*** Alien: Covenant ***

My rankings for the alien films:

Alien - 8.5
Aliens - 8.5
Prometheus - 6.8
Alien Covenant - 6.3
Alien 3 - 6.2
Alien 4 - 6.0

Note: Alien and Aliens are pretty much on par for me, both great films.

Quality drops off a cliff after aliens. A real shame.

Alien 3 could have been so much better. It had a lot of potential, but it is so utterly grim and soulless. That coupled with the awful CGI ruins it for me.
 
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Alien covenant.
I have to start by saying I was one of the people critical of the pos known as prometheus, it was awful at all levels.
This, wasn't.
It wasn't a great show, but clearly lines in the dialogue were added ti at least give the audience the impression the crew had been trained and had some idea what they were doing.
There were very few complete idiot moments, one does stick out when the captain finds david trying to have a chat with the alien, and then follows him to an egg room.
No person in the history of humanity would have followed such a path.

I liked the walter david play off.
I didn't mind the reasoning behind davids insanity.

It is rather strange, as now the entire course of the third film would be plotted in advance, we'll see what they do with it.

I'd give it a 5/10.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Alien covenant.
I have to start by saying I was one of the people critical of the pos known as prometheus, it was awful at all levels.
This, wasn't.
It wasn't a great show, but clearly lines in the dialogue were added ti at least give the audience the impression the crew had been trained and had some idea what they were doing.
There were very few complete idiot moments, one does stick out when the captain finds david trying to have a chat with the alien, and then follows him to an egg room.
No person in the history of humanity would have followed such a path.
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If the captain was the brightest of the lot (colonists) then humans deserved to get wiped out by Xenomorphs.

Maybe Ripley was right "Did IQ's drop whilst I was away"

Although Covenenant was before Ripley, so they were dumb before Ripley, smart in Ripleys time, then they went dumb again
 
So much hate for Alien 3. I disliked it on first viewing, but the second time around really gelled. It felt very claustrophobic, and I noticed some things I hadn't before (like the fact the alien actually came from a dog this time).

That said, it does not stand the test of time in comparison to the others. I still rank it 3rd in line tho. The rest have been abysmal, but mainly in chronological order i.e. convenant has been the worst. Aliens is above alien for me tho, as it was my first watch and it really scared the hell out of me in an era where freddy krueger couldn't.
 
Alien 3 is shockingly boring and a complete lemon. How could the follow up Aliens with a film that makes you completely 'meh' as to what happens to Ripley :/
 
Also a fan of aliens 3

Think it's the only film after aliens that expanded on the xeno without ruining it. Aliens adapt depending on their host and won't kill a host. Good stuff, all down hill for the xenos after that.

Also some good performances and characters. People just dislike it for killing of characters and making it a smaller film rather than upping the ante and making it an big action movie where the aliens make it to earth or something.
 
sneakysnail said:
Also a fan of aliens 3

Think it's the only film after aliens that expanded on the xeno without ruining it. Aliens adapt depending on their host and won't kill a host. Good stuff, all down hill for the xenos after that.

Also some good performances and characters. People just dislike it for killing of characters and making it a smaller film rather than upping the ante and making it an big action movie where the aliens make it to earth or something.
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I really rate 3. The best film in terms of performances, the Weaver/Dance relationship was very well done, not some token romance that it could have been, it actually served to develop both characters.
 
I like 3 for what it does with her arc.

"Was she your daughter?"

"No... she wasn't my daughter. My daughter died a long time ago..."

That exchange encapsulates what 3 is trying to say (and could have said a lot better if it's development wasn't so hellish). I'd argue that 3 is more Ripleys movie then the previous two where.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
There were very few complete idiot moments, one does stick out when the captain finds david trying to have a chat with the alien, and then follows him to an egg room.
No person in the history of humanity would have followed such a path.

I liked the walter david play off.
I didn't mind the reasoning behind davids insanity.

It is rather strange, as now the entire course of the third film would be plotted in advance, we'll see what they do with it.

I'd give it a 5/10.
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Capt was quite well done as a flawed character from the start. He wasnt the captain, he was the stand in and so followed their failed logic and fate similarly. Thats not a bad plot line really, he is immediately wobbly
Walter looked after the entire crew and ship while they slept for years so David then being a duplicate seemingly was not a good reason to follow him but it does explain and again the captain was really not the right stuff to determine a path for the group or even himself in the end.

Aliens is more of a kick ass movie, Alien 3 was an attempt to step back to back to a more sedate developed story but only Alien managed to do both fully which is rare and why its a 9 or 10 out of 10. Its ok to give full marks when you are still talking about it 40 years later as one of the best, that is the correct mark probably. The public buys into hype and popcorn way too much but neither of the last two films was 5 out of 10 imo, 6 or more if you liked the sfx spin.

Pitchblack is one of the few movies with original elements to it, probably better then any of these latest attempts
 
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SixTwoSix said:
Mainly Weaver threatening to walk again and again if certain things weren't changed, she was a nightmare on set by all accounts.
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Sounds like she had too much say, just as Tom cruise had too much say with the recent mummy film. I think actors should just act and not call the shots. :p
 
Watch covenant again tonight, meh. Even the whole talk between David and Walter with Walter being more robot like was taken straight out of TNG where Lore says that he was too human and it unsettled people so Data was created to be more robot like, pretty much the same dialogue in this.

Its funny just how fast the Aliens grow in this movie, the back burster went from being the size of a puppy to the size of a rottweiler when it scurries outside the ship mere moments after being born. I know they're meant to grow fast but that was a bit ridiculous. Whistle and i'll come (spelling of come is left open to interpretation) and the whole "i'll do the fingering" part.

Some things just don't need to be explained, the Xenomorph could have and should have just been an Alien species, instead of shoehorning in this bs story of it being a psycho Androids personal engineering project.

Ironically this film was made in collaboration with Ridley Scotts production company "Scott Free Productions", which is what this franchise needs to get back on track, to be Free of Scott. He's had 3 cracks at Alien 1 good one and 2 very meh ones. Time to let someone else take it on and pretend these 2 turds never happened.

silversurfer said:
Actually that wasnt the engineers, the world was far too basic it seems or maybe thats the films fault. It was an alternate world that knew of the engineers but werent that elite, I think. Its getting a bit old, this ambush the clueless plebs.
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After having watched it again tonight its pretty obvious these were the Engineers, they looked exactly the same, had the same large head sculptures everywhere etc. If these somehow weren't the engineers then it makes no sense as to why they would look identical, (same robes at the engineers at the start of Prometheus) and the planet just happening to have a docking port for the ship, it also had the opening hole in the ground for the ship to land into like Prometheus, which was seen opening just before the black stuff got dumped out.

Also, theres this:

In the blu-ray special features, there is a short film in which David documents what happened in between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. In it he states that he killed off the Engineers as a 'gift' to Elizabeth, in order to cleanse the planet
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Think Scott said in interviews they are engineers and it's their home planet as well. Yes it's really dumb but what do you expect. Hell the next alien film Scott wants to do takes place between Prometheus and Covenant.....says all you need to know. No planning at all, just thrown together movies.
 
sneakysnail said:
People just dislike it for killing of characters and making it a smaller film rather than upping the ante and making it an big action movie where the aliens make it to earth or something.
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And that's a valid reason, it was what everyone was waiting for and then we got a retread of the first Alien film. I don't dislike Alien 3 but it could have gone in so many more interesting directions, what's curious the studio was only entertaining this particular direction, the details and setting where changing but every script was for Riply to crash on a planet with one Alien threat and no weapons. Why make it so much smaller after the success of Aliens? It felt like a backwards step to just about everyone at the time.
 
sneakysnail said:
Think Scott said in interviews they are engineers and it's their home planet as well. Yes it's really dumb but what do you expect. Hell the next alien film Scott wants to do takes place between Prometheus and Covenant.....says all you need to know. No planning at all, just thrown together movies.
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So you'd think at some point David has to find a new engineer ship, or they find him, and he 'dies' and in the process leaves an engineer infected with an alien queen, so she kills him, makes his ship crash, and lays an awful lot of eggs to be found in the original alien.
Or alternatively, the engineers catch David, figure out what he was at, and then decide to send a ship laden with his product earthwards, but it crashes on LV on the way.

It doesn't seem like a great plot either way, no matter how you try to dress it up and fit the threads together.

He still hasn't really explained the black goo, the engineers sacrificing themselves all over the galaxy with the when's the why and the wtfs? Nor I think can he, as stuff on cutting room floor doesn't count, nor can it count when he clearly didn't know what he wanted with Prometheus in the first place.
 
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