Yes, absolutely. Prometheus and Covenant are flawed films, and could’ve been executed better. But I think people are too hung up on these flaws in particular. The characters were always going to be expendable, I would be more concerned about the way they were expended rather than own personal antics. The deaths in the last two films have been visual feasts, much like almost every frame in the films. While some were focusing on the stupid biologist, I was in awe of the beautiful Hammerpede. You saw Theron’s character run straight like an idiot, I saw a beautiful and epic cinematic of a Juggernaut come crashing down killing one of the more vile characters in the story. You can choose to focus on what part of the scene you want.
I am not here to patronize anyone and suggest that what they are seeing is NOT stupid characters, just that their stupidity in isolation is utterly inconsequential to the big picture. They all deserved to die and they did. I don’t think this is an accident. Prometheus set the tone with this by making it into a point that the Engineers wanted to kill us, that they thought that we deserved to die. Shaw kept whining about this for the second half of the film when the answer was right before her eyes.
Were the characters in the last two films more stupid than the stupid characters of the original trilogy? I can’t tell with certainty honestly because I didn’t see the old films with my present day eyes. What I can tell you though, is that as a whole people are more stupid now than they were 30 years ago.
The original trilogy had no overarching throughline since each movie was a self-contained story. There was clearly no plan since subsequent movies had to retcon stuff to make sense of the timeline.
As far as Scott’s prequels, they are flawed to the core. He never wanted to make a prequel to Aliens, he originally intended to make a movie about Exogenesis (the hypothesis that life originated elsewhere in the universe and was spread to Earth) and due to studio pressure he mashed in some Alien references. The final script is a Frankenstein monstrosity and it only got worse with Covenant. Covenant was not the movie Scott was planning, I’m certain the negative fan reaction and studio pressure led to derivative plot that seems to have very little connection to the previous installment.
Let it die.
Please don’t put any more money into this garbage. Download, Redbox it or wait till netflix, if you really want experience the mediocrity for yourself.
You guys realize Ridley Scott is only one bad movie away from repeating George Lucas with his own terrible prequel trilogy, right?
Edit: Also its fitting how they show the dumbest scene in the movie on the back of the case.
Late to the convo, I thought the movie was alright, but I didn’t quite get everything I wanted out of it. I thought I’d get satisfactory answers to the questions Prometheus set up: why were humans made and how the Engineers lived. But that didn’t happen, instead, David’s obsession with creation and his antics dominated the theatrical version. Considering how well David was received and how little most people seemed to care about those questions in Prometheus, I guess it was to be expected. However, the extra scenes gave me a bit more of what I was looking for regarding the Engineers, and in retrospect, I guess some of the clues were already there in Prometheus.
I felt the musical/literary allegories to David’s character and actions throughout the movie were too on the nose at times. As for the Covenant crew, I don’t really care about the fact that they were supposedly smart guys and gals making stupid decisions, that’s par for the course in a lot of horror movies, but I expected more. For example, Oram’s faith and relationship with his wife, as well as his anecdote about seeing the devil was something that they could’ve explored, something that could’ve endeared him to us, make him interesting but they didn’t. There were flashes of interesting things in certain characters that weren’t explored, which was a shame. The interviews with the actors and actresses in behind-the-scenes book I was reading on Covenant made the characters seem more interesting than they actually were on-screen.
I get David’s resentment over being mistreated over the fact he’s an android, having to be servile to people who didn’t respect him (like Shaw’s husband and Weyland), and his grand desire to create to prove he’s more than just an android because of Weyland’s remarks during the piano scene. I get the hubris of the Engineers coming back to bite them in Prometheus/Covenant, and in humanity’s case, throughout the entire series. Dunno if we’re supposed to come to the conclusion that some nutty android creating a species that kills its own host upon birth and mindlessly kills almost everything it sees afterwards is supposedly the answer to stupid people/superior to humans. If that’s indeed the message of Covenant, it’s a pretty banally executed one.
But ultimately, what I like most about the Alien franchise are the fucked up creatures and the horrifying shit they inflict on people and Covenant delivered in that department I guess. I was expecting more varied creatures to attack the crew like in Prometheus, but they were all dead in David’s lab and David was zeroed in on creating the famous Xenomorphs we all know. I’m always down for an Alien movie, so I’m looking forward to the sequel. The premise that David’s essentially got a huge playground for his experiments is a terrifying one.
