The Alien Franchise

[CautiousLurker 16,578]

5 hours ago, Belivet said:

Shaw didn't deserve this ending...  

Ikr... Especially since Noomi Rapace made a much stronger lead- she at least made me care about her character... 

I will say, as much as I hated Prometheus when it came out, watching the Covenant actually made me appreciate Prometheus in some ways 

[JustaMonster 4,909]

21 minutes ago, Helxig said:

This.

I liked Covenant while watching it, but in hindsight I have my hesitations to say I enjoyed the film.

I feel like it didn't really add anything to the franchise or lore. And in fact, by explaining the origin story of the aliens it kind of spoiled their mystery and appeal to me. Kinda disappointed.

And I was really hanging out for the other movie which was going to have Sigourney. Should've scrapped Covenant instead 

Same actually, I went with a big group of like 8 friends to see it in theaters and I remember enjoying it while watching it but later that night I realized it has some problems    

[Antichrist 9,818]

43 minutes ago, CautiousLurker said:

Ikr... Especially since Noomi Rapace made a much stronger lead- she at least made me care about her character... 

I will say, as much as I hated Prometheus when it came out, watching the Covenant actually made me appreciate Prometheus in some ways 

Thisssssss!!!

I just watched Covenant today, not sure why I kept pushing it off, I'm really really disappointed. While Prometheus was pretty shitty as well, it at least had a story that you could follow, there's literally NOTHING in Covenant 

[CautiousLurker 16,578]

19 minutes ago, Antichrist said:

Thisssssss!!!

I just watched Covenant today, not sure why I kept pushing it off, I'm really really disappointed. While Prometheus was pretty shitty as well, it at least had a story that you could follow, there's literally NOTHING in Covenant 

I would also add that at the very least Prometheus is a very pretty movie - like, sets and shot comps are very well done... The Covenant is a lot lazier in comparison, and the special effects look really undercooked, especially the aliens themselves...

[ryanripley 86,575]

54 minutes ago, CautiousLurker said:

I would also add that at the very least Prometheus is a very pretty movie - like, sets and shot comps are very well done... The Covenant is a lot lazier in comparison, and the special effects look really undercooked, especially the aliens themselves...

Prometheus is visual p*rn for me, that surgery scene? holy f*ck, i had to rewind instantly and be scalpedt again  

but that's probably the only reason that pushes my love for Prometheus as well as the characters, they were just so much better than Covenant

also Noomi starts in a new movie called What Happened To Monday  it's rather good

[Doot 2]

4 hours ago, ryanripley said:

i'm sorry but covenant was really bad  the characters were so bland, generic and boring, there was no emotional connection with them so i didn't really care who lived or died and the script was super basic

the alien is supposed to be the real enemy of the franchise, not some demon robot

also the "finale" really bothered me since it took them about 5 minutes to defeat an alien. the xenomorph is supposed to be a relentless monster but they managed to deal with the problem faster than you can say ferrari and i just found it insulting to the original movie  

I’ve now seen the film twice, and while it is okay to have on in the background if you are like, walking around your house vacuuming or folding laundry, aside from that, there is no real point in watching it. 

While I find the story of David interesting, I don’t find the story of David and the Xenomorph interesting. I think if they had made a film simply set in the same universe as Alien without having it tied AT ALL to the Xenomorphs, I would have enjoyed that. 

But I agree, I feel that the Xenomorph is supposed to be the main villain, and it was shoehorned in to the last 20-25 minutes of the film, and a bad CGI version at that. 

And when I go to see an Alien film, I expect there to be some level of suspense. Even Aliens, which everyone tries to trash on here and say is more of an action movie, still had suspense in it. Alien was described as a “haunted house movie on a spaceship” by the people involved. I agree. Aliens, while taking the franchise in a more action oriented route, still maintained a sense of suspense and horror. 

Covenant did not. 

3 hours ago, JustaMonster said:

@SarconSal @ryanripley @Doot

I've played a bit of AI and I LOVE it so far 

I should not be playing it home alone in the middle of the night though 

I felt the same way. I tried playing that in the dark at one point and was quickly like nope 

3 hours ago, ryanripley said:

i'm currently playing on nightmare (or whatever the hardest difficulty is called) mode and i want to die  

My hats off to you lol

2 hours ago, Helxig said:

This.

I liked Covenant while watching it, but in hindsight I have my hesitations to say I enjoyed the film.

I feel like it didn't really add anything to the franchise or lore. And in fact, by explaining the origin story of the aliens it kind of spoiled their mystery and appeal to me. Kinda disappointed.

And I was really hanging out for the other movie which was going to have Sigourney. Should've scrapped Covenant instead 

Same. It’s the same idea of Michael Myers...you provide some sort of back story and origin, and you kill any sense of intrigue and mystery. 

The only good thing that Covenant really had going for it was the the scenic shots of the planet, the shots of the ship in space (especially during the scene where they extended the solar sails), and the shots of a Michael Fassbender 

[Doot 2]

9 hours ago, Omar Vela said:

Watch the video 3:54 min

 

8 hours ago, JustaMonster said:

Color me intrigued on that. Let’s hope that was an actual indication that he’s going to make a Queen Xenomorph, and it’s not just Ridley ****ing with us and having David simply refer to the Ripley knock off in Covenant as his queen in the romantic sense like he was with shaw. 

[ryanripley 86,575]

16 minutes ago, Doot said:

Color me intrigued on that. Let’s hope that was an actual indication that he’s going to make a Queen Xenomorph, and it’s not just Ridley ****ing with us and having David simply refer to the Ripley knock off in Covenant as his queen in the romantic sense like he was with shaw. 

if you're talking about:

then i just cackled, it's so true  i couldn't stand her from the trailers and my hunch about her was right: a basic, boring, bad haircut mess

[CautiousLurker 16,578]

7 minutes ago, ryanripley said:

Prometheus is visual p*rn for me, that surgery scene? holy f*ck, i had to rewind instantly and be scalpedt again  

but that's probably the only reason that pushes my love for Prometheus as well as the characters, they were just so much better than Covenant

also Noomi starts in a new movie called What Happened To Monday  it's rather good

Yeah, it was actually decent, and they also had a good actress who could sell terror and pain, unlike a certain scene in Covenant where an actor did uh... not do such a thing 

Spoiler

Seriously what was that about 

The head of the engineer still bothers me... Engineers in general bother me but especially the design of the head and even the big statue thing just looks like a guy with a bunch of latex stuck to his face... It very much looks like a prop and not a remnant of an ancient structure... Maybe just me tho 

Here's the thing, ok, STORY... Imma bitch about this for a bit - they hired a concept artists, Carlos Huante, whom I absolutely love but - I actually used to mimic his work back when I was into creature design... but... his work is just wrong for the Alien franchise imo... and granted filling Giger's shoes is hard to say the least, but Carlos's work has a very generic monster flick quality to it, not so much surreal nightmare high...

https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=carlos huante&rs=typed&term_meta[]=carlos|typed&term_meta[]=huante|typed

And there are artists who do surreal horror well, Allen Williams for instance... you just gotta look for them... 

Though, I though the deacon that we got to see for 2 second at the end of the film looked really good... IF ONLY WE GOT TO SEE MORE OF IT IN THE NEXT MOVIE LIKE IT WAS IMPLIED 

Actually nevermind cuz they resorted to poor CG in the Covenant so it would probably not look as good anyway 

The snek looked kinda cool too, but that scene was ruined for me by how infuriatingly stupid the 'biologist' was, like, I know its been talked about to death, but HOW did it not occur to anyone on the production team throughout MONTHS of working on that movie that hey, maybe that scene is a tad too unrealistic... 

Spoiler

...or that maybe you can run in more than one direction 

 

[Doot 2]

37 minutes ago, ryanripley said:

if you're talking about:

then i just cackled, it's so true  i couldn't stand her from the trailers and my hunch about her was right: a basic, boring, bad haircut mess

I can’t say anything about her as an actress, I thought she was able to act perfectly fine, but it was completely obvious she she was suppose to be a Ripley-esque character, and it just fell flat. 

And yeah...the haircut 

33 minutes ago, CautiousLurker said:

Yeah, it was actually decent, and they also had a good actress who could sell terror and pain, unlike a certain scene in Covenant where an actor did uh... not do such a thing 

  Hide contents

Seriously what was that about 

The head of the engineer still bothers me... Engineers in general bother me but especially the design of the head and even the big statue thing just looks like a guy with a bunch of latex stuck to his face... It very much looks like a prop and not a remnant of an ancient structure... Maybe just me tho 

Here's the thing, ok, STORY... Imma bitch about this for a bit - they hired a concept artists, Carlos Huante, whom I absolutely love but - I actually used to mimic his work back when I was into creature design... but... his work is just wrong for the Alien franchise imo... and granted filling Giger's shoes is hard to say the least, but Carlos's work has a very generic monster flick quality to it, not so much surreal nightmare high...

https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=carlos huante&rs=typed&term_meta[]=carlos|typed&term_meta[]=huante|typed

And there are artists who do surreal horror well, Allen Williams for instance... you just gotta look for them... 

Though, I though the deacon that we got to see for 2 second at the end of the film looked really good... IF ONLY WE GOT TO SEE MORE OF IT IN THE NEXT MOVIE LIKE IT WAS IMPLIED 

Actually nevermind cuz they resorted to poor CG in the Covenant so it would probably not look as good anyway 

The snek looked kinda cool too, but that scene was ruined for me by how infuriatingly stupid the 'biologist' was, like, I know its been talked about to death, but HOW did it not occur to anyone on the production team throughout MONTHS of working on that movie that hey, maybe that scene is a tad too unrealistic... 

  Hide contents

...or that maybe you can run in more than one direction 

 

Which is why Covenant turned out to be such a sloppy mess, because it was basically two various movies mashed together (Prometheus and Alien). 

Promethus was simply a beautiful, visual sight to behold, and while Covenant had its moments, it was destroyed by the fact they shoved in Xenomorphs which simply didn’t belong with the aesthetic that was created with Prometheus. 

The creature designs were just poor. Prometheus had the edge especially with the Engineers, but on a few pages back in this thread I pointed out the design differences between them in Prometheus and Covenant. It was just ****ing lazy. 

And I don’t know when people are going to get this through their skulls, but if I am able to look at something and instantly say “that’s computer generated”, well then I’m not scared. Constantly running around in interviews post release talking about how they used a guy in a suit for motion capture, is only going to dupe the general movie goer who doesn’t understand what that means. Planet of the Apes is motion capture. That little thing from Lord of the Rings was motion capture. Yet those are obviously computer generated images. 

There is a reason that animatronics and people in body suits are scarier, and it’s because they look real. 

(I’m looking at you Jurassic World)

[CautiousLurker 16,578]

6 minutes ago, Doot said:

I can’t say anything about her as an actress, I thought she was able to act perfectly fine, but it was completely obvious she she was suppose to be a Ripley-esque character, and it just fell flat. 

And yeah...the haircut 

Which is why Covenant turned out to be such a sloppy mess, because it was basically two various movies mashed together (Prometheus and Alien). 

Promethus was simply a beautiful, visual sight to behold, and while Covenant had its moments, it was destroyed by the fact they shoved in Xenomorphs which simply didn’t belong with the aesthetic that was created with Prometheus. 

The creature designs were just poor. Prometheus had the edge especially with the Engineers, but on a few pages back in this thread I pointed out the design differences between them in Prometheus and Covenant. It was just ****ing lazy. 

And I don’t know when people are going to get this through their skulls, but if I am able to look at something and instantly say “that’s computer generated”, well then I’m not scared. Constantly running around in interviews post release talking about how they used a guy in a suit for motion capture, is only going to dupe the general movie goer who doesn’t understand what that means. Planet of the Apes is motion capture. That little thing from Lord of the Rings was motion capture. Yet those are obviously computer generated images. 

There is a reason that animatronics and people in body suits are scarier, and it’s because they look real. 

(I’m looking at you Jurassic World)

I think Ridley kinda wants to remake the first Alien with better visual effects - that's what it boils down to... he just doesn't know how to do it well 

Cuz both Covenant and Prometheus hit some of the same beats Alien did... But Ridley keeps missing what made the first movie great... The chest bursting scene in the Covenant is a good example of that - imo it was there just so he could serve updated visuals, but, even though the little alien was so polished, and they did slow mo of the actor writhing in 'pain', and then zoomed in and held that shot on the little alien for a WHILE, that's not what made the scene from the first Alien so iconic, and... it's just my guess, but I think this dip in quality is in part because Giger is no longer here to give a helping hand, cuz he was actually on set during the making of the first Alien, building some of those sets in fact... 

Same for the Jurassic World - they just keep picking out the wrong things to focus on

[Doot 2]

1 minute ago, CautiousLurker said:

I think Ridley kinda wants to remake the first Alien with better visual effects - that's what it boils down to... he just doesn't know how to do it well 

Cuz both Covenant and Prometheus hit some of the same beats Alien did... But Ridley keeps missing what made the first movie great... The chest bursting scene in the Covenant is a good example of that - imo it was there just so he could serve updated visuals, but, even though the little alien was so polished, and they did slow mo of the actor writhing in 'pain', and then zoomed in and held that shot on the little alien for a WHILE, that's not what made the scene from the first Alien so iconic, and... it's just my guess, but I think this dip in quality is in part because Giger is no longer here to give a helping hand, cuz he was actually on set during the making of the first Alien, building some of those sets in fact... 

Same for the Jurassic World - they just keep picking out the wrong things to focus on

I think my issue with that is that Alien legit did seem like a HORROR film, whereas, if that was his intention with Covenant, it fell flat. 

I know it’s hard to push the horror side of things when discussing it because Aliens was more action oriented but still great, however, Covenant just left a bad taste in my mouth. 

The chest burster scene included. I know they keep calling it a Protomorph, or whatever, in order to justify the design differences, but the whole ‘David raising his hands and then the Xeno raises its hands’ scene was just super dumb and took my out of the moment. 

[CautiousLurker 16,578]

13 minutes ago, Doot said:

The chest burster scene included. I know they keep calling it a Protomorph, or whatever, in order to justify the design differences, but the whole ‘David raising his hands and then the Xeno raises its hands’ scene was just super dumb and took my out of the moment. 

Yeh, he should have just started kissing the little alien passionately, then cut to 9 months later - David is in an apron, cooking, while a grown up alien with a big belly is sitting there watching tv while petting a face hugger... and then the mutilated corpse of Elizabeth Shaw lifts her head and says 'that's all folks' and credits roll... 10/10 on imdb, Golden Globe for best comedy/musical, Academy Award nom for best song 'Hug My Face' by Sia 

[Tercodio 107]

On 9/18/2017 at 8:59 PM, Omar Vela said:

Love it, I'm gonna be a xenomorph this halloween

I tried one year to do the costume, but I started the week of Halloween, and didn't finish in time for this Halloween Block Party here in Dallas, Texas. So I just dressed as a Nostromo crew member and carried around this head, ohh and I also made a facehugger and wore that on my face, I'll see if I can find the picture!!!

[JustaMonster 4,909]

I just realized I didnt remember a single character from covenant other than david until you guys posted that picture of the main female protagonist  All of them were boring with no personality  At least david was memorable and interesting but thats pretty much it.