Even larger than just ruining Prometheus, I think Covenant also ruins Alien and the Xenomorph in general. I think one thing that made the Xenomorphs so evocative and dreadful was that they were a manifestation of the universe's ultimate in difference. They are the living embodiment of space's inherent hostility to terrestrial life. The horror behind the Xenomorph was the implication that the blind forces of the universe produced this thing that was beyond any rational nightmare, that killed people in a manner so unreasonably grotesque as the be sadistically inefficient, and what the implied about humanity's lack of significance in the grand scope of things.
@@slinkyatrest Yep & instead humans & their stupid Android creation had huge significance in meddling with the Xeno or Deacon or whatever the hell they are supposed to called. For me, who F cares about David, what David is doing & why? If Ridley wanted to make a movie about a psychopathic robot go make a new movie & franchise.
Exactly. Aliens made us seem insignificant, maladapted, and powerless in the big hostile universe where a much fitter organism has evolved. Prometheus made the universe small with us at the center of it and the Xenos and Space Jockeys all being related to us.
Ridley Scott didn't want to make a sequel to prometheus, it's actually really well reported on. What he *really* didn't want was the Aliens Concept Sequel that was being shopped around by Neill Blomkamp. He purposefully helmed a movie he didn't want to make because his pride wouldn't allow someone like Blomkamp to potentially tell a better story.
Because Scott has always been an average director elevated with great scripts (Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner) When he has his own people writing movies, like Robin Hood or Prometheus, we get muddled movies. So Scott being petty, and shutting down Blomkamp's film (which already had Sigourney Weaver attached to), isn't surprising to me.
'Prometheus' was full of idiot characters as well. We start with a couple of archaeologists pitching their idea to travel to another planet, and when they're asked what evidence they have to support their hypothesis, they say they don't have any and counter with a "but my FEELS!" defense. Then the audience is treated like idiots because we're clearly meant to sympathize with this position - with the idea that Shaw's emotional motivations are obviously superior to empirical evidence. In 'Alien', we could understand how overwhelmed the crew of the Nostromo felt because they were intentionally written as "truck drivers in space". They weren't supposed to be prepared for any of the crazy shit they encountered. But the Prometheus was on an exploratory mission funded by one of the richest humans who ever lived. You'd expect the scientific crew to be among the best in their fields. But we get a geologist who acts like a misanthropic petty criminal, and who, despite being the one who launches the drones that go about mapping the structure they're in, manages to get lost. We also get a biologist who, upon finding actual examples of long-dead alien life, announces how creeped out he is and that he wants to go home. Then later, when he finds an actual living alien life form, he dies because he tries to PET the damned thing. Based on all the Eric von Däniken 'Chariots of the Gods' baggage in the plot, as well as the idiotic caricatures of the scientists and the "your evidence is no match for my emotionally based revelation" slant of the narrative, I got the sense that the writing came from the perspective of someone not only ignorant of science, but actually hostile to science because it doesn't support their pet ideas.
I remember an Adam Savage quote about walking out of a theater trying to convince himself that he'd liked a movie, and as soon as I heard that I thought of 'Prometheus'.
Thank you. I watched Covenant a few days ago. I put it off for years, but with my Alien need reaching fever pitch, my curiosity got the better of me. I regretted it because it added, noting to the franchise other than David's return, and he doesn't make any sense as a character. I really don't understand his desire to create or to become a god. You'd think his logic would be pure, but it seems to keep hinting that he has original thoughts. Again, it really doesn't make any sense, and the movie hopes you'll just go along with it just to see what happens next. Ridley set up David to be this robot who goes against his programming and lies to everyone for reasons. Without any explanation why. Like you said, it feels "Sources, bro. Trust, bro."
As far as Ridley Scott goes this is nothing new really. Each time Ridley has full controll over the script it ends up being terrible, mediocre at best. Ridley is an exceptional visual director. Almost all his movies show that. Great cinematogreaphy, awesome visual story telling. But the plot and narrative usually really sucks. The guy just can't write a story. And when he also has some sort of agenda - like with both Prometheus and Covenant - it becomes downright bad. Scott mentioned several times that his motivation was the dangers of AI and that this is what he wanted to really tell, a story about the android. But it kinda gets in the way of the overall plot.
I generally don't think a bad sequel ruins a previous film, but Covenant certainly makes Prometheus worse. The latter film was filmed with a messy screenplay, but it had interesting ideas that could have been expanded upon for some really good potential, if done properly. Scott threw all that away & didn't give a damn, but still filled it with his self indulgent smugness that was all over Prometheus. Scott arrogantly believed criticism against Prometheus was due to people disappointed it didn't have aliens in it, so he made an Alien film instead. Well, not only is that false, but hypothetically, if that was the reason it disappointed fans, Scott & Fox should still be blamed because of all the marketing (the trailers with that eerie siren sound from the original Alien), not to mention the same Alien letter title forming, cues from Goldsmith's score etc. The backburster scene in Covenant was overly shown in marketing. It was very disturbing to see in the trailer, but they kept showing it so much that the effect was lost when the film was released. Scott should receive some of the blame for not demanding to keep things like that out of the marketing. Alien Covenant is one of the worst films of the last decade. Scott should be kicked away from the franchise, & these films should be erased from canon.
Maybe, but not in an Alien movie. Pushing a glorified toaster like David the Paranoid Android to the front is not compatible with Alien at all. We make toasters. We only just started making toasters. Where's the mystery? Where's the horror? Where's the sense of human exploration? Where's the ancient quality this particular antagonist needed in order to be evocative? All gone, and everything was the fault of the toaster we just made! Woopsies! It's just shit. Absolute and unmitigated shit. No amount of sophistry and mental gymnastics will ever change it into anything else.
I remember watching the last 45 or 30 minutes of this on TV one, and only watching it bc of your Prometheus video. When I saw that Ellie died I was like what the heck? I also didn't like the more horror tone it had and thought a more scifi tone like Prometheus would have been better.
Beside the idiot plot, I guess what annoyed me about Covenant on a higher level is that it shifted focus once again. Prometheus moved the focus away from the aliens and over to the Engineers. Like mentioned, the end of Prometheus left a lot of mysteries surrounding the Engineers (some of which were actually explained in deleted scenes) and left open to be explored in a sequel. Instead, the sequel kills off the Engineers because reasons and instead David becomes the main protagonist. The aliens' role are somehow reduced to being more or less wild beasts of David's creation and limited control. That somehow makes them less frightening to me. And Davids motivations are all a bit obscure and makes little sense.
Sure, but it already had the abominable twist that androids dunnit, which is not possible in Alien, because both the engineers and the xenomorphs are ancient and we only just recently started building androids in this universe. That really tells you how misguided these two movies were, and would have remained even were they good movies, and even if they had been mutually consistent and coherent. They needed to be consistent and coherent with Alien too, and were just never going to be with that incompatible, impossible angle. Everyone involved in these productions, and apparently many professed Alien fans with them, need to sit down and watch the start of Alien over and over again until the penny drops. There are a few scenes and approximately one line of expo in that entire movie, but it is vital that one picks it up before one proceeds to make sequels. Otherwise it will be incoherent and mutally exclusive, which is what both Prometheus and Covenant are. And once you do pick up the evidently far too subtle, elegant and intelligent exposition in Alien, you must choose between that and the two recent Ridley Scott abominations. It is as incoherent as these movies to pretend to be an Alien fan and a fan of either Prometheus or Covenant. It's one or the other, whether you like it or not.
I guess Covenant is not set in the Alien universe, but is instead a sequel to Idiocracy. That means those "astronauts" really were the smartest people available for such a mission...
My interpretation of David’s decision to kill the engineers comes down to the opening of the film. “You seek your creator, I am looking at mine.” David seems to have a complex about creation, both his own at the hands of humans and in turn the humans at the hands of the engineers. Thus, the engineers in a far removed sense are also his creators. The fact he fully exterminates them seems done out of disgust, like David couldn’t stand that he was no longer superior to humans (in his eyes) by virtue of knowing his origins.
I think David says somewhere, if I remember correctly, that he can understand human emotions but he will never have any. He might simply hate humans, not because he is in many ways superior but because they made him, despite their inferiority. A sort of inferiority complex maybe. Despite the fact that he is a "superior" being, as he doesn't really age, the same way humans do and he has greater strength and intellect he still can't "feel" and thus is in many ways flawed as he also doesn't have the potential for growth. So what he does is trying to destroy everything infront of him and trying to build something new on the ashes of it. But since he is not a real creator in that sense what he creates is violent, murderous and corrupts. That's my take on it.
changing from "Prometheus 2" to "covenant" was a mistake ,knowing that "Ridley Scott's" decision influenced by the community fandom was aggravating . personally i liked Prometheus i didn't even know that it belong to the alien series at the time surely was more successful than alien covenant no doubt about that .
Ok, but if your problem with Covenant is that it has an idiot plot, then why do you like Prometheus? It also has an idiot plot. I only ever watched the film when it was in theatres, so I can't quote chapter and verse, but you have to know that so many of the decisions the characters made on the mission, supposedly characters who were chosen out of all humanity to execute a history-making mission, made idiotic mistake after idiotic mistake, full of petty bickering and really basic emotional regulation problems. The crew of Prometheus were markedly worse than your average group of coworkers, far from being an elite group of professionals. The plot of Prometheus would never have happened if the crew were the highly trained and skilled specialists the film made them out to be. It wouldn't even have happened if the crew were normal people. It required many of them to be of below-average intelligence.
You're not wrong... Though as someone who prefers "Prometheus" vastly over "Alien Covenant" for much of the same reasons, the only rationale I can offer is that the idiot-plot in "Prometheus" was no where near as insufferable and infuriating as the one in "Alien Covenant". It may just be a matter of personal preference, but to me the crew in "Alien Covenant" made the crew in "Prometheus" look like proper professionals in comparison. The only other bit I can offer is that at least with "Prometheus" we the audience know by the end that the mission was just a secondary concern to the real mission: Get Weyland to humanity's creators so that he can find a way to live longer/forever, and its filled with the usual hubris from the Company that we've all come to know and love... With "Alien Covenant" on the other hand, there is no such excuses. Even if the premise that launches the plot for "Prometheus" forward is dumb, with the Company involved in things it's still believable. Especially when you see how far they'll go in future films to get their way.
I’m convinced Ridley made it an idiot plot to get back at the audience. Like people were so stingey about Prometheus that Ridley was like alright give them something else… like we could have had a totally different movie from covenant
Yeah, be spiteful against the audience that praised Alien, a 2 hour movie that didn't have 10% of that be action, AND DIDN'T chastise how the crew WOULD NEVER ALLOW AN INFECTED PASSENGER ON THE SHIP (EVEN IF THEY DID THAT WOULD BE QUARANTINED AND SURVEILLANCED 24/7). Even though Prometheus sucked (and I'm the biggest Alien fan), doesn't give him the right to destroy the franchise. Even though I know you're joking, I'm legitimately bothered how he destroyed my favorite Horror/Sci-Fi!
But Prometheus was shit. I want both movies permanently erased, and take both AvP movies, Resurrection, Romulus and A3 with you as you go! I have no use for any of these shitty, not-Alien movies, and I never did. If people don't know how to continue the story due to illiteracy and alcoholism; stop trying! Just for God's sake stop!
I've just watched this again. So sad they went away from the exploration and wonder looking for answers from the first one, and went to dr frankenstein. Did noone read the script like wtf. Must admit, for a bad movie its one of the best shot.
The first one was also Dr. Frankenstein. Weyland as Frankenstein, creating David. The Engineers as _Igor_ fetching more bodies from Earth. Look at the scene where Shaw reanimates the head using electricity. The 1818 book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has the full title "Frankenstein : The Modern Prometheus "
I know it’s hard for a lot of people to accept, but Scott hated the fans after Prometheus and really did make this whole movie as nothing more than a “fuck you”
... I mean, is that such a difficult notion to accept? To have gone from "Prometheus" to "Alien Covenant" he'd either have to be just the biggest idiot in cinema, have to be going senile, or (as you said) just did it as a big middle-finger to the fans and critics.
And this keeps happening. Wachowski did it with the last Matrix sequel and now Todd Phillips has done it with the Joker sequel. It seems that the directors have gotten too powerful that they could waste ridiculous amounts of money on spite for the audience. (Though in Wachowski's case it could have been contempt for the studio -- still doesn't matter because, like Ridley and Phillips, they could have stepped aside.) The director ego must be stopped, and that goes along with hacks like Snyder getting endless chances as they produce crappy film after crappy film.
I have just discovered this channel. It is the best movie/show analysis channel at the moment. It reminds me of the earlier days of RedLetterMedia and RalphTheMovieMaker.
Prometheus was not a good movie. It was just as big of an idiot plot with just as unbelievably idiotic characters. It asked the most basic generic questions with no intention of ever trying to provide an answer. Also it decided to try and give an origin story to something that didn't need an origin story and for some reason also had to be tied to humanity as if we are a chosen people that everything in the universe must be related to.
I whole heartedly agree. This was a waste of money and talent. How Scott allowed the script to be this lame is beyond me. You would think with the advent of better SPX that the screen writing would also improve. The color pallet was too murky...the players did not act like true scientists..let alone rational laymen travelers of space. In the far future why would weapons not be energy drive..hell even light sabre powered. Shooting bullets are so antiquated and impotent for defence. And the women folk??? really...not a brain cell shared between the group. This movie was a complete fail for me..sadly. Why not allow some film fans make a 50 million dollar movie..I'm sure they could do better...buy the way..what was the profit margin on this film?? Love your introspective critique...razor sharp...Thanks.
Okay, it might be stupid and lazy, since it's almost 4 in the morning, but if we establish that Scott didn't made the film out of spite, or that this movie is what it is not because Scott was "forced" (by producers and other stakeholders) to make the movie that way, i think that David killed engineers for the same reason he would've kill humans - to play God. Specially with all the biblical tropes and references in the movie (it feels like it was made by Zach Snyder, tbh). Engineers created humans, and humans are worshipping their creators, which is logical since Engineers are far more advanced than humans. But for David the logic doesn't work, he is superior to his makers. So he uses the Alien virus to extinct Engineers and he "breeds" the Xenomorphs - creatures that are way superior to both his makers and his makers makers. In a scene with "baby alien" David makes alien worship him by raising it's "hands" and David himself stands there as a "all-loving" God. Just like humans are God's "magnum opus", Aliens are David's magnum opus. And then he has a chance to further spread his "wonderful creations" by planting the aliens inside the ship with colonists. But that also would imply that David was jealous of humans worshipping some higher being, rather than worhipping David, which at the same time makes and doesn't make any sense.
I love how most video essays usually point out the subtle ways a work fails to tell a good story, and then in this one the biggest issue expressed is that the script is just stupid; not because he couldn't think of a better answer, but because there is no more profound source of this movie's issues than it just being dumb as shit.
I agree. I have been watching all the Alien movies recently. Outside of the prequels, in each movie there are generally at least some sensible people, struggling with the conditions or resources available to fight off the "perfect organism". You don't have to be the perfect organism to kill the dummies in Covenant. I think the medbay scene and David with captain Oram near the end are the two scenes that exemplify how badly written these characters are in terms how they completely fail to act in a way that makes us root for for them or even feel human at times. They are way better armed than anyone outside of the colonial marines in the other movies. Oram had david dead to rights. He has an assault rifle, he has compelling evidence David is making the monsters that are killing his crew. He is a religious character and basically calls david the devil. Just blow him away and all his creepy eggs. Ripley vs the queen style. You want to hear him out and get some answers? Ok, ask some questions but for the love of god, don't comply with any of his suggestions. Logic, emotions and evidence of an evil robot standing in front of you should all be enough motivation for him to resist or even justified to destroy david. But he does literally nothing, his writer took an early lunch that day or something. Complies like a zombie, gets chestbursted. Why. It actually makes me mad. There was a chance to actually do something with anything they established with him as a character, like he struggles to earn the respect of his crew as he was promoted due to the death of the captain, his faith and how he feels like an outsider with how many non religious people there are. This stuff could have played into how the scene unfolded, a heroic sacrifice one of the crew witnesses to save them but not himself like a Lt Gorman style tiny bit of redemption at the end. Or a philosophical conversation with david about faith that gives him pause, I don't know anything. But those threads just go nowhere and he just dies to make the little spaceballs top hat alien do a little dance with david.
All your points are totally spot on. When I watched this film I thought these people are the most useless bunch of idiots ive seen in a movie in some time. Except for that girl who becomes batman during the climactic fight on top of the space shuttle of course
David did not make the Xenomorphs in a deleted scene in the beginning of the movie he was supposed to find an OG Xeno egg made by the Engineers and then he made his version. What we got ruins so much lore and retcons so much i will never see this piece of garbage as canon!!!!
Good thing then that, at least if my understanding is correct, the idea of David being the creator of the xenomorphs has been debunked through other ALIEN-related media. One of the more recent comic series I think goes into this and makes it clear that David did NOT create the species.
The opening of prometheus showed the engineers seeding earth with dna, it's reasonable to assume evolution followed from that naturally. The movie was stupid, but that premise wasn't
Yeah, and up until they decide to destroy humanity, it's not bad. Even creating Xenomorphs for war and genocide isn't bad. If they find a habitable world that has creatures unfavorable for life, let's say dinosaurs in this case, they could release Xenomorphs or the alien plague and let it wipe out all life on the planet, then presumably have a way to kill the Xenomorphs, thus leaving them free to seed the planet with life and repeat the process. I could even see it being considered a great honor to be the one engineer who sacrifices themselves to seed a planet with life. So up until they decide to kill humanity, seeing it as a failed experiment, the engineers are, or at least were, interesting.
I don't appreciate the MAGA comment in the video, but wholeheartedly endorse your take on this movie. When can we get (across the board) super high quality Sci-Fi?
Hey, if the shoe fits... A lot of people lost friends and loved ones to that pandemic, myself included, and there's a great number of people still struggling with long-covid or other lasting health-complications. And why? All because a bunch of MAG-gots felt their "personal freedom" was more important than the health and well-being of themselves and others.
Everytthing you said is true, and this is (as usual0 an outstanding video, but I still enjoy the film, sorry. I have to say when the two people in the shuttle panic when the creature comes out, that actually felt plausible. We all like to think we'd know exactly what to do in a crisis, but in the handfull of real life crises I've been in, I've often found myself frozen with shock or indecision - I felt that bit was actually a very strong part of the film - a big part of the Alien films is that human stupidity or incoimpetence is a big part of what makes the Aliens dangerous (like when the marines cannot fire at them under the heat exchanged in Aliens). I also think its unfair to blame them for not taking a minute to verify Walter's identity when they were running for their lives to escape the monster, again, they're panicking and afraid, not calm and cool. Also, both Prometheus and Covenant had a glut of characters who were just sort of, there. I get havin one or two people who exist to quickly get killed, but both films had about 6 such figures, unlike the first three films, which took even a little time to develop them, these characters have barely any screen time, bary any dialogue and barley any personality.
I could have liked Covenant if it was not part of the ALIEN film series. It should have been a stand-alone film with no characters from any previous ALIEN film. For me the biggest issue was that Covenant was not a Prometheus sequel, and I had no interest in seeing a "David as Dr. Frankenstein" movie. This is the only ALIEN film that refused to buy a blu-ray copy of. I just wanted to forget it was ever made. Now we have ALIEN Romulus coming in August, and I suspect I'm going to hate as much as Covenant.
I'd love to watch a take on how films can retroactively negatively affect new viewings of previous movies. Of course it's possible to mentally separate Prometheus from Alien and move on with life. After watching Prometheus and Covenant, knowing now this is canonically relevant to Alien dramatically alters how we view events. Retroactively inserting new bullshit just sucks imo.
I never watched Covenant. Prometheus was a franchise killer for me for very similar reasons you hated this movie... the characters made insanely stupid choices
You're not wrong. The characters are dumb in both movies. But I liked Ellie and David in Prometheus and the mystery of the engineers. Covenant had nothing going for it.
@@davescripted3796 David in Prometheus, yes. Elle? Nope. I found the whole Christian thing eye rollingly bad. You've got a woman, in the future, who has studied all about ancient cultures, who is looking for our "creators"... yet still believes in a divine creator who had a plan to nail his son to a tree in order to forgive Adam and Eve generations later?
I watched Prometheus in the cinema and Gibraltar and people were laughing when she ran so far in a straight line to get squished. It was so bad it was comical. But we had a great protagonist with good potential for a sequel...
I think this is the case... Prior to the movie's release, back when they were dropping clips and short-videos as promotion for the movie, one showed us pieces of Shaw's journey with David and she progressively gets sicker and sicker. The only other explanation that would make sense is that she just inevitably weakened and died because of all the shit that happened after she gave herself the c-section. She had to run, jump, fight, and took at least one rifle-butt to the area within hours after surgery. I would not be surprised if the surgery site didn't heal properly and caused complications.
@@refurbishedtechpriest9076 5 months late but ion David died like a day after the infection. Ellie was doing quite good and she probably died of natural causes. Since enough nutrients, proteins, vitamins and stuff to make a whole ass living being was sucked out of her body in like a day. It takes us 9 months of constant extra eating to make a baby. Ellie is a small person and it’s a miracle she could even walk after having that much taken out of her body. She just died cuz she got weakened asf and ion think she had enough resources to get her body back to normal
Prometheus was the first Alien movie Ive seen. Its unfortunate that we didnt get to see more of the engineers, i found the theme of religion in a sci fi story quite interesting. Given that the prequels were supposed to be a trilogy, with the 3rd cancelled I guess that the studio forced the writes into creating a more traditional alien movie. Hence the Engineer story just being cut short. It seems very impossible for the creators of all humans to just be whiped out by one single robot. And also, they all just happened to be in one place?
I for myself loved Alien Covenant, yes it could have been better but i really like how they did build this Style around Creation and Playing God. Is the Movie Stupid? Yes, are the Characters dumb? Absolutly, could the Movie be better? Maybe. But i still love Alien Covenant for what it is. The Design, the Xenomorphs, The Mysterious Pathogen, the Idea of Davids Petect Eden that he wanted to create. I really liked that and say what you want about the Movie but Ridley Scott at least tried for us Fans to give us Both Alien and Prometheus and i have Respect for this.
As someone who pretty much loathed this movie upon release and still does upon a rewatch (though admittedly with more of a slight appreciation for it), I decided to read the two drafts of the script available that John Logan wrote, along with Logan’s original prologue which ended up being filmed to an extent as “The Crossing” for RUclips. And… I’ve come to the conclusion that this was actually a good concept for a movie with solid writers behind it (particularly Logan and Michael Green), but it was plagued by 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott. 20th Century Fox clearly decided this sequel needed way more Alien in it after the feedback towards Prometheus. Whether Scott was pressured into making the film a certain way or not is debatable, but whatever the case, three things are certain with him. 1.) He pretty much maintained plenty if not complete creative control over the project with no one to firmly tell him “NO,” and he’s been trying to take ownership over a franchise he clearly has little investment in now. 2.) His investment in David and the Engineers was way higher than his investment in the Alien, and he couldn’t or wouldn’t find a way to get himself excited over either. 3.) He had no idea how far to take this story or even the exact timeframe it takes place in (you can’t bridge a 100 year time gap between a Prometheus sequel and Alien considering it all takes place almost 30 years before the Nostromo lands on LV426). He desperately needed a writer’s room or something to put all the pieces together. Put all those things together and you have this mess of a movie with too much on its mind and no idea what it wants to be. Really, the Prometheus saga as a whole would’ve benefited way more from being their own standalone films completely divorced from Alien. It’s frustrating because I love the lore of these films, and in a lot of ways I think they do slot in well within the Alien mythos, especially Prometheus. And it’s even more prevalent now with their integration into Romulus. But I think once David entered the picture, Ridley Scott no longer wanted to make any sort of Alien prequel, and he couldn’t get out of it, especially once it came time to make Covenant. And it shows in the final products of both films.
I've been on this in cinema, came out excidingly disapointed and like you- I do somewhat like Prometheus, but on it's own, set besides the Alien as a series. And because of a cerain "bug" i have with me- I started to come up and write down reimaginings of this set of movies to make things more satisfying. Stuff like removing the fact that David is the creator of xenomorphs- it was far more satisfying that they were implied to be a weaponized organism far far far older than one could imagine, probably even older than Engineers themselves. My thinking and idea was that even Engiees changed an already existing creature for whatever warfare they had in mind. And for me Engineer plot should have been resolved in a way of Old Ones in Warhammer (and alike): "Somewhere in the stars they still are", but now watching instead of acting, which for some might still be far more teriffying. THe story with such plot continiuation would have been more satisfying as a story how a search destroys the searcher- first it kills Ellie, who doesn't have infinite life, and then it destroys David, who falls into obsession for answer and fulfilment for a want to be a creator himself
The planet you call “engineer-planet” is not the engineer. It’s an experiment planet , just like earth. You can see that they look like human mix with engineer. Also this has been confirmed by R.Scott.
Over explaining kills horror. Why can’t Xenos just exist?! Why do they have to have an origin being lab created by bald giants and a evil android?! I don’t consider Prometheus and Covenant canon, and I look forward to the tv series Alien: Earth as it’s going to ignore those 2 films’ continuity and make the aliens mysterious again and not be stupid black goo. By the way, Ridley Scott ruined Fede Alvarez’s film putting his crap Prometheus and Covenant crap in it.
Ellie needed David to fly the ship and communicate with the Engineers. That's why she attached the head. This was not the movie Scott wanted to make. The big wigs had issues with the religious undertones and killed his entire origin trilogy idea he had been planning for over a decade
The fact that nobody in this movie follows a basic infection/quarantine protocol is especially infuriating cause in the first Alien Ripley was adamant in not making the 2 peeps plus the infected dumbass on board the Nostromo when they come back from the alien ship!
I agree it needed to tell a different story, and arguably be a different genre - the same genre as Alien: ancient, cosmic horror - but the angle was all wrong from the jump. Androids dunnit is stupid for several reasons, the most important of which is that it flatly contradicts the original movie it allegedly attempted to continue. If i tell you that it takes an organism a minimum of tens of thousands of years to fossilize, and you can work out the rest of this particular error yourself, if you've actually watched the original Alien movie. But this glaring mistake is not the only reason this choice was stupid. Alien is ancient, cosmic horror, and the key part of that genre is the unknown being partially exposed, never fully. if you fully expose it, the horror becomes known and therefore less scary and less mystical. The other significant feature of the style of literature the Alien script was is that the antagonizing menace needs to be ancient. You know: like the space jockey and xenomorphs in Alien, or like the...penguins in At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft, which is the novel Alien was directly inspired by. You can not stamp "Made in China" on the side of your ancient cosmic horror and have it be either particularly ancient, alien or horrific = you have failed as a writer. Just miserably....0/3 points, report to remedial writing class at once and stay there! No amount of remedial writing training can possibly be too much! So anyway, there are zero good things about Prometheus for anyone who is an Alien fan, and Covenant is somehow even worse. A fake Alien fan, sure. Plenty of those around. But not for a real fan. A real Alien fan will understand that both these movies are the exact opposite to Alien in every conceivable way, and should never have been made. Anti Alien movies is what they are. And that is unforgivable to an Alien fan.
I don’t remember where I heard this but the species that David killed weren’t engineers. They were created by the engineers the same way humans were but unlike humans they were perfect and peaceful. In a Prometheus deleted scene the engineer said that humanity needed to die because of how violent it was. These people living on the planet were the engineers perfect creation. David somehow knew this so he killed them all. I still don’t know why he did this but I think this should have been explained in the movie.
Not goin lie when I seen that the Noomi rapace didn’t reprise her roll in covenant I knew it would be garbage . I still liked it though when I watched I was younger and not really understanding the continuity of alien lore but it’s crazy the deeper you fall in the rabbit hole of learning things the more dumb things become so now I can understand why ppl hate covenant I actually like Prometheus though and also the deleted scene and script with the engineers makes the film easily a 8.7/10 . But never the less noomi rapace is badass it’s no way you just off screen her. Like this shit a damn weekly show
I actually really like these videos, but my partner said this guy sounds a bit like Ben Wyatt from parks and rec. And i can't un hear it. So I'm going to make it head cannon that this is ben wyatt if he made a RUclips channel.
Great video! thanks. In my opinion, david was obsessed with the idea of the superior species. he wanted to design the perfect alien like weyland designed him. that's why he wanted to wipe out the engineers. before that they were the creators of humans. but the xenomorphs outnumbered them.
🙏Yeah I like that explanation. Weyland considered himself a god for creating David. So david wanted to be a god too. It's interesting how in religion god creates lesser beings, but in evolution, greater things come from simpler things. They're in conflict. There were some cool existential ideas the film could have explored but wasted the opportunity.
With the release of Alien Romulus I keep seeing people try to pretend like Covenant is now suddenly a good movie and YT recommended me this video because it knew I was going to agree with it 1000%.
Good video I very much agree. So many points throughout the movie I thought to myself, what an idiot, WHY. However: 6:28 Careful mate that's a whole 0.0001% chance of death for anyone under 30! Watch out! 13:40 He kills the engineers for killing his creator Weyland in the previous movie.
I strongly believe the dudes David killed weren’t engineers but were the engineers favorite creation. evidence being how different they are, shorter, different facial structure, skin tone and human like eyes
[WARNING: LONG] Alien: Covenant really is my least favourite of the lot, Ridley Scott's worst film and possibly the worst of the series not named "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" in my opinion. And ironically, that's because it plays out like a spiritual sequel to that film's mean, spiteful gore-focused schlock despite its delusions of grandeur and being thought-provoking, only this time it plays out like a giant revenge fic against both Prometheus and the entire Alien series in general. David is one of the most despicable villain mary sues ever committed to film, the reveal that he created the Xenomorphs is utterly insulting, and the film is hellbent on making everyone else as dumb as humanly possible to make sure that he wins. That is what the movie is about: Making everyone as stupid as possible so that the overpowered bad guy can take over the mythology of the series and win. This is why I hate Covenant so much, and why this is the only film of the lot I won't rebuy on home video: At its core, Covenant is a gigantic, vile fanfiction with a budget. It's out to ruin its predecessor by resolving it in the most infuriating ways, and ruin the series it's a part of by forcing its special little snowflake of a character into the mythos, whilst at the same time being as cruel and spiteful as possible by having him overpower the cast through sheer dumb luck. That's why it's so infuriating whenever I see someone trying to paint Covenant as a "misunderstood masterpiece" when it's anything but, and why It's so baffling whenever I see someone declare Alien 3 the worst of the series because "DEY KIL3D HIX AND NOOT" before turning around to praise Covenant: Yes. Alien 3 killed Hicks and Newt in an EEV crash. Yes, it was an insulting cop out. But at least the inmates of Fiorina 161 were _smart._ Under the leadership of protagonist Ellen Ripley, they actually succeeded where the Nostromo crew and Gorman's Colonial Marine unit failed and trapped that film's Alien, albeit temporarily. The cast of Covenant, because they're dumb as bricks and the film is utterly hostile and spiteful towards them whilst one-sided in favour of David, can't possibly hope to do such a feat, and that in my mind is far worse than any unceremonious character killing. All I can say is thank the Engineers for Alien: Romulus.
This probably comes down to a fundamental problem with quality control. The writing was abominable (ala Game of Thrones final season) and Scott didn't see the need to override the plot. Or it might be indicative of a decline in artistic expression in the 21st century. Or it could be indicative of both.
I hate to be “that guy” but attractiveness is real and affects everything. Fat, lose 50 pounds. I was fat and I just did that and the way people treat me is completely different. Noomi Rapace is gorgeous. Whether or not we will admit it, we care more about her character because she’s beautiful. There is no one who thinks James Franco is moving to another planet with the lead woman from alien covenant. Is that an asshole thing to say? Absolutely. Is it true? Yeah, it is. The superficial nature of our society is real: gorgeous people deny it because they don’t want to admit that they have it easy. Ugly people deny it because they don’t want to admit they have it hard. As a guy who has been a bodybuilder, and also a big fat piece of shit: if you think looks don’t matter, you are in denial.
why are you talking about James Franco? He isnt in this film? are you saying the lead is ugly or not im confused. also there were no fat people in the film
Yeah you are right Naomi character was retarded. Religious and irrational. Charlize has good and rational character but finished retarded run in line. Also Charlize character was portrayed as unlikable for some reason. Scott probably wanted his religious bollocks in those movies. Remember sequence from first alien when ripley use self destruct panel. All buttons are marked in religious terms from different religions. Scott likes this shit.
I agree with this to an extent - but the characters in Alien were not all super attractive (some were ofc), we still had empathy for them and liked them as characters. There's lots of amazing films with actors that aren't conventionally attractive but the film maker elicites empathy for them. I think it's a lot more complex than 'I find this character less attractive so I care less'. I'd certainly agree that having attractive actors is a cheap and easy way to overcome bad writing though 😂
@@kernel-pult Hahaha he’s not a main character in the film but he’s definitely shown to be the main girls significant other. That’s “what I’m talking about”. Maybe you need to watch it again.
@@kernel-pult Also: Danny McBride is definitely overweight in this film, just look at his jawline. Maybe he’s not fat by typical American standards where you have to be 400 pounds to be considered fat but he’s overweight.
I get it that these people in this era are use to space travel but they landed in a new planet and the crew was oblivious to the new world wonders or lack thereof 😂
Worst movie in the franchise because of the one dimensional character of contrived intention in the least believable way even taking into account the idiot plot.
They do mention the problem with the comms throught the movie and how they couldnt get close cause there wa a hurricane n the planet, and david also cut his arm to make them think he was walter but besides that YEP idiot plot
I have such mixed feelings about Prometheus and Covenant. Both movies are visually and technical stunning. But Covenant is such nihilistic nonsense it torpedos any good will.
I think what got in Scott's way is his own atheism. Atheism is a theme in some of his movies, and he wasn't able to take the story anywhere interesting. Not to mention being heart broke that people didn't like Prometheus as he hoped.
@@davescripted3796 EEEH.... They really have an ANTI christian message. Shawl believes in christianity, just to learn SCIENTIFICALLY she wasnt created by what she thought... and although she has scientific evidence, she chooses to believe anyway. That's really an ANTI christian message...especially coming from an atheist!
Its a lot easier to write an idiot plot, thats why you see it more and more lately, its lazy writing. Prometheus also had an idiot plot so one would conclude that Scott should not be involved in writing films just directing them.
Alien(s) fans disparage Prometheus because it does not bear enough resemblance to Alien(s). The writers make the sequel more like a Prometheus-Alien crossover, AND some kind of origin story for the Xenomorph. Its a total mess. Lesson: blame negative Alien(s) Prometheus naysayers. And, just for reference, yes, I do agree that the Prometheus concept would have been far better being carried on as its own thing, without the need to cram the next movie full of Alien(s) tropes.
... Citation needed. While I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case, given what a shit-show of storytelling this movie was, but we know from the end of "Prometheus" that Shaw and David were making their way to the Engineer home-world... So why would they go to some random world that was just seeded by the Engineers instead? Again, given the movie we're talking about it would not surprise me in the slightest if you're right; but a source for this info would be appreciate. If nothing else it'd be one more criticism to levy against this movie.
@@refurbishedtechpriest9076 Wrong height. Wrong eyes. Too primitive. This was not the Engineers home-world, just another world they seeded and still had contact with. It is obvious. There was mention of this in an interview somewhere, but as you said..."given what a shit-show of storytelling this movie was"...it makes the most sense. Shaw wanted to go to the home-world and ask the "creators" why they wanted to destroy human life. Who knows if they had co-ordinates to that world? Who knows what David did to manipulate things en route? Whatever plans might have been mentioned at the end of "Prometheus", that was also a "shit-show", so we can't take it as a blueprint for the events of this movie. All in all, this attempted extension of "Alien" was a massive failure. I hope "Romulus" brings something better.
Here is a quote from Damon Lindelof, who wasn't involved in "Covenant" but has discussions with a lot of the creative people. "“I think that one of the conversations that we had at the end of Prometheus is, Shaw and David have basically locked in on the coordinates of the planet where the Engineers came from. What does that place look like? Ridley called it ‘Paradise’. What happens when they land on that planet? It doesn’t feel like they’ve gotten there yet in Covenant , Covenant felt like it maybe was a detour prior to them arriving at the place of origin so I don’t want to spoil any place that he might still be wanting to go, but the conversations that he and I had about where the story goes next were largely about the place where the Engineers were from and less the events of Covenant .” Here is the title of a video by another RUclipsr discussing this. It makes sense to me. Alien Covenant: Planet Was Not The Engineer Homeworld
@@Murdock13 Honestly I chucked the changes in their appearances to just gross incompetence and/or they didn't care enough to get them right. And given the quote you just provided (Thanks for that btw) it sounds like they just didn't care about what "Prometheus" established while writing the script for this dumpster-fire of a movie. But once again I find myself vexed that the shitty writing for this movie forces us to either lean on assumptions, fan-theories, and/or interviews instead of making this shit clear in the movie. Such atrocious writing. Thanks for responding with the quote, and I share you hopes regarding "Romulus". The trailer looked solid, here's to hoping it delivers...
If I remember correctly there were 2 Davids in Prometheus so I can understand because she thought the one she was fixing was the good one, and not the evil one since there was a point where the characters themselves split near the end with the evil one destroying the good one taking his place. Everything from that point just follows, and only reveals the evil one at the end. Everything else about the movie except that part is pretty spot on.
Those couldn't be the original engineers. In AC their advance civilization would have been hundred of thousands of years further develop, to the point of snorting the black goo on one nostril and farting rainbows on the other.
@@hwyadoin_alt Because even officials who forced masks on people by now admitted that they weren't effective and that they had no good reason to implement mask mandates maybe?
Plus germs on an alien planet wouldn’t be the same as those found on earth. Covid was a variant of the flu, whereas anything on an alien planet would likely kill you because you have no immunity to it whatsoever.
@@TrangleC you mean… the surgical masks? Yeah, people noted that they were significantly less effective (NOT useless, mind you) pretty quickly. If I recall correctly the standard for mask was raised to a basic respirator. So… I mean I guess the commonly used mask wasn’t ideal, surgical masks, which makes sense because… well they’re surgical masks, not respirators. They’re used to keep things in your mouth, in your mouth. A room for preforming surgeries is ideally already sterile. Which is why the standard for masks was raised to respirators, (you know, your KN95’s and N95’s) which actually were proven to be effective against COVID. Because… they filter things. I mean I guess you are, in a sense, not totally wrong, as many people continued to use surgical masks which were known to be ineffective but the commonly recommended mask by medical professionals was a suitable option. Also I hate this language like “they FORCED masks on people!” They made temporary rules to combat a virus spreading across the world, this wasn’t some malicious plot against the citizens of the United States, they weren’t sending people in black suits to go force masks onto people’s faces, and like yeah some initial decisions were rushed because they couldn’t just sit down and twiddle their fingers. They did what they could, and when they were given time to reflect upon their decisions, they reconsidered some actions and changed them accordingly. They are human beings, you know.
This proves most people know nothing about microorganisms. How about taking a microbiology class and actually grow some bacteria in a petri dish with and without a surgical mask and seeing the difference....
For God's sake, I've lost count of the number of people who watched this movie and think that the planet that Ellie and David reach is the Engineer homeworld. It isn't, it's another seed planet, just like Earth, only populated with a race derived from the Engineers, but more closely resemble them. That they aren't the Engineers is painfully obvious. If you're going to make a video critiquing a movie, please try to understand it first.
Where in the movie is this established? We know from the end of "Prometheus" that Shaw wanted to go to their home-world and we're pretty much told that's exactly where their course was set to. Why go to a random world they mere seeded with life instead? Don't get me wrong, given what a mess this movie is and how Scott and his writers just turned their brains off for it, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case. Still, citation is needed my friend.
It's ambiguous. David may have merely "reengineered" them and they are in fact very ancient. No one knows if the Xenomorphs existed as they are first, or if they originally came from the black goo. Either way AvP events can still be considered in universe canon, just depends on how you think about it.
there's no way david actually created anything, i think it's reasonable to assume he just carried on with whatever bio engineering he found on the ship/planet. If humans are nowhere near bioengineering xenomorphs with their tech and intelligence, then why would the robot humans created be capable of it? He is on par with a genius level human in terms of intelligence, not as smart as the engineers. Apparently there is a deleted scene where david finds a xeno egg on the planet but even without this scene i think it makes total sense that he just found the xeno eggs and made more or optimised them slightly. It also fits in with his inflated ego where he wants to feel superior by becoming an originator of life meanwhile he cannot change that he is an inferior being that cannot innovate
It seems that covenant was just a response to the people who were crying about how bad prometheus was. I wish the movie studios would stop listening to 'fans' so much. These movies always seem to end up worse because of it.
A lot of the critiques here are logical idealism. I think you're forgetting that this is primarily a philisophical and artistic movie. NOT just a horror movie and not just a supporting pillar of the alien trilogy. As an alien fan of course you're going to hate it. Maybe Scott shouldn't have tagged into such a beloved franchise to make these films which are fundamentally not about the same thing but whatever, he did. As someone who liked alien but doesn't d-ride it, i can appreciate these 2 films as their own thing. First of all the issues you have with the idiot plot - have you considered how it ties into the crux about humans being an inferior species with huge problems regarding selfishness and stupidity? The thing about "scientific procedure 🤓" isn't what this film is about and to centre your argument around it is obtuse. This main themes of the film are religion and creation, what counts as life, are some species superior to others, is searching for your creator worthwhile. Those are the questions the film attempted to answer (as I remember it, it was 6 years ago) and it did them well. Also some other annoying things: they are not on the engineers home planet, it is another seed planet like Earth and those are not the engineer species that David kills. Also david did not create the xenomorphs, he found the eggs left by the engineers and spent his time developing it or making more. The point is that David, contrary to his beliefs, is an inferior life form not capable of creating life. Also this film is by definition going to also be about feminism seeing as the point "those who cannot create life are inferior" is a huge signpost to feminsim, not to mention all the alien abortion/birth scenes. The crumbs of a point are alll there so idk why you didnt notice this.
Even larger than just ruining Prometheus, I think Covenant also ruins Alien and the Xenomorph in general. I think one thing that made the Xenomorphs so evocative and dreadful was that they were a manifestation of the universe's ultimate in difference. They are the living embodiment of space's inherent hostility to terrestrial life. The horror behind the Xenomorph was the implication that the blind forces of the universe produced this thing that was beyond any rational nightmare, that killed people in a manner so unreasonably grotesque as the be sadistically inefficient, and what the implied about humanity's lack of significance in the grand scope of things.
The Alien seems like the most evil and dangerous creature imaginable any explaination of its
origin could never measure up to the monster itself
Incredibly well said and true.
@@slinkyatrest Yep & instead humans & their stupid Android creation had huge significance in meddling with the Xeno or Deacon or whatever the hell they are supposed to called. For me, who F cares about David, what David is doing & why?
If Ridley wanted to make a movie about a psychopathic robot go make a new movie & franchise.
Exactly. Aliens made us seem insignificant, maladapted, and powerless in the big hostile universe where a much fitter organism has evolved. Prometheus made the universe small with us at the center of it and the Xenos and Space Jockeys all being related to us.
@@ThorX89 good point. I didn't even think of how small it made the universe by having everything being related to us.
Ridley Scott didn't want to make a sequel to prometheus, it's actually really well reported on. What he *really* didn't want was the Aliens Concept Sequel that was being shopped around by Neill Blomkamp. He purposefully helmed a movie he didn't want to make because his pride wouldn't allow someone like Blomkamp to potentially tell a better story.
Because Scott has always been an average director elevated with great scripts (Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner)
When he has his own people writing movies, like Robin Hood or Prometheus, we get muddled movies.
So Scott being petty, and shutting down Blomkamp's film (which already had Sigourney Weaver attached to), isn't surprising to me.
Meh, it could have been good or it could have been Alien: The Last Jedi.
Blomkamp's movie would've been just as awful.
🤦🏾♂️ 🤦🏾♂️ 🤦🏾♂️. Damn it
@@frankthecat1660 because?
'Prometheus' was full of idiot characters as well. We start with a couple of archaeologists pitching their idea to travel to another planet, and when they're asked what evidence they have to support their hypothesis, they say they don't have any and counter with a "but my FEELS!" defense. Then the audience is treated like idiots because we're clearly meant to sympathize with this position - with the idea that Shaw's emotional motivations are obviously superior to empirical evidence.
In 'Alien', we could understand how overwhelmed the crew of the Nostromo felt because they were intentionally written as "truck drivers in space". They weren't supposed to be prepared for any of the crazy shit they encountered. But the Prometheus was on an exploratory mission funded by one of the richest humans who ever lived. You'd expect the scientific crew to be among the best in their fields. But we get a geologist who acts like a misanthropic petty criminal, and who, despite being the one who launches the drones that go about mapping the structure they're in, manages to get lost. We also get a biologist who, upon finding actual examples of long-dead alien life, announces how creeped out he is and that he wants to go home. Then later, when he finds an actual living alien life form, he dies because he tries to PET the damned thing.
Based on all the Eric von Däniken 'Chariots of the Gods' baggage in the plot, as well as the idiotic caricatures of the scientists and the "your evidence is no match for my emotionally based revelation" slant of the narrative, I got the sense that the writing came from the perspective of someone not only ignorant of science, but actually hostile to science because it doesn't support their pet ideas.
I really enjoyed it
@Foster.
Well said. 👏
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I remember an Adam Savage quote about walking out of a theater trying to convince himself that he'd liked a movie, and as soon as I heard that I thought of 'Prometheus'.
Thank you. I watched Covenant a few days ago. I put it off for years, but with my Alien need reaching fever pitch, my curiosity got the better of me. I regretted it because it added, noting to the franchise other than David's return, and he doesn't make any sense as a character. I really don't understand his desire to create or to become a god. You'd think his logic would be pure, but it seems to keep hinting that he has original thoughts. Again, it really doesn't make any sense, and the movie hopes you'll just go along with it just to see what happens next. Ridley set up David to be this robot who goes against his programming and lies to everyone for reasons. Without any explanation why. Like you said, it feels "Sources, bro. Trust, bro."
I hated Prometheus but what Scott did to Ellie is just criminal.
As far as Ridley Scott goes this is nothing new really. Each time Ridley has full controll over the script it ends up being terrible, mediocre at best. Ridley is an exceptional visual director. Almost all his movies show that. Great cinematogreaphy, awesome visual story telling. But the plot and narrative usually really sucks. The guy just can't write a story. And when he also has some sort of agenda - like with both Prometheus and Covenant - it becomes downright bad. Scott mentioned several times that his motivation was the dangers of AI and that this is what he wanted to really tell, a story about the android. But it kinda gets in the way of the overall plot.
I generally don't think a bad sequel ruins a previous film, but Covenant certainly makes Prometheus worse. The latter film was filmed with a messy screenplay, but it had interesting ideas that could have been expanded upon for some really good potential, if done properly. Scott threw all that away & didn't give a damn, but still filled it with his self indulgent smugness that was all over Prometheus.
Scott arrogantly believed criticism against Prometheus was due to people disappointed it didn't have aliens in it, so he made an Alien film instead. Well, not only is that false, but hypothetically, if that was the reason it disappointed fans, Scott & Fox should still be blamed because of all the marketing (the trailers with that eerie siren sound from the original Alien), not to mention the same Alien letter title forming, cues from Goldsmith's score etc.
The backburster scene in Covenant was overly shown in marketing. It was very disturbing to see in the trailer, but they kept showing it so much that the effect was lost when the film was released. Scott should receive some of the blame for not demanding to keep things like that out of the marketing.
Alien Covenant is one of the worst films of the last decade. Scott should be kicked away from the franchise, & these films should be erased from canon.
Maybe, but not in an Alien movie. Pushing a glorified toaster like David the Paranoid Android to the front is not compatible with Alien at all. We make toasters. We only just started making toasters. Where's the mystery? Where's the horror? Where's the sense of human exploration? Where's the ancient quality this particular antagonist needed in order to be evocative? All gone, and everything was the fault of the toaster we just made! Woopsies!
It's just shit. Absolute and unmitigated shit. No amount of sophistry and mental gymnastics will ever change it into anything else.
I remember watching the last 45 or 30 minutes of this on TV one, and only watching it bc of your Prometheus video. When I saw that Ellie died I was like what the heck? I also didn't like the more horror tone it had and thought a more scifi tone like Prometheus would have been better.
I totally agree!
Beside the idiot plot, I guess what annoyed me about Covenant on a higher level is that it shifted focus once again. Prometheus moved the focus away from the aliens and over to the Engineers. Like mentioned, the end of Prometheus left a lot of mysteries surrounding the Engineers (some of which were actually explained in deleted scenes) and left open to be explored in a sequel.
Instead, the sequel kills off the Engineers because reasons and instead David becomes the main protagonist. The aliens' role are somehow reduced to being more or less wild beasts of David's creation and limited control. That somehow makes them less frightening to me. And Davids motivations are all a bit obscure and makes little sense.
Sure, but it already had the abominable twist that androids dunnit, which is not possible in Alien, because both the engineers and the xenomorphs are ancient and we only just recently started building androids in this universe. That really tells you how misguided these two movies were, and would have remained even were they good movies, and even if they had been mutually consistent and coherent. They needed to be consistent and coherent with Alien too, and were just never going to be with that incompatible, impossible angle.
Everyone involved in these productions, and apparently many professed Alien fans with them, need to sit down and watch the start of Alien over and over again until the penny drops. There are a few scenes and approximately one line of expo in that entire movie, but it is vital that one picks it up before one proceeds to make sequels. Otherwise it will be incoherent and mutally exclusive, which is what both Prometheus and Covenant are. And once you do pick up the evidently far too subtle, elegant and intelligent exposition in Alien, you must choose between that and the two recent Ridley Scott abominations. It is as incoherent as these movies to pretend to be an Alien fan and a fan of either Prometheus or Covenant. It's one or the other, whether you like it or not.
I guess Covenant is not set in the Alien universe, but is instead a sequel to Idiocracy.
That means those "astronauts" really were the smartest people available for such a mission...
"Why did you go to space!?"
"I like money."
2:15 Ellie has no mandible
2:25 Ellie has a mandible
Continuity error in the very same movie
Yeah, I don't get it. Were they drawings or photographs? Either way... ugh. Fingers crossed for part three... if they ever make it.
@@davescripted3796
They did because they could. They never think if they should.
My interpretation of David’s decision to kill the engineers comes down to the opening of the film. “You seek your creator, I am looking at mine.” David seems to have a complex about creation, both his own at the hands of humans and in turn the humans at the hands of the engineers. Thus, the engineers in a far removed sense are also his creators. The fact he fully exterminates them seems done out of disgust, like David couldn’t stand that he was no longer superior to humans (in his eyes) by virtue of knowing his origins.
I think David says somewhere, if I remember correctly, that he can understand human emotions but he will never have any. He might simply hate humans, not because he is in many ways superior but because they made him, despite their inferiority. A sort of inferiority complex maybe. Despite the fact that he is a "superior" being, as he doesn't really age, the same way humans do and he has greater strength and intellect he still can't "feel" and thus is in many ways flawed as he also doesn't have the potential for growth. So what he does is trying to destroy everything infront of him and trying to build something new on the ashes of it. But since he is not a real creator in that sense what he creates is violent, murderous and corrupts.
That's my take on it.
changing from "Prometheus 2" to "covenant" was a mistake ,knowing that "Ridley Scott's" decision influenced by the community fandom was aggravating .
personally i liked Prometheus i didn't even know that it belong to the alien series at the time
surely was more successful than alien covenant no doubt about that .
Ok, but if your problem with Covenant is that it has an idiot plot, then why do you like Prometheus? It also has an idiot plot. I only ever watched the film when it was in theatres, so I can't quote chapter and verse, but you have to know that so many of the decisions the characters made on the mission, supposedly characters who were chosen out of all humanity to execute a history-making mission, made idiotic mistake after idiotic mistake, full of petty bickering and really basic emotional regulation problems. The crew of Prometheus were markedly worse than your average group of coworkers, far from being an elite group of professionals.
The plot of Prometheus would never have happened if the crew were the highly trained and skilled specialists the film made them out to be. It wouldn't even have happened if the crew were normal people. It required many of them to be of below-average intelligence.
You're not wrong... Though as someone who prefers "Prometheus" vastly over "Alien Covenant" for much of the same reasons, the only rationale I can offer is that the idiot-plot in "Prometheus" was no where near as insufferable and infuriating as the one in "Alien Covenant". It may just be a matter of personal preference, but to me the crew in "Alien Covenant" made the crew in "Prometheus" look like proper professionals in comparison.
The only other bit I can offer is that at least with "Prometheus" we the audience know by the end that the mission was just a secondary concern to the real mission: Get Weyland to humanity's creators so that he can find a way to live longer/forever, and its filled with the usual hubris from the Company that we've all come to know and love... With "Alien Covenant" on the other hand, there is no such excuses. Even if the premise that launches the plot for "Prometheus" forward is dumb, with the Company involved in things it's still believable. Especially when you see how far they'll go in future films to get their way.
I’m convinced Ridley made it an idiot plot to get back at the audience. Like people were so stingey about Prometheus that Ridley was like alright give them something else… like we could have had a totally different movie from covenant
Yeah, be spiteful against the audience that praised Alien, a 2 hour movie that didn't have 10% of that be action, AND DIDN'T chastise how the crew WOULD NEVER ALLOW AN INFECTED PASSENGER ON THE SHIP (EVEN IF THEY DID THAT WOULD BE QUARANTINED AND SURVEILLANCED 24/7). Even though Prometheus sucked (and I'm the biggest Alien fan), doesn't give him the right to destroy the franchise.
Even though I know you're joking, I'm legitimately bothered how he destroyed my favorite Horror/Sci-Fi!
I know this post is a year old, but I believe something similar was behind Lucas' decision to sell Star Wars to Disney.
But Prometheus was shit. I want both movies permanently erased, and take both AvP movies, Resurrection, Romulus and A3 with you as you go! I have no use for any of these shitty, not-Alien movies, and I never did. If people don't know how to continue the story due to illiteracy and alcoholism; stop trying! Just for God's sake stop!
@ you okay bud?
I've just watched this again. So sad they went away from the exploration and wonder looking for answers from the first one, and went to dr frankenstein. Did noone read the script like wtf. Must admit, for a bad movie its one of the best shot.
The first one was also Dr. Frankenstein. Weyland as Frankenstein, creating David. The Engineers as _Igor_ fetching more bodies from Earth. Look at the scene where Shaw reanimates the head using electricity. The 1818 book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has the full title "Frankenstein : The Modern Prometheus "
I know it’s hard for a lot of people to accept, but Scott hated the fans after Prometheus and really did make this whole movie as nothing more than a “fuck you”
... I mean, is that such a difficult notion to accept? To have gone from "Prometheus" to "Alien Covenant" he'd either have to be just the biggest idiot in cinema, have to be going senile, or (as you said) just did it as a big middle-finger to the fans and critics.
@@refurbishedtechpriest9076 He was saying .. 'You want stupid? Here you go ... Eat it.' 😂
And this keeps happening. Wachowski did it with the last Matrix sequel and now Todd Phillips has done it with the Joker sequel. It seems that the directors have gotten too powerful that they could waste ridiculous amounts of money on spite for the audience. (Though in Wachowski's case it could have been contempt for the studio -- still doesn't matter because, like Ridley and Phillips, they could have stepped aside.) The director ego must be stopped, and that goes along with hacks like Snyder getting endless chances as they produce crappy film after crappy film.
I have just discovered this channel. It is the best movie/show analysis channel at the moment. It reminds me of the earlier days of RedLetterMedia and RalphTheMovieMaker.
RLM is still good.
Prometheus was not a good movie. It was just as big of an idiot plot with just as unbelievably idiotic characters. It asked the most basic generic questions with no intention of ever trying to provide an answer. Also it decided to try and give an origin story to something that didn't need an origin story and for some reason also had to be tied to humanity as if we are a chosen people that everything in the universe must be related to.
I whole heartedly agree. This was a waste of money and talent. How Scott allowed the script to be this lame is beyond me. You would think with the advent of better SPX that the screen writing would also improve. The color pallet was too murky...the players did not act like true scientists..let alone rational laymen travelers of space. In the far future why would weapons not be energy drive..hell even light sabre powered. Shooting bullets are so antiquated and impotent for defence. And the women folk??? really...not a brain cell shared between the group. This movie was a complete fail for me..sadly. Why not allow some film fans make a 50 million dollar movie..I'm sure they could do better...buy the way..what was the profit margin on this film?? Love your introspective critique...razor sharp...Thanks.
Okay, it might be stupid and lazy, since it's almost 4 in the morning, but if we establish that Scott didn't made the film out of spite, or that this movie is what it is not because Scott was "forced" (by producers and other stakeholders) to make the movie that way, i think that David killed engineers for the same reason he would've kill humans - to play God. Specially with all the biblical tropes and references in the movie (it feels like it was made by Zach Snyder, tbh). Engineers created humans, and humans are worshipping their creators, which is logical since Engineers are far more advanced than humans. But for David the logic doesn't work, he is superior to his makers. So he uses the Alien virus to extinct Engineers and he "breeds" the Xenomorphs - creatures that are way superior to both his makers and his makers makers. In a scene with "baby alien" David makes alien worship him by raising it's "hands" and David himself stands there as a "all-loving" God. Just like humans are God's "magnum opus", Aliens are David's magnum opus. And then he has a chance to further spread his "wonderful creations" by planting the aliens inside the ship with colonists.
But that also would imply that David was jealous of humans worshipping some higher being, rather than worhipping David, which at the same time makes and doesn't make any sense.
I love how most video essays usually point out the subtle ways a work fails to tell a good story, and then in this one the biggest issue expressed is that the script is just stupid; not because he couldn't think of a better answer, but because there is no more profound source of this movie's issues than it just being dumb as shit.
Alright, I give in, I'll watch Prometheus
Prepare to be unimpressed ;-)
@@davescripted3796compared with covenant Prometheus was alright
I agree. I have been watching all the Alien movies recently. Outside of the prequels, in each movie there are generally at least some sensible people, struggling with the conditions or resources available to fight off the "perfect organism". You don't have to be the perfect organism to kill the dummies in Covenant.
I think the medbay scene and David with captain Oram near the end are the two scenes that exemplify how badly written these characters are in terms how they completely fail to act in a way that makes us root for for them or even feel human at times. They are way better armed than anyone outside of the colonial marines in the other movies. Oram had david dead to rights. He has an assault rifle, he has compelling evidence David is making the monsters that are killing his crew. He is a religious character and basically calls david the devil. Just blow him away and all his creepy eggs. Ripley vs the queen style. You want to hear him out and get some answers? Ok, ask some questions but for the love of god, don't comply with any of his suggestions. Logic, emotions and evidence of an evil robot standing in front of you should all be enough motivation for him to resist or even justified to destroy david. But he does literally nothing, his writer took an early lunch that day or something. Complies like a zombie, gets chestbursted. Why. It actually makes me mad.
There was a chance to actually do something with anything they established with him as a character, like he struggles to earn the respect of his crew as he was promoted due to the death of the captain, his faith and how he feels like an outsider with how many non religious people there are. This stuff could have played into how the scene unfolded, a heroic sacrifice one of the crew witnesses to save them but not himself like a Lt Gorman style tiny bit of redemption at the end. Or a philosophical conversation with david about faith that gives him pause, I don't know anything. But those threads just go nowhere and he just dies to make the little spaceballs top hat alien do a little dance with david.
All your points are totally spot on. When I watched this film I thought these people are the most useless bunch of idiots ive seen in a movie in some time. Except for that girl who becomes batman during the climactic fight on top of the space shuttle of course
The thing that pisses me off the most is the fucking fact no one wore a mask on a planet they knew nothing about.
David did not make the Xenomorphs in a deleted scene in the beginning of the movie he was supposed to find an OG Xeno egg made by the Engineers and then he made his version. What we got ruins so much lore and retcons so much i will never see this piece of garbage as canon!!!!
Good thing then that, at least if my understanding is correct, the idea of David being the creator of the xenomorphs has been debunked through other ALIEN-related media. One of the more recent comic series I think goes into this and makes it clear that David did NOT create the species.
I don't know how everybody on the internet likes Covenant but hates Prometheus, i think Prometheus is much better.
What internet are you on?
They both suck, Covenant sucks more tho.
The opening of prometheus showed the engineers seeding earth with dna, it's reasonable to assume evolution followed from that naturally. The movie was stupid, but that premise wasn't
Yeah, and up until they decide to destroy humanity, it's not bad. Even creating Xenomorphs for war and genocide isn't bad. If they find a habitable world that has creatures unfavorable for life, let's say dinosaurs in this case, they could release Xenomorphs or the alien plague and let it wipe out all life on the planet, then presumably have a way to kill the Xenomorphs, thus leaving them free to seed the planet with life and repeat the process.
I could even see it being considered a great honor to be the one engineer who sacrifices themselves to seed a planet with life. So up until they decide to kill humanity, seeing it as a failed experiment, the engineers are, or at least were, interesting.
I don't appreciate the MAGA comment in the video, but wholeheartedly endorse your take on this movie. When can we get (across the board) super high quality Sci-Fi?
Aw, did he insinuate Trump worshippers are credulous nincompoops when it comes to....well everything? 😭😭😭😭😭😭
lmaoooo
Hey, if the shoe fits... A lot of people lost friends and loved ones to that pandemic, myself included, and there's a great number of people still struggling with long-covid or other lasting health-complications. And why? All because a bunch of MAG-gots felt their "personal freedom" was more important than the health and well-being of themselves and others.
Is it that you don't appreciate it because you actually do actually advocate for mask usage, or are you just triggered?
Everytthing you said is true, and this is (as usual0 an outstanding video, but I still enjoy the film, sorry. I have to say when the two people in the shuttle panic when the creature comes out, that actually felt plausible. We all like to think we'd know exactly what to do in a crisis, but in the handfull of real life crises I've been in, I've often found myself frozen with shock or indecision - I felt that bit was actually a very strong part of the film - a big part of the Alien films is that human stupidity or incoimpetence is a big part of what makes the Aliens dangerous (like when the marines cannot fire at them under the heat exchanged in Aliens). I also think its unfair to blame them for not taking a minute to verify Walter's identity when they were running for their lives to escape the monster, again, they're panicking and afraid, not calm and cool.
Also, both Prometheus and Covenant had a glut of characters who were just sort of, there. I get havin one or two people who exist to quickly get killed, but both films had about 6 such figures, unlike the first three films, which took even a little time to develop them, these characters have barely any screen time, bary any dialogue and barley any personality.
I could have liked Covenant if it was not part of the ALIEN film series. It should have been a stand-alone film with no characters from any previous ALIEN film. For me the biggest issue was that Covenant was not a Prometheus sequel, and I had no interest in seeing a "David as Dr. Frankenstein" movie. This is the only ALIEN film that refused to buy a blu-ray copy of. I just wanted to forget it was ever made. Now we have ALIEN Romulus coming in August, and I suspect I'm going to hate as much as Covenant.
I'd love to watch a take on how films can retroactively negatively affect new viewings of previous movies. Of course it's possible to mentally separate Prometheus from Alien and move on with life. After watching Prometheus and Covenant, knowing now this is canonically relevant to Alien dramatically alters how we view events. Retroactively inserting new bullshit just sucks imo.
I never watched Covenant. Prometheus was a franchise killer for me for very similar reasons you hated this movie... the characters made insanely stupid choices
You're not wrong. The characters are dumb in both movies. But I liked Ellie and David in Prometheus and the mystery of the engineers. Covenant had nothing going for it.
@@davescripted3796 David in Prometheus, yes. Elle? Nope. I found the whole Christian thing eye rollingly bad. You've got a woman, in the future, who has studied all about ancient cultures, who is looking for our "creators"... yet still believes in a divine creator who had a plan to nail his son to a tree in order to forgive Adam and Eve generations later?
I watched Prometheus in the cinema and Gibraltar and people were laughing when she ran so far in a straight line to get squished. It was so bad it was comical. But we had a great protagonist with good potential for a sequel...
Faris n Covenant infuriated me
@@Briaaanz Would you rather a story about the cult of scientism .. make her an avid crusading climate alarmist maybe?
The problem with this movies is that the monster is the damn android!
Jealousy kills the franchise Ridley
I always wondered was Elizabeth infected from the Alien c-section
I think this is the case... Prior to the movie's release, back when they were dropping clips and short-videos as promotion for the movie, one showed us pieces of Shaw's journey with David and she progressively gets sicker and sicker.
The only other explanation that would make sense is that she just inevitably weakened and died because of all the shit that happened after she gave herself the c-section. She had to run, jump, fight, and took at least one rifle-butt to the area within hours after surgery. I would not be surprised if the surgery site didn't heal properly and caused complications.
@@refurbishedtechpriest9076 5 months late but ion David died like a day after the infection. Ellie was doing quite good and she probably died of natural causes. Since enough nutrients, proteins, vitamins and stuff to make a whole ass living being was sucked out of her body in like a day. It takes us 9 months of constant extra eating to make a baby. Ellie is a small person and it’s a miracle she could even walk after having that much taken out of her body. She just died cuz she got weakened asf and ion think she had enough resources to get her body back to normal
Prometheus was the first Alien movie Ive seen. Its unfortunate that we didnt get to see more of the engineers, i found the theme of religion in a sci fi story quite interesting.
Given that the prequels were supposed to be a trilogy, with the 3rd cancelled I guess that the studio forced the writes into creating a more traditional alien movie. Hence the Engineer story just being cut short. It seems very impossible for the creators of all humans to just be whiped out by one single robot. And also, they all just happened to be in one place?
I for myself loved Alien Covenant, yes it could have been better but i really like how they did build this Style around Creation and Playing God. Is the Movie Stupid? Yes, are the Characters dumb? Absolutly, could the Movie be better? Maybe. But i still love Alien Covenant for what it is. The Design, the Xenomorphs, The Mysterious Pathogen, the Idea of Davids Petect Eden that he wanted to create. I really liked that and say what you want about the Movie but Ridley Scott at least tried for us Fans to give us Both Alien and Prometheus and i have Respect for this.
As someone who pretty much loathed this movie upon release and still does upon a rewatch (though admittedly with more of a slight appreciation for it), I decided to read the two drafts of the script available that John Logan wrote, along with Logan’s original prologue which ended up being filmed to an extent as “The Crossing” for RUclips.
And… I’ve come to the conclusion that this was actually a good concept for a movie with solid writers behind it (particularly Logan and Michael Green), but it was plagued by 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott.
20th Century Fox clearly decided this sequel needed way more Alien in it after the feedback towards Prometheus.
Whether Scott was pressured into making the film a certain way or not is debatable, but whatever the case, three things are certain with him.
1.) He pretty much maintained plenty if not complete creative control over the project with no one to firmly tell him “NO,” and he’s been trying to take ownership over a franchise he clearly has little investment in now.
2.) His investment in David and the Engineers was way higher than his investment in the Alien, and he couldn’t or wouldn’t find a way to get himself excited over either.
3.) He had no idea how far to take this story or even the exact timeframe it takes place in (you can’t bridge a 100 year time gap between a Prometheus sequel and Alien considering it all takes place almost 30 years before the Nostromo lands on LV426). He desperately needed a writer’s room or something to put all the pieces together.
Put all those things together and you have this mess of a movie with too much on its mind and no idea what it wants to be.
Really, the Prometheus saga as a whole would’ve benefited way more from being their own standalone films completely divorced from Alien.
It’s frustrating because I love the lore of these films, and in a lot of ways I think they do slot in well within the Alien mythos, especially Prometheus. And it’s even more prevalent now with their integration into Romulus.
But I think once David entered the picture, Ridley Scott no longer wanted to make any sort of Alien prequel, and he couldn’t get out of it, especially once it came time to make Covenant.
And it shows in the final products of both films.
Scott is not smart, all he excels at is taking credit for things he didn't create. its a mediocre and pretentious nepo baby.
I always just thought that Noomi Rapace wasn't available for the sequel so the killed her off because they didn't want to delay the release date.
I've been on this in cinema, came out excidingly disapointed and like you- I do somewhat like Prometheus, but on it's own, set besides the Alien as a series.
And because of a cerain "bug" i have with me- I started to come up and write down reimaginings of this set of movies to make things more satisfying.
Stuff like removing the fact that David is the creator of xenomorphs- it was far more satisfying that they were implied to be a weaponized organism far far far older than one could imagine, probably even older than Engineers themselves. My thinking and idea was that even Engiees changed an already existing creature for whatever warfare they had in mind.
And for me Engineer plot should have been resolved in a way of Old Ones in Warhammer (and alike): "Somewhere in the stars they still are", but now watching instead of acting, which for some might still be far more teriffying.
THe story with such plot continiuation would have been more satisfying as a story how a search destroys the searcher- first it kills Ellie, who doesn't have infinite life, and then it destroys David, who falls into obsession for answer and fulfilment for a want to be a creator himself
The planet you call “engineer-planet” is not the engineer. It’s an experiment planet , just like earth. You can see that they look like human mix with engineer. Also this has been confirmed by R.Scott.
Over explaining kills horror. Why can’t Xenos just exist?! Why do they have to have an origin being lab created by bald giants and a evil android?! I don’t consider Prometheus and Covenant canon, and I look forward to the tv series Alien: Earth as it’s going to ignore those 2 films’ continuity and make the aliens mysterious again and not be stupid black goo. By the way, Ridley Scott ruined Fede Alvarez’s film putting his crap Prometheus and Covenant crap in it.
Ellie needed David to fly the ship and communicate with the Engineers. That's why she attached the head. This was not the movie Scott wanted to make. The big wigs had issues with the religious undertones and killed his entire origin trilogy idea he had been planning for over a decade
I liked Prometheus ans I liked Covenant. They both are different, but interesting in their own way.
The fact that nobody in this movie follows a basic infection/quarantine protocol is especially infuriating cause in the first Alien Ripley was adamant in not making the 2 peeps plus the infected dumbass on board the Nostromo when they come back from the alien ship!
Prometheus is actually scary and thrilling and Alien covenant was just a gore festival I believe
The end was super frustrating for me.
I agree it needed to tell a different story, and arguably be a different genre - the same genre as Alien: ancient, cosmic horror - but the angle was all wrong from the jump. Androids dunnit is stupid for several reasons, the most important of which is that it flatly contradicts the original movie it allegedly attempted to continue. If i tell you that it takes an organism a minimum of tens of thousands of years to fossilize, and you can work out the rest of this particular error yourself, if you've actually watched the original Alien movie. But this glaring mistake is not the only reason this choice was stupid.
Alien is ancient, cosmic horror, and the key part of that genre is the unknown being partially exposed, never fully. if you fully expose it, the horror becomes known and therefore less scary and less mystical. The other significant feature of the style of literature the Alien script was is that the antagonizing menace needs to be ancient. You know: like the space jockey and xenomorphs in Alien, or like the...penguins in At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft, which is the novel Alien was directly inspired by. You can not stamp "Made in China" on the side of your ancient cosmic horror and have it be either particularly ancient, alien or horrific = you have failed as a writer. Just miserably....0/3 points, report to remedial writing class at once and stay there! No amount of remedial writing training can possibly be too much!
So anyway, there are zero good things about Prometheus for anyone who is an Alien fan, and Covenant is somehow even worse. A fake Alien fan, sure. Plenty of those around. But not for a real fan. A real Alien fan will understand that both these movies are the exact opposite to Alien in every conceivable way, and should never have been made. Anti Alien movies is what they are. And that is unforgivable to an Alien fan.
I don’t remember where I heard this but the species that David killed weren’t engineers. They were created by the engineers the same way humans were but unlike humans they were perfect and peaceful. In a Prometheus deleted scene the engineer said that humanity needed to die because of how violent it was. These people living on the planet were the engineers perfect creation. David somehow knew this so he killed them all. I still don’t know why he did this but I think this should have been explained in the movie.
Not goin lie when I seen that the Noomi rapace didn’t reprise her roll in covenant I knew it would be garbage . I still liked it though when I watched I was younger and not really understanding the continuity of alien lore but it’s crazy the deeper you fall in the rabbit hole of learning things the more dumb things become so now I can understand why ppl hate covenant I actually like Prometheus though and also the deleted scene and script with the engineers makes the film easily a 8.7/10 . But never the less noomi rapace is badass it’s no way you just off screen her. Like this shit a damn weekly show
There were two more films planned, Dumb and Dumber and Stupid is as Stupid does. So they got cancelled!
I choose to believe characters in alien are always under prepared for their professional roles for lower cost reasons
I actually really like these videos, but my partner said this guy sounds a bit like Ben Wyatt from parks and rec. And i can't un hear it. So I'm going to make it head cannon that this is ben wyatt if he made a RUclips channel.
Its actually the same guy
Couldn’t feel bad for these characters, but it did make it more fun and entertaining to watch them get taken out with gruesome body horror moments.
Great video! thanks.
In my opinion, david was obsessed with the idea of the superior species. he wanted to design the perfect alien like weyland designed him. that's why he wanted to wipe out the engineers. before that they were the creators of humans. but the xenomorphs outnumbered them.
🙏Yeah I like that explanation. Weyland considered himself a god for creating David. So david wanted to be a god too. It's interesting how in religion god creates lesser beings, but in evolution, greater things come from simpler things. They're in conflict. There were some cool existential ideas the film could have explored but wasted the opportunity.
I hated the fact that they just killed off Shaw offscreen, like when I saw her on that table I wanted to throw stuff at the screen.
With the release of Alien Romulus I keep seeing people try to pretend like Covenant is now suddenly a good movie and YT recommended me this video because it knew I was going to agree with it 1000%.
Good video I very much agree. So many points throughout the movie I thought to myself, what an idiot, WHY.
However:
6:28 Careful mate that's a whole 0.0001% chance of death for anyone under 30! Watch out!
13:40 He kills the engineers for killing his creator Weyland in the previous movie.
I strongly believe the dudes David killed weren’t engineers but were the engineers favorite creation. evidence being how different they are, shorter, different facial structure, skin tone and human like eyes
you could be right, but I find the whole thing annoyingly mysterious
The problem is the xenomorphs.
People are tired of evil or hostile aliens.
[WARNING: LONG]
Alien: Covenant really is my least favourite of the lot, Ridley Scott's worst film and possibly the worst of the series not named "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" in my opinion. And ironically, that's because it plays out like a spiritual sequel to that film's mean, spiteful gore-focused schlock despite its delusions of grandeur and being thought-provoking, only this time it plays out like a giant revenge fic against both Prometheus and the entire Alien series in general. David is one of the most despicable villain mary sues ever committed to film, the reveal that he created the Xenomorphs is utterly insulting, and the film is hellbent on making everyone else as dumb as humanly possible to make sure that he wins. That is what the movie is about: Making everyone as stupid as possible so that the overpowered bad guy can take over the mythology of the series and win.
This is why I hate Covenant so much, and why this is the only film of the lot I won't rebuy on home video: At its core, Covenant is a gigantic, vile fanfiction with a budget. It's out to ruin its predecessor by resolving it in the most infuriating ways, and ruin the series it's a part of by forcing its special little snowflake of a character into the mythos, whilst at the same time being as cruel and spiteful as possible by having him overpower the cast through sheer dumb luck. That's why it's so infuriating whenever I see someone trying to paint Covenant as a "misunderstood masterpiece" when it's anything but, and why It's so baffling whenever I see someone declare Alien 3 the worst of the series because "DEY KIL3D HIX AND NOOT" before turning around to praise Covenant: Yes. Alien 3 killed Hicks and Newt in an EEV crash. Yes, it was an insulting cop out. But at least the inmates of Fiorina 161 were _smart._ Under the leadership of protagonist Ellen Ripley, they actually succeeded where the Nostromo crew and Gorman's Colonial Marine unit failed and trapped that film's Alien, albeit temporarily. The cast of Covenant, because they're dumb as bricks and the film is utterly hostile and spiteful towards them whilst one-sided in favour of David, can't possibly hope to do such a feat, and that in my mind is far worse than any unceremonious character killing. All I can say is thank the Engineers for Alien: Romulus.
This probably comes down to a fundamental problem with quality control. The writing was abominable (ala Game of Thrones final season) and Scott didn't see the need to override the plot. Or it might be indicative of a decline in artistic expression in the 21st century. Or it could be indicative of both.
Dr Shah, and Dr Holloway were not married and calling her ellie is annoying lol
I hate to be “that guy” but attractiveness is real and affects everything. Fat, lose 50 pounds. I was fat and I just did that and the way people treat me is completely different. Noomi Rapace is gorgeous. Whether or not we will admit it, we care more about her character because she’s beautiful. There is no one who thinks James Franco is moving to another planet with the lead woman from alien covenant. Is that an asshole thing to say? Absolutely. Is it true? Yeah, it is. The superficial nature of our society is real: gorgeous people deny it because they don’t want to admit that they have it easy. Ugly people deny it because they don’t want to admit they have it hard. As a guy who has been a bodybuilder, and also a big fat piece of shit: if you think looks don’t matter, you are in denial.
why are you talking about James Franco? He isnt in this film? are you saying the lead is ugly or not im confused. also there were no fat people in the film
Yeah you are right Naomi character was retarded. Religious and irrational. Charlize has good and rational character but finished retarded run in line. Also Charlize character was portrayed as unlikable for some reason. Scott probably wanted his religious bollocks in those movies. Remember sequence from first alien when ripley use self destruct panel. All buttons are marked in religious terms from different religions. Scott likes this shit.
I agree with this to an extent - but the characters in Alien were not all super attractive (some were ofc), we still had empathy for them and liked them as characters.
There's lots of amazing films with actors that aren't conventionally attractive but the film maker elicites empathy for them.
I think it's a lot more complex than 'I find this character less attractive so I care less'. I'd certainly agree that having attractive actors is a cheap and easy way to overcome bad writing though 😂
@@kernel-pult Hahaha he’s not a main character in the film but he’s definitely shown to be the main girls significant other. That’s “what I’m talking about”. Maybe you need to watch it again.
@@kernel-pult Also: Danny McBride is definitely overweight in this film, just look at his jawline. Maybe he’s not fat by typical American standards where you have to be 400 pounds to be considered fat but he’s overweight.
I get it that these people in this era are use to space travel but they landed in a new planet and the crew was oblivious to the new world wonders or lack thereof 😂
Worst movie in the franchise because of the one dimensional character of contrived intention in the least believable way even taking into account the idiot plot.
yes, ridley scott is a great director. but he doesn't understand a single thing about writing
They do mention the problem with the comms throught the movie and how they couldnt get close cause there wa a hurricane n the planet, and david also cut his arm to make them think he was walter but besides that YEP idiot plot
Good video
This is an example of a terribly made movie that I enjoyed fully knowing how bad it was written 😂😂
I have such mixed feelings about Prometheus and Covenant. Both movies are visually and technical stunning. But Covenant is such nihilistic nonsense it torpedos any good will.
I like the trivia questions I like doing it too yes I hate mask but I’ll take it is a emergency
I liked Prometheus a lot. I hated covenant. It felt rushed and unfocused.
I think what got in Scott's way is his own atheism. Atheism is a theme in some of his movies, and he wasn't able to take the story anywhere interesting.
Not to mention being heart broke that people didn't like Prometheus as he hoped.
Interesting. I'm surprised to learn that he's atheist because these two films have such christian message to them.
@@davescripted3796 EEEH....
They really have an ANTI christian message. Shawl believes in christianity, just to learn SCIENTIFICALLY she wasnt created by what she thought... and although she has scientific evidence, she chooses to believe anyway. That's really an ANTI christian message...especially coming from an atheist!
Its a lot easier to write an idiot plot, thats why you see it more and more lately, its lazy writing. Prometheus also had an idiot plot so one would conclude that Scott should not be involved in writing films just directing them.
I would say the idiot plot works in comedies but not in films like this.
Right Dave! Covenant was just a movie about idiots getting slaughtered! I was so disappointed by this movie, it was heartbreaking.
Alien(s) fans disparage Prometheus because it does not bear enough resemblance to Alien(s). The writers make the sequel more like a Prometheus-Alien crossover, AND some kind of origin story for the Xenomorph. Its a total mess. Lesson: blame negative Alien(s) Prometheus naysayers. And, just for reference, yes, I do agree that the Prometheus concept would have been far better being carried on as its own thing, without the need to cram the next movie full of Alien(s) tropes.
If you dont like making theories.... Then you lack imagination...
Love your channel and this video but that face palm emoji with the sound effects was annoying
lol yeah sometimes I go a little overboard with the editing...
Nahh the facepalms were extremely appropriate and hilarious
@@Lootroq Too loud
It's existance.
Yes, idiot plot.. i like it..
Cpt Daniels is the only smart character..
The were not Engineers. They were aliens created by the Engineers, and although they looked very similar...they were not Engineers.
... Citation needed. While I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case, given what a shit-show of storytelling this movie was, but we know from the end of "Prometheus" that Shaw and David were making their way to the Engineer home-world... So why would they go to some random world that was just seeded by the Engineers instead? Again, given the movie we're talking about it would not surprise me in the slightest if you're right; but a source for this info would be appreciate. If nothing else it'd be one more criticism to levy against this movie.
@@refurbishedtechpriest9076 Wrong height. Wrong eyes. Too primitive. This was not the Engineers home-world, just another world they seeded and still had contact with. It is obvious. There was mention of this in an interview somewhere, but as you said..."given what a shit-show of storytelling this movie was"...it makes the most sense. Shaw wanted to go to the home-world and ask the "creators" why they wanted to destroy human life. Who knows if they had co-ordinates to that world? Who knows what David did to manipulate things en route? Whatever plans might have been mentioned at the end of "Prometheus", that was also a "shit-show", so we can't take it as a blueprint for the events of this movie.
All in all, this attempted extension of "Alien" was a massive failure. I hope "Romulus" brings something better.
Here is a quote from Damon Lindelof, who wasn't involved in "Covenant" but has discussions with a lot of the creative people.
"“I think that one of the conversations that we had at the end of Prometheus is, Shaw and David have basically locked in on the coordinates of the planet where the Engineers came from. What does that place look like? Ridley called it ‘Paradise’. What happens when they land on that planet?
It doesn’t feel like they’ve gotten there yet in Covenant , Covenant felt like it maybe was a detour prior to them arriving at the place of origin
so I don’t want to spoil any place that he might still be wanting to go, but the conversations that he and I had about where the story goes next were largely about the place where the Engineers were from and less the events of Covenant .”
Here is the title of a video by another RUclipsr discussing this. It makes sense to me.
Alien Covenant: Planet Was Not The Engineer Homeworld
@@Murdock13 Honestly I chucked the changes in their appearances to just gross incompetence and/or they didn't care enough to get them right. And given the quote you just provided (Thanks for that btw) it sounds like they just didn't care about what "Prometheus" established while writing the script for this dumpster-fire of a movie. But once again I find myself vexed that the shitty writing for this movie forces us to either lean on assumptions, fan-theories, and/or interviews instead of making this shit clear in the movie. Such atrocious writing.
Thanks for responding with the quote, and I share you hopes regarding "Romulus". The trailer looked solid, here's to hoping it delivers...
@@refurbishedtechpriest9076 Fingers crossed. 😁
Man the mask comment is cringe and aged like milk
If I remember correctly there were 2 Davids in Prometheus so I can understand because she thought the one she was fixing was the good one, and not the evil one since there was a point where the characters themselves split near the end with the evil one destroying the good one taking his place. Everything from that point just follows, and only reveals the evil one at the end.
Everything else about the movie except that part is pretty spot on.
Those couldn't be the original engineers. In AC their advance civilization would have been hundred of thousands of years further develop, to the point of snorting the black goo on one nostril and farting rainbows on the other.
My answer is B all the way, ridiculous 😆😆
I dont have a big problem with this movie
This movie was more entertaining than this movie!
The mask/MAGA joke aged like milk. A good example for why it is best to keep politics out of stuff like this.
How so did it age like milk?
@@hwyadoin_alt Because even officials who forced masks on people by now admitted that they weren't effective and that they had no good reason to implement mask mandates maybe?
Plus germs on an alien planet wouldn’t be the same as those found on earth. Covid was a variant of the flu, whereas anything on an alien planet would likely kill you because you have no immunity to it whatsoever.
@@TrangleC you mean… the surgical masks? Yeah, people noted that they were significantly less effective (NOT useless, mind you) pretty quickly. If I recall correctly the standard for mask was raised to a basic respirator. So…
I mean I guess the commonly used mask wasn’t ideal, surgical masks, which makes sense because… well they’re surgical masks, not respirators. They’re used to keep things in your mouth, in your mouth. A room for preforming surgeries is ideally already sterile.
Which is why the standard for masks was raised to respirators, (you know, your KN95’s and N95’s) which actually were proven to be effective against COVID. Because… they filter things.
I mean I guess you are, in a sense, not totally wrong, as many people continued to use surgical masks which were known to be ineffective but the commonly recommended mask by medical professionals was a suitable option.
Also I hate this language like “they FORCED masks on people!” They made temporary rules to combat a virus spreading across the world, this wasn’t some malicious plot against the citizens of the United States, they weren’t sending people in black suits to go force masks onto people’s faces, and like yeah some initial decisions were rushed because they couldn’t just sit down and twiddle their fingers. They did what they could, and when they were given time to reflect upon their decisions, they reconsidered some actions and changed them accordingly. They are human beings, you know.
This proves most people know nothing about microorganisms. How about taking a microbiology class and actually grow some bacteria in a petri dish with and without a surgical mask and seeing the difference....
For God's sake, I've lost count of the number of people who watched this movie and think that the planet that Ellie and David reach is the Engineer homeworld. It isn't, it's another seed planet, just like Earth, only populated with a race derived from the Engineers, but more closely resemble them. That they aren't the Engineers is painfully obvious. If you're going to make a video critiquing a movie, please try to understand it first.
It was never confirmed to be another planet.
Where in the movie is this established? We know from the end of "Prometheus" that Shaw wanted to go to their home-world and we're pretty much told that's exactly where their course was set to. Why go to a random world they mere seeded with life instead? Don't get me wrong, given what a mess this movie is and how Scott and his writers just turned their brains off for it, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case.
Still, citation is needed my friend.
Worst movie of all time on so many levels.
The fact that they allowed a godlover on the journey is proof enough they just sent a group of expendable idiots😂
"I dont need God to be a good person"
*believes anyone with a differing belief to their own is an idiot and inferior to themself*
lol. lmao.
r/atheism over here
@@kernel-pult well done
Didn't Ridley watch the AVP? The Aliens are way older than David created.
Ridley Scott and James Cameron both utterly despise both the AVP movies and deny them in the canon. Fox was apparently just fine with that.
@@jasonbungard7484 😢
It's ambiguous. David may have merely "reengineered" them and they are in fact very ancient. No one knows if the Xenomorphs existed as they are first, or if they originally came from the black goo. Either way AvP events can still be considered in universe canon, just depends on how you think about it.
there's no way david actually created anything, i think it's reasonable to assume he just carried on with whatever bio engineering he found on the ship/planet. If humans are nowhere near bioengineering xenomorphs with their tech and intelligence, then why would the robot humans created be capable of it? He is on par with a genius level human in terms of intelligence, not as smart as the engineers. Apparently there is a deleted scene where david finds a xeno egg on the planet but even without this scene i think it makes total sense that he just found the xeno eggs and made more or optimised them slightly. It also fits in with his inflated ego where he wants to feel superior by becoming an originator of life meanwhile he cannot change that he is an inferior being that cannot innovate
It seems that covenant was just a response to the people who were crying about how bad prometheus was. I wish the movie studios would stop listening to 'fans' so much. These movies always seem to end up worse because of it.
true dat
A lot of the critiques here are logical idealism. I think you're forgetting that this is primarily a philisophical and artistic movie. NOT just a horror movie and not just a supporting pillar of the alien trilogy. As an alien fan of course you're going to hate it. Maybe Scott shouldn't have tagged into such a beloved franchise to make these films which are fundamentally not about the same thing but whatever, he did. As someone who liked alien but doesn't d-ride it, i can appreciate these 2 films as their own thing. First of all the issues you have with the idiot plot - have you considered how it ties into the crux about humans being an inferior species with huge problems regarding selfishness and stupidity? The thing about "scientific procedure 🤓" isn't what this film is about and to centre your argument around it is obtuse. This main themes of the film are religion and creation, what counts as life, are some species superior to others, is searching for your creator worthwhile. Those are the questions the film attempted to answer (as I remember it, it was 6 years ago) and it did them well. Also some other annoying things: they are not on the engineers home planet, it is another seed planet like Earth and those are not the engineer species that David kills. Also david did not create the xenomorphs, he found the eggs left by the engineers and spent his time developing it or making more. The point is that David, contrary to his beliefs, is an inferior life form not capable of creating life. Also this film is by definition going to also be about feminism seeing as the point "those who cannot create life are inferior" is a huge signpost to feminsim, not to mention all the alien abortion/birth scenes. The crumbs of a point are alll there so idk why you didnt notice this.
Who calls her ellie
charlie did so that's how I think of her