Watching it for the first time just I watched Prometheus a week ago and kinda liked it.
And so far I’m liking it but, damn, sending your whole crew down to an UNKNOWN PLANET with not protective equipment? Like wtf, just cuz the atmosphere is breathable doesn’t mean there won’t be, I dunno, SOME WEIRD ALIEN DISEASE??? As well as several other potentially deadly things, like idk psychic plants or aliens that say hello by ripping your genitals off.
Do characters in SciFi stories ever read SciFi? Come on this is like 101 shit bro.
One of the possible characteristics of a good horror movie is that every character makes the correct decision given the information they have at the time and still perish because the scope of the danger is simply beyond them.
Convenant ain’t that movie.
One of the possible characteristics of a good horror movie is that every character makes the correct decision given the information they have at the time and still perish because the scope of the danger is simply beyond them.
It was rough around the edges, but I think the movie Sunshine pulled that off for the most part. Even the critical error on the way there truly was an accident that crushed the morale of the crew member that did it because he really was otherwise competent and trying his best.
Good job making sunlight terrifying and darkness comforting, too. I didn’t see that thematic twist again until FFXIV Shadowbringers.
good reference. I loved Sunshine, but whenever I tell people to watch it and call it science fiction, they insist on knowing the single sentence premise and I can’t seem to do it in a way that doesn’t sound hackey, so nobody ever watches it.
Yeah what gets me is that the characters in Prometheus and Covenant are supposed to be top scientists and constantly do things a rookie scientist even wouldn’t do.
Like taking their helmet off on a alien planet. Touching shit. All that dumb stuff.
They act like dumb Americans.
i mean it’s kind of the blade runner cyberpunk future they are from where the whole world is like a dying mall America
In Alien they are naive and panicked but also actively sabotaged by Ash. And it isn’t a ship full of dedicated explorers or scientists.
Yeh. They’re space truckers. One of hteir guys is sick and needs help. They don’t care about some OSHA bullshit enforced by a regulatory commission thirty lights away, they want to help Kain regardless of what Ripley says. It makes sense in the context of the characters and their knowledge and motivations.
The asspull that demystified the xenomorphs and made the universe much, much smaller in a genre that’s supposed to be about how vast and scary space is was very, very disappointing. The Space Jockeys/Engineers being absent and presumed extinct worked wonderfully for that vibe in the previous movies, but then “oops actually our new character killed them all and actually invented the xenomorphs” writing in Covenant fucking suuuuuucked and ruined that.
I don’t think my old interest in the Alien franchise ever recovered from Covenant.
David going all mad scientist didn’t really make sense to me either. In the previous movie I just got the sense he didn’t like being Wayland’s servant boy, it almost would have made more sense for him to just be enjoying his solitude. Idk where he got the idea of being some weird android supremacist from.
I didn’t like Prometheus all that much but it didn’t retroactively reduce my enjoyment of the previous movies the way Covenant did.
Isn’t it a requirement in any Alien movie that only a single person on the entire crew isn’d dumb as a rock?
Alien and Aliens very much averted this. the characters behaved in a believable manner given their background and the knowledge available to them.
All the characters in Alien are so likeable too. It feels rare that there’s ever a story now where a character isn’t annoying to their colleages or unlikeable beyond repair.
I wonder if it’s American moralism that they feel like they have to have the characters who get killed be unlikable so moralist normies are OK with them all dying. The 2000s especially felt like every movie was just a group of either awful people or at least aesthetically displeasing people. Elevated horror side-steps but doesn’t really address this by taking an ambiguous stance on whether you’re supposed to sympathize with or just gawk at the alien main characters who talk sparsely and slowly about their trauma over the course of the film while everyone else around them dies.
Right
It’s usually the robot too
I didn’t care for alien 3 but everything after had support dumb characters and / or plot
Mandem went down to an unknown planet with scuba masks
I’m with you on their stupidity and correct me if I am wrong… but weren’t they basically like the vanguard of an interplanetary settlement project?
therefore, basically the scientists without good critical analysis skills and a prediction for tunnel vision that makes them best suited for “getting the job done” and not getting “bogged down” with “risk assessments” and safety/security protocols.
that’s sort of how I remember it, which may be conflated with my own experiences of working alongside similarly smooth brained “scientists”.
Lol is “smooth brained” a dig at people with less surface area in their gray matter?
Kinda, but they had a planet they had already surveyed and took a detour because a preliminary scan of a closer planet suggested it may be a nicer colony spot. Which okay, but I assume your ship has the ability to do some from orbit research on the surface, and maybe send like a droid down first? There’s a huge ass empty alien city on the surface, I’m 100% even modern satellites could detect that. That alone would suggest there’s something concerning on this planets surface.
Idk just seemed like a foolish move coming from a group that’s been training for space exploration.
Droid expensive, nerds cheap
