Is Alien: Covenant still terrible?

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Is Alien: Covenant still terrible?

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

It was cool and good, in a world of endless remakes and reboots actually doing new things with a franchise is admirable even if it makes the nerds mad because they just want the same familiar product regurgitated into their waiting maws. Compared Prometheus and Covenant to the Terminator sequels or the Predator sequels and its night and day in terms of trying new things versus endlessly chasing the dragon of your first two hits and always coming up short while drowning in more and more Canon and Lore.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 01:39

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 11:10

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

"When God gives you lemons, YOU KILL GOD"

-Alien: Covenant

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 11:45

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Alien fans be like "the first movie was the best because they didn't explain anything and things are cooler and more scary without explanations" and then complain that Prometheus sucked because they never explained what the black goo was.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 12:34

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Sentinel Red posted:

What is there to explain? It�s like demanding to know what the mutagen that makes the Ninja Turtles, or the T/G-virus in Resident Evil is. It�s a lethal, mutagenic substance, the life that is death, the very essence of the Alien, no further explanation necessary.

The same nerds that were mad that the explanation for the magic island on Lost was that it was a magic island are also made that the explanation for the evil mutagen in Prometheus is that it was an evil mutagen. It's why whenever someone accuses something of having bad writing with zero elaboration or explanation you can pretty much always safely discard their opinions because it usually boils down to their own hang-ups and an inability to form them into words.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 13:10

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Xaintrailles posted:

I'm sorry that the film hurt your feelings.

Look, everyone knows the quality of a film is directly related to what comes up when you search for its plot relevant terms in pornhub. pop fly to McGillicutty also thinks Citizen Kane is a stupid movie because he searched for "rosebud" once.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 18:39

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

My favorite cool trick in Prometheus is that for old man Weyland they had a younger actor in old man makeup so your basic film literacy would make you think that his plan was going to work and he would be restored to his youth, so his death is even more surprising in its abruptness. It's up there with adding CGI birds flying out of the giant statues in Lord of the Rings as if they were startled by an actual helicopter doing an aerial shot in terms of tricking people by using their knowledge of filmmaking against them.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2020 23:16

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

End of Shoelace posted:

There is something extremely weird with Prometheus where a lot of people watch it and don't say "this research team does some questionable things; they are not so professional it seems", but instead say "this research team does some questionable things; this is a huge loving plothole and they were written like this by mistake! Ridley Scott is senile!"

The guy in Jurassic Park keeps saying he spared no expense but everything keeps going wrong because he cuts corners, geez what hack frauds made this movie???

# ¿ Sep 1, 2020 20:17

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

One of the weirder goon shibboleths is complaining that a movie is forgettable while continuing to discuss it years later. Avatar is definitely the biggest offender but in this very thread you have people saying that about Prometheus and Covenant and, like, if they were forgettable then people wouldn't still talking about them would they.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2020 20:57

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Biohazard posted:

It's been a bit since I watched it, and I also read the book so maybe I'm able to back fill a bit (though most of the characters are fairly different than the movie), but there's some pretty good screenwriting in general that gives you a lot of information about the characters without banging you over the head about it. Like without having seen the movie in at least a year I can remember that there

1. the main character who is an ex military biologist, and has a history of self destructive behavior like sleeping with married coworkers. her husband disappeared after going on this mission, she goes on the same mission to find out wtf happened after he showed back up and immediately started dying.
2. The director lady, who seems so weird and detached at the beginning that it's off-putting, but turns out to have been diagnosed with terminal cancer and just wants to understand what this thing is before she dies, and pushes the group in to increasingly dangerous situations
3. Woman who lost a child and is basically there because she has nothing to lose, and knows she'll probably die (and boy does she).
4. the EMT.... okay they don't really develop her, she's just there to be the one that loses it. But she was an addict of some sort.
5. tessa thompsons character has a history of mental health problems, and is the one who ultimately sorta figures out what it going on.

Basically every character is written in a way that references back to the central theme that people are self destructive in nature, and that that impulse is born out of a desire to have a solid identity of ones "self".

I'm not going to tell anyone they have to like a movie, there's certainly things you can criticize about Annihilation, but I think the characters are pretty amazingly written, especially when compared to a handful of il-defined scientist who are looking for something, a sassy pilot (who's actually great in prometheus but that's just Idris Elba being Idris Elba), the rich lady in charge of the money, and some other people around who we never learn anything about nor understand what they are doing there other than to be killed horrifically. Like I said, I don't hate either Prometheus or Covenant, but from a character and theme standpoint, they are pretty horribly written.

Yeah, Annihilation has some things I'd criticize it for but not clearly stating each character's motivation and relevance to the central theme is not one of them. If anything I thought it was a little on the nose that they had the head scientist sit down and literally explain to the main character the ways that all the characters were self-destructive but apparently it wasn't enough considering people in this thread completely missed it.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2020 22:03

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

It still kind of rules that before Alex Garland wrote all these nerd favorite sci-fi movies he was a writer at Ninja Theory and wrote the script for games like the Devil May Cry reboot that sent those same nerds into conniptions because they didn't get that it was supposed to be funny.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2020 13:11

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

People who think that the map guy getting lost is a plot hole are gonna have their minds blown out of the back of their skull when they learn that doctors get sick and cops commit crimes.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2020 18:35

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Joe Chill posted:

Thank SMG for making CD a cargo cult of film criticism.

Judging by how dead Blockbuster Video is the people who love to complain about CineD don't actually want to talk about movies, they just want to talk about how other people are talking about movies the wrong way.

Collapsing Farts posted:

I think people just struggle to express why they dislike movies

Like, even if the scientist map guy is a complete loving idiot, how does that ruin the entire movie? That's like 5 minutes of the movie. Obviously there's way more there if you hated the movie.. maybe talk about that instead of going "movie bad because a background character was dumb"

We're like a decade out from every goon thinking that "Avatar is just Dances With Wolves with Smurfs" was a brilliant piece of film criticism and the rot has only gotten deeper since then.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2020 01:00

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Hell Yeah posted:

i would like to just bring this post to the attention of people in the thread who are saying people only complain about plot holes in these movies. i'm not complaining about a plot hole, the movie is just poorly written and edited, which is a good criticism. like for instance there was a scene in prometheus where the extreme geologist guy with a mohawk throws his little flying orb mapmaker things into the air and calls them his pups and then howls. i guess i can understanding writing that in the movie, or even filming it, but leaving it in the final cut of the movie that showed in theaters? that's an insane decision and there are several examples of similar things that are just dumb as gently caress and make you question why you're even watching this movie.
the best evidence that the movie is bad is the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ct4CN4dSnA

# ¿ Sep 3, 2020 01:54

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Remember when Prometheus was announced and everyone online was complaining that Alien didn't need a prequel and that giving explanations for things would cheapen it and that they should just make an original movie instead of trying to rehash a then 30 year-old film and then the movie came out and those same people complained that it didn't explain enough and it should have had more xenomorph in it?

# ¿ Sep 3, 2020 03:16

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Breetai posted:

Is the cd thread still full of people saying that Prometheus and covenant are good and when pressed on the matter as to what's so good about them they cite supplementary media like books and interviews and making ofs and expanded universe stuff and basically anything other than the film's themselves?

No.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2020 10:50

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Randarkman posted:

Was the abortion scene in Prometheus a reshoot thing? Because as I remember it from the movie it kind of happens completely disconnected to everyone else. Noomi Rapace wakes up being operated on by the doctors, breaks free and escapes, uses the abortion machine to remove the alien hybrid thing, then just walks off and bumps into Guy Pearce getting kitted out, accompanied by that doctor/medical tech Shaw broke away from. There's like no acknowledgement alnmsot that it happened aside from the end where the CGI alien kills the CGI engineer man.

It felt weird to me and kidn of encapsulates the movie as a whole to me: It's a visually stunning movie with some great visual gags, but aside from that all of it kind of feels disjointed and hollow and aside from David and Noomi Rapace, all the characters just felt like expendable nobodies who were just there for the body count. And Noomi Rapace's character wasn't very interesting.

That said it kind of gets by on visuals. But it's a mess.

Covenant is also that, but it's also a rushed, cynical retread. It's halfway between being a kind of sequel to Prometheus as well as a retcon (David just kills all the Engineers, there's a line straight up just saying what the black goo is) and a by-the-numbers Alien/Aliens remake that hits all the beats of those movies in the second half, but at 2.5x speed and again disjointed and with wortless characters.

The alien fetus extraction scene was foreshadowing that Weyland was on the ship because the medical pod was calibrated for a man despite being in Charlize Theron's quarters.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2020 13:23

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Wait, you're telling me that nuclear radiation made Godzilla bigger and stronger? Uh, that's literally the opposite of what exposure to to high levels of radiation does to living creatures you buffoon, you utter ignoramus.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2020 17:05

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

nobody cares what you jack off to, but please don't share it with the thread

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 18:52

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

Colonel Cancer posted:

Sexy aliens are an improvement over the loving CD rejects jerking off over their kino

sorry people are talking about a movie in a thread for talking about a movie, I recommend you cry about it

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 19:01

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 11:10

Sleeveless: Dec 25, 2014; by Pragmatica

FoolyCharged posted:

It popped up for a couple of seconds at the end just in case you forgot the franchise you were watching

That wasn't a xenomorph.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2020 22:24

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Is Alien: Covenant still terrible?