This is a discussion thread about ALIEN: COVENANT. Don’t read if you haven’t see the movie as it will contain major spoilers not blacked out.
I have some questions that need insight from FSM members.
One. A few FSM members said that the CGI aliens are not that scary. I agree. I read somewhere that the very first alien we saw in ALIEN (1979) was a person in a suit. It was the scariest alien for me, but I didn’t know it was a person. True? (Obviously in ALIENS, we had CGI.)
Two. Noomi Rapace is listed in IMDB as staring (uncredited) in this this movie. In one of the trailers, I saw her lying on a bed while David tended to her. I’ve seen the movie twice now, and not ONCE does she appear. I only saw pictures of her and her dried husk. Were her live scenes also cut from your viewing?
Three. I was always confused about David’s motivations in PROMETHEUS and in ALIEN: COVENANT, but seeing it the second time cleared up a few things. As Walter said, “You were too human and idiosyncratic.” David complained about not being able to create, so he becomes a creator of a perfect killing species to kill off humanity. A. Why did he kill of the engineers? Seems like since they were the creators of us, why not learn from them? B. Supposedly this is the second to last prequel to ALIEN. If he takes the two alien forms and infects the crew of the Covenant, he’d have a lot of aliens. In ALIEN, there were eggs. How will he get eggs? He had some which he used to infect Captain Oram which created an alien, but I can’t figure out how he ever got eggs or how he’ll get eggs that eventually lead to infecting Kane on the Nostromo. Seems like he also has to experiment to get a Queen alien.
Four. Finally, when the Nostromo in ALIEN follows the signal to the planet, they find a ship with the dead Spacey Jockey whose chest has burst. There is speculation that the Jockey was David. Does that make sense to you?
I know some of you didn’t like the movie. That’s fine. I got frustrated with the idiocy of some of the crew members. (“I think I’ll wander off and freshen up.” Duh.) Also, the Walter-David switch was not a surprise, but overall I liked it and want to see Scott do one more and answer all questions raised in the prequels.
In the meantime, I’ll let you enlighten my confused mind.
No surprise a poorly plotted prequel would foster a poorly plotted sequel (there is no "there" there), but that's probably not the explanation you want.
I read somewhere that the very first alien we saw in ALIEN (1979) was a person in a suit. It was the scariest alien for me, but I didn’t know it was a person. True? (Obviously in ALIENS, we had CGI.)
A: The bipedal adult in "Alien" (1979), known by Ridley Scott as the 'big chap,' was mostly played by Bolaji Badejo, a 6'10" young Nigerian man who casting director Peter Archer discovered in a pub. H.R. Giger designed and handmade the 'big chap' suits, which featured latex castings, fiberglass, bones and some automotive parts. Carlo Rambaldi, later creator of the puppet in E.T., mechanized the big chap head for closeups. Stuntman Eddie Powell wore a lighter version of the suit for scenes of the big chap hanging from chains in Brett's death and the Narcissus airlock scenes. But most of the beautiful, skinny, balletic alien is Bolaji. There's a touching account of Badejo's life here:
"Aliens" (1986) predated modern CGI, so all those skittering 'xenomorph' warriors are either stunt performers in latex and spandex suits, or full-scale puppets, created by Stan Winston's creature crew. The editing, lighting and direction make them seem deadly and numerous. Even the Queen was built full-scale, although some of her climactic scenes and the ovipositor egg chamber involved 1/3-scale miniatures built by the Skotak Brothers. There were no digital aliens in "Aliens".
Two. Noomi Rapace is listed in IMDB as staring (uncredited) in this this movie. In one of the trailers, I saw her lying on a bed while David tended to her. I’ve seen the movie twice now, and not ONCE does she appear. I only saw pictures of her and her dried husk. Were her live scenes also cut from your viewing?
A: Shaw only appeared in "Covenant" in holographic form and as a flayed effigy, seen in David's lab, the latter created as a combination of makeup effects and visual effects. Shortly before the theatrical release, Fox revealed a teaser prologue that provided scenes of Shaw and David's journey, which I'm guessing you referred to above: https://youtu.be/XeMVrnYNwus
Three. I was always confused about David’s motivations in PROMETHEUS and in ALIEN...
No comment!
Finally, when the Nostromo in ALIEN follows the signal to the planet, they find a ship with the dead Spacey Jockey whose chest has burst. There is speculation that the Jockey was David. Does that make sense to you?
This is a discussion thread about ALIEN: COVENANT. Don’t read if you haven’t see the movie as it will contain major spoilers not blacked out.
I have some questions that need insight from FSM members.
Well, I just posted this on Facebook, which I wrote early this morning.
Greg
Okay, I think I waited long enough before talking about Alien: Covenant. Boy what a disappointment, only marginally better than Prometheus, which I really disliked. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
Alien: Covenant is essentially a reworked update of the original Alien, but tied into the previous Scott film, Prometheus. A group of colonists on their way to a new home are diverted from their course to answer a strange beacon on an unknown planet. What they find is David, (Michael Fassbender) the android remnant of the Prometheus mission, and a new breed of Xenomorph. Things follow the usual course as the Xenomorphs begin to spawn and start killing off the colonists. It's just business as usual. And like Prometheus, just as flawed.
It's abundantly clear Ridley Scott is only as good as his scripts. I'm a huge supporter of his director's cut of The Counselor, which had a script by Cormac McCarthy. The script for Alien: Covenant (written by John Logan and Dante Harper) gives us a lot of pretentious talk about God and faith, but doesn't do much with it. Only an initial scene at the beginning of the film with Fassbender and Guy Pierce is interesting. I had mentioned in another post, The Counselor is a bleak film, but artfully bleak. Alien: Covenant is just nihilistic.
The production design and FX are good, but it's all meaningless if you don't give a damn about the characters. The original 1979 Alien used broad strokes, but gave us enough information on each character (along with great casting) so that you had a rooting interest in what happens to them. There are some good actors in Alien: Covenant, Katherine Waterston, (Sam's daughter) Billy Crudup, Demian Bechir, Danny McBride, and James Franco, (in a WTF role) but you just don't care what happens to them. It also doesn't help that your characters act so stupidly ( and illogically) that your film is reduced to little more than a Friday The 13th stalk-and-slash. The one compelling actor in the film, is Michael Fassbender as David, also playing a later model android named Walter. There is a sequence where Fassbender is onscreen playing both characters and the interaction between the two is fascinating.
The film reveals to us the final fate of Elizabeth Shaw, a character I thought was conceptually weak in Prometheus, but is revealed in this new film to be profoundly stupid for rebuilding David (you fill in the blanks, but that's the gist). The original Alien gave us a great character in Ellen Ripley; a take charge, no-nonsense warrior, and (soon-to-be) feminist icon. Ripley was scared, but rose to the occasion to battle the dragons. Shaw spends a lot of time running around in Prometheus whimpering and not taking control of the situation. I was waiting for a "Ripley moment," which never came.
Katherine Waterston does a bit better than Shaw, but comes of as a very pale version of Ripley, lacking Sigourney Weaver's dynamic presence. I guess it bugs me a bit that Scott created cinematic icons like Ripley, along with Thelma and Louise, and seems to have drifted away from how to do this. Imagery in Alien: Covenant of a woman's severed head floating in a basin, that Scott lingered on no less than three times in the film, also made me wonder about this?
Extremely annoying how Ridley retconned the Xenomorph life cycle. I swear, when we first see the emergence and quick growth of the Alien Warrior, I was thinking of the Instant Martians from the Looney Toon short, Hare-way To The Stars.
I think the thing I most disliked is the important point that Scott has effectively destroyed any mystery the Xenomorphs once held by trying to explain it all. He did this in Prometheus with the engineers, and continues this downward spiral in Covenant by setting David up as the creator of the Xenomorph eggs and face huggers. He also muddles the timeline before the original Alien; If David created his Xenomorphs on the Engineers homeward, how did the Derelict ship filled with Alien eggs get on LV-426? Did David find another Engineer (Juggernaut) ship? I'm open to other people's theories.
The film could have also used more humor. The one line in the film that made me laugh was the use of Roy Batty's line from Blade Runner, "That's the spirit!"
I like Sir Ridley as a filmmaker, and quite a number of his films are favorites, but I don't hold much hope that his next Alien film will be an improvement, if it gets made. Alien: Covenant is not doing well at the box office, so the point may be moot. It just makes me sad that the franchise will likely be killed off by the guy who started it. At this point I think I'd rather watch an old Alien knock-off, like Galaxy Of Terror, or Forbidden World, than another Alien sequel. Also very glad Scott is not directing Blade Runner 2.
It just makes me sad that the franchise will likely be killed off by the guy who started it. At this point I think I'd rather watch an old Alien knock-off, like Galaxy Of Terror, or Forbidden World, than another Alien sequel. Also very glad Scott is not directing Blade Runner 2.
Greg Espinoza
Again, no surprise if you listened to his commentary on the original ALIEN (ie "I did this scene because it looked neat"). Storytelling requires more than pretty pictures.
Haven't seen the film, but there's thousands of hours of crap on the net with flame fanning you wouldn't believe unless you'd seen it with your own eyes.
There is an undercurrent connecting the Alien (Prometheus) and Blade Runner Universe which has been vented, and unashamedly so.
This seems to centre on a kind of recursive pathway intelligent life takes from primeval soup to higher forms of evolution. It's as simple as that. Life comes from . . . what exactly?
Planets give rise to organic forms, initially. Once that life has been expressed, it doesn't matter where it appears in the Universe because it is all equivalent. The Universe is isotropic. The planetary environment, as it exists via the Laws Of Nature, is the creator. That is where the true intelligence stems from. You could call it I(0) because it is at the highest level of abstraction. When intelligent life appears on the surface of a planet, as handed down by the forces of evolution, it becomes represented as I(1). When I(1) builds what it refers to as artificial intelligence, that is still I(1). The truth is, there is no distinguishing between any expressions of I(1). You could say I(1) < I(0). Expressed as a tree, I(0) is the root node and I(1) exists as a leaf node on the next level down. There are no other levels. That, in a nutshell seems to be how Ridley Scott has set up his game. The juggling act consists of two balls. Basically, any molecular 'life' made from chemical Meccano sets is artificial, no matter what made what. Inscrutable planets are where the seat of true intelligence lies. We have no idea how I(0) works. We don't even know how I(1) works! We suspect that it can never be I(0).
Yes, dogplant, the youtube you listed is the one I saw with a very living Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. I thought it would be in ALIEN: COVENANT, but it wasn’t. I guess it was a prelude.
Thanks for you explanation about the man in the suit in ALIEN. Good information, and it was interesting to read Bolaji’s story. I’m shocked that the aliens in ALIENS were not digitized. We had a lot of CGI movies by then, so I assumed those were CGI aliens.
I just found a youtube listed below where Ridley Scott talks about why David killed the engineers. It sort of makes sense.
Greg, you have some interesting insights. Obviously, we differ some. I’d have to have my gums scraped and fingernails pulled out before I watched The Counselor again. But I should know better than to never say never.
Greg said: “He also muddles the timeline before the original Alien; If David created his Xenomorphs on the Engineers homeward, how did the Derelict ship filled with Alien eggs get on LV246? Did David find another Engineer ship? I'm open to other people's theories.”
Ditto to the above statement. That should have been one of my questions. The alien ship in ALIEN was obviously not the Covenant, so how did David make eggs, get eggs to an Engineer’s ship and get them to L V246.?
I guess, Greg, that I will have to DRAG you to see the next prequel to find out the answer to the question that you just posited. You raised the questions, so you’ll have to find out the answers. If it terrifies you to see another prequel, I’ll take you to some beer and wine-flowing PUB first.
Grecchus, can’t say I followed your statements very well. Are you some kind of a scientist, maybe an astrophysicist? Is Last Child your assistant?
I've kinda retreated from doing a lot of A:C defense, because the negative criticism from the fan community (the film has been quite well received among critics, thankfully!) has been 100% exactly what I predicted it would be; just as with PROMETHEUS, a stream of narrative deconstructing. A few of them have had a point, most of them don't. But in either case, it has required a defense that only deals with plotting, and to be honest, that's not my favourite activity in terms of film criticism for a film like this, which is so RIPE with other values -- audiovisual symbolism and intertextuality for example. That accounts for at least 75% of the film's value, IMO.
But since you're more levelheaded than most, Joan (and -- like me -- you actually like the film!), I'd like to give your remarks a shot!
One. A few FSM members said that the CGI aliens are not that scary. I agree. I read somewhere that the very first alien we saw in ALIEN (1979) was a person in a suit. It was the scariest alien for me, but I didn’t know it was a person. True? (Obviously in ALIENS, we had CGI.)
Although the xenos are still scary to me (they still haunt me in my nightmares!), I agree that they've lost some of their intial fright. Partly because we've seen them so many times, partly because CGI still quite can't capture the presence of wellmade, mechanical effects (the sort of slower-moving, more "operatic" movements). ALIENS also employed mechanical effects, as previously noted.
Two. Noomi Rapace is listed in IMDB as staring (uncredited) in this this movie. In one of the trailers, I saw her lying on a bed while David tended to her. I’ve seen the movie twice now, and not ONCE does she appear. I only saw pictures of her and her dried husk. Were her live scenes also cut from your viewing?
As others have noted, she does not appear in the film proper, no (beyond the corpse).
Three. I was always confused about David’s motivations in PROMETHEUS and in ALIEN: COVENANT, but seeing it the second time cleared up a few things. As Walter said, “You were too human and idiosyncratic.” David complained about not being able to create, so he becomes a creator of a perfect killing species to kill off humanity. A. Why did he kill of the engineers? Seems like since they were the creators of us, why not learn from them? B. Supposedly this is the second to last prequel to ALIEN. If he takes the two alien forms and infects the crew of the Covenant, he’d have a lot of aliens. In ALIEN, there were eggs. How will he get eggs? He had some which he used to infect Captain Oram which created an alien, but I can’t figure out how he ever got eggs or how he’ll get eggs that eventually lead to infecting Kane on the Nostromo. Seems like he also has to experiment to get a Queen alien.
I was under the impression that the eggs in A:C were created through science, like many of the other things in David's lab. They were not collected from anywhere. He's clearly a skilled scientist who can breed all sorts of things from his available source material. I just hope the entire mythos of eggs and xenos isn't exclusively tied to David's tinkerings. Hopefully, the next film will clear up some of that.
Understanding David's motivations also requires understanding some of the intertextuality that Scott injects into these films -- from Wagner's "Das Rheingold" to the Prometheus myth to "Ozymandias" to basic etymology. The latter, for example: 'David' means "The Beloved" in its original meaning, and it connotes the android's conflicting state between 'love' and 'duty' (which is explored using Walter as a 'mirror' -- another aspect of 'creation' and 'self-awareness' that is common in A.I.-themed movies).
This was already established in PROMETHEUS. In A.C., we also get a concrete David, as he takes his name from Michelangelo's statue of the biblical king. There are many parallells between them. Like the biblical David, our David is also confronted with a Goliath (whether humans, Engineers, xenos or Walter). Like the biblical David, our David is also a renaissance man -- a warrior, poet and artist. A creator. Like the biblical David, who brough the Pact of the Covenant into Jerusalem, so too does our David use the ship Covenant for his purposes.
In many ways, these films are not only about self-awareness and creation, they are also very much about hubris. As in the Prometheus myth or Ozymandias (the Greek name for Ramesses II) or the gods in Valhalla of Wagner's piece, both humans and human-created beings (or being-created humans) will at some point challenge the forces which have created them, which in turn will lead to their self-destruction.
Fortunately, it is not a requirement to catch these references to get a good film experience. The film also works remarkably well in its sort of 'hybrid' narrative structure, much like JURASSIC PARK -- between a sense of "being there" (all the gorgeous vistas and nature descriptions) on one hand, and then the intense and jampacked horror/suspense sequences on the other. The constant ebb and flow between them.
Four. Finally, when the Nostromo in ALIEN follows the signal to the planet, they find a ship with the dead Spacey Jockey whose chest has burst. There is speculation that the Jockey was David. Does that make sense to you?
The derelict ship in ALIEN doesn't necessarily have to be directly connected to David. Perhaps indirectly.
IN SPACE DON'T TAKE IT PERSONAL! Sorry but I didn't like it. Recycled, tired, remade script like TFA & LIFE! A team of expert Scientist / Engineers playing dumb, lack of logic characters in an unchartered hostile paradise whilst trying to survive illimination! The ALIEN had dreadful CGI making it not scary enough. Music mediocre. Luv Ridley but na should've let this lay to rest in exchanged for Bloomkamps' script!
It just makes me sad that the franchise will likely be killed off by the guy who started it. At this point I think I'd rather watch an old Alien knock-off, like Galaxy Of Terror, or Forbidden World, than another Alien sequel. .
Greg Espinoza
Dawn Dunlap? Hell yes! Plus they're hilariously bad opposed to just bad. Oh and you think things are convoluted now wait until he forces the cross universe tie-in with Blade Runner.
Thanks all, lots of thought provoking and thoughtful comments. Thor, I enjoyed your thoughts on David of A:C and David of the Bible, and Scott's references there. I may have missed something, but I am somewhat perplexed by Scott's treatment of "people of faith" in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. They are clearly delineated early on in both films by statement, but not explored. Even the ship bears a name that can have biblical contextual meaning. I mean, assuming Scott is referring to them as people of Christian faith, they never exhibit any of those characteristics. "Oram" complains about being passed over because of his (Christian?) faith, yet he never exhibits any faith, instead whining, complaining, waffling with fear, etc., (not that Christians never do those things), never doing anything typical of Christians whom do exhibit faith. I just wonder if his wearing a cross is Scott's idea of Christianity. Or his use of people of faith perhaps some statement on those who feel oppressed or suppressed or passed over because of something other than their qualifications or lack thereof and he used the idea of people of faith to express that feeling. It's delivered like a throwaway line, but was that all it was? Could it have anything to do with the idea of a "Space Jesus" lurking somewhere in the Ridley-Aliensphere?
Thank you, Thor, for your insightful remarks. While I did think of Michelangelo’s David, I had not thought about the David in the Bible. Your comments really to dovetail well with the Biblical David. Hoping that if Scott finishes his prequels, we’ll get more answers about David, the Covenant space ship, and the eggs on the planet Ripley and crew discovered.
I believe that David quoted OZYMANDIAS which fit the movie, but if I remember correctly, he stated the wrong author. He didn’t say Shelley, and I think Walter corrected him. That David missed the correct author should mean something, some flaw.
Jackfu, you bring up good points about faith with Oram and Dr. Shaw. Supposedly, faith should be tested to see if it is authentic, and Oram did whine and seem to lose track of his faith. However, towards the end of his life, he did ask David what he believed in. He also told David that he had seen the Devil, and I think he knew he was once again witnessing the Devil in David. Was he rediscovering faith? Also, since the movies show that humans were made by Engineers, that has to shake up the book of Genesis. On the other hand, the faithful could ask, “Who made the Engineers?” I think Shaw was exploring that idea. Also, supposedly the Engineers were going to kill us off 2,000 years ago, but Christ came then. Were they hoping we'd improve?
Hope more will chime in with answers and theories.
I believe that David quoted OZYMANDIAS which fit the movie, but if I remember correctly, he stated the wrong author. He didn’t say Shelley, and I think Walter corrected him. That David missed the correct author should mean something, some flaw.
Exactly. That's the great irony. This is actually DOUBLY intertextual:
David sees himself if not a God himself, then a person who challenges the gods through his own creations. He sees himself mirrored in Ramesses II (Ozymandias), perhaps, but by only quoting parts of the first verse ("And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’"), he neglects the great irony of the poem, which is about the futile strive for divinity - the ultimate hamartia or hubris -- ending in despair and destruction (second part of the verse reads: "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away").
Also, by misattributing the poem to Byron, he reveals his flaw as a divine creator. When Walter corrects him by saying it is by Shelley, he makes it painfully aware to David ("One wrong note can make the whole symphony off" or something to that effect).
Yes, perfect analysis, Thor. Also, I think there were references to the "Creators" often being destroyed by those they created. That could mean his perfect killing machines could and will eventually turn on him.
Yes, perfect analysis, Thor. Also, I think there were references to the "Creators" often being destroyed by those they created. That could mean his perfect killing machines could and will eventually turn on him.
Indeed. The ending seems to suggest so. Both because of the Pact of the Covenant/Covenant link, and because he plays the Wagner piece again -- a piece that on the surface seems to celebrate the gods' return and entry into Valhalla, but -- as Loge/Loke says -- their demise is imminent.
I just hope the entire mythos of eggs and xenos isn't exclusively tied to David's tinkerings. Hopefully, the next film will clear up some of that.
Oh, me, too! That has been my problem with some of the new revelations in the recent movies; I know the ideas have been retrofitted to the original Dan O'Bannon / Ronald Shussett story, and while I enjoy many of their imaginative concepts I am struggling to reconcile some of the ideas. Even the whole Weyland Yutani technological universe -- which sprang from a Walter Hill / David Giler subplot, and Jim Cameron expanded on in "Aliens" -- has been retconned onto the mythology, despite its official year-by-year timeline, unveiled on "Prometheus", presumably dreamed up by John Spaihts / Damon Lindelof, or a clever marketing person at Fox:
In "Covenant", when I saw David's Da Vinci-esque drawings and his experiments, and then they revealed those eggs, I was a little crestfallen that something that (for the last 38 years) I had considered so wonderfully alien had been cooked up by a human robot after ten years studying the Engineers. My hope is that David's eggs, and the leggy little critter that grew out of them, are sufficiently different from what Giger created to be synthetic creations. Whereas, we know an alien queen lays the 'real' things. And, to my mind, that's what is buried beneath the derelict in "Alien"!
One last detail I can add: I know the derelict in "Alien" is not the ship that we see crashed in the forest in "Covenant" -- I interviewed many of the effects folk on "Prometheus" and, when they were discussing what they referred to as 'the juggernaut' on that film, the idea was there were many of those ships, all built in the same factory. Back then, they told me the alien ships we saw, the engineer's juggernaut and David and Shaw's ship that flies off at the end, were not the same as the derelict in "Alien". So, the verdict is still out on the space jockey.
Another interesting Velaquen article about him here:
I had hoped the Engineers were ultra rational, and not akin to the ritual-seeking despots we saw in Gibson's Apocalypto. As for Shaw's crucifix and any other specific ornamental symbols cropping up in the series, I kind of suspected they were not meant to be literal representations of what they embody. As I said before, they are place holders for that higher dimensional order mentioned above, I(0). Maybe it was a mistake to do that because those symbols come with a long and winding baggage train. If they really do signify what they literally refer to then we're not dealing with a sci-fi story any more. It could be Ridley Scott may have been thinking of Buzz Aldrin as well as the crew of Apollo 8, and included that aspect for some authentic currency. Things get complicated and muddled, at best. Rest assured, a hard nosed scientist doesn't step on board a bucket of bolts on faith alone.
In "Covenant", when I saw David's Da Vinci-esque drawings and his experiments, and then they revealed those eggs, I was a little crestfallen that something that (for the last 38 years) I had considered so wonderfully alien had been cooked up by a human robot after ten years studying the Engineers. My hope is that David's eggs, and the leggy little critter that grew out of them, are sufficiently different from what Giger created to be synthetic creations. Whereas, we know an alien queen lays the 'real' things. And, to my mind, that's what is buried beneath the derelict in "Alien"!
That's my take too. I mean, didn't we clone a sheep called Dolly a few years ago? It looks everything like the real thing, but has been scientifically manufactured. I think of David's eggs the same way. They can perfectly fine co-exist with the natural, queen-produced eggs. It's also a perfect mirror of what David is himself. And even if that isn't the case, there might be some other explanation for the eggs being there that we're not aware of yet.
I loved David's lab, btw, and all the creatures and aborted experiments in it. It felt like an ode to the "burlesque" of Jean Pierre Jeunet's ALIEN: RESSURECTION and its warped scientific experiments; down to the orange-ish lighting with those gorgeous lanterns and flickering drawings on the wall.
Speaking of which, there are obviously many references to the previous films in the series, but I think they're all organically integrated with the new story; there to see for the fans and those who have the means to recognize them.
