haha on my side of it, I've had to learn that is what it means over the years. But there is a reason why audiences have bias against vfx in films, and it's really not the VFX artists fault at all
@@FrameVoyager The original Jurassic Park had less than 60 visual effects shots. Moonfall had over 1700 VFX shots. Visual effects can enhance a story and should but it can’t save it. It can’t save acting. It can’t save emotional connection. It can’t add the magical spark, only enhance it if it’s there. It’s a tool that people lean on too much. It’s like people hoping their aspect ratio is going to save their turd movie.
Killing Elizabeth felt as deflating as Newt and Hicks dying at the beginning of Alien 3. It didn't feel natural, just the writers clearing the desk to tell their story.
Agreed. I thought Shaw might represent an alternate xenomorph creation method by becoming the alien Queen. That would have solved Scott's problem hating the idea. Mostly new xenos would be created from victims, but David trying another pathway in the queen... I dunno, something, anything but just killing her
I worked at Fox Studios Australia during the filming of Alien: Covenant. A fun fact is that one of the film's "Terraforming Vehicles" is actually just a road grader, leased from a construction company, and then vinyl wrapped in white and gold to give it a "sci-fi appearance". At the conclusion of filming, the vinyl wrap needed to be removed. The crew attempted to use a heat gun, but found that it posed a dilemma: it was either hot enough to remove the wrap but damaged the underlying paint, or not hot enough to remove the wrap but left the paint intact. Consequently, not wanting to lose their bond, they had to manually peel every inch of the wrap off this gigantic machine. This task turned into a friendly competition to see who could peel off the longest continuous strip - contestants would tape their strip to the wall, label it with their name and a winner would be announced at the end of the day!
Covenant partly respected Prometheus, but was a massive confused let down. Ironically focusing on the alien rather than Elizabeth and David’s arc into a paradise lost I thought was a detriment.
I agree. It's mid-series pivots like this that are always such a frustrating state of affairs. I'd much rather something I'm not keen on stay the course than try and pivot because it's just going to disappoint almost everyone.
he wasn't allowed to do the story like he wanted so they went back to the old formula which messed up the whole movie and why we did not get the conclusion
This movie desperately needed a scientist or two on set and during preproduction, there were so many odd things that logically shouldn’t have happened in the movie. New planet, no EVA suits?? Handling stagnant water without protection?? Smoking?? and so many others.
I worked on that movie at MPC Montreal, I was a somewhat new artist in the industry. Movie didnt come out as many wished it would, but I can't bring myself to hate it, its my baby
Personally I'm more engaged with David's saga more than I have ever been with people fighting Xenomorphs. It stimulates me more intellectually and I still think about the ideas and themes of the prequels, I'm glad that Romulus continued some of those elements
I rewatched this last night. It’s not far off from being a great movie. Tighten up that middle act with David and I think you’ve got a real winner here. The first 45 minutes and the final act are very good. It’s a shame we will never get to see David fulfill his grand visions…
like you said, "tighten up" some parts, which I think would also make Prometheus a pretty good movie it deserved to be. Director's or Final Cut or whatever. I can definitely feel in Covenant something super timeless. I think it will age like Blade Runner did.
in Hollywood the bean counters are in charge. It's why the entire movie industry is so stale and stagnant right now. If you have a truly creative idea for your franchise the wider general action flick uninspired audience will shut it down because they want to see the same thing repeated infinitely. I have no intention to even watch the new one it's the same premise scary horror monster movie.
@@funnycatvideos5490Romulus was really boring. It had way too much fan service even down to the main character wearing rebook shoes like Ripley did in aliens. Essentially Romulus was 💩💩💩 and it offered nothing new.
THE PROLOGUES: The Crossing: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XeMVrnYNwus.html&pp=ygUYYWxpZW4gY292ZW5hbnQgcHJvbG9ndWVz The Last Supper: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EkXgRlRao5I.html&pp=ygUYYWxpZW4gY292ZW5hbnQgcHJvbG9ndWVz
Covenant is not perfect, but I enjoyed it, it definitely has the spot for the most feral Xenomorph in the entire franchise. That thing was a unhinged, I would've loved to see a full movie with that version and not just the 3rd act
I wish to see a conclusion with David and the Engineers. Prometheus was NOT going to be alien universe focused, so anyone complaining about that have not being doing their research. I am sad that Ridley Scott could not continue exloring that mythology. As much as i love Alien, the Engineer lore is much more interesting if you ask me.
I wanted to like it. I wanted to love it. And for the sake of objectivity, it is a genuinely beautiful-looking movie. It’s just not a very good overall movie. Definitely will leave you with more questions than answers, and has too many nonsensical moments to allow for prolonged suspension of disbelief. Just watch it on mute, without subtitles, and enjoy the gorgeous visuals.
I believe Tom Rothman (the infamous former co-chair of Fox) championed Prometheus becoming a more distant relative to the Alien series. I also believe Rothman was responsible for replacing Jon Spaiths with Damon Lindelof. But as soon as Rothman was ousted, the studio forced Scott to change course.
Issue with Ridley's profound vision for the prequels was that too much was left out of the movies, and on the cutting room floor or hidden away in trailers or extras/deleted scenes. I was someone that loved Covenant for what it conveyed, but understandably I was in the minority, due to the exposure I had to the films marketing and promotional material. Things were better fleshed out in the marketing with additional material, and a lot was hinted at and alluded to in interviews - but when it came to the movie itself, it left a lot to be desired. 'The Crossing' made Shaw feel like a character - and had the sequence been included in the beginning of the movie, would've given her character a purpose and posed the question throughout the movie, "What happened to her" - it would've given her reveal more weight, which when coincided with the birth of the Alien, would've by proxy also been given more weight and poignancy. 'The Last Supper', 'Phobos', and the goodbye messages shot for trailers, could've served as great character building material, and fleshed them out - giving their demise more weight. An Extra sequence, called 'Advent' provided an insane amount of exposition by David (to Weyland-Yutani) detailing why he killed Shaw, why he killed the Engineers, what he discovered on the planet, and why he decided to create the Xenomorph. Had this just been a sequence at the end of the movie, it would've brought everything together, instead of leaving his reveal unsatisfactory.
you're right. the deleted scenes/extras would've made it a more complete movie. regardless of that though the second half of the movie is still horrible no matter what
I know I’m in the vast minority (I always am for basically everything), but I’ve always loved Covenant. It in no way stacks up with the first two movies, but for me it was a comfortable third place. Though now after Romulus, I’d put Covenant in fourth.
they had something with Prometheus and then threw it into the trash, you can give an idiot a treasure and he would just assume is trash and throw it away, that was Alien Covenant which could of been an amazing movie if it had stuck to its original intention from Prometheus.
I refused to see this movie. While Prometheus had its issues, the most promising aspect of the movie was Shaw's quest to find engineers. Killing her off screen and completely changing course was both dumb and disrespectful. Glad it flopped :)
The thing that sucked was how stupid the humans were in the movie, the engineers' city wasn't shown all that much and the fact that the original screenplay for the movie had a better idea than what we got in the end.
The work and research put into this series shows - I subscribed right away after watching your video on “Alien” and have loved each video that’s followed. Great work and thank you!
No, we really don’t. We didn’t need Prometheus or covenant. Both have stupidly incoherent scripts. Both films are a mess, covenant being the worst of the two. Stupid writing.
The most Fun aspect of this movie is The no continuation scenes within The plot: - How long storm lasts? - Days, Wheeks, months... Next scene, no rain, next scene no rain. Scene from The spaceship huge storm. No communications because of The storm. Back on land Two droids talking on outside no rain at ALL... For a Ridley movie, this was such a big error... It must bê só stressful for an Old director making movies on other peoples Therms...
yeah the bean counters screwed up his vision so much that he basically gave up trying. We could've had some great movies behind this instead they went back to the general audience cliché monster movie of the week nonsense.
It's amazing how much work goes into realizing a script that wasn't ever worth making. Far from the only film it happened on, but always heartbreaking to see.
I watched this twice in cinema, despite.. you know. You can say about Scott all you want (and Alien has never been HIS story)... but: He's got a knack for framing and aesthetics. If there's parts of Covenant that are superior watching, it's best on the big screen for sure. Overall I think series like that would be best served on more modest budgets again. With less expectations behind of what such a movie should be, both by fans as well as corporate suits. Alien and to some extent Aliens were made by fresh filmmakers that worked under pressure. But not with the massive franchise expectations yet behind. Thus they were allowed to walk into territory never seen before -- and Cameron even wrote his own script, despite still being a newcomer at that point.
I am sooo tired of the 'this was all practical' when 80+% is replaced in post anyway. Studios are hellbent on devaluing VFX and discrediting the meticulous and most of the time unrealistic level of work we are tasked to create.
This film had zero idea of what it wanted to be. It fails to be a proper Prometheus sequel and at the same time struggles being an Alien prequel. I can enjoy some of the ideas that they played around with in both Covenant and Prometheus but overall these films fail to justify their existence.
18:26 I call this The Hangover effect! Do the exact same thing or something too similar people say it’s lazy and when you change it too much you get criticized for that too.
This series is awesome! thanks for all the hard work and the masterpieces you put out. Can you please do one of these on the Alien vs Predator production? super curious on that
In Prom and Cov technique, DOP, editing and sound are incredible while stories were so disappointing. The writers really have nothing to say. They don't understand the lore, but they know the techniques to poker face during prod, but when you watch the movies, it's empty, and none of the good intentions are visible on screen.
One of the things that was going over me while I was watching this movie was how many times they were doing things that regardless of a computer telling them that the air they were going to be breathing was safe. I don't know of anybody who would go into an area like that without having something in the way of protection because a computer can might say that something is not a danger but I can't figure out every single possible hazard. Just as there are things in the world today that have things like poison oak or poison ivy. So that a computer might say everything safe. But then to turn around and be freaking out because all the sudden you got this stuff cuz you have no idea that this thing the computer is not telling you that well there might be hazards out there no there's hazards everywhere. Especially in something where you can visibly see pollen coming off of there yeah that's not a good thing. One of the things I didn't like from Prometheus was the aspect of the robot taking the black stuff putting it in the liquid defeated to somebody just to see how it's going to react with them. It still isn't explaining how Wayland knew about the Xenomorphs. There's this thing apart from with me on the issue of alien 79, was how did the group know that there was something there and that that thing had to be extricated from there to be brought to Earth. Because in Prometheus there is nothing going out they had no ability to to contact the Earth to let them know what they found there or what had been there. The idea of the engineers going and putting life on the planet that's all fine and dandy and I get it because Carl Sagan when he realized that the issue of chance with regards to establishing life was impossible. To such a degree that the only way it made sense was to say that an alien came to Earth to put it here. So this is the outgrowth of what Carl Sagan said. Which is really funny when you hear somebody like Dawkins saying the universe created itself. And they laugh saying that somebody who believes in in a god creating the universes is a fairy tale. But their version of it isn't and their version isn't a religion yet it's covers all the bases of being religion.
The trouble with this movie is that it's too cryptic. Too much is left unanswered, and it didn't feel like an Alien movie. If there's a third in this run, then it needs to be simplified and close some loops.
No, it is in my opinion ridicules that they threw away the character of shaw (the only interesting thing from Prometheus) plus, now scientist are even more stupider. It looks and sounds beautiful though. But i like it even less than Alien 4.
Appreciate the things it does well, conflicted by some choices that disregarded what Prometheus had set up, rushing the Alien evolution\creation?, Muddying the biomechanicle alien aesthetic for a simple bugs exoskeleton organic one, favouring chliches and horror tropes, altering Ridley's vision to appease fans, it's annoyingly a set up for a final entry in the trilogy that doesn't look t be happening anytime soon. Mixed feelings overall, wouldn't say it's the worst in the series, not great, glad Ridley came back to direct one last time.
@@PoepopdestoepWould have been interesting if the story had David releasing the Black-Goo on the world and then waking Elizabeth up and showing her they’re all gone, but finds out his sinister plan, so she runs and it’s like a hunted movie where David is like the Alien, but then a fake distress call get received by Covenant some time later and lowers them in so David can experiment and learn of their destination. Then Elizebeth could somehow be in the next movie. Probably a terrible idea hahah, what do you think 😂
Yes, probably one of the most overly hated films of all time. Personally I am in agreement that the film struggles with an identity crisis that is also hampered by some poorly written characters. That being said, Michael Fassbender easily carries the cast with his dual roles, Ridley Scott makes sure to get those beautiful shots, and the VFX work truly is incredible. Personally I tend to give Covenant a "B" when it comes to grading or tier lists. As for the guy who says that Resurrection is better... you crazy for putting a "D" film above a "B" film.
It’s crazy. This movie had such potential. It gets a five out of 10. It looks beautiful and it had some prettygreat effects. The story on the other hand was horrible some of the dumbest decision-making by fictional characters in history. If they were gonna kill off Elizabeth, they should’ve showed it. Continuity errors out the ass. Prometheus was a way better film. I may get shit for that but that’s how I feel get Prometheus a 7.5 out of 10. Just thinking about it. These two could’ve gone so well together. I even bought it after seeing it in theaters, hoping to give it another chance, but I just can’t with this movie.
prometheus and covenant were amazing, never understood the disappointment from some people. Sci Fi at its finest and tried to develop further the story.
because obviously the general audience for this is action flick popcorn moviegoers. this was tragic it could've been an awesome thought-provoking sci-fi film series at its best. The bean counters would not let Ridley Scott interpret his own vision for the franchise. although I don't think it was advertised in the best way to start with. people were looking for a mindless action film like all of the others and they were disappointed. well they can watch the Disney one it will be the exact formula that I am not interested in one iota.
The thing that bothered me terribly about Prometheus and covenant was the whole theme was mysteries will be solved and questioned will be answered. But if anything those two films presented more questions and less answers. So much left unresolved and now we will probably never know thanks to brain dead morons that think Romulus is the best thing since sliced bread.
The plot of a man made creation - David tracking and taking down the creators of humanity was so interesting & much more compelling than any movie as of late, such a shame we will never see the original continuation of his and Shaws story
While I enjoyed Covenant, I thought the worst parts of that movie was having David and Walter being both played by Fassbinder. While this might work on paper, it just made the whole movie a jarring watch when a lot of the scenes it's just the same actor over and over for a lot of the run time. I think the movie would have worked better having another another actor cast as Walter, and then simply having David as a stowaway for the finale in the ship. Maybe add him on the equation by making him another chaotic player during the final confrontation for added tension. Funny thing is, you'd think Ridley Scott of all people would know what works and what doesn't work on camera.
sadly wont happen..Disney have splashed out on the TV series and Romulus. Time will tell if this was a good move, but the Alien world should be expanded more.
It's a shame that so much was invested in this film knowing what a failure it was in the sense that it was a good franchise for Alien. Prometheus had such great promise for a not a very grand conclusion And that's exactly why the studio is going to make a new Alien movie unrelated to this film.
Being disappointed watching it the first time, it was a lot better the second time around (this week, and when it came out). The movie is really well made, and although I don't like where the story went (I really would have loved to see more of Shaw), I kinda like it now. Some parts are a little weak, but Fassbender's performance here is really S-tier. Also I really like the David character. It's very dark (I mean it's a horror movie), but looking at it now, the incredible visuals, practical effects and I also kinda liked the crew, just made a lot more enjoyable the second time around. Watching this YT video, just made me appreciate it more.
Succeed or fail, I respect the infinitely interesting concept and commitment to create, I just wish he stuck to his original goal and made the story that he wanted rather than bend to the mob that hated the lore and wanted more xeno then subsequently got more xeno but then complained about not having enough story lore. It’s easy to criticize others’ hard work and art and feel entitled enough to demand that someone else’s story be shaped to each persons liking. I’d have liked to have seen where the director would’ve take his original vision.
The worst part of this movie was the unrealistically stupid decisions made by the ship's crew, over and over and over. Having them ground the "reality" of what was unfolding by taking appropriate actions but being overwhelmed by the circumstances anyway, would have made the whole thing feel much more engaging. Instead we were just presented with the equivalent of a bunch of dumb, horny teenagers on holiday by a lake...
Would the two Alien vs Predator movies productions be covered in videos or being crossovers that's technically a different category from the main Alien series?
What I find unbelievable in these movies is how much drooling is going on with the Alien or Aliens. I can understand them doing this to some extent but as the series progressed the sticky blobs found on surfaces indicating the presence of an Alien because a shower head constant river of drool. Later Aliens must be leaking gallons of drool which is infeasible.
But there are also other forms of Aliens or species,I don’t understand why they are not playing with imagination,since 30 years we play the same scenario
If they had only made the characters in both Prometheus and Covenant not act like total idiots and actual be best of the best, chosen elite for their missions, both movies would have been so much better.
The biggest problem with Covenant (other than it ditched the more interesting Prometheus stuff) was the marketing. Every single trailer and clip was a spoiler and ruined the movie, you knew exactly what was going to happy. Covenant was so bad I have returned to the theaters since seeing it.
Sometimes in a movie franchise, a bad film will cause the *next* film to be a box office flop, even if said next film is arguably an improvement. e.g. I would argue Justice League (the theatrical cut) bombed because Batman v. Superman was so off-putting to moviegoers. Justice League was certainly not a great film, but it might have performed better if it wasn't following up such a dour, pretentious mess. I think the same is true for Alien: Covenant. I certainly didn't bother seeing it in theatres, because Prometheus was such a let-down.
These movies have the same issues as the new Terminator movies ... They are made for the director...not the fans. Just give the fans what they want. A true engineer sequal and for Terminator the war we saw in flashbacks
The middle act brought this movie to a grinding halt. It was boring, watching David talking on and on in his cave hideout. The absence of the Elizabeth Shaw character was also annoying, given the ending of the Prometheus, which promised a sequel that we were not given. I saw Covenant at the cinema in 2017. I've never watched it since.
I think if people don’t like it or the series, just move on and don’t ruin it for the rest of us. You have a right to your opinion, I too have the right to ignore it.
It's a shame the movie was a disappointing mess but the effort on the props and sets was amazing. I would love to see a full length documentary on what it took to create David's lab alone.
