Prometheus Sequel (ALIEN: Covenant)

[Wor-Gar]

I kinda feel like Ridley might be lucasing the series with these prequels.

...

That he is.

Its a shame, because as The Martian clearly shows, Ridley can still make great movies. But he's never been consistent.

 

[GasparZizou]

I still remember that Ridley's early plans was to have the movie deal with shaw. I remember the early interviews

They definitely wanted to use her more.

She definitely crapped everything for everyone

I still think that's only half the reason, if Ridley wanted he could've still followed the plot with David, but he went and gave us more "Alien", I also wonder if the studio forced his hand in some way, again; because the fans wanted more Alien. But, like Wor says, Scott has never been consistent to begin with so who knows.

I am more convinced than ever that, at concept level, Prometheus was the way to go, stay the **** away from the actual Xeno and tell your cosmic horror story about the gods that created us and wanted to destroy us, develop that, have the Xenomorph just be a distant tie, part of the same universe but not in every single story line, that would've made it more interesting.

Same goes for Predator, instead of explaining every single thing about Predators, like how now it turns out they get the skull and vertebrae for bone marrow and dna enhancement, not trophies .

**** it, Arthur C Clarke had it right, wrote 2001 and made every single sequel happen in an alternative universe, books aren't canon between each other.

 

[Unclechopchop]

I still think that's only half the reason, if Ridley wanted he could've still followed the plot with David, but he went and gave us more "Alien", I also wonder if the studio forced his hand in some way, again; because the fans wanted more Alien. But, like Wor says, Scott has never been consistent to begin with so who knows.

I am more convinced than ever that, at concept level, Prometheus was the way to go, stay the **** away from the actual Xeno and tell your cosmic horror story about the gods that created us and wanted to destroy us, develop that, have the Xenomorph just be a distant tie, part of the same universe but not in every single story line, that would've made it more interesting.

Same goes for Predator, instead of explaining every single thing about Predators, like how now it turns out they get the skull and vertebrae for bone marrow and dna enhancement, not trophies .

**** it, Arthur C Clarke had it right, wrote 2001 and made every single sequel happen in an alternative universe, books aren't canon between each other.

The studios deliberately steered Ridley away from the whole "alien" thing in Prometheus. Otherwise it wouldn't be greenlit. The only reason we even got the deacon was because of fan backlash from the news we were getting about how the movie wasn't about the alien.
Interest was extremely high with Prometheus so the studios knew to cash in right away by rekindling the whole "alien" thing. Plus the whole battle between Scott and blomkomp pretty much sealed the deal that Scott was going to do exactly what the studios wanted. With this turd out of the way, hopefully the leash runs a little looser, and things might get saved.

 

[theuzi9mm]

The studios deliberately steered Ridley away from the whole "alien" thing in Prometheus. Otherwise it wouldn't be greenlit. The only reason we even got the deacon was because of fan backlash from the news we were getting about how the movie wasn't about the alien.
Interest was extremely high with Prometheus so the studios knew to cash in right away by rekindling the whole "alien" thing. Plus the whole battle between Scott and blomkomp pretty much sealed the deal that Scott was going to do exactly what the studios wanted. With this turd out of the way, hopefully the leash runs a little looser, and things might get saved.

if it really does poorly as I think it may, the Awakening film is in serious jeopardy, unless Scott wants to fund it himself.

 

[Devil_666]

like how now it turns out they get the skull and vertebrae for bone marrow and dna enhancement, not trophies

Huh!? Where is that from?

 

[abake]

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs yeah...

I may have to re-watch Prometheus, I'm thinking Covenant looked better, but admittedly I haven't watched Prometheus in a while, the one thing I do remember is that the Engineers in Covenant looked pretty bad, in Prometheus they looked like that David sculpture at the beginning of Covenant.

The only thing that this movie has going for it is that it doesn't have ******** and unjustifiable script moments like Prometheus, perhaps at the expense of more interesting themes exploration.

The more I think about it, the more I realize they barely did anything with the topics of Prometheus.

Well, I was invited to a second screening tomorrow, will watch Prometheus tonight like Rory suggested and see Covenant tomorrow.

Which topics would those be?

 

[Wor-Gar]

if Ridley wanted ...

No. No. "What Ridley wanted" was lost after the failures of Prometheus and Exodus. Now its what Fox wanted. He was a hired hand. And it seems to show.

 

[Reinhardt]

Very disappointing! Absolutely no tension whatsoever. Didn't care about any of the characters. Some interesting ideas, but none of them developed.

Surprisingly, Danny McBride was quite good, and the best of all the characters. While Fassbender was great, the double Fassbender role was annoying.

I didn't like Prometheus that much at all, and yet it was 10x better than this steaming pile.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Prometheus ... was 10x better than this steaming pile.

Holy moly... this deal's getting worse all the time.

 

[ApeManRyan]

Got to see this today in Imax with my friend and brother. Overall I did enjoy it like most which my brother agrees is the first half was the best and after that it lost the horror elements that really kept you Interesting. But again I did enjoy it even with it's flaws it was a little better then Prometheus but I never minded that film I actually quite liked it just like this one. It was a good popcorn flick. Nothing spectacular but it was a fun one. Not sure where Scott is going to go with the movies if it will even tie with alien 1 or not but it's interesting. A lot answered after Prometheus left us questioning. I'm glad it was connected to the film I was worried it wouldn't at all and that Scott would leave it behind. I recommend it but for sure Alien 1 will always be the true film. It has A lot of nods to that film especially the score. Great cinematography. I dig the creatures and fx. Gory to the max. Actors did fine but Fassbender nailed it again and I actually quite surprised by the actress who played Daniel's. Danny McBride also did a great job. I'll be looking forward to watching it again on blu ray.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

 

[SNIKT1950]

Now its what Fox wanted. He was a hired hand. And it seems to show.

Lol no.

Scott had complete control on this movie. He's just old.

 

[GasparZizou]

Then I don't get it, why drop his vision almost completely in favor of more Alien? Surely then he intended/intends to go full circle with the other 2 sequels then...

 

[GasparZizou]

Huh!? Where is that from?

N-Nowhere...

Which topics would those be?

All the mythology, theology, philosophy that was set up in Prometheus was barely advanced in here if touched upon at all.

However, I go back an forth, I do see some of the topics get developed under the surface, the whole movie plays out as mythology and I think most people are going to miss that, has anyone even asked why David killed the Engineers? I see people pointing out non-plotholes but I don't see them asking the questions that really matter and that don't seem to have an answer, at least in this movie.

There's no reason behind killing the Engineers, David didn't love Shaw, Walter stated how David was incapable of love, as I predicted, and this was ultimately confirmed towards the end of the movie when David confesses he killed Shaw for being "nosy", which in itself seems like a tremendously out of character thing for David to do, and David loving Shaw was the only possible reason at hand for killing the Engineers, sure, Prometheus sets up the "King has his reign and then dies", but David also claims to be curious in Covenant, no such curiosity when dealing with the Engineers, humans weren't worthy of their creation (Androids), but why was he so sure the Engineers weren't worthy? As of now, the only thing I can think of, is that David hated humanity, and the Engineers being the progenitors of it, by extension he hated them too.

Things like that make me see this movie as a trailer for the next movie, and that's me being optimistic; believing advancing the Prometheus concepts is still the plan.

What I don't like at all is how Covenant heavily implies that David went nuts, like, what a cop out.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Lol no.

Scott had complete control on this movie. He's just old.

How do you know that?

 

[Bo Shrek]

Just watched it. After 40 years of Alien I think I'm done with the XENOMORPH. To me it was the least exciting part of the movie. I think I wanted a Prometheus sequel more than an Alien movie. Keep the XENOMORPH in this world but not in the storyline

 

[GasparZizou]

As I was thinking why David did what he did, I came across another possible answer that I was wondering about, I had for a while considered that the Xeno/Alien was a sort of death god, punishment god, black god etc etc, or not necessarily a "bad" god, just a god, but I couldn't quite reconcile the why, this dude made me think about something that I never thought and has always been in front of us from the very beginning of Prometheus, "if the Engineers made us, who made them?", so we fixated on the fact that they were trying to destroy us, hence this post:

Bear with the English, clearly not the dude's first language, not that I'm one to talk, but he noticed things that I didn't.

Spoiler

New here. I was never a feverish Alien fan like you guys. I like it, and I have re-watched it many times becoz I like those Bio-weapons / organisms themes, probably becoz I am a biologist too. But I got hooked on the Alien franchise becoz of Prometheus. The movie is bad in a way there are too many unfilled holes and its kind of all over the place. But at the same time there are lots of things they can follow up, and in a way, it is good for the Alien prequel/sequel franchise.
Anyway, I want to tell you guys my theory about the chains of order/hierarchy. I think it could cover many of the facts shown in the movie and the 'rumors' circling around. RS hinted that engineers did not create xeno/human. But it does not mean that human/xenon did not evolve from engineers. Humans and engineers have the same DNA, so it is safe to suggest that engineer is an ancestor of human, just like human evolve from apes but apes did not CREATE us.
My theory is that engineer/humanoids/humans are part of the life/evolution chain. Goo/black goo are the tools to evolve. Because we are all coming/evolving from the goo, we all share similar characteristics: to learn things, to reproduce, to dominate, to advance and eventually to play God. In each level of the hierarchy, say the engineers in Prometheus, that group will like to ultimately create (seeding life scene) coz they advance to a level that now they can access the goo and want to/can play God. It is these characteristics that cause the movement of the chain. So engineers play God and help "making/evolving" the humans. The chain is not linear; meaning that, says engineer may have modified and evolved a range of human/humanoids. They do that becoz of the impulse they inherit from the goo/black goo.

But this chain of the order has an ultimate purpose. That everytime two groups meet, there is a chance that an alien type of creature (neomorph/decon/protomorph/xenomorph..., etc.) will be born. This is the attempt to produce a perfect organism, i.e., The God-being. If that organism isn't perfect, as the killing machine the xenomorph is, those groups got destroyed by the creature itself. In this sense, alien creature is a "punishment" to those groups who fail to produce the perfect organism/god being.
So all life forms have the same purpose: to try to recreate the god-being. That's our purposes. And the chain of the order did not move like a written manual. It is only happening because of the trillions of life forms that form and that we all bear the same characteristic (from the goo) so the even the small probability thing will eventually (advancement of technology, to play god and the alien creature) happen.
But you can explore on that. Maybe you can argue that it is a loop. Perfect organism/ god-being-->humanoids xxth generations-->David or creature like david?--> god being. So at any one level in the hierarchy, you are the creation of someone and you are also the creator of someone else. There is no ultimate being or that the ultimate being is the black goo or the hierarchy itself. That can be a philosophical angle.
Or that you can say that the creation or evolution of human or any life form is a "life-cycle" of the ultimate being. That trillion of life forms are needed to be created, modified and destroyed in order to "maintain" the life cycle of the ultimate being. That is quite sinister to me.
What do you guys think? Maybe someone has the same idea before but I could not go through everything in the forum. If that is the case I am sorry!

TL;DR: The Engineers are also looking for God, or Godhood, each mutation is one step closer to Godhood, which means the Xeno is either a step closer to Godhood or it's punishment for a step backwards, so they weren't trying to "destroy" us, they were trying to advance the chain.

Now that's ****ing cosmic horror.

 

[Gruson]

This movie was complete garbage. I hated it and wish I had never seen it. It ruined Prometheus as well as alien and it was not scary or suspenseful at all. The CGI and characters are laughable and I cannot believe we didn't get the true sequel to aliens and instead we got this garbage. What a waste of time.

 

[DiFabio]

As I was thinking why David did what he did, I came across another possible answer that I was wondering about, I had for a while considered that the Xeno/Alien was a sort of death god, punishment god, black god etc etc, or not necessarily a "bad" god, just a god, but I couldn't quite reconcile the why, this dude made me think about something that I never thought and has always been in front of us from the very beginning of Prometheus, "if the Engineers made us, who made them?", so we fixated on the fact that they were trying to destroy us, hence this post:

Bear with the English, clearly not the dude's first language, not that I'm one to talk, but he noticed things that I didn't.

Spoiler

New here. I was never a feverish Alien fan like you guys. I like it, and I have re-watched it many times becoz I like those Bio-weapons / organisms themes, probably becoz I am a biologist too. But I got hooked on the Alien franchise becoz of Prometheus. The movie is bad in a way there are too many unfilled holes and its kind of all over the place. But at the same time there are lots of things they can follow up, and in a way, it is good for the Alien prequel/sequel franchise.
Anyway, I want to tell you guys my theory about the chains of order/hierarchy. I think it could cover many of the facts shown in the movie and the 'rumors' circling around. RS hinted that engineers did not create xeno/human. But it does not mean that human/xenon did not evolve from engineers. Humans and engineers have the same DNA, so it is safe to suggest that engineer is an ancestor of human, just like human evolve from apes but apes did not CREATE us.
My theory is that engineer/humanoids/humans are part of the life/evolution chain. Goo/black goo are the tools to evolve. Because we are all coming/evolving from the goo, we all share similar characteristics: to learn things, to reproduce, to dominate, to advance and eventually to play God. In each level of the hierarchy, say the engineers in Prometheus, that group will like to ultimately create (seeding life scene) coz they advance to a level that now they can access the goo and want to/can play God. It is these characteristics that cause the movement of the chain. So engineers play God and help "making/evolving" the humans. The chain is not linear; meaning that, says engineer may have modified and evolved a range of human/humanoids. They do that becoz of the impulse they inherit from the goo/black goo.

But this chain of the order has an ultimate purpose. That everytime two groups meet, there is a chance that an alien type of creature (neomorph/decon/protomorph/xenomorph..., etc.) will be born. This is the attempt to produce a perfect organism, i.e., The God-being. If that organism isn't perfect, as the killing machine the xenomorph is, those groups got destroyed by the creature itself. In this sense, alien creature is a "punishment" to those groups who fail to produce the perfect organism/god being.
So all life forms have the same purpose: to try to recreate the god-being. That's our purposes. And the chain of the order did not move like a written manual. It is only happening because of the trillions of life forms that form and that we all bear the same characteristic (from the goo) so the even the small probability thing will eventually (advancement of technology, to play god and the alien creature) happen.
But you can explore on that. Maybe you can argue that it is a loop. Perfect organism/ god-being-->humanoids xxth generations-->David or creature like david?--> god being. So at any one level in the hierarchy, you are the creation of someone and you are also the creator of someone else. There is no ultimate being or that the ultimate being is the black goo or the hierarchy itself. That can be a philosophical angle.
Or that you can say that the creation or evolution of human or any life form is a "life-cycle" of the ultimate being. That trillion of life forms are needed to be created, modified and destroyed in order to "maintain" the life cycle of the ultimate being. That is quite sinister to me.
What do you guys think? Maybe someone has the same idea before but I could not go through everything in the forum. If that is the case I am sorry!

TL;DR: The Engineers are also looking for God, or Godhood, each mutation is one step closer to Godhood, which means the Xeno is either a step closer to Godhood or it's punishment for a step backwards, so they weren't trying to "destroy" us, they were trying to advance the chain.

Now that's ****ing cosmic horror.

Suddenly, I'm back in 2012 again.

 

[Victοr]

As I was thinking why David did what he did, I came across another possible answer that I was wondering about, I had for a while considered that the Xeno/Alien was a sort of death god, punishment god, black god etc etc, or not necessarily a "bad" god, just a god, but I couldn't quite reconcile the why, this dude made me think about something that I never thought and has always been in front of us from the very beginning of Prometheus, "if the Engineers made us, who made them?", so we fixated on the fact that they were trying to destroy us, hence this post:

Bear with the English, clearly not the dude's first language, not that I'm one to talk, but he noticed things that I didn't.

Spoiler

New here. I was never a feverish Alien fan like you guys. I like it, and I have re-watched it many times becoz I like those Bio-weapons / organisms themes, probably becoz I am a biologist too. But I got hooked on the Alien franchise becoz of Prometheus. The movie is bad in a way there are too many unfilled holes and its kind of all over the place. But at the same time there are lots of things they can follow up, and in a way, it is good for the Alien prequel/sequel franchise.
Anyway, I want to tell you guys my theory about the chains of order/hierarchy. I think it could cover many of the facts shown in the movie and the 'rumors' circling around. RS hinted that engineers did not create xeno/human. But it does not mean that human/xenon did not evolve from engineers. Humans and engineers have the same DNA, so it is safe to suggest that engineer is an ancestor of human, just like human evolve from apes but apes did not CREATE us.
My theory is that engineer/humanoids/humans are part of the life/evolution chain. Goo/black goo are the tools to evolve. Because we are all coming/evolving from the goo, we all share similar characteristics: to learn things, to reproduce, to dominate, to advance and eventually to play God. In each level of the hierarchy, say the engineers in Prometheus, that group will like to ultimately create (seeding life scene) coz they advance to a level that now they can access the goo and want to/can play God. It is these characteristics that cause the movement of the chain. So engineers play God and help "making/evolving" the humans. The chain is not linear; meaning that, says engineer may have modified and evolved a range of human/humanoids. They do that becoz of the impulse they inherit from the goo/black goo.

But this chain of the order has an ultimate purpose. That everytime two groups meet, there is a chance that an alien type of creature (neomorph/decon/protomorph/xenomorph..., etc.) will be born. This is the attempt to produce a perfect organism, i.e., The God-being. If that organism isn't perfect, as the killing machine the xenomorph is, those groups got destroyed by the creature itself. In this sense, alien creature is a "punishment" to those groups who fail to produce the perfect organism/god being.
So all life forms have the same purpose: to try to recreate the god-being. That's our purposes. And the chain of the order did not move like a written manual. It is only happening because of the trillions of life forms that form and that we all bear the same characteristic (from the goo) so the even the small probability thing will eventually (advancement of technology, to play god and the alien creature) happen.
But you can explore on that. Maybe you can argue that it is a loop. Perfect organism/ god-being-->humanoids xxth generations-->David or creature like david?--> god being. So at any one level in the hierarchy, you are the creation of someone and you are also the creator of someone else. There is no ultimate being or that the ultimate being is the black goo or the hierarchy itself. That can be a philosophical angle.
Or that you can say that the creation or evolution of human or any life form is a "life-cycle" of the ultimate being. That trillion of life forms are needed to be created, modified and destroyed in order to "maintain" the life cycle of the ultimate being. That is quite sinister to me.
What do you guys think? Maybe someone has the same idea before but I could not go through everything in the forum. If that is the case I am sorry!

TL;DR: The Engineers are also looking for God, or Godhood, each mutation is one step closer to Godhood, which means the Xeno is either a step closer to Godhood or it's punishment for a step backwards, so they weren't trying to "destroy" us, they were trying to advance the chain.

Now that's ****ing cosmic horror.

Yeahyeahyeah, that's all fine and good, but I have another question...

>our creators
>white albinos
>black goo
>destroys everything
>white = ascended
>black = death

What did the absolute madman Ridley mean by this?!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

All kidding aside, the A L I E N Universe always was a case of promising more than delivering. It has some nifty ideas and whatnot, but its faults lie in not really exploring them and falling back on familiar tropes. It's as if they want to explore the Cosmic Horror angle, but the studios think it's not profitable, so they just *wink*wink*nod* at it, and that's it. But eh, at least it's not HBO's Lovecraft "Eldritch monsters are the same as southern racists, so let's just do a series about that" Country...

PS: If the Prometheus Trilogy wasn't advertised as an ALIEN Prequel and just had nods to it, while focusing on David himself, I imagine people would've liked it more, and it could've gone to different directions.

 

[olbertfrog]

Saw it again.
It's an entertaining flick with some cool, good ideas concepts but too many plotholes, retconning and stuff seen before.
What striked me the most is how Scott made again a best of Alien.
Ripping off Aliens blattently.

Oh and please guys stop with all your theories to connect and make Prometheus, Aliens, Covenant, engineers and xeno mythology all of this has been written on the go, there is no big plan.
Fanboys wrote stuff that made more sense.
Or read the original script ALIEN ENGINEERS.
This is damage control, Scott almost reached prequel trilogy nonsense with these movies.

A well done flick that just made me more detached from the franchise.