#4360018 - 05/29/17 10:17 AM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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Ssnake
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My main beef with Covenant is that the scientists don't behave like scientists, and the plot requires too many bad decisions being made by too many people in order to continue. - You land on a planet with breathable atmosphere to find the origin of a human song's transmission ... and they grab rifles?
The equipment that protects you against 0.001% of all deadly threats in an alien biosphere. - You land on an unknown planet with breathable atmosphere ... and you DON'T wear protection suits?
Seriously? The one piece of equipment that would protect you against 99.99% of all deadly threats in a species-compatible but presumably alien ecosphere? - You feel a sting in your ear/your nose. Soon after you feel ill - and you don't make the connection that you may have been infected by an alien organism, and alert the others, and be it just to request medical assistance?
- You meet a perfect copy of your synth as the source of the song's transmission after being confronted with a highly aggressive predator, walk through the charred bodies of a million human-like bodies, people are constantly disappearing, and you never question the motives of the AI?
- You just lost 30% of your buddies to horrible space monsters, and you walk away from the group to take a pee and to wash your face? That's your priority, really?
- You meet a perfect copy of your trustworthy synth in conditions that would turn every normal person's paranoia up to eleven, and you never test with whom you're actually speaking, or whether the evil twin could reprogram the good 'bot?
- You enter the creepy synth's lair, take a look at all his horrible fabrications, see him try to make friends with a horrid monster that just ate your friend's face, and, after he told you that in order to finish his research for the perfect organism he always needed one ingredient that wasn't to be had (because he was all alone with no human being on this planet), you trust his word that a "look at these disgusting eggs, it's perfectly harmless"?
Man, these people needed killin'. Even more so, the script writer, the director, and the studio execs who greenlit the project. In Alien 1-3 at least, the number of bad decisions was pretty low. Yes, an error was made occasionally, sometimes even just once, and the rest simply were consequences of that single or the few bad calls. None of the scientists in Prometheus behaved like an actual scientist. It is as if writing a concise story has become a lost art. Ridley Scott apparently isn't very good ad judging the quality of a script. Sometimes he gets lucky - more often in the past 30 years he does not.
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#4360019 - 05/29/17 10:24 AM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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Ssnake
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How did David create the Alien when this was already a thing in Prometheus? I know there is a lot wrong with Covenant but this just seemed sillier than most. Well, assuming that the bioweapon was designed to adapt to different DNA and to yield a different creature, something that was being alluded to as early as in Alien 4 (which I hated, even though it was solid gold compared to the trash that was cranked out in the years after), without more than one human body he could only come so far. After all, this was the engineers' planet. Apparently they left the planet where they crashed with the Prometheus in the alien ship, flew back "home", and then he performed the genocide on the engineers. Obviously that would produce different xenomorphs, simply because of the different DNA. And David has nothing to feed on, for an Alien.
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#4360038 - 05/29/17 01:28 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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Bib4Tuna
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The whole Alien as a engineered bio weapon by David kills other previous elements in the franchise -
- In Alien, they estimate the ship they discover with The Space Jockey and the eggs is thousands of years old. This seem to fit initially with the Prometheus premise, but now its just another hole.
-No development cycle from chestbuster to full Xenomorph as seen before. They don't even get the chestbuster right. Cue the diner dancing number in Spaceballs.
-Although not necessarily canon, the whole AvP series of books and movies, establishes that the Predators have been using the Xenos for thousands of years as a test for their skill as hunters.
-No queen. Why do you need a queen (or eggs...or facehuggers) if you have floaty goo? However...this seem like Scott squashing Cameron's take on the Xenos, as the queen was introduced by Aliens.
But the worse was Scott literally killing the mystery and the best element in Prometheus, which was the Engineers and their motivations.
He seem to have adjusted the movie based on audience feedback (like Lucas did with Jar Jar after TPM), and wanted to steer the direction of the plot mid-movie towards the horror elements in Alien. It all ends up messy and amateurish in the way it is done.
Last edited by Bib4Tuna; 05/29/17 06:41 PM.
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#4360045 - 05/29/17 02:10 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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Ssnake
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Well, even then you still need someone...something to actually produce the eggs. The Alien Queen is a very concise idea to answer the obvious question where these eggs are coming from. Now he destroyed the queen concept, but put nothing in place to fill the plothole.
Also, I don't know about aliens in all shapes and forms. It's not as what was established by the first three movies wasn't scary enough. I might even tolerate the fourth film as clueless dabbling by military research facility bioengineers (with predictable outcomes), but only AFTER they are in contact with humans. These latest two abominations have great visuals and a gret soundtrack, but not only are they plot hole ridden and with less than impressive characters (I liked Liz Shaw, to Julia Ormond's credit), the stories themselves simply aren't very good. Whether the AvP films should be considered "canon" is a question for nerds. But, as bad as they were (compared to what they could have been), at least they didn't question the very foundation of the established Alien backstory.
The "Alien vs Predator" and "Alien Isolation" computer games were both leaps and bounds better in their storytelling, and they respected the original material. Ridley Scott seems to follow the terrible example of George Lucas, except that so far he refrained from tinkering with the old films. Hopefully he's not reading this. I don't want to give him ideas how much more destructive he could become.
Last edited by Ssnake; 05/29/17 02:12 PM.
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#4360050 - 05/29/17 02:37 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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DM
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I thought the idea of the xenomorph is that it takes new features from its hosts and adapts, hence the alien in Alien (1979) has the basic shape of a human, possibly for the first time. So as long as there is some insectoid creature in the alien's future then it will take that on and adapt yes? Or at least, that one branch of it.
Last edited by DM; 05/29/17 02:38 PM.
"They might look the same, but they don't taste the same."
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#4360099 - 05/29/17 06:45 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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Bib4Tuna
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#4360884 - 06/01/17 12:13 AM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ssnake]
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Vertigo1
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Well, even then you still need someone...something to actually produce the eggs. The Alien Queen is a very concise idea to answer the obvious question where these eggs are coming from. Now he destroyed the queen concept, but put nothing in place to fill the plothole.
Didn't David basically dissect Shaw and use her ovum and reproductive system to produce these new Alien eggs? Wouldn't that make her, in essence, the first "queen" for his variant of the xenomorph?
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#4361372 - 06/01/17 03:41 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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Jayhawk
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There needs to be an Amendment to the Constitution that makes it illegal for creators of iconic franchises to mess with their creation at some point, determined by a board of experts. For George Lucas, the specific point in time would have been 1981. BTW, fun fact, according to this guy here, Star Wars was meant to be a single, stand-alone movie. Only after the overwhelming success (which caught everyone, especially Lucas, by total surprise) were the sequels even considered. So the whole Anakin= Vader arc was an afterthought. I've read somewhere else that the "Episode IV" thing on top of the crawl was merely a nod towards the Flash Gordon serials, not a hint for an actualy, pre-planned, larger story arc. Ridley Scott strikes me to have the same frame of mind as Lucas before him: nipping and tucking at the franchise (which also started out as a stand-alone film) until it looks like a freak. So Scott remembered the deleted scene (must have been deleted for a reason, I assume) and "retcons" the whole franchise based (in part) on that? It would have probably been best to let the story rest after part 2. At some point, especially when doing prequels, you always run the risk to ruin the previous films by introducing plot holes, or make it all unnecessarily complicated by over-exposition. The origin of the Xenomorph is actually quite irrelevant to the plot of the original Alien, as well as to the sequel.
Why men throw their lives away attacking an armed Witcher... I'll never know. Something wrong with my face?
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#4361377 - 06/01/17 03:55 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Jayhawk]
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PanzerMeyer
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The origin of the Xenomorph is actually quite irrelevant to the plot of the original Alien, as well as to the sequel. Completely agree and the enigmatic derelict ship on LV426 just added that much more to the mystery and allure of the franchise. Some things are better left unexplained.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
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#4362403 - 06/06/17 05:08 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Deacon211]
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DM
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I tend to agree that a little mystery goes a long way to making a movie a classic.
I, like many I think, always want answers to those enigmatic questions from my favorite movie worlds. But, if you are going to reveal the answers, you really need it to be a wow moment and not a meh one. Trying to explain everything seems to lose the magic somehow and make the extraordinary, ordinary.
BTW, the original Star Wars didn't have Episode IV in the crawl. It was added in later. The first re-edition I think? Maybe later. I still own a Laserdisc version of Star Wars in it's original release state.
"They might look the same, but they don't taste the same."
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#4362417 - 06/06/17 06:26 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: DM]
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Jayhawk
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I tend to agree that a little mystery goes a long way to making a movie a classic.
I, like many I think, always want answers to those enigmatic questions from my favorite movie worlds. But, if you are going to reveal the answers, you really need it to be a wow moment and not a meh one. Trying to explain everything seems to lose the magic somehow and make the extraordinary, ordinary.
BTW, the original Star Wars didn't have Episode IV in the crawl. It was added in later. The first re-edition I think? Maybe later. I still own a Laserdisc version of Star Wars in it's original release state. I would put that in a vault if I were you....at least as long a George is still alive.
Why men throw their lives away attacking an armed Witcher... I'll never know. Something wrong with my face?
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#4362425 - 06/06/17 06:41 PM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Jayhawk]
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PanzerMeyer
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I tend to agree that a little mystery goes a long way to making a movie a classic.
I, like many I think, always want answers to those enigmatic questions from my favorite movie worlds. But, if you are going to reveal the answers, you really need it to be a wow moment and not a meh one. Trying to explain everything seems to lose the magic somehow and make the extraordinary, ordinary.
BTW, the original Star Wars didn't have Episode IV in the crawl. It was added in later. The first re-edition I think? Maybe later. I still own a Laserdisc version of Star Wars in it's original release state. I would put that in a vault if I were you....at least as long a George is still alive. Along with any copies of the original theatrical release of "E.T."
Last edited by PanzerMeyer; 06/06/17 06:41 PM.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
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#4367195 - 07/03/17 12:43 AM
Re: The worst plot hole in Alien Covenant
[Re: Ajay]
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Mr_Blastman
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Saw the movie today, and it became a farce when...
a. Neutrino burst fried the ship.
b. Solar sails used in interstellar space to power the ship.
OKAY
Neutrino burst fries the ship? For real? I don't think so! Neutrinos are essentially non-interacting particles! Billions travel through the Earth daily! This is the biggest #%&*$# excuse I've seen a film use in a long time. For #%&*$#'s sake, if you're going to physics something, damn well know what the #%&*$# you are doing before you do it! Script writers failed hard here.
Solar sails... that was a huge WTF moment. There's not enough insolation in interstellar space to provide significant power through a solar sail. You know, the whole inverse square law thing. The ship would have used reactors, especially a craft of that size.
So barely into the film, it is full of pseudoscientific BS and that torpedoed any authenticity it had from there on out.
Did I hate the film? No. Did I get any enjoyment out of it? Yes. But it was far from perfect. I loved seeing the evil guy win. I thought it was fantastic the android wanted to be a god of his own. I did not care for the politically correct android kissing(totally not needed in the film and did not belong), nor did I care for how idiotic some of the characters were. But I enjoyed seeing an evil mastermind android carry out his sinister plan.
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