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Alien: Covenant - Barney's Five Second Reviews
- Black Barney
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Well that wasn't very good. Not necessarily bad, just not very good at all.
It's a weird mix of great action sequences (second half) with some really lazy screenwriting. That's my biggest beef with the movie, it offers absolutely nothing new and is highly predictable. The first half of the movie is a nice build-up and somewhat intellectually-stimulating, and the second half is some really tight and exciting action sequences. There are just too many shortcuts that were taken in order to link elements together later on.
Best performance I've ever seen from james Franco. I think they literally lifted a scene from 127 Hours and put it in this movie.
I need to take accountability for crapping on Danny McBride when I initially saw the trailer, he's actually totally fine in this. Katherine Waterson is very strong as Franco's wife (lol). Fassbender is excellent but his character just becomes ridiculous at one point. It's hard to fault the actor.
There is much I want to complain about the story-writing, but that would involve spoilers so I'll leave that out of the review. I can safely critique the idea of a 16-person crew being composed of 8 couples as just about the dumbest idea I've ever seen. The second someone's wife or husband goes missing, all protocol goes out the window since these well-trained flight officers are now putting thousands of lives in danger because their partner isn't answering their comms. Ridiculous.
The non-stop obvious foreshadowing during the movie really started to grind my gears as well. Why bother going to visit some bizarre large bay in the ship for no reason at all early on in the movie? Oh, I guess this will be important later maybe so I know how chains work. Stuff like that. There is a way to introduce concepts while not making it obvious you are simply setting up scenes later. It's harder to do, but that's what good movies do.
This isn't necessarily a bad movie, it's just not very good. Ridley Scott is really at fault for not respecting the canon much either. Why has the alien life cycle changed so much? Where are the chestbursters and why did they get cut? Why do I have a flute duet instead that makes the entire audience laugh when Fassbender talks about "fingering?" Is there really going to be another one of these movies?
I hate to say it but Prometheus was better. I got scared and creeped out, was fairly entertained, but just kept losing patience at how this movie failed again and again to surprise me. Ash being an android and being evil surprised me, Bishop being good surprised me. Nothing in this surprised me. It's paint-by-numbers and this is my favourite movie franchise so that's a real shame. At least it's not AvP.
The movie started SO strong too, with the lettering AND musical score of Alien all starting the movie. I got goosebumps. It didn't last.
Heart rating: 3.5 stars - those action sequences were great
Brain rating: 3 stars - first half of the movie was mostly very good
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- Black Barney
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- Disgustipater
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Edit - And I'm not talking about movies that are just earlier in the timeline. I mean movies which try to explain the origins of things that came later.
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Xthexlo's comment is very interesting. After watching Prometheus and Covenant, I am convinced that Ridley Scott not only dislikes Aliens (and the rest of the sequels, of course) but doesn't even consider Aliens to be part of his cannon. I think hence the prequels.
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This sparks a thought, Vlad: who "owns" the canon of a film series? Is it the original writer of the story? The director of the first film? As a series grows in installments, does each director that molds a chapter in the unfolding story own the canon for their installment, and are they therefore entitled to make changes to the canon? For example, I'm a huge fan of Hellboy and feel that Guillermo del Toro added to the canon as defined by Mignola... but I worry about what the next film will bring with the change in director. Don't get me wrong: I believe that every director should be free -- no, encouraged -- to exercise creativity... but what canonical backbone needs to be maintained and who should police that?Vlad wrote: After watching Prometheus and Covenant, I am convinced that Ridley Scott not only dislikes Aliens (and the rest of the sequels, of course) but doesn't even consider Aliens to be part of his cannon.
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In the case of Alien, it's probably Twentieth Century Fox (aka Fox). I don't think it's Brandywine and it's not Scott Free. It could be Brandywine actually cuz they bought the script to Alien, but I remember Fox being approached about AvP.
Who polices it? Ticket buyers. If you think that Michael Bay is taking a hot oil piss on the Transformers license with turning Bumblebee into a beatbox, then don't go see his movies.
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Disgustipater wrote: Has there ever been a prequel movie that has added any value to its existing universe? I can't think of any.
The Godfather Part II. Yes, I know it's half prequel, half sequel, but I think it qualifies.
That being said, I think the biggest problem with prequels is that they almost never account for the fact that the original films are inseparable from the time in which they were made. Prequels tend to explain things just for the sake of explaining without any thought or intention to tackle any deeper themes. Studio meddling can be blamed for some of it, but you won't be able to convince me that anyone was pushing Ridley Scott or George Lucas around. In the best cases prequels are pedestrian and unremarkable, in the worst cases you wonder why they even bothered since it seems like no one involved understood the original film (like that shitty The Thing prequel that came out in 2011). I never thought I'd say this, but Covenant makes me look forward to watching the Aliens 3 Assembly Cut.
I can respect Prometheus and Covenant for trying, but neither one needed to be an Alien film and both halves of each film (high-minded scifi vs. gory creature feature) suffer when they get mashed together in the second act. They come off as bad Alien fanfic and that's before you get to the poor writing. Like how apparently the xenomorph gestation period is now a matter of minutes, or how we're not even bothering with helmets this time, or the convoluted mutation/life cycle stuff, or how the scientists turns into spastic piles of gibbering shit at the first sign of trouble, or that truly wretched CGI chestburster that stands up after hatching (seriously, that thing is going to look like garbage in five years), etc., etc.
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Disgustipater wrote: Has there ever been a prequel movie that has added any value to its existing universe? I can't think of any.
Watchable prequels:
Godfather 2, X-Men First Class, Monsters University, Batman Begins, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Rogue One
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Not exactly a movie, but I think the second season of Spartacus (which was essentially a prequel to the first season) did quite a good job to introduce where the characters came from and also introduced Gannicus, who then showed up in the future seasons as a regular.Disgustipater wrote: Has there ever been a prequel movie that has added any value to its existing universe? I can't think of any.
Edit - And I'm not talking about movies that are just earlier in the timeline. I mean movies which try to explain the origins of things that came later.
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Vlad wrote: Xthexlo's comment is very interesting. After watching Prometheus and Covenant, I am convinced that Ridley Scott not only dislikes Aliens (and the rest of the sequels, of course) but doesn't even consider Aliens to be part of his cannon. I think hence the prequels.
IMDB has a couple of good interviews with him. He makes a big comment about how those sequels were fine and the directors were good, but none of them answered the questions Alien brought up. He wanted to answer the questions.
I also read that he intended Covenant to be a sequel to Prometheus and get much more into the Engineers, but many fans complained about Prometheus so he abandoned that and tried to bridge the gap more clearly to Alien.
Best Prequels - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the Godfather Part II, Rogue One, Fire Walk With Me, Red Dragon
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Shellhead wrote: The mixed reviews (including Barney's) of Alien: Covenant have convinced me to skip this movie, just like I skipped the AvP movies. Instead, I may finally take a look into the Dark Horse comics exploring the Alien setting. I have already enjoyed two of their crossovers. Judge Dredd vs. Aliens was pretty good, and Batman/Aliens was excellent.
Hah, I read the one with Green Lantern, 'cause they had it at the library! It was...interesting. These things are just the authors having fun trying to meld two franchises together. Not bad, but obviously not essential.
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