"YOU ARE SUCH A DISAPOINTMENT TO ME!"

David (Alien Covenant)

Happy times.

Just a few nagging questions / thoughts I have following Covenant. I think enough time has passed now that I can discuss this without ruining the film for anybody (see, ain't I thoughtful?)...

Yes, I did this exact same thing after Prometheus,

I know. In no particular order:

1. Is Ridley Scott Intentionally demystifying the entire franchise? By delving into the 'how and why' of the alien mythos, and effectively sucking the mystery out of the franchise by insinuating that the most feared extraterrestrial in film history is, in all likelihood, the work of a demented android with 'daddy issues', feels like someone's being a dick about things...

2. Taming the alien is, simply put, stupid, and steals much of their menace. They are no longer the most dangerous organism in the galaxy, just a pet to be tamed.

3. The Oram / Daniels re-connection has no weight because the conflict never grew beyond a few angry words.

4. David goes full-on 'Games of Thrones' in terms of villains who take a long time to meet their deserved fate at the expense of sympathetic characters. We can pretty much kiss goodbye to Daniels and Tennessee et al.

5. The implied rape of Shaw is harsh, bad enough she was fucking cut to bits. Missed it? David threatens Daniels with the line “I'll do to you what I did to her” before throwing her onto the table and forcibly kissing her. Worse over, Daniels probably still has this to come, and she knows it as she drifts into hyper-sleep with David watching over her. Cruel.

6. Am I really to believe you can drown out an emergency alarm with loud music in the shower? Er, NO.

7. Why, after being stalked by monsters, would anybody decide “oh, I need to wash because I'm dirty and sweaty” and then proceed to wander off into a dark and deserted castle all on their own?

8. Why are the Covenant crew transporting fetuses? What good does this actually do? They still need to be raised into adulthood like normal children, so why not conceive them the usual way? And how, exactly, are they meant to grow? Just, why? WHY???

9. When the alien is crushed by the crane, that acid should have dissolved the metal almost instantly (one single drop in Alien dissolved through 3 floors and a metal boot) and the subsequent spurt should have easily covered and killed Daniels.

10. During that same crane scene, the heat alone from those jets should have killed Daniels.

11. We're told the Walter android was adapted because David was dangerous. Yet, nobody on Earth should know that David went off the rails in Prometheus. This implies that Peter Weyland took David on that doomed trip knowing full well he was dangerous, which doesn't sound all that likely.

12. The crew of the Covenant comment on the Prometheus mission because Dr Shaw vanished along with it. Surely, if Prometheus was to be remembered for anything, it would be for the fact that Peter Weyland, one of the most influential businessmen of the last century, went missing aboard it, not some bloody random doctor. That, or for the fact that Weyland's daughter and the intended inheritor of his enterprise, also went missing on the Prometheus's journey.

13. The alien life cycle feels too fast, as it did in AVP and AVPR.

14. How did nobody not notice the sprawling great dead city on their arrival? It didn't feel like they had to walk all that far from the landing spot to reach it so you'd think it could be seen from the air...

15. Where is the rest of the planet's population? Even if this isn't the Engineer's home-world, you'd think they'd have spread out beyond just the one city... And if this wasn't the Engineer's home planet, how comes they never thought to investigate? Surely all these creatures have a way of staying in touch with each other or routinely drop by?

16. David, seemingly marooned on the Engineer's planet, plans on destroying mankind- but why? Surely he must have realised that the odds of him being discovered were incalculably small?

17. David is more than capable of flying an Engineer shuttle on his own (he did so while Shaw was asleep). Could he honestly not find another shuttle to fly elsewhere? Did the Engineers really live on the planet without other shuttles? And on that subject, David drops the toxin which attacks and kills the Engineers, and then, having made it across the galaxy safely, somehow loses control and crashes his ship into a mountain? What, did the large, immovable mountain suddenly leap out at him from behind a tree?

So, fair?  What do you guys think? Can you defend any of this, or do you have issues I've missed?

let me know...

"BIG THINGS HAVE SMALL BEGININGS..."

David (Prometheus).

The "money shot".

Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Growing up Alien and Aliens were two of my favourite films, a love that has followed me into adulthood.

Alien 3, after initial disappointment as a teenager, I've grown to appreciate as a beautiful disaster. Alien Resurrection, however, I believe is total and indefensible garbage, for which all those involved should be totally ashamed of themselves. That film marked the absolute low-point for the franchise till Aliens vs Predator and the subsequent sequel. It's not that I took offense to the notion of a cross-over, simply that the films were as life affirming and enjoyable as a one-way trip to a Swiss clinic.

By that point I couldn't see how things could get any worse and hoped (Christ, how I hoped) that would be an end to it.

Then, news surfaced that no other than Ridley Scott was returning to the franchise, for a prequel to his first Alien. That got me curious, and as the release date grew closer and closer, my expectations ran higher and higher.

Long story short: Prometheus was shit. Poorly defined relationships, and a smorgasbord of forgettable one-dimensional characters who only serve to drive the story into a number of contrived hoops- and for what? Some hackneyed space-Jesus plot! Hardly an original idea. And to top it off, the crowning turd in the water-pipe (something you'd not even credit for a film in the Alien franchise) no fucking alien!

Anyway, Mr Scott is returning to the series for this next installment and has decided to back-track on his “I-know-best” NO-ALIEN policy.

We've had a number of little teasers so far, including two trailers (one much more subtle than the other), a closer look at the new stock-android (it seems most crews feature one, even though this was a major surprise to those on board the Nostromo first time round), and a “bloody-hell-it's-in-broad-daylight” view of the new 'Xenomorph' design- although I need to add at this point, I personally hate it when people call the aliens Xenomorphs like that's their official genus, it's a term used by the Colonial Marines to describe a generic 'bug' before they even meet their first monster...

One of H.R. Giger's early designs- look familiar?

I wasn't entirely sure about that 'money shot' at first, but given how everyone and their dog knows how the alien looks these days (Scott once famously said he spotted the alien in Disney Land), maybe it's better to tackle that head-on. Looks like much of the bio-mechanical styling have been dropped in favour of a more naturalistic and 'butch' design- the alien till this point had always been predominantly slender and feminine. In truth, it sticks quite accurately to Giger's original sketches from the first film, and I feel like that's a bold move on Scott's part.

Other 'tools' in the marketing campaign for Alien Covenant are the release of a number of clips. One of these is entitled Last Supper and provides a look at the new soon-to-be-doomed crew, while another shows Shaw (Prometheus' only human survivor) repairing David the android's destroyed body. Given how one of the things I loathed about Prometheus was the lack of group dynamics and believable characters, I was relieved watching Last Supper to see a little more of the 'old magic' at play; the scene felt believable and intimate. Obviously this is just a small window into a feature length film, but it's reassuring. A final clip revealed a now-repaired David essentially laying waste to what appears to be the Engineer's homeworld with their own weaponised black toxin (which truth be told felt a little like a spoiler).

However, for everything Alien Covenant might be doing right, it may be making further errors. News is now circulating which throws the whole premise of the current Alien saga in a different direction... Apparently David, the android who just barely survived the events of Prometheus, is responsible for engineering the particular strain of alien we've so far seen in the franchise, thus entirely decoding the subtext of the film cannon. What had once been a case of 'man is inferior to nature / man is not on top of the natural order of things' is now 'man sows the seeds to his own destruction': man created A.I, A.I creates the alien, alien destroys man.' Scott is quite pleased with this little gimmick, pointing out that while the 'man vs nature' trope has been played out quite often, this particular little avenue of creativity is fertile ground... Aside from my own reservations (personally I actually really like the 'man vs nature' trope) what the blinding-fuck is Ridley Scot actually talking about? 'man sows the seeds etc' is a trope as old as the hills! I mean, Christ alive, that's the entire through-line for the Terminator franchise for a start! Man creates A.I ' Skynet, Skynet creates terminators, terminators destroys man', not familiar at all? Ridley! This is James Cameron's shtick, you've probably heard of the guy, he got the job of doing a sequel to your first Alien film! Off the back of his first Terminator film! I despair, I really do...

Am I the only one who thinks Ridley Scott as actually suffered some sort of stroke?

Anyway, long story short, I'm off to see Alien Covenant when it comes out. Here's hoping it's good.

"THE TRICK, POTTER, IS NOT MINDING THAT IT HURTS..."

*Peter Weland, Prometheus (2012).

Oh Prometheus, you troublesome beast...

Well, maybe I should prefix this review with a little background information:

I, like many of you (I’m sure) sometimes struggle to make ends meet. My ‘better half’ is pregnant, and before the approaching due-date we decided to have one last night of freedom. We both agreed that “dinner and a movie” would be good, and I managed to convince her to see Prometheus. No mean feat, her not being big on science fiction.

Although I plan to write at length about this later, cinema costs are now close to extortion. Without the added costs of driving to-and-from, or paying for a car park, you’re looking at between £7 and £13 for a cinema ticket, depending on venue and 3D or 2D screenings. Let’s not forget snacks and a drink, that’s about another £5  to £10 a head. So for the two of us to just go see a movie we’re looking at paying around the £40 mark, travel not included. I remember when the cinema used to be a cheap night out…

I won’t beat around the bush, as you can tell by having a quick look at the scores avaliable in the 'Carlisle's Final Word' review, Prometheus failed to live up the level of hype and expectation that surrounded it. It is of course possible that the disappointment concerning my ‘last night of freedom’, as well as the expenses surrounding it, is partly to blame. The following is as even handed as I can be, and I’m nowhere near as cantankerous as I was on leaving the cinema. Counter arguments are always encouraged, but are still incorrect.

Here goes. The next section is spoiler free…

Prometheus, if nothing else, is certainly intriguing, whether you’re discussing the plot points or the circumstances around the projects traumatic birth.

As I’ve stated previously, this IS a film in the long-suffering Alien franchise, and it’s a confused entry at that. To be honest, although ‘They’ say the story started off as an Alien prequel and mutated into something different along the way, the film actually feels like a totally independent story with Alien-franchise references uncomfortably forced into it- and that may well be one of the film’s biggest problems. The content is almost entirely permissible at 12A, with some pointless low-end 15 certificate violence. For this a multitude of unnecessary and under-developed characters are introduced for the sole purpose of being killed-off in scenes that feel as if they are included only to liven the pace and reinforce the Alien content.

Perhaps the film would have kept more integrity if the Alien references were trimmed entirely, because they fail to serve the story in any way and feel laboured, as unnatural as a square peg in a round hole.

Instead of being intellectually gratifying (the aim) or torturously terrifying (as was Alien), the film is as thrilling as a carpet convention, as frightening as a leaky tap, non-cannon, and fails to deliver on its lofty (and cliché ridden) premise: seriously, directors shouldn’t indulge such overused material or theological ideas unless they have something unique, insightful or enlightening to bring to the table.

On the positive side, the film looks great and the sets are spookily atmospheric, and some of the acting is top-draw. Unfortunately, the good quality acting highlights those amongst the cast who aren’t quite up to task...

Well, that was my thoughts on the film itself. Now I’m going to address some big issues I have with the plot itself. Warning, spoilers ahead.

How can an expert geologist with mapping devices get lost coming out of a straight tunnel? Some expert.

Why would anyone approach a hostile alien-cobra, of which absolutely nothing is known, with all the fear and awe you'd associate with approaching a 3-legged puppy?

Why even consider setting fire to an ‘ill’ man when you have a perfectly functioning, state-of-the-art quarantine bay (used later)? Would seem a little excessive.

If you’re an android, programmed to protect your boss, a multiu-millionaire who is secretly in hiding onboard the ship, why run the risk of infecting one of the crew with alien slime? And why then introduce your boss to an alien creature that you know full-well has its mind set to destroying Earth? Stupid android.

Yes, the air is breathable, but why run the risk of removing your helmet? And again, why remove your helmet after you discover the Alien ship was actually a military installation working on biological weaponry?

The film Alien is set eighty years from these events. Aliens and Alien 3 fifty years after that. So why, one hundred and thirty years into the future, is there no technology to successfully remove an alien parasite without killing the host when that technology exists in Prometheus? 

If a giant ship is rolling after you (like a giant biscuit), why not run sideways? 

How did the Weyland business empire continue if Weyland himself and his only child are both killed in this film?

Note to the writers; if the shocking revelation of your story is that the ‘Engineers’ are actually human, then perhaps don’t reveal that in your opening scene? Sort of takes away from your climax.

The effect of the black jelly is too inconsistent. Don’t give me that “oh, it reacts to the mental state of the life form it comes in contact with” because it’s bollocks. I defy someone to explain that rationally.

Assuming the aliens stayed in contact with their own kind, why when their weapons base (the setting of the film) became poisoned did others not take up the task of ending life on earth 2000 years ago? The film points out that they have a home world, so they weren’t the last of their kind. Didn’t they have communications of some kind, I dun ‘no, like Facebook or something?

The music is (for the most part) too upbeat and majestic, more fitting for a cartoon adventure about lost kittens, or about a brave little toy who loses his owner.

How did the android learn the alien’s language? I mean, they do answer this; apparently by studying the similarities in ancient languages. Ahem, bullshit, ahem! And even so, understanding an alien’s language shouldn’t mean you can effortlessly activate their technology…

Nobody at any point stayed in contact with Earth. Seems a bit stupid.

Why did Weyland have to hide aboard the ship like a stowaway, it was his fucking ship! Surely if the man is paying the bills he pretty much gets to set the parameters? I mean, the scientists were hardly going to pass-up the expedition rather than take along some old codger, were they?

How could the Romans confuse the alien for Jesus? Assuming they did, which I believe is the crux of the film. The ‘Engineers’ stayed in contact with earth after creating humanity, visiting on occasion, till they eventually come visit us during the Roman Empire. This ends badly, they crucify the ‘Engineer’ and so his kin decide ‘fuck the humans’. They fly away and work on a biological weapon to destroy us / their creation.

My final thought... Jesus = average looking guy with a big beard, very mellow and peaceful, even in the face of adversity. Engineer = 8 foot tall unstoppable humanoid with no hair whatsoever and aggressive tendencies.

PROMETHEUS; Carlisle’s Final Word.

"A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable."

Meredith Vickers.

 

Script Logic; 0/2

Pace; 1/2

Acting; 1/2

Aesthetic; 2/2

Originality & Intention; 0/2

Score; 4/10

Final Word; A nonsensical, overblown, cliché ridden and smug mess of a film. Makes the fatal mistake of revealing its ‘twist’ in the opening scene and has nothing else to keep you interested. So many plot holes and ‘what the fuck?’ moments  it makes the mind boggle. If it didn’t have Ridley Scott’s name attached no critic would give it the time of day- what was he thinking? Does Scott have Dementia now? Vicker's quote opening this review sadly illustrates both the career of Ridley Scott and the genre-defining Alien franchise.