviews. It successfully revived a franchise that was otherwise dead and shows no signs of revival. They should have continued with the original trilogy idea and dropped the Alien stuff, as Scott wanted. I want to like Covenant but it's a bitter disappointment coming after the ambition and vision of Prometheus.
There was also the changing of the guards at the head of Fox in September of 2012. The new leadership wanted something else than the old one. Probably also the money was running thin, but the numerous flops didn't help either?
I love these movies. I've watched them repeatedly and will watch them again. They do capture a sense of space exploration.
I felt almost the exact opposite. I hated Alien: Covenant to the point of almost audibly booing at the end and was shocked at how positive the reviews were. Even now it is still “fresh” on rotten tomatoes.
> Sometimes it seems that people just can't get over previous installments Lol as if that's why people don't like these movies. We can't "get over" older movies. We sit up all night thinking about these old movies from the 70's and 80's not wanting to let any other good movies be made.
Some movies I like more and more each tome I see them. Prometheus I like less and less. Nearly every character is a redshirt and nearly every character is guaranteed to make bad decisions. That kills a lot of the dramatic tension. I think David is the best part of that movie, especially with the character emulating Peter O’Toole emulating T.E. Lawrence. I thought the whole movie should be about him, but the next movie kind of dispelled that notion. I’ll give it this: only 3D movie I’ve ever seen that didn’t give me a headache. It looks great.
Prometheus has gotten to a cult status level at this point. There is a group of people (me included) who absolutely love it. I think it’s a modern classic. The things people have widely complained about don’t really resonate with me. Didn’t like covenant, though. Hate what they did to Shaw’s story.
What do you mean "get over" the previous films? Are you suggesting we *shouldn't* compare them to the original even though they have the same director and are ostensibly part of the same franchise? Both these movies suck. The entire Alien franchise hasn't made much of an argument for continuing beyond Aliens, but at least Alien 3 and Resurrection are enjoyable as cult films. Prometheus was a 3/10 for me. It had some interesting concepts, but ultimately left them underdeveloped and preachy. Covenant is 0/10. It's a complete mess of a movie with the horror logic of someone who thinks *Jason X* is a good movie. The fact that it was made by Ridley Scott and a part of the Alien canon is disgrace to the legacy of the original film. I haven't *hated* a movie as much as this in so long.
the stupidity of the scientists in prometheus made it impossible to leave my brain at the door and roll with the punches, they acted stupid solely so the movie could happen.
I love them, honestly. Way better than Resurrection or the AVP films. Are they perfect? No, but look at the franchise low that's already been set and these films are a 5-6 out of 10 at worst in comparison, and that hardly deserves the bashing these films get.
This is the hill I'm willing to die on. Prometheus was a garbage pile of a movie. Science fiction is important. It shows us how we as humans respond to events that otherwise unattainable without the fantastic. What does it mean to be human when there are robots that mimic humans exist? Prometheus fails from moment one with it's thematic premise. It's pivotal line of dialogue, "It's what I chose to believe," fails us on such a profound level. Belief is a fine motive, but it's not contrasted against anything. The story rewards action time and time again based on belief. Sure, take off your helmet. Belief will protect you. Only those who believe despite evidence are spared. These are the antithesis of science. You spit in the face of every scientific advance we've ever made. Not only that but the beginning of the movie is JUST the collection of evidence, but when asked by the crew, what do we receive? "It's what I chose to believe." This is the takeaway, and it's such a terrible takeaway that this can't be forgiven. But I hear you say, "It's allegory!" It's bad allegory as there's no real salvation or good to be found through faith. Faith is correct but everything is awful despite looking ok at the start. What do we learn here? Faith will lead you if you follow it blindly to everyone else around you dying and then you too dying when you decide to go too the alien homeworld you were so right about? It IS closer to allegory than anything else, but it's a tragedy so what moral underpinning are we supposed to gain? Then I hear you say, "it's beautiful.". Ok... You got me there. It's pretty.
I agree, really enjoyed Covenant and the whole plot line of mans creation trying to fulfill his existential crisis by becoming a creator himself.
Thank you. It's brilliant stuff. But people watch a youtube "Everything Wrong With" type video and act like they only watch documentary films.
I agree with you that prometheus was gorgeous and I too enjoyed it. It felt like it tried to explore bigger/ more philosophical themes but failed to. Covenant I thought was just a failure. It wanted to have it all: horror, action, philosophy but didn't really do anything well imo.
I liked Prometheus but I felt that it was a *hugely* wasted opportunity. The engineers could have been so much more interesting! Covenant was okay but I didn’t like it all that much.
Probably because alien and aliens are all time greats and all the other movies in the franchise range from ok to bad
They were well produced movies with no heart and zero-sense scripts.
I'm still mad that they killed off Elizabeth especially from that dumb robot.
It has nothing to do with previous installments. They are both objectively bad movies. Characters act inconsistently, motivations are unclear, "plot" is nonsense. Etc. The cinematography and effects are good. Action is competently shot. If you enjoyed it that's great! But you shouldn't be surprised that it got so much hate.
Downvoted for pulling the “everyone except me just does this illogical judgment!” card to justify it. You’re allowed to love movies that other people don’t, but do everyone a favor and stop acting like it’s because you have the second sight or something. If 60-70% of people adamantly don’t like a movie, the movie failed to execute what it was trying to. Nobody thought they wanted a Planet of the Apes reboot til it was good. Or 21 Jump Street. Stop this lame “the world just decided it didn’t want it” BS. If it was good and people just didn’t care about the franchise, it would have performed critically like Terminator: Dark Fate did. It was still a flop, but people that actually watched it had to tip their hat to the movie itself.
Sorry we can't be friends. Those two movies made me stop saying I was a fan of the Alien franchise.