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Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

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Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Old 05-14-17, 11:43 AM
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Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

**SPOILERS WITHIN**

Please continue pre-release discussion here.

Movie:
"Alien: Covenant" (Starring: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demiαn Bichir)

Release Date:
5/19/17

Rating:
R (for sci-fi violence, bloody images, language and some sexuality/nudity throughout.)

Running Time:
122m. (2h. 02m.)

Budget:
$111 million (estimated)

IMDb Synopsis:
Spoiler:
The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world. When they uncover a threat beyond their imagination, they must attempt a harrowing escape.


IMDb Info and Rating:
7.1 (12,767 votes as of 5/14/17)

Rotten Tomatoes:
Fresh:84 Rotten:28 (75% as of 5/14/17)

Metacritic:
64 metascore ('Generally favorable reviews' as of 5/14/17)

Trailer:


Poster Art:
Old 05-14-17, 02:13 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Votes will probably be all over the place.
Old 05-18-17, 05:00 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Prometheus 2) (D: Scott) S: Fassbender

I was thinking of going tonight but we are under a tornado watch for the next 5 hours.
Old 05-18-17, 05:38 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Prometheus 2) (D: Scott) S: Fassbender

Catching a morning show tomorrow, looking forward to it.
Old 05-18-17, 07:20 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Prometheus 2) (D: Scott) S: Fassbender

4 star review.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/alien-covenant-2017

Spoiler:
Ridley Scott’s dazzling “Alien: Covenant” is set ten years after the events of “Prometheus” and is a direct sequel to it, bridging the gap between that film and the original “Alien.” The story kicks off with an accident on board the Covenant, a colony ship headed for a paradise planet. The chosen captain, Jacob Branson (played in a one-scene flashback, puzzlingly, by James Franco) dies in hypersleep, leaving behind a grieving wife (terraforming expert Daniels, played by Katherine Waterston), a weak second-in-command named Oram (Billy Crudup) who’s now unfortunately seated in the captain’s chair, and 2000 still-sleeping colonists and frozen embryos. Fassbender, who played the android David in “Prometheus,” is on board the Covenant playing Walter, a next generation version of the character whose emotions and personality have been dialed back a bit. The awakened crewmembers are shaken, demoralized and still far from their destination, so when they hear a distress signal coming from a nearby planet that seems habitable, they decide to take a leap of faith and head there rather than go back into hypersleep and risk death again. And they all live happily ever after in a land of rainbows and unicorns. Just kidding! They end up trapped on a rainy planet filled with creatures that want to eat or impregnate them.
They’re momentarily rescued by David (Fassbender again), who settled there after the bloody climax of the first film and now has long hair, a Jedi robe with hood, a sullen and a grandiose demeanor, and lives in a spectacular ruin of an old city that was originally colonized by the Engineers from “Prometheus.” Daniels, who is determined to realize her late husband’s dream of building a cabin by the edge of a lake, went along with Oram’s plan to detour to this new world, and now feels trapped and hopeless. So do the other colonists, several of whom ingested spores that will gestate into xenomorphs.
If this sounds a bit like a variation on the plot of every “Alien” film ever, that’s because it is. The series’ repetitive structure is a feature, not a bug, as in the James Bond, "Star Wars" and Marvel franchises. If you don’t like them, you can complain that they recycle the same images and situations. But if you like them, you can compare them to sonatas or sonnets or three-chord pop songs, where part of the fun lies in seeing what variations the artists can bring while satisfying a rigid structure. The ritualized beats of the “Alien” movies offer many such scenarios, including initial landing on the dark planet, the first alien attack, the realization that a character that you thought was part of the team is actually treacherous, the escape from the complex that’s about to be wiped out, and the second ending that happens when you thought the story was over.
This one has a lot of nifty variations, most revolving around Fassbender’s dual performance. The film starts with a flashback prologue showing the android David in conversation with his creator, technology magnate Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, who acted the role in old age makeup in “Prometheus”). Alert viewers will realize that the movie wouldn’t start with a flashback to David’s creation unless it intended to bring him back in later. His entrance is delayed (perhaps too long, though your mileage will vary), but once he’s in the story, saving the wrecked colonists from an unrelenting, expertly choreographed attack by xenomorphs in a field of tall grass, Fassbender is given numerous chances to act against himself, via digital compositing that’s so subtle that we forget we’re seeing effects. And it’s in these scenes, thoughtfully written by John Logan and Dante Harper and gracefully acted by Fassbender, that we realize that this movie is not merely a bridge between the “Alien” films and “Prometheus,” but between the “Alien” films and “Blade Runner” as well.
Old 05-18-17, 07:28 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Prometheus 2) (D: Scott) S: Fassbender

Never expected MZS to give it 4 stars. Damn.

I'm seeing it in about 3 hours! Yay me!
Old 05-18-17, 09:40 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

bump
Old 05-19-17, 12:10 AM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

A very worthy sequel to Prometheus.

Far more a horror movie. This is probably the bloodiest film in the entire Alien franchise.

Perhaps humanity (or any sentient species) is only fallible to itself, not external forces, no matter how hostile.
Old 05-19-17, 05:43 AM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Fassbender was great as usual. But I was bored. It is essentially an expanded remake of Prometheus.
Old 05-19-17, 03:24 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Oof. Not a fan. I liked Prometheus up until some of the dumb stuff at the end, especially visually, but I thought this was basically just a rehash of stuff we've already seen in Prometheus and Alien. None of the characters are particularly endearing, and I really hate that both Prometheus and Covenant have focused on David so much - he's interesting, but I just don't need him to be the main character/villain moving the plot and universe forward in these movies.

Also, the end was so painfully obvious I was praying they didn't go that route.

Spoiler:
Is there anyone who didn't see the Walter/David switch coming as soon as it happened? Blah.

And maybe it's not running in a straight line bad, but I could do without Faris shooting randomly and blowing up an entire ship, or Oram looking in to the egg just because David says it's fine.

And yeah, everyone's concerns about why Shaw would go along with David are just amplified by how this plays out. Just dumb.


I guess it's just me, but even the Alien "kills" weren't particularly unique or original.
Old 05-19-17, 03:38 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Totally agree with you about the spoilered part.
Otherwise, I enjoyed it. It's far from perfect, and continues to suffer from the "smart people doing really dumb things" trope carried over from Prometheus, but I was entertained throughout. I liked the David/Walter interactions. I thought the first two kills were awesome; tons of tension in that first one in particular. The rest of the kills never really did much for me after that, though.
I thought David's
Spoiler:
Neomorph, that he was 'talking' to, before the new captain kills it

was kind of lame.
Old 05-19-17, 04:14 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Yeah, this is a tough one. I really wanted to like it a whole lot more than I did. Smart people doing dumb shit. It just suffered from a lot of the same problems as Prometheus, and it wasn't as good looking to boot. The story was super predictable and so, so many of the cool visuals were spoiled in trailers or clips. I stopped watching anything a couple months ago, I think, and still feel like I saw too much.
Old 05-19-17, 04:28 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Prometheus 2) (D: Scott) S: Fassbender

Originally Posted by TomOpus
I was thinking of going tonight but we are under a tornado watch for the next 5 hours.
It's not easy choosing between two large scale disasters.
Old 05-19-17, 04:43 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Okay, that was funny.
Old 05-19-17, 06:23 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

It was seriously impossible not to see the end of this coming a mile away if I tried. I mean, really?

Wonder who designed the spindly-legged new xenomorph? Was it done with mo-cap? Wonder if there were any practical effects?

Fassbender was a knockout as usual in the double roles, and a definite improvement over Prometheus, but still too many people acting like dumb slasher movie victims. Frankly, whatever was wrong with Prometheus, it had a lot more interesting visuals than this. It sort of feels like a bigger-budgeted take on the original Alien.
Old 05-19-17, 06:55 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Didn't care for it. Alien is probably a top 5 film for me, and I liked Prometheus, but this just felt like a weird amalgamation of the two that did neither justice. I did enjoy the first half, which was more Prometheus, but once they meet up with David it begins to really feel like a bad remake of Alien. It felt unnecessary, and it strangely feels like we've moved farther away narratively from Alien than where we were at at the end of Prometheus.
Old 05-19-17, 08:21 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

I liked some of the audio nods to Alien. And there was that thingy that dips it's nose into the cup of water.
Old 05-19-17, 08:28 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

I think they tried to hard on the twist at the end and for once I would love to see smart people do smart shit instead of dumb stupid shit. Its like the writer doesn't trust us to be smart.

I enjoyed it for being an alien tie in. Though I didn't like and won't be adding it to my dvd collection.
Old 05-19-17, 08:58 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

I noticed a line from Blade Runner: "That's the spirit!"
Old 05-19-17, 09:00 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Originally Posted by csant
I think they tried to hard on the twist at the end and for once I would love to see smart people do smart shit instead of dumb stupid shit.
You mean like "I'll be back. I'm going to go clean up" ?
Old 05-19-17, 09:09 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Disappointing. It was as dull as Prometheus. I think the low point came when we had to endure David teaching Walter how to play a flute for what seemed like an eternity. I probably saw too many trailers/commercials, so there were zero surprises for me (including the ending). I suppose this means we'll get the same bad guy in the next installment. Enough already.
Old 05-19-17, 09:35 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

They still haven't explained how Yutani merged with Weyland? Some thought Prometheus 2 would get to that.

There's only the AvP Requem ending with Ms. Yutani.
Old 05-19-17, 10:12 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

If they wanted to go with that horribly telegraphed ending I wish they at least would have had Daniels not notice - have her go to sleep and then have David bring up the embryo's...the way it happens now is supposed to be a 'gotcha' ending, which makes her look stupid and makes me think the filmmakers think the audience is stupid. Seriously, that one small tweak would have been 10x better.

My main issues all stem from idiot plot and dull characters - should have had a few more bonding moments and played up the couple aspect a bit more. The FX are cool but still pale in comparison to the practical stuff from previous movies - the Xenomorphs have no weight to them - in Aliens they were lumbering (especially the Queen). I also didn't know why they changed the Chestburster from being it's own creature before it turns into a xeno - where as here it is just a mini-xeno from the start - we've had many movies with a consistent look to the chestburster, why change now?

Yes, some nitpicking but the whole thing never gels and we get a lot of 'been there done that' kind of action, strange/forced story beats and the oddest timing for a shower sex scene ever. Hugely disappointing for me. 2.5/5
Old 05-19-17, 10:17 PM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

I just got back from seeing it.

I'd probably give it a B or B- from a technical standpoint. Very well made, directed and the Alien design looked good. Some really gruesome kills.

But yeah, the crew of the Convenent was a bunch of mostly morons. They really lacked some common sense. I know it's a trap that a lot of movie writers fall into. If you don't write characters who do dumb actions, it will fail to create suspense/tension. I could not believe how dumb they made Crudup's captain character, especially in that scene with David and all the Alien pods.

Funny how the last "smart" and badass character was Ellen Ripley 31 years ago in Aliens.

The twist with David/Walter you could see coming from half a mile away.
Old 05-20-17, 12:06 AM
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Re: Alien: Covenant (Scott, 2017) — The Spoiler Filled Reviews Thread

Just got done with it. Overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was better than Prometheus on first viewing which I also liked. You could spot the twist a mile away I agree. For a moment when Daniels was stitching him up I thought she knew. I would have liked to have seen her realization that It was actually David and a final confrontation between her and Tennessee taking him on. Most of the characters acted stupidly I agree but these are horror films so it kind of goes with the territory. Just because they're scientists doesn't mean they've got common sense is how I view it. I still liked the film though.

Last edited by Mike86; 05-20-17 at 12:11 AM.

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