Whoever wins, we lose: Aliens and Predator (also Prometheus and stuff)

I forgot what video I saw it in, but someone in a review said they thought at some point Ridley Scott fell in love with Michael Fassbender and did everything he could to put him at the forefront of the films.

Now, I don't say I'm agreeing but I just remembered there's literally a scene where

Spoiler:

So, that idea might not be as far off as I once thought.

TheDreamMaster wrote:

I forgot what video I saw it in, but someone in a review said they thought at some point Ridley Scott fell in love with Michael Fassbender and did everything he could to put him at the forefront of the films.

Now, I don't say I'm agreeing but I just remembered there's literally a scene where

Spoiler:

So, that idea might not be as far off as I once thought.

I think that scene is not sexual.

Spoiler:

I can't help but wonder if the poor performance of this movie will force Fox to end the Alien prequel trilogy early. Fox might not want to, but at this point, they might want to seriously consider it.

Not that I was expecting much, but well, wasn't that just a whole bunch of nothing.

Now some of the Fassbender stuff was pretty competent, I mean mid way through there were moments where it actually felt like a movie that had something to say. But everything involving the alien spiraled from annoying to laughable, all the human characters were boring cardboard cutouts (inspired by AVP?), and of course 90% of the film was rehash.

I didn't HATE it, mainly because the Fox marketing department pretty much had spoiled the whole thing beforehand anyway, but I was just so bored... so bored.

Off to watch Big Lebowski for the millionth time, to wash off the poisonous smell of lazy modern blockbusters and reboots. I know what the Dude and Walter would say of this Covenant wiki line: "The film received generally positive reviews, with most critics praising Fassbender's dual performance, and noting it as a return to form for both director Ridley Scott and the franchise."

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In terms of lists, for me it's either position 9 or 10, haven't decided, but for now I put AVP before it. Might change later, or not

1] Aliens 10/10
2] Alien 9/10
3] Alien Resurrection 7/10
4] Alien III 7/10
5] Predator 7/10
6] Predator II 6/10
7] Predators 6/10
8] Prometheus 5/10
9) Alien vs Predator 4/10
10] Alien Covenant 4/10
11] Alien vs Predator Requiem 2/10

Hey come on Mistral, I didn't think Covenant was a 4...it was more a 7 for me.

Well I doubt you would agree with my 7/10 on Resurrection either

I just like that film. I'm also probably the only person on the planet who prefers it over the director's way more celebrated work, Amelie.

Anyway, 7 for me is the first positive grade, and to get it isn't that simple of a job. Even more of a difficulty to get 8, "good". For 9 it would have to be in my top ~100 films of all time and for 10 in my top ~30 or so.

So finally got around to watching Covenant Last night. I have to say I really really liked it. Fassbender did an amazing job in my eyes and would love for them to do movie set before it with David and his research explained more. Did anyone notice the Deacon Artwork on the wall in his study? A nice throwback to Prometheus I thought. I liked the twist at the end of the also. It did raise a lot of questions though.

This ScreenRant article says that Alien: Covenant was a success. I like Screenrant, but this is totally wrong.

Not only that, but as I posted in the Marvel thread, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 retook the top spot back on Monday this week. Worse. I've read somewhere that Alien: Covenant will drop to 4th place during the weekend. That's embarrassing.

Sickle_Claw wrote:

Hey come on Mistral, I didn't think Covenant was a 4...it was more a 7 for me.

I admit, Mistral and I don't agree on much when it comes to movies, but I've got to agree here. I might be more generous and go with a 5, but it felt pretty bad to me. I liked some things, I didn't like a lot of things. Some of it was outright comical in places it shouldn't have been ( see my above post.). That said, I'm glad you liked it Sickle, it just didn't work for me.

Comical yes? I literally laughed out loud at the alien chestbuster scene, as well as when they were shooting the CGI blops in the grasslands.

Thankfully they axed out some of the awful scenes the marketing department had shown us earlier, but at the same time they should have given Shaw some screen time in the actual movie. She would've been the only non cardboard cutout besides Fassbender. At least Prometheus had some characters.

Anyway... Besides new Half in the Bag, RLM just also released same kind of "logical questions" treatment for Covenant as they did for Prometheus 5 years ago. Because remember it? Remember it? The satire is real.

Spoiler:

Mistral wrote:

Comical yes? I literally laughed out loud at the alien chestbuster scene, as well as when they were shooting the CGI blops in the grasslands.

Thankfully they axed out some of the awful scenes the marketing department had shown us earlier, but at the same time they should have given Shaw some screen time in the actual movie. She would've been the only non cardboard cutout besides Fassbender. At least Prometheus had some characters.

Anyway... Besides new Half in the Bag, RLM just also released same kind of "logical questions" treatment for Covenant as they did for Prometheus 5 years ago. Because remember it? Remember it? The satire is real.

Spoiler:

The chestburster scene nearly ruins chestbursters for me. Even in Scott's original they were slightly different, still somewhat of a larval form before quickly maturing. Besides being terrible and comical, it basically makes the chestburster form pointless as Scott showed it just becoming a tiny Xeno.

I didn't actually mind the Neomorphs, but the CGI in most scenes was awful. I'm looking forward to the NECA figure but i'll likely wait for a revision as the Neomorph figure looks somewhat based on concept art. Even still, I still hate the origin Scott gave to these creatures, and I'll just be ignoring it.

The most pathetic thing with neomorphs is that they - with no effort - reproduce through magic mushroom spores interacting with humans, while xenomorphs still require the "middle phase" with facehuggers and humans. For such a 'perfect organism', xenomorph reproducing sure sucks in comparison to neomorph process. Hey mr robot, how about fixing that problem too with your experimentation, to make it as smooth? No?

Btw. I think we're already at the stage where Scott's retconned not only both AVPs, but also Aliens and the other two sequels with Queen's role now completely eliminated in Covenant. Unless she's somewhere far away in that magic cave barfing out eggs.

Mistral wrote:

The most pathetic thing with neomorphs is that they - with no effort - reproduce through magic mushroom spores interacting with humans, while xenomorphs still require the "middle phase" with facehuggers and humans. For such a 'perfect organism', xenomorph reproducing sure sucks in comparison to neomorph process. Hey mr robot, how about fixing that problem too with your experimentation, to make it as smooth? No?

Btw. I think we're already at the stage where Scott's retconned not only both AVPs, but also Aliens and the other two sequels with Queen's role now completely eliminated in Covenant. Unless she's somewhere far away in that magic cave barfing out eggs.

I don't think we should consider Aliens as removed from the series yet. At least not unless Scott say it is or if-(I don't know if another one is possible yet) another manages to do that. And even then, it would only be a matter of time before Cameron's anger-remember, he's making Avatar 2 soon-and fan outrage forces Aliens to be ret-conned back in.

I think after watching the films again, Scott has re conned Aliens out now with Covenant, it makes no sense now...

Alien vs Predator 2004 started the trend of "nothing making sense" continuity wise

It's official. From last Friday to this one, Alien Covenant has underwent a whopping 80% drop.

That's a killing blow. Domestically, i.e. here in the United States, it's a huge bomb. Given the law of diminishing returns, it's going to be hard for Fox to allow Scott to make a 3rd prequel given how the chances of it bombing overall are going to be fairly high.

I wonder how it'll do in China and Japan? Probably not nearly enough.

Honestly even if the movie is a mess, I think it's an incredibly fun mess. And Scott lost his mind along time ago so I'm here for the ride .

I hope they make atleast one more so we can see 

Spoiler:

I still don't think it's ever hit Ridley that he could probably make a full film about David and Weyland on earth(No Aliens involved) and make an incredibly interesting film without it having to tie into Alien.

Troyal1 wrote:

I wonder how it'll do in China and Japan? Probably not nearly enough.

Honestly even if the movie is a mess, I think it's an incredibly fun mess. And Scott lost his mind along time ago so I'm here for the ride .

I hope they make atleast one more so we can see 

Spoiler:

I still don't think it's ever hit Ridley that he could probably make a full film about David and Weyland on earth(No Aliens involved) and make an incredibly interesting film without it having to tie into Alien.

As I said before, if one takes the law of diminishing returns into account, the next Alien prequel movie-if it ever gets made-has a high chance of being an outright bomb. And even then, I wouldn't be surprised if this prequel trilogy gets ret-conned out of existence.Or at least being heavily ret-conned while still being canon like Disney has done with the Star Wars prequels.

Troyal1 wrote:

I wonder how it'll do in China and Japan? Probably not nearly enough.

Honestly even if the movie is a mess, I think it's an incredibly fun mess. And Scott lost his mind along time ago so I'm here for the ride .

I hope they make atleast one more so we can see 

Spoiler:

I still don't think it's ever hit Ridley that he could probably make a full film about David and Weyland on earth(No Aliens involved) and make an incredibly interesting film without it having to tie into Alien.

The spoiler is the only thing that I can kind of use to justify Aliens staying in continuity.

Spoiler:

If Ridley retcons Aliens I would be very disappointed. It's the only other good Alien movie aside from the original.

TheDreamMaster wrote:

The spoiler is the only thing that I can kind of use to justify Aliens staying in continuity.

Spoiler:

Megaspino2 wrote:

If Ridley retcons Aliens I would be very disappointed. It's the only other good Alien movie aside from the original.

I still think that if Ridley does do that, then Cameron and fan-outrage will force Fox to ret-con it back in. We might even see Cameron not only doing that himself, but ret-conning Ridley's prequels out of existence the way Fox let Byran Singer ret-con X3: The Last Stand and most of Wolverine: Origins out of existence with Days Of Future Past.

Rhedosaurus wrote:

TheDreamMaster wrote:

The spoiler is the only thing that I can kind of use to justify Aliens staying in continuity.

Spoiler:

Megaspino2 wrote:

If Ridley retcons Aliens I would be very disappointed. It's the only other good Alien movie aside from the original.

I still think that if Ridley does do that, then Cameron and fan-outrage will force Fox to ret-con it back in. We might even see Cameron not only doing that himself, but ret-conning Ridley's prequels out of existence the way Fox let Byran Singer ret-con X3: The Last Stand and most of Wolverine: Origins out of existence with Days Of Future Past.

I...just don't know. Similar to our debate on Resident Evil getting a Claire spin-off, and then instead doing a reboot, I think they might revive the Blomkamp sequel before getting Cameron involved, only because Cameron has like 3 Avatar sequels ahead of him if his usual comments are to be believed.

TheDreamMaster wrote:

Rhedosaurus wrote:

TheDreamMaster wrote:

The spoiler is the only thing that I can kind of use to justify Aliens staying in continuity.

Spoiler:

Megaspino2 wrote:

If Ridley retcons Aliens I would be very disappointed. It's the only other good Alien movie aside from the original.

I still think that if Ridley does do that, then Cameron and fan-outrage will force Fox to ret-con it back in. We might even see Cameron not only doing that himself, but ret-conning Ridley's prequels out of existence the way Fox let Byran Singer ret-con X3: The Last Stand and most of Wolverine: Origins out of existence with Days Of Future Past.

I...just don't know. Similar to our debate on Resident Evil getting a Claire spin-off, and then instead doing a reboot, I think they might revive the Blomkamp sequel before getting Cameron involved, only because Cameron has like 3 Avatar sequels ahead of him if his usual comments are to be believed.  

That and the fact that he's the executive producer of the upcoming proper Terminator 3 movie. I.E. The one that's going to be a direct sequel to T2 and ret-cons all other movies post-T2 non-canon.

That or they'll compromise. If Scott ret-cons Aliens out of existance, then they'll let Blomkamp make an Alien movie, but only if he ret-cons Aliens, or at least the Queen Alien, back in.

Rhedosaurus wrote:

TheDreamMaster wrote:

Rhedosaurus wrote:

TheDreamMaster wrote:

The spoiler is the only thing that I can kind of use to justify Aliens staying in continuity.

Spoiler:

Megaspino2 wrote:

If Ridley retcons Aliens I would be very disappointed. It's the only other good Alien movie aside from the original.

I still think that if Ridley does do that, then Cameron and fan-outrage will force Fox to ret-con it back in. We might even see Cameron not only doing that himself, but ret-conning Ridley's prequels out of existence the way Fox let Byran Singer ret-con X3: The Last Stand and most of Wolverine: Origins out of existence with Days Of Future Past.

I...just don't know. Similar to our debate on Resident Evil getting a Claire spin-off, and then instead doing a reboot, I think they might revive the Blomkamp sequel before getting Cameron involved, only because Cameron has like 3 Avatar sequels ahead of him if his usual comments are to be believed.  

That and the fact that he's the executive producer of the upcoming proper Terminator 3 movie. I.E. The one that's going to be a direct sequel to T2 and ret-cons all other movies post-T2 non-canon.

That or they'll compromise. If Scott ret-cons Aliens out of existance, then they'll let Blomkamp make an Alien movie, but only if he ret-cons Aliens, or at least the Queen Alien, back in.

I'm not sure Scott will get another movie to retcon Aliens out given the box office currently. I mean, he could just make a comment which people could take as fact to his version of the universe, but whether we actually see what Scott has planned for another movie, I can't say (and frankly, would rather he not.). Like or hate the sequels to Alien, I always felt the universe felt bigger with the added elements. The Alien Queen was a cool progression, and I like the design tweaks Cameron made to the Xenos in Aliens. The movie isn't great, but I like the Dog Alien design and it opened the door for other Xeno variation (which Kenner, and later NECA, happily realized for me.). Resurrection....less said about it the better, but even if the AvP films aren't great (I enjoy the first to a degree, but Requiem is garbage), I like the AvP franchise as a whole because it expands the universe. In Alien, we've only seen the humans, Xenos, and Engineers. With Predator added in, that's another species, plus the species that have shown up in the Predator franchise (the dog thing and the original Predator design-inspired alien from Predators.). With the Xeno origin plot point, as well as the potential to retcon something like Aliens, I think Scott is making his universe smaller (and a tad preachy with the Engineers are our God, creation overtones, etc.). I don't blame Scott for ignoring something like the AvP films, but changing the origins and somewhat skirting around things established in the other films, what with there still being potential for these other elements to exist in this universe, rubs me the wrong way.

Covenant suffered from an enormous amount of plot holes and things that made absolutely no sense. The more I think about it, the more I dislike it. Shame, considering it was one of the most anticipated movies of the year...

Someone on AvP Galaxy has started posting differences between the early cuts and the final one of Covenant. Here it is.

James Cameron says that A.I. and machines are more dangerous now then back when he made the first Terminator movie.

Water is wet.

Fire burns.

Wind blows.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4296&p=.htm

Well, Covenant is most likely not going to break even at this point so I suppose the Alien franchise will be shelved once again for another decade or so. I thought things were finally starting to turn around with Prometheus and Isolation too. Ugh.

These films have never done particularly amazing at box office though. Prometheus probably did 'fine' because excluding AVPs it had been 15 years since the last film, and also Scott was returning for the first time and was starting from clean slate again. Also I think the marketing campaign was better.