baekgom84

Alien: Covenant (and all other Alien-related stuff)

Recommended Posts

Couldn't find any other threads discussing it, so here's one for the upcoming film directed by Ridley Scott. This is the trailer:

 

 

Thoughts? Alien(s) is probably my absolute favourite sci-fi series, and I say that as someone who has never really dipped into the extended universe, or who acknowledges the existence of 3 and 4 (don't even get me started on the Alien vs Predator movies). I thought the trailer was a bit weak to be honest, but then again Prometheus had a fantastic trailer and I found that to be disappointing. I know a lot of people who watched The Martian have said that Ridley Scott is back (I didn't see it) but I feel like for the last 15 years or so, he has pretty consistently failed to show any of the subtlety that made some of his previous films like Alien and Blade Runner so great. But... I WANT TO BELIEVE...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Looks like a weird mix of Alien, Aliens and Prometheus. Mostly seems okay, except it seems to have a

humans mutating into xenomorphs

thing going on, which was crap back when William Gibson did it in his unused Alien 3 script.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ben, is that what that is? I thought so but then I assumed I was just misunderstanding it. If there is precedent then it makes sense, though. Bleh. I found most of Prometheus terrible in terms of writing and acting, and this looks like it's going to continue the super heightened everything. My favorite part of Prometheus was it's focus on the android during the beginning, and I found myself wishing that the whole movie had just been Michael Fassbender on a spaceship trying to become Laurence Olivier. This trailer again made me fascinated as to what Fassbender is up to, then just has a bunch of people screaming while blood splashes. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To me the new trailer has the look of something calculated to appeal to a very general audience, who perhaps need reminding about what the whole franchise is about. It’s odd that they wouldn’t lead with an online-only teaser aimed at devotees of the original, especially with Scott back at the helm, but I think we’ll get something a bit more mysterious in due course.

 

(Do kids know or care about the Alien movies today, I wonder? Is it still a known quantity for anyone under 20? It feels like a long time since anything official happened in that department. There's Alien: Isolation, but that was a fairly niche thing which felt like it happened in spite of the trademark holders, not because of them. I guess Prometheus was relatively recent, but if you weren’t a fan of the originals you could easily miss the connections.) 

 

My expectations for the movie are fairly low. I don’t think Prometheus was a great movie, but I’ve always found a lot to like about it. I don’t know how to explain – it has a certain rich, strange atmosphere. It has some fine imagery. I hope for some of that at least. But given everything that Ridley Scott has done since Alien, I sometimes wonder if he really understands what made the original film so compelling. You could say the same for Blade Runner, especially given his bizarre recent attempts to skewer some of its ambiguities...

 

I actually watched Alien 3 for the first time ever recently. Having heard forever that this was the worst in the series, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it a great deal. I think I might even like it better than Aliens – I mean, I don’t think it’s a 'better movie', but I like Alien 3 better. It’s kind of a mess; but what a weird, interesting mess! And if the Creative Assembly decided to make a follow up to Alien: Isolation and based it on the idea of ‘Doing Alien 3 Properly, With Monks In Space On A Wooden Spaceship’, I'd be very happy with that. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah I pretty much echo your thoughts on Prometheus. It disappointed me in many ways, but I certainly can't say I hated it, and I still find myself thinking about it from time to time. I would describe it as 'deeply flawed' rather than just 'bad'.

 

Did you watch the theatrical cut of Alien 3 or the director's cut? I've heard that the director's cut, while not a great movie, is a big improvement. From what I know of Alien 3, it went through a tortured pre-production that basically set it up for failure. I don't see a path to success when you immediately kill off two popular characters from the previous movie, and then ask us to care about a group of pretty unlikeable prisoners. Also, it just seemed like lazy writing to say, 'oh yeah there were two facehuggers hiding on the ship that they didn't notice'. Like, they fought a fucking alien queen on the ship before they went into cryosleep, you'd think they would have swept every inch of it to make sure there was nothing else hiding in there. But I'm not sure that I like the idea of the wooden ship/planet with space monks either. That sounds like an interesting idea in isolation, but for me it sounds a bit too out-there for a sci-fi series that kind of built its shtick on 'blue-collar space people are confronted with an alien terror beyond their wildest imaginations'.

 

I would absolutely love a sequel to Alien: Isolation though. In hindsight, one of my favourite games of all time, despite its flaws.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think young people do end up knowing about Alien in the same way as Warhammer and what else just generally diffuses through pop culture.

Also I like Alien 3 so sue me.

Having a future Aliens franchise that yo yos between tense personal horror and cheesy Starship Troopers action-horror works for me.

 

As to this one, idk. I think Ridley might've lost his touch but I have to believe for the sake of this.

Maybe it's just Fassbender idly looking on as all the humans die around him and he works at maintaining his perfect hair..

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 hours ago, baekgom84 said:

Did you watch the theatrical cut of Alien 3 or the director's cut? I've heard that the director's cut, while not a great movie, is a big improvement. From what I know of Alien 3, it went through a tortured pre-production that basically set it up for failure. I don't see a path to success when you immediately kill off two popular characters from the previous movie, and then ask us to care about a group of pretty unlikeable prisoners. Also, it just seemed like lazy writing to say, 'oh yeah there were two facehuggers hiding on the ship that they didn't notice'. Like, they fought a fucking alien queen on the ship before they went into cryosleep, you'd think they would have swept every inch of it to make sure there was nothing else hiding in there.

 

Actually I have no idea what version it was  - I watched it on broadcast TV, like an old person - but from looking this up now I think it was the theatrical cut. (I had no idea there were quite so many changes made in the other editions; why does the alien come out of an ox rather than a dog?!) Apparently David Fincher has effectively disowned the movie so it looks like the idea of version control has finally gone out the window with this one. 

 

The death of the crew from Aliens at the start of Alien 3 didn't really bother me - perhaps that's just because I knew it was going to happen already (I'd spoiled myself for most of the key plot points). But I think it's also that Aliens never meant that much to me. I think it's  the first sign of the film trying to put clear blue water between itself and the James Cameron version - like, this is a dark 90s horror film rather than an optimistic 80s action movie, and all your favourite characters are gonna die, and everything is just going to be fairly hopeless. And I like that, as an ambition. I like that pre-millennial, anti-corporate angst of it. It's trying to bring it back to the true existential Conradian vision: a world populated by small-minded jobsworths who are just trying to cover their own backs, while their environment becomes the thing that will ultimately devour them. 

 

But of course none of it is carried off very well. Maybe the best thing would be for us all to imagine the version of Alien 3 that we'd like to see in our heads, and forgo any hope that it'll ever be fixed...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

For me, the issue with the character deaths is that to some degree it takes the events and themes in Aliens and renders them pointless. I mean, what is the point of Aliens really if the relationship that is built between Ripley and Newt is abruptly ended forever at the beginning of the next film? I understand that for many people Aliens is not a sacred cow, and I hear your points about entertaining bleak ambitions (and the Alien movies are nothing if not bleak) but I think that if you are attempting to build a series of movies with meaningful continuity, you can't just take things from previous films and flush them down the toilet.

 

There's still some hope; as far as I know, after Alien: Covenant is done, Neil Blomkamp has plans to direct what would essentially be Alien 5. I think he is planning to completely ignore the events of Alien 3 and Resurrection, and Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn will reprise their roles. Don't know about Newt though (the actress who played her didn't go on to make a career of it, although it wouldn't be at all difficult to just get someone else to play an adult version of her). There's great potential here for a real revival of the franchise, but I have my concerns about Blomkamp has a director. I enjoyed District 9 and didn't see any of his other films which received mostly mixed reviews, but I haven't seen any evidence that he can pull off the right tone for an Alien film. Still, I'd rather he make an attempt than to see nothing at all.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
51 minutes ago, baekgom84 said:

There's still some hope; as far as I know, after Alien: Covenant is done, Neil Blomkamp has plans to direct what would essentially be Alien 5. I think he is planning to completely ignore the events of Alien 3 and Resurrection

 

Reports on this were a little confused, but I think he downgraded to circumnavigating the events of those films rather than retconning them out of existence. I don't think it's yet confirmed as definitely happening anyway. We discussed it here:

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

hey thats me ^

 

This looks generic as hell from what they've shown. Only thing that piques my interest is seeing David, the rest all seems so 'ben there done that' ;), although on second viewing seems as though David is up to his old tricks again. Hopefully this isn't a soft reboot of Alien, linking Prometheus into the continuity whilst hitting all the tried and tested story beats.

 

What if the board meeting for this film was literally "Alien is old and people in there early/mid 20s haven't seen it, lets reboot/remake the film, The Force Awakens style :tup:"

 

I assume that David, with his Alien Knowledge from the last film is tricking Dr Manhattan that the egg is perfectly safe for you to put your face over. Otherwise that'll be the third(?) time someone has stuck their face where they shouldn't in the aliens franchise.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Or even... "People in China haven't seen Alien, lets reboot/remake the film, The Force Awakens style :tup:"

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I would take a Force Awakens-style reboot/remake/homage to Alien at this point, as long as it's just a good film on its own merits. The Alien franchise desperately needs to restore some respectability, after years of disappointments (Alien 3, Prometheus), soulless cash-ins (Alien vs Predator), and a hot mess of a film that should probably be incinerated along with Ripley's tortured clones (Alien Resurrection).

 

Honestly, I think Alien: Isolation is the best thing to happen to the Alien franchise since Aliens came out in 1986. As a game it has its flaws, but as an experience its incredible. If Alien: Covenent turns out to be The Force Awakens of the Alien series, then Alien: Isolation is its Rogue One.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 hours ago, Mington said:

Hopefully this isn't a soft reboot of Alien, linking Prometheus into the continuity whilst hitting all the tried and tested story beats.

 

:bomb:

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm constantly amazed at the people who get mad at Alien 3 because they wanted more Michael Bland and Chirping Little Kid in their Alien movies. A3 is a failure on some pretty major levels, but thank God they didn't try to just do Aliens again.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Patrick R said:

I'm constantly amazed at the people who get mad at Alien 3 because they wanted more Michael Bland and Chirping Little Kid in their Alien movies. A3 is a failure on some pretty major levels, but thank God they didn't try to just do Aliens again.

 

For me it's not so much the fact that they aren't in the movie as the fact that the movie just kills them off instantly and then does very little with that fact in terms of narrative or theme. I mean you can probably take or leave Hicks, but Ripley's relationship with Newt was a big part of her character development in Aliens, and then to make a direct sequel to that movie while basically ignoring that aspect of Ripley's character kind of suggests ignorance on the part of the filmmakers. Personally I would rather have left Ripley out of the movie entirely, her story was finished. The idea that Ripley must always be the protagonist of an Alien film is, I think, a large part of why the later films were so unsuccessful.

 

I agree with you about not just making another Aliens again though. I love Aliens, but if there's one thing Alien 3 does successfully, it's that it steers the franchise away from a timeline of endless space marine-oriented action movies of rapidly diminishing quality. Not that the franchise hasn't already suffered from a massive dip in quality, but at least it's an interesting dip in quality.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 

Re. Hicks' and Newt's deaths, yeah, it feels purely like a sequel sweeping old characters under the rug and it does fuck with the whole previous movie. I understand why they did it, but I'd rather they'd allowed the characters to be auto-jettisoned into space or something so there was a hope they got found and had a chance at a good life.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I just think the one thing Alien 3 gets really really right is it's tone, and that opening (and later, Newt's autopsy) is a big part of that. I think Alien 3 doesn't work because the side characters are all underdeveloped and the action scenes get incoherent when you don't understand the geography of the environment and all the bald-headed prisoners look identical and they never started with a full version of the script. But the only reason people call it an interesting failure is, I think, that tone. And you don't get that doom and gloom hopelessness from Ripley if Hicks and Newt are auto-jetissoned into space and there's a hope they got found and had a chance at a good life.

 

That said, I'm not really a big fan of Aliens (I find Cameron's badass grunt characterizations to be mostly intolerable, and the budget really isn't there for the scope he's going for) and I find Michael Biehn to be a particularly boring actor, so there's not a lot of love lost from me when they killed them off. Especially when the way they get killed off is in this spectacular series of impressionistic edits:

 

 

It works better with the hard cuts to black of the titles, but that image of the facehugger unfurling it's legs will be stuck in my nightmares forever. This is honestly one of the more memorable sequences in the entire series for me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Very much agree with all @Patrick R said about tone. It's a personal preference but I think qualities like 'tone' and 'atmosphere' (the mise-en-scene?) might be more important for me than 'characters' for movies in general. Not that anyone has to choose one or the other, of course...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree that Alien 3 does a lot right with regards to tone, but I think it overdoes the bleakness. The combination of Newt's death, the violent prisoners, the presence of the alien queen inside Ripley... it's a bit too much for me. It's probably not fair to say that 'Alien films should be about x and not be about y' because only two films existed before this one and they were fairly different from one another... but I do think that in both previous films, there was an element of hope that isn't really present here. Much of the tension of those films came from the idea that we were rooting for the characters to survive against an extremely lethal and hostile threat, which they just might manage to do if they could hold out long enough to escape or to be rescued.

 

But Alien 3 is so torturous that I want Ripley to be put out her misery, which is a problem from the film's perspective because she is just about the only sympathetic character. It baffles me that they decided to have her impregnated (is that the right word?) with an alien queen, since not only do we now know the alien won't hurt her, but she wants to take her own life as well. That pretty much sucks all of the tension out of the film.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Alien 3 is the Halloween III: Season of the Witch of Alien films.

 

There, I said it, it was terrible to do it. But I had to.

 

Am I the only one that likes Hicks then? For me, he was the 'awshucks' male ally in Ripley's struggle to deal with the patriarchy. He is taciturn and likable in the ways that Clint Eastwood's silent protagonists rarely are.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now