Prometheus and Alien: Covenant - Deep or Dumb? - Wisecrack Edition 

The only movie I can recall where the mythology, backstory and overall themes are more interesting than the actual movie itself

I hate that Shaw died. Would've been interesting to see more of her

Deep in concept. Dumb in execution. both films are examples of how a director's vision needs good logistics and good writing to be actually good films

My favorite scene in Prometheus is when those two guys who were hostile to one another in the beginning and who were deathly afraid of the engineers... you know those two... they suddenly became friends and started laughing and playing with the alien snake. This is one of the best moments in cinema, surpassed only by The Room.

"It is the way of men to make monsters... and it is the nature of monsters to destroy their makers." -Harlan Wade (F.E.A.R)

I liked Prometheus, though not perfect, I liked the overall narrative about the Engineers and what they were doing and why. And then Alien: Covenant just threw all that out the window because people wanted to see the xenomorph in Prometheus, and the worst thing they did was killing Shaw off screen.

I've never understood why people ask "what's our purpose". Why would you want a predetermined purpose? What if we have one and it sucks? Better to just make your own.

It feels like the aliens are shoehorned in. I mean, why would David's perfect creature be a self annihilating parasite that REQUIRES hosts to survive and propagate, yet destroys those hosts much faster than the hosts themselves can propagate? And what will come of the aliens? No civilization, no higher thoughts with which to make the poems and music David likes so much, and no method of creating any intentional art of their own. For all his bragging and self indulgence, he is the lesser of his creators, who despite their flaws created an immortal servant with the ability to think and create and POTENTIALLY surpass them, whereas David has only succeeded in creating monsters, something Mankind could undoubtedly do using the same technology they used to create him. So why? Why parasites? Why animals? His covenant is the lesser of the human covenant and the engineer covenant in every way. The aliens will never create starships, never seek for meaning or philosophy, never spread or evolve beyond their hosts. They are, by the very natures, dependents with no capacity outside of their limited self perpetuation. Every fault in the human race magnified grossly, with none of the debatable virtues humans may posses. Also, really takes the alien out of the aliens.

Really wanna see a 3rd one either way how deep or dumb.

Just rewatched both and yes curious stupid characters are everywhere however... David is a masterpiece

I actually like these movies, specially because of Fassbender great performance as David, which is an awesome villain in my opinion.

Alien * horror Aliens * action Alien 3 * drama Alien resurrection * comedy Prometheus * mystery Alien covenant * slasher

They lost me at no suits in a foreign and alien environment...

Prometheus is an excellent standalone film. I went into it completely in the dark, not having seen the trailer or knew anything about it whatsoever, and I ended up re-watching it like 20 times, no joke. Covenant sadly, was something else entirely.

The movies gave us the great "Prometheus School of Running Away"

The Prometheus school of running away from things

I unabashedly love Prometheus. Despite the running in a straight line from a rolling spaceship.

Bruh, we know where Alien's Guide is. But where's Thug Notes?

Prometheus DVD release--THERE WILL BE ANSWERS. Fast-forward 5 years--THERE ARE NO ANSWERS.

Interesting thing about the mention of Ozymandias in Covenant. It was written by Percy Shelley, the husband of Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley was the author of Frankenstein: a novel about a creator’s discontent with his creation (similar to the engineers view of humanity) and it’s also about the creation’s rise to destroy its creator (similar to what the human do to the engineers, and what the David does to the humans). That could also foreshadow (if they ever make a sequel to Covenant) David’s downfall due to the Xenomorphs.

"We meed to send some people on a dangerous space mission with near zero chance of survival" "Just send the dumbest scientists we can find and a malfunctioning android."

Two movies with good intentions but unfocused story-lines. Covenant tried to be both an Alien prequel and Prometheus sequel and wound up not properly being being either. Hopefully Disney will let Scott finish the trilogy.

I saw it once while incredibly high and it was amazing. I refuse to watch it again and destroy that.

The premise of the prequels can be summed up as: Where did we come from? Where do we go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?

This potentially could have been one of the best sci fi films ever made. Oh well.

It’s almost like the bigger and more awe-inspiring the question, the more underwhelming the answer. Behind the magic lies the mundane. Though I guess that means the reverse is often true.

Scott has a thing about Maker-Creation meetings turning violent. Though in Blade Runner it was the Maker who wound up getting his eyes gouged out.

i often wonder how different David's whole goal and personality wud've been if ppl actually just treated him alright and maybe someone even loved him

i remember right at the beginning the ships captain steering the mothership with thousands of colonists on board into a dangerous storm because his wife was in trouble on the planets surface. by than i already knew - they all going to die.

The fact that David created the xenomorphs is lazy! There was a sculpture of a xenomorph in the beginning of Prometheus, in a planet they’ve never been too, on a ship of the engineers which they’ve never met, that will never make sense.

I'm still waiting for Alien: Awakening. And I'll be waiting till I die it looks like

David didn't wipe out the Engineers. The race wiped out was another seed race they made, hence why everyone gathered around the ship when it docked as the only other similar design ascetic wise is the ship David's Engineer ship docked in. They thought the Engineers had returned. Further more, they're not white skinned or super tall, they're similarly structured and humanoid which seems to be a running trend with seed races. But they're also quite furry. Point is; ya got that bit wrong. Small thing I know but it's a fairly common misconception that a lot of people perpetuate.

Prometheus has, imo, the best setup in sci fi, may be even better than the matrix, but it craps the bed so hard, it hurts.

I liked both movies, and would love to see where they go from there. After rewatching them, I found they actually made sense on most of things.

I think the aliens are better if you don't know their origin, and never will. Whatever that origin may be. There is a sense of mystery about the alien (and the derelict) that I think only makes them scarier. I feel any explanation detracts from it since our imagination is better at horrifying us. For me, Prometheus was destined to fail as a movie because of this.

Yes. Seriously though, it tried, but obviously mashed together several different scripts. That's why it's all over the place. I've see so many people call this deep, but none of that matters because even if it could tell a cohesive and compelling story, it went absolutely nowhere with those questions it posed. That's not deep, that's trying to be deep. There's a difference. And so much wasted potential, these movies make me physically angry.

14:36 spawning the meme "Prometheus school of running away from things"

The bottom line with Prometheus is that it was originally written as a direct prequel to Alien,. It was meant to take place on the same planet and in the same spaceship, and address where the xenomorphs came from and how they came to be there. Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox got cold feet about a direct prequel to Alien, because everything in the story would have to be a direct lead-up to the set pieces of Alien. As a reboot they wanted a jumping off point for a larger universe to explore, so they made big changes...originally the ship wasn't called Prometheus, the Engineers didn't create humans (they just accelerated their evolution from apes), etc. It wasn't until they hired Damon Lindelof for rewrites that Prometheus shifted from a direct Alien prequel addressing the origin of the xenomorphs, to exploring where HUMANITY comes from and why we're here. Those are the biggest and most significant questions in the history of humanity, and couldn't possible be tackled by a movie...let alone a talentless writer like Lindelof who is well known for writing in "mystery boxes" with no answers in mind. There was already plenty of Christian references in Alien, (ie the Leviticus references in the planetoid names). Once Lindelof came on board, the stage was set for the toxic duo of Lindelof and Scott to jam in as many motifs and allegories as they could with no plan on resolving a deeper meaning. For example, they take on the mythology of the titan Prometheus, which could be an entire movie because he has such a significant and complicated story. He was the titan who created humans by shaping them out of clay (in the film, "Prometheus" is the engineer from the opening who drinks the black goo to "seed" Earth). The Greek titan was also the was the one who imbued humans with divine knowledge the in the form of fire, he was punished for overreaching his power and angering the gods by eternal torment, and he was eventually redeemed by Hercules. So his mythos covers Creation, Education, Endowment with the Divine, Punishment, and Redemption....these are some pretty heavy motifs for a single film. The film then heavily tacks on Christianity, with a lead character who maintains a strict Christian faith in the face of proof that God did not create humanity. It explores Genesis in the form of the Engineers, then flips to the New Testament by setting the film on Christmas Day and having Shaw give "virgin birth". It continues with the Jesus motif with the death of Christ (the original plan for the Engineers on Earth 2,000 was only half written out, leaving the heavy implication that an engineer was Space Jesus). It then flips back to the old testament (the name of both Alien planets, LV 226 and LV 436 are references to verses in Leviticus) - implying that the Engineers were pissed off either because of the death of Space Jesus, or that humanity "lost reverence of their sanctuary"...but the filmmakers never make a decision on this point. THEN the film takes on Revelations (mortal sin and Armageddon) in the form of the Last Engineer's intended apocalypse of humanity,. It also jams in Christ motifs in the self sacrifice of Holloway and the crew of the Prometheus killing themselves to stop the apocalypse. it even tackles abortion by having Shaw refer to her alien-ectomy as a "Caesarian." The film then introduces Weyland and it deals with capitalism, corruption, immortality, greed, daddy issues, hubris, delusions of grandeur, artificial intelligence, apotheosis, etc etc. It's just jam packed with allegory and themes, but those themes are so jumbled that it never makes a statement on any of them. To fit all the motifs on screen, you're left with a paper-thin plot and nonsensical characters: a cartographer who gets lost, a xenobiologist who's clueless around animals, and the cold calculating Vickers who is crushed to death because she can't calculate that the way to survive is slide 3 feet to the left. The main message of Prometheus movie at the end seems to be "the creation of life requires self sacrifice, and death is the result of the lack of self sacrifice." What happened to that theme in Covenant? By this time you've probably forgotten that the question that the movie initially asked is "where did we (humanity) come from, and why are we here?" Which they NEVER answer, because in all their navel gazing THEY forgot about it too. The point of Covenant SHOULD have been exploring the dynamic between humanity and its creators. TELL us the motivation of the engineers in creating and destroying us! Flesh out their culture and their religion. Give us a new, interesting, and even more threatening antagonist to expand this universe! AI gone awry is such a played out premise it makes me groan just thinking about it. Anyway, I've written a novel of a post now that is 100x more well thought out, articulate, and well researched than the damn video it's under. I'm not going to apologize for the films like you did a the end of this video. They were directionless trash.

He turned cosmic horror into a sophmore philo 200 lecture. Slow... Clap...

Killing Shaw killed the franchise imo.

If only they made the "scientists" act like scientists, instead they acted like the 'Cabin in the Woods' technicians were pressing buttons.

We should have gotten Neill Blombkamp's Alien movie. That would have been epic.

Alien was the perfect cosmic horror BECAUSE of the mystery. Even remotely touching down on 'origin stories' sucks the life out of it.

Ridley Scott went full George Lucas. Never go full George Lucas.

I personally loved Prometheus, it was so well done from the atmosphere to the symbolism. But I hated Covenant, it had no identity, ruined the feeling of suspense, and was fake deep.

I like David as a character and find myself really just wanting to hear a story like I Robot or another Asimov story from watching these films

Prometheus: "Trust me, I'm a scientician"

Also dumb: ''Hey that alien thing looks like a snake and is actually hissing at us! I feel I should try to pet it!'' Along with all the rest of the sheer lack of caution everyone demonstrates before a foreign alien world. That super high tech medical capsule thingy that ''isn't made to treat women'' and uses hardware grade metal tacks to clumsily suture someone up. Or planning this whole keystone, incredibly expensive, mission... only to randomly throw a bunch of people together at the last possible minute. The key members of which have mostly never worked together, let alone even met before. So many idiotic moments/details/dialogues in this movie that the suspension of disbelief was quickly ruined beyond any redemption.

I actually liked both movies. Prometheus just showed how full of themselves the explorers were which in the end got most of them killed in a dumb way. At least that’s how I saw it and is why I never had a problem with it.

Great stuff, these movies just break my heart because Ridley is so talented but SO DAMN STUBBORN. Alien was perfection because the director knew his place and allowed the writers do their thing. Now with his clout, he can’t help but foolishly insert himself into the script. Only a very few directors can pull this off and it’s usually very early in their career.

Never answer questions that are more interesting left as mysteries that don't really affect the plot/story anyway which if answered, still wouldn't. You don't need to know where the Alien comes from, to fear it and have a good movie with one. Its not scary because you don't know where it comes from; whether you knew where it came from or not, its still gonna get you!

*Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken. ₩*

They're obsessed with the truely deep questions of the universe. Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?

How can you create something when it has already been created? - The "mural on the wall" to David

They really screw up by just writing over-the-top dumb characters and scenes into the movies. Everyone seems intent on dying, as opposed to actually being picked off, in any meaningful way. Even Aliens (the second one), had an entire squad of expendable troops, and took time to make their deaths feel natural... to an extent, at least. In Covenant, we see people die seemingly, one room apart, firing automatic weapons.... and nobody hears a damn thing. Prometheus was no less egregious, in sheer stupidity. Having watched this, I have more interest in the overall narrative, but they shot themselves in the foot, when they undercut the action scenes. The current market only seems to sell on action, now.

Whether its deep or dumb, it certainly has one of the dumbest death scenes ever.

What happened to Thug notes? I really enjoyed that.

I noticed you never actually say whether it's Deep or Dumb.

Jesus rose 3 days later, not 2. Also, your deep dive into these movies was FAR more interesting than the movies themselves.

Loved Prometheus/Covenant due to David. His understanding of God to creation, esespically the piano scene. He grasped just part of the equation. He lacked the understanding though that we are all imperfect from the start because our own maker made us so; as he would be imperfect because of his own creator; man. So I'm the end, he made an imperfect being that was in his own personal image as perfect but was flawed as well. Loved the cycle this series showcased even if flawed in many ways.

Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge OF GOOD AND EVIL. This distinction is important because it sets the Biblical narrative apart from similar greek narratives in that Adam and Eve sought to be gods. They were not merely curious about "things" and looking for answers for answers sake. They wanted to upend the natural order (from "God > Man" to "Man = or > God"). And so Adam and Eve does not serve as a context for Prometheus unless they were looking for the engineers to become like them or even supersede them.

Well good to know Jared Graduated from being Garrix's Intern.

I love the prequels but people like to hate lol

It would really cool if you guys started doing “Deep or Dumb” videos on music. Wether it be on specific songs, or an analysis of a band’s lyrics and themes, and even musical composition through the bands whole discography. I’d definitely watch something like that from you guys.

Prometheus felt a normal sci-fi movie, but i realy liked Covenant, it touches nature of "repeats" of the existance.. things keep repeats themselves with small changes to create perfection. engineers creates human, human creates androids, android creates alien

But... the planet David wiped out was not the engineers' homeworld

2:20 "Prometheus begins in the early 21st century..." I thought it began in 2104 which will be the early 22nd century.

7:18 "Shaw renounces her faith". Um no, actually. You are actually wrong and must've not paid attention to the film because at the end of it, Shaw takes her necklace back from David and he specifically asks her, "you still believe, after all that's happened?" to which she responds yes and David tells her that he doesn't understand why, to which she delivers the beautiful and absolutely amazing line, "well, maybe that's because I have a soul. And you're a robot".

I actually really enjoy these movies. Fassbender is great as David ... and Walter. Yes I admit there were some dumbass character moments in Prometheus but I’m willing to forgive because Ridley Scott’s vision is incredible and the entire production of these movies is as quality as it gets. Plus it’s a pretty rich story with just enough ambiguity to keep me fascinated and wanting more. I really hope Scott can make 1 more to complete his story.

Shaw doesn't renounce her faith. That's the whole point; she decides to choose what she believes, rather than need "proof."

What about Thug Notes? I miss that content.

"Alien" is Ripley's saga. We care so much for her and so end up caring about those she cares about. I couldn't care less about these new people!

Lets face it, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant are Deep AND Dumb

I think Scott's aiming for something quite unexpected. Covenant looked almost 1990's in design. The characters appearance, the films cinematographic style (and even the spacecrafts design) did not appear as modern as in Prometheus. This could indicate a slow devolution into the aesthetic of the original Alien allegedly 18 years after Covenant. If the next movie appears 1980'ish with design, clothes and hairstyles from that era it just might catch up with 1979. Or is that too deep?

“ it starts with a mission in the early 21st century.” But isn’t 2019 the early 21st century?

Ridley said they're proceeding with the third movie after discussions with Disney executives. Wahoooo!!!

I'd like to see philosophies of the original alien... Quadrilogy :/. Maybe a what went wrong for the meh ones.

Prometheus was pretty infuriating in the basic lack of science on part of the scientists. All the "scientific" concepts like reverse engineering the language or the whole DNA thing and the "star map" and that stuff, it just doesn't work that way. It really riles me up. I don't mind alien bringing life to earth or whatever, but the inner logic of a story should hold up to basic reasoning. Covenant was pretty boring. I liked some scenes, but the movie didn't explore what would be interesting to me. What I really mourn though, both movies aren't really horror movies and I think that is what made the first Alien so awesome. I would've liked the franchise to stay in that lane more and explore their different themes from there.

Wow Fassbender really turned the Peter O'Toole up to 11 and ripped the knob off for that Ozymandias quote.

One correction, it's strongly implied that the planet in Covenant is not the engineer home world and the race David destroyed were not engineers. It was more likely that they were another subspecies created by the engineers, much like humanity, seeing as they all looked smaller and weaker than engineers. It would also explain why they were welcoming the ship like their gods were returning before David unleashed the black goo.

Prometheus and Covenant are incredible films, people might be disappointed if they don't understand it. Also box office numbers don't always reflect true interest in a film. I really look forward to ridley scotts next Alien films! I really like this series.

10 bucks on dumb.

No one asked about Earthling Cinema. We did, however, ask about Thug Notes... constantly.

"The Room explores the themes of trust and betrayal, of two powerful fundamental moral and immoral forces guiding humanity and whether one can really trust friends and loved ones, and the horrible consequences of betrayal by those you trust the most. How can a god allow us to behave this way towards each other? This reflects Khaine's etrayal of Abel and Brutus betraying Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet dying form tragic love. And what of the consequences? Is Johnny going to hell because of his suicide or is Mark or Lisa because of their betrayal? Does Mark's guilt redeem him? Is redemption even possible?" The Room has themes. It still sucks. Prometheus has themes. It still sucks.

Prometheus introduced us to an expanded lore within the Alien Universe especially with the Engineers and the black goo etc. However it got so much hate from people complaining about the lack of the xenonorphs that we got the Covenant movie where it brushed over the Engineers and Shaw in order to appease those critics by going back to the Xenemorph and forgetting about what could have been with a continuation of the Engineer story/lore and Shaw.

Prometheus: deep and fun. Covenant: dumb and not fun.

Prometheus was a masterpiece. Watched it 8 times.

I actually think its deeper than people give it credit to. I know people just want to see aliens eating people but Alien was always more about symbolism than sheer horror.

The problem has always been: These movies give terribly boring answers to questions no one ever needed an answer to. They destroyed the mystique of the creature.

The main question posed is a cautionary one regarding AI. Power and intelligence without morals, conscience, empathy, boundaries or limit could be considered the ulimate evil; the ultimate psychopath or as someone puts it in Covenant: The Devil.

But what happened to Thug Notes?

I’m sure that alien “serpent” was post look more like a sperm cell or a dong. Because that’s how Geiger do.

What happened to Earthling Cinema? A better question is what happen to Thug Notes?

*Prometheus* movie has a mural of the Alien on a wall. But the Alien is created by David in *Covenant* *Prometheus* fans: "This is great" Alien fans: *"The fuck?!?"*

The original film, "Alien," was going to be a low-budget sci-fi film. When "the stars aligned" with the script plot twists of Dan O' Bannon and Ronald Schsett, along with the amazing artistic vision of both Ridley Scott and H.R. Geiger, it became a box office triumph - and that was because 20th Century Fox approved the project to keep up with the post "Star Wars" interest in the genre. As Scott said: "I wanted to create 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' in space." Even the "engineer" scenes had no more plot depth other than to create as Scott and O'Bannon put it: "A Cecil B. Demille moment" to convince people that this was more stylish than a B-movie would be. Everything was targeted to impress with unique visuals and be successful. No deep narrative, or intent tell a larger story. Ever since, it has been the fans who have sought something larger, and the succeeding films after "Aliens" have been less than substantial.

Covenant didn’t do bad it just did bad at the box office, it did really good in pirated movie apps

Shaw does not renounce her faith!

Thanks for reminding me how bad these movies were.

The subplot is a paraphrased concept off the original Bladerunner from the 80s.

For Me, as a scientist, the dumb part is the argument of the engineers as creators of humanity. That ignores all biology. All of it. “Nothing in biology makes sense but in light of evolution”. And hence the idea of creators makes these movies soft sci fi, instead of hard science fiction. They got the potential, but the scientific ignorance of Ridley screwed all.