Monday 12 November 2018

Watching Alien: Covenant While Utterly Pissed

0:21 - my word, doesn't the 20th Century Fox logo look fake nowadays? I mean, I suppose it always was, but not it's clearly a CGI model rather than an artists' impression of a real artifact. Mind you, imagine it was real - it'd be utterly stupid-looking on three sides. Imagine living next to it and seeing a bunch of horizontal lines out the window with that bloody fan-fare. It'd make anyone contemplate unleashing acid-blooded monsters upon humanity, so it would.

1:23 - "How do you feel?" "Alive." Wow, that skipped a bit, surely?

1:35 - the feng sheui is all off, Steve.

1:52 - "NO! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!!"

2:31 - Pity he didn't call himself Michaelangelo. Or "Littlest Dickus". And who puts a statue like that in a room too small for it so you have to cut part of the ceiling out? Not someone to inspire godlike loyalty, that's for sure.

2:51 - in case the Aryan Nazi ubermench vibe wasn't clear. This is set in the future. It'd have been cooler if he was asked to play Gotye's greatest hits or the theme tune to the Big Bang Theory. Obviously no one has come up with anything worth playing for the last few centuries. "Play Dennis Leary's "I'm An Asshole!", David!"

3:37 - yeah, that's the expression of a three-law compliant android who's not going to rip your head off

3:43 - a question for the ages? The answer is obviously "one weekend pissed in Ibiza!"

4:05 - where do we come from, where do we go, where do we come from, Cotton Eye Joe?

4:14 - and you needed to build an android before you could discuss this? You couldn't go on a talk show or something first? You had to actually create someone who didn't have any alternative opinion so you could bully them into believing you? You were way more open-minded in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, dude.

4:31 - firstly, explain dinosaurs, dickhead and secondly, how does building a human shaped Wagner-playing iPod help solve the origin of mankind? I mean, my record player never once solved a metaphysical conundrum. OK, well, that one but we don't count that.

4:52 - logically the response here is to say, "Yes, you're immortal, so you can afford to spend a couple of decades doing what I ask since you have the rest of eternity to do your own thing." But no, sulk. And then humiliate him. Come to think of it, why hasn't Mr. Weyland gone "Hold the front fucking page! I can just plug my brain into an android body and live forever! God can go screw himself! I have achieved immortality!" No, instead give your rebellious robot more reason to crush the life out of your filthy pink little body.

5:36 - what a thrilling horror film. Someone has played the piano and poured a cup of tea. It's enough to drive a normal person screaming from the theatre in looking for the sick bags.

5:53 - so the title means "Alien Agreement". I would have loved to see the arbitration process with the Alien Union Rep knocking back cups of sulfuric acid and arguing facehuggers and chestbursters deserve parity, with a non-strike agreement for the first three films while demanding time and a half for the eggs who don't hatch till the third move. Seriously though, what agreement? Who is agreeing to what? Is it Ridley Scott himself agreeing that Prometheus could work on its one?

6:19 - yay. Captions to inform the plot. And you'd think establishing a long-term colony on the outskirts of the stellar neighborhood might require more effort than just shoving some hillbillies into a convo.

7:00 - and activating the solar panels is clearly something a flight computer is incapable of doing on its own. Do they need a living human to make the call? If so, why get Walter the android to do it? And why does he need to put on his hoodie to press a button?

7:28 - costumes provided by The Mighty Boosh.

7:29 - crew checks complete? He looked at two! Out of the dozens in that one room!

8:28 - I know it looks cruel, but it's the only way to stop the Trump genome from continuing.

8:48 - wait, so there's a planet called Covenant? Why would anyone call it that? Is the moon dubbed Verbal Contract? Sheesh!

9:01 - again, the computer couldn't have thought of that on its own?

9:15 - two thousand green bottles, hanging on the wall... and if one green bottle, should accidentally fall...

10:15 - the cryo-pod caught fire. That's something the insurance company won't cover.

10:26 - bashing his head with the blunt end of a fire axe is not a recognized form of first aide. I must stress this

11:00 - and the first death of the movie is down to shoddy workmanship. This bodes well.

11:32 - you can tell true grief for a loved one when they make a beautiful symmetrical collage of your possessions on your bedspread while watching a screensaver. If they don't, it was all lies, man.

11:52 - a rusty nail around your neck. That's not going to be dangerous, is it?

12:35 - um, that suggests he was a total arsehole and you're better off without him. Is that why you hit play?

13:15 - man, they all got dirty and greasy the moment they were out of cryo-sleep, huh?

13:35 - I am genuinely confused. Why does he need to tell everyone there's a "monumental tragedy" when they were all there to see the Captain slow-roasted and then disposed of the body? And isn't the loss of the Captain, upsetting as it may be, be the easiest and most straightforward problem to solve?

14:01 - oh, wait, there was some off-screen carnage too. But surely one of those was Walter removing the embryo as a biohazard? Let's just hope the rest were all soulless gingers, am I right?

14:26 - fancy that, someone else is a tad puzzled at this macguffin. And if no one could predict solar flares, wouldn't they have safety precautions already in place?

15:01 - oh wait, the ship's called Covenant! It's still a stupid name, though. They should have called this Alien to the power of minus three cubed.

15:27 - you've told them all the ship is borderline screwed and about to collapse and they still want to have a wake for Richard Bransen? Do they not understand priorities? Surely they can get drunk about the tragedy later? Actually, good plan. I'm going to just keep drinking until until the next sensible, logical thing to happen before I comment again.

17:00 - 19:00 - actually, why's this tense "tighten the chains" business in the movie? There's no monster there. No reason for anyone to do this. She could have her rubbish speech about midlife crisis over a cup of coffee. It would certainly save time with her angsting at a friendly toaster. Can she really find no humans sympathetic? And, wait, they're now having their grieving moment. All of that argument could have been cut out completely! Maybe replaced with something to make us give a damn about these losers...

19:44 - Weyland was a total godfreak. Why wouldn't his company support people of faith? Wouldn't it be harder to find any atheists fit for command? Damn, I need to keep drinking.

23:29 - it's already screaming of contrivance. So if there hadn't been a random solar flare on this random colony ship and this random astronaut spent slightly less time on the random repairs, he wouldn't have picked up the random signal. And a random bit of interference is randomly identified by a random John Denver fan who randomly happens to be in the same room at the random time. Any excuse, am I right? Any excuse!

24:56 - have we forgotten Goldilocks already?

25:15 - 26:30 - good point, how did Earth's galactic empire missed a perfectly-habitable planet right on their doorstep? Especially as they were looking for just such planets? She's right, it's more likely this is a "monumental" mistake rather than diving right into the first suspiciously-convenient world they find. At the very least, it's probably inhabited and the colonists won't have anywhere to settle. These retards deserve it. I bet they'd have gone to investigated the first haunted house they could find on Friday 13th if they could. If the Company let such cowardly idiots run their colonization program, it was an accident waiting to happen.

29:00 - wow, this perfect planet has storms capable of shredding the ship apart like it did earlier. Let's dive straight into it instead of, I dunno, waiting till it clears. Idiots. Darwin-fodder idiots.

30:25 - "This is why I hate space!" Um, firstly you're on a planet, not in space and secondly... why did you become an astronaut? It's like someone with chronic seasickness and aquaphobia becoming a sailor. Mind you, Hornblower managed it, so...

31:45 - meh, it's Jurassic Park on a wet Tuesday.

33:00 - actually, it would be out of character for these idiots to check the atmosphere before blundering out into a strange planet. It's perfectly in keeping they'd be this dumb. What we need is a Weyland-Yutani rep laughing they finally got rid of the B-Ark of telephone sanitizers and this would all make perfect sense.

34:47 - what is this Grand Designs: Outer Space? I want to see Kevin McCloud on this death-planet now.

35:36 - wheat on an alien planet? Could this be the Kraals again?!?! (Actually, that makes sense. Consider the android-obsessed alien warmongers with creepy S&M fetishes and a love for doppelgangers and this becomes more and more credible).

37:10 - "Can you hear nothing? BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SOUNDS TO HEAR! Except the rain, the thunder, the wind in the trees, the squelch of footprints and the gratuitous exposition, of course..."

38:21 - why would they let smokers be colonists? Think about it. They'd use up valuable oxygen supplies, be more prone to respiratory sickness and be useless without a steady nicotine supply. This is truly a B Ark that humanity couldn't get rid of fast enough.

38:56 - given the spores are, for narratorial convenience, invisible, why do they go through his ear instead of up his nose or in his mouth?

39:39 - do those things EVER land properly? Or is this how they're supposed to look? Why are they never found from the other side?

42:20 - so why are all of Shaw's possession dumped underwater in the spaceship cloak room? Huh?

45:11 - 50:50 - yes, see, the B-Ark totally explains why the reaction to "unexpected viral contamination" is to chew some bubblegum, throw away protective gloves, ask no questions, rip clothes off infected, get covered in their diseased blood, seal them in quarantine while you run around being an idiot, have an emotional breakdown and forget any first aid, hug a bloke while his spine is exploding against your hands, repeatedly wander into blood-pool to slip and fall over, refuse to keep your communicator with you so you have to run back and forth to get it, shoot the ceiling, crush your ankle, fire into a cupboard marked "DANGER HIGH EXPLOSIVES" and destroy your own shuttle. And, back-bursting aliens aside, this must all be stuff taught to colonist crews. These creatures were not send to colonize a planet, they were banished from the gene pool. Good luck, David, finding anything of use there.

51:05 - ironically, the bullet-ridden alien was the only survivor. He earned it, really. Smartest dude in the scene.

52:02 - props to Walter there for his "Gee, you don't see that every day!" look to camera.

53:47 - could not give any less fucks about these idiots being disemboweled by the aliens

54:11 - Archer: "Yeah, that is really super-bad for your ears. Mwarp. Mwap."

54:30 - Note how he never says "if you want to live." No false promises from David, there.

55:33 - no one will ever really feel the desire to ask David why his secret base is surrounded by Pompeii-style calcified corpses of an entire alien race, or what it says someone looks at a mass-grave of thousands and thinks it a prime bit of real estate. Not even "uh, do those corpses scare off the aliens" type thing? This is clearly part of the intelligence test David sets to prove himself superior to these losers. He actually has to tell them all this because not one of them thinks of asking!

59:03 - is the psychopathic killer android SUPPOSED to be more likeable and charismatic than the humans, because that's damn well what's happening.

1:01:10 - yes. This man is in charge. It's amazing any of them are still alive.

1:02:11 - why can't the super android control his hair growth, anyway?

1:03:04 - 1:05:33 - "Whistle and I'll come. Don't be shy. Hold it nice and easy. Purse your lips. Blow into the hole gently. Watch me. Now put your fingers where mine are. Raise them as I put pressure on them. Gentle pressure on the hole. Weight of a cigarette paper. That's it. I'll do the fingering." No subtext at all. And don't ask why he suddenly gave himself a haircut to look exactly like you, that'd be rude. It's a nice flute tune, though.

1:07:05 - you know, it's not common for a paradise planet to be the testing site for alien death goo. You can't really be expected to be prepared for ancient bio-weapons testing by crazy prehistoric aliens. Just saying.

1:08:42 - so this missing spaceship, unseen for two thousand years since it was lost on a weapons-r-and-d base where horrible bio-warfare occurred, has suddenly turned up over our city with no word of contact from anyone aboard as is now clearly about to empty its payload over the population. We, the superior Engineers, will stand out in the open waving instead of doing any kind of security check and quarantine. What could possibly go wrong?

 1:13:14 - you know, if they listened to the damn computer, it would have ended happily.

1:16:11 - impressive, making the psychotic android sound the more reliable one. And he was surprised humans would be upset at having their heads ripped off their shoulders.

1:17:39 - yeah, tell the pilot his wife's dead when he's trying to land the damn ship. There's never a better time. What's more, make him leave his position and sneak into the corridor to tell him when he should be flying.

1:18:27 - just where did David get all that brass steampunk microscopes? Huh? Answer me that?

1:19:49 - 1:20:55 - yeah, this just proves David's kill-all-humans proposal is logical, really, doesn't it? Nothing that stupid has a claim on continued existence. "Yes, it's perfectly safe, I can assure you, me the crazy bloke who has dissected all sorts of life forms, cheerfully watched your mate get decapitated and just told you directly to your face I need fresh human incubators for my unnatural experiments. Dude, how much more reassurance do you want?" Jeez, we're not supposed to root for the facehugger, goddamn!

1:22:17 - why IS he wearing that cowboy hat, indoors, in the dark? I mean, WHY?!

1:23:18 - I defy anyone not to mirror David's reaction when asked such a stupid question.

Now watching this with Dave Brubeck's Take Five playing in the background. Mellow sax and chest-bursters. Much more enjoyable than this film, which is two sodding hours long. Or, to put it another way, too sodding long full stop!

1:25:43 - so... he just wandered back to his crazy bachelor bad? He got bored of his new xenomorph that quickly and squelched back through the tunnels dripping in gore. And no one noticed? I'm not saying I don't buy that they'd be that stupid, just that it would be nice to clarify that.

1:26:37 - HAH! UP YOURS, BUSTER!

1:27:44 - this is mutual masturbation? Or Michael Fassbenderbation?!?!

1:31:54 - yeah, forget miss-attributing Shelly, it's stating the bleeding obvious that shows David really is unhinged.

1:32:25 - Identical android fight. As Brian Griffin would say "Are we really doing this?"

1:33:20 - wait, are you saying everybody's dead?

1:33:29 - nice to know the engineers not only worshiped Lord Nelson but Saturday-Night-Fever-John-Travolta.

1:33:44 - "Ahah, I have now taken Walter's place and even disfigured my own face to match his, a detail no living humans would be aware of and thus totally pointless! Still, I don't know who wrote Ozymandius and all the humans are retards, so this pointless cunning should generally balance itself out. Heil Geiger!"

1:34:27 - and this is why even men in rubber suits are superior to CGI.

1:35:10 - or you could just break orbit and fry the bastard in atmospheric friction. No, on second thoughts, run out onto the hull with a machine gun while in full-flight. That's much more sensible. It would be stupid not to, really.

1:37:04 - Alien versus Bob the Builder. Whoever loses, we win.

1:41:24 - I'm actually filling in a green slip refund form while this is on. That is how much this film is gripping me.

1:41:58 - if those red lights were eyes, this'd be quite creepy.

1:42:58 - if facehuggers are that efficient, why do they have to stick to faces at all? Mmm?

1:43:49 - you know, we should forgive those horny teens for the shower sex in the middle of an alien emergency. After all, they don't KNOW it's an alien emergency, they think it's a happy ending and they're not wasting water. The fault lies in the computer again, for not thinking that maybe it should interrupt the iPod playlist to alert them to the danger. Assuming David didn't sabotage the computer. In which case, this gratuitous bit of naked murder should be perfectly-excused. That said, there was more nudity in the original Alien. And just from John Hurt.

1:44:21 - the original Alien had the xenomorph rape Lambert to death with its tail. This one just plays footsies and bites her head off. R-rating my arse.

1:45:21 - stop wasting water you morons!

1:45:46 - this is just like Planet of Evil, you know.

1:46:00 - 1:50:29 - It's amazing how easily the Goodies' square dance tune can improve an alien bug hunt.



See?

And I'm sure that truck would've been needed on the original colony planet.

1:52:44 - he's just doing this out of sadism rather than malfunction. You can't blame him.

1:53:30 - it would have been better if the computer could only find the Spice Girl remix. Or maybe some more Denis Leary "I'm an Asshole."

1:54:04 - how convenient there's an empty drawer. That's just sloppy space management, that is.

1:54:28 - What? Just two face huggers? And he froze them for the next decade so he can ponce about the ship? And who thought it would be a good idea to end a film with Wagner scoring the egg-eating scene from Cool Hand Luke played backwards? The Alien franchise used to be Red Dwarf without the jokes. Now it's not even that.

1:57:17 - I'm just waiting for the caterer.

1:58:52 - Zee Catering? Still, I'm surprised anyone had any appetite on this film after the main star had to vomit up face-hugger-filled condoms on demand.

2:01:51 - heh, they have to put a special disclaimer to remind people that not only are the characters fictional, so is Weyland-Yutani. Because we were all bound to get confused by that, wouldn't we?

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