GRWelsh
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Re: Alien covenant was pretty great

Tue 05 Oct 2021, 00:08

Both Prometheus and Covenant had good ideas, but the final product was lacking and a bit of all over the place. The main issue, for me, was linking them to the Alien universe. They messed everything up, had too many retcons and the timeline doesn't make sense. If they had gone with a new sci-fi franchise, completely removed from Alien, about the origin of humankind, playing God, etc. it could have been great, Scott always delivers visually and there's a lot of interesting ideas...but as part of the Alien universe they're pretty weak.

That sums up my own feelings quite well. I loved that the newer movies were ambitious and tried to tackle the big ideas of classic science fiction and philosophy. Do we have a creator? If so, why did He/She/They create us? What obligations do we have to them -- or to those that we ourselves create? Is it even wise to create A.I. or explore a potentially hostile universe? Those are all valid questions, and it is great to explore them in fiction. Yet, I consider these movies flawed because they didn't pay enough attention to the details of how it all matches up with the continuity of the ALIEN universe, and many of the human characters are not handled well -- almost like the humans were an afterthought. The humans in these movies are supposed to be highly educated with scientists among them yet don't even take basic precautions which is so annoying to watch. Ridley Scott's visuals and David Fassbender's performances make them worth watching, and I still consider them good movies -- but seriously flawed on the script-writing and world-building side. It was like they had a lot of grand ideas but lacked a rigorous editor challenging them to have everything make sense and fit together in a logical way. PROMETHEUS should have focused on the creator/human/android dynamic, which deserved its own movie. ALIEN: COVENANT should have been a follow up to that with a focus on the creators, or engineers, and why they created us and why they wanted to destroy us -- and could still have included them being brought low by their thematic "grandchild" David. It would have been interesting if perhaps they wanted to create us to serve but once they found out we had developed technology that could threaten them (i.e. throw them down the way the Olympian gods threw down the titans) that was why they wanted to destroy us. If David found a way to destroy them, in a way that would make them right.

In my mind, the retcon of David creating the Xenomorphs simply isn't true. Yes, he tampered with DNA and created something, perhaps similar to the Xenomorph, but like Walter told David he was flawed ("Who wrote OZYMANDIUS?" "Byron." "Shelley. When one note is off it eventually destroys the whole symphony, David."). David may have believed he was this great creator, but he was only playing at being God and tampering with things beyond his understanding. Whatever the Xenomorphs are is still shrouded in mystery. They've been around long enough for a Space Jockey that had a chestburster erupt out of it to become fossilized, which means over 10,000 years. My idea is to have a mixture of the various sources. In the Dark Horse comics, the Xenomorphs evolved from a particular ecosystem, a harsh planet which could even produce variants like we saw with the Black and Red Xenomorphs. Sometime later, however, a higher species like the Engineers tampered with or modified the Xenomorphs to make them even more dangerous, and perhaps even biomechanical in the sense of being silicon-based and having metal teeth and able to digest metal and minerals and having a rapidly increased metabolism far beyond anything nature alone could evolve. This was probably also tied into the religion of the Engineers which was obsessed with perfection and sacrifice. The Xenomorphs were developed into the perfect weapon, but one that was perhaps too perfect, as they are ultimately uncontrollable... It is the classic theme of hubris that seems to run through the ALIEN movies.

You could say the same theme is reflected with the synthetic persons we create to serve yet who at times turn against us or prove uncontrollable.

Janek's sacrifice in PROMETHEUS, along with the other crew members, could be that which made us worthy to survive -- which calls us back to the sacrifice of the young engineer at the beginning of the movie.
 
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Grimmshade
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Re: Alien covenant was pretty great

Tue 05 Oct 2021, 02:46

I really like David's story, and the interaction of David and Walter. That said, I think it's pretty uninteresting to have the Xenomorphs completely created by David.
It's also strange that in Prometheus we see an image that really looks like a xenomorph, and also the strange bird-like alien species.
I like the idea that the Engineers got the black goo DNA technology from studying the Xenomorphs (the perfect organism), and maybe at most David reverse engineered them. This is of course just my personal take on it.
 
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Angelman
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Re: Alien covenant was pretty great

Tue 05 Oct 2021, 13:29

Personally, I'm assuming, perhaps naively, that Scott is playing tricks with our expectations; that David is NOT responsible for the (clearly ages old) derlict on LV-426 (we're just ment to think so); that the Aryan Übermench Engineers are NOT the same as the SpaceJockey people/culture, but that the Engineers are rather emulating their own SpaceJockey creator gods with priest-costumes to make themselves resemble SpaceJockeys (possibly as a priest class tricking/controlling other Engineer casts); and that the overarching plot/story is a LOT grander than what's been alluded to thus far, including an ages-spanning War in the Heavens conflict between the übermench Engineers and their elephantine SpaceJockey creators, with humans and xenos being nothing but toy soldiers caught in the mix.

(For the record, I also feel there's a whole lot of flaws in P & AC, and Scott seem to have lost his filmmaker game decades ago, unfortunatelly...)

(Also for the record, I find AC to be vastly superior to P, but I seem to be in the clear minority there)
"And the rain sets in,
it's the Angelman.
I'm deranged".
--David Bowie, I'm Deranged
 
GRWelsh
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Joined: Mon 04 Oct 2021, 14:28

Re: Alien covenant was pretty great

Tue 05 Oct 2021, 13:59

Personally, I'm assuming, perhaps naively, that Scott is playing tricks with our expectations; that David is NOT responsible for the (clearly ages old) derlict on LV-426 (we're just ment to think so); that the Aryan Übermench Engineers are NOT the same as the SpaceJockey people/culture, but that the Engineers are rather emulating their own SpaceJockey creator gods with priest-costumes to make themselves resemble SpaceJockeys (possibly as a priest class tricking/controlling other Engineer casts); and that the overarching plot/story is a LOT grander than what's been alluded to thus far, including an ages-spanning War in the Heavens conflict betweenn the übermench Engineers and their elephantine SpaceJockey creators, with humans and xenos being nothing but toy soldiers caught in the mix.

I love these ideas and they are similar to my own for use in the RPG. I like how in the core rule book both the elephantine Mala'Kak from the Dark Horse comics and the Ossians/Engineers from the PROMETHEUS and ALIEN: COVENANT movies are referenced. That allows Game Masters to have the most flexibility in what they want to present in their games. Personally, I don't see why both cannot exist. It could be that the Ossians/Engineers began to mimic the appearance of the Mala'Kak for religious reasons as you suggest (good idea, I hadn't thought of that) or for some more practical purpose like being able to access their technology -- such as being able to pilot the juggernauts. The same applies to David's creations and the classic Xenomorphs -- both can exist independently. David could have genuinely created something similar to, but not exactly like, the Xenomorphs which have been around much longer. In his mind, he was this great and original creator, but we know from the mural in PROMETHEUS that something like the Xenomorph had already existed and may have been part of the religion of the Ossians/Engineers, and from the original ALIEN movie the Mala'Kak Pilot aka Space Jockey was killed by a chestburster over 10,000 years ago -- long enough to become fossilized. We know the accelerant/black goo could already create monsters without David having to do any more than put it in Holloway's drink.
 
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Grimmshade
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Re: Alien covenant was pretty great

Tue 05 Oct 2021, 17:11

It sounds like all three of us have very similar thoughts on the subject. It's definitely the background I'm running with for my role playing campaign.

And for the record I also think Alien Covenant is a much better movie than Prometheus.
 
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DagobahDave
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Re: Alien covenant was pretty great

Fri 08 Oct 2021, 17:58

I think there's a win-win scenario where the producers of the next Alien movie make it perfectly clear that the Davidverse is not the same as the Ripleyverse, and that the new movies are a part of a reboot of the franchise. That would mean longtime fans don't need to think about how David's experiments relate to the the derelict on LV-426 because they're in different universes, and can continue to play in the Ripleyverse as it was imagined previously, with vague origins for the aliens. Meanwhile, the producers would be free to create new stories in the Davidverse's unwritten future, without being shackled by the original lore. Certainly wouldn't be the first time that has been done with this creature.

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