{"id":18953,"date":"2017-05-19T22:09:31","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T14:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/geekwire-at-the-movies-alien-covenant-delivers-the-gory-goods-and-some-answers\/"},"modified":"2017-05-19T22:09:31","modified_gmt":"2017-05-19T14:09:31","slug":"geekwire-at-the-movies-alien-covenant-delivers-the-gory-goods-and-some-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/geekwire-at-the-movies-alien-covenant-delivers-the-gory-goods-and-some-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"GeekWire at the Movies: \u2018Alien: Covenant\u2019 delivers the gory goods, and some answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_333714\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-333714\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-333714\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/170519-alien-3-630x354.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Alien: Covenant&quot; monster\" width=\"630\" height=\"354\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/170519-alien-3-630x354.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/170519-alien-3-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/170519-alien-3-1260x708.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/170519-alien-3.jpg 1777w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-333714\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cAlien: Covenant\u201d expands the film franchise\u2019s monster menagerie. (Twentieth Century Fox)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em><strong>Spoiler Alert:<\/strong> This item avoids discussing major plot twists in \u201cAlien: Covenant,\u201d but wait until after you see the movie to read it if you want to stay totally in the dark.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve seen enough \u201cAlien\u201d movies by now that we pretty much know what should be coming, and \u201cAlien: Covenant,\u201d the latest installment in the space-horror franchise, turns the dial up to 11.<\/p>\n<p>There are new ways to pick up alien infections, new ways for incubating monsters to pop&nbsp;out of their hosts, and new ways for the crew members of the colony spaceship Covenant to fall for alien set-ups they totally should have seen coming.<\/p>\n<p>If only they had watched the first \u201cAlien\u201d movie from the year 1979, they could have saved themselves a lot of grief in the year 2104.<\/p>\n<p>But if you look beyond the gore and the surprise twists (which we promise to avoid like the alien plague), the biggest revelation is an explanation for how the movie saga bridges the gap between the seemingly baffling \u201cPrometheus\u201d prequel and the original \u201cAlien\u201d movie.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the most sense \u2018Prometheus\u2019 has made since I saw it,\u201d my colleague at GeekWire, Kurt Schlosser, observed&nbsp;after&nbsp;last week\u2019s advance screening.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Alien: Covenant | Teaser Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H0VW6sg50Pk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Erudite film buffs&nbsp;may want to bone up on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d Richard Wagner\u2019s \u201cRheingold\u201d and John Milton\u2019s \u201cParadise Lost\u201d&nbsp;to catch the literary references that director Ridley Scott and the writers worked into the script. That\u2019ll give you a head start when you and your moviegoing friends discuss whether 22nd-century androids will be serving in heaven or reigning in hell.<\/p>\n<p>In&nbsp;the meantime, here are a few observations that \u201cpopped out\u201d when Schlosser, GeekWire chief business officer Daniel Rossi and I sat down for a post-movie chat:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kurt Schlosser:<\/strong> It\u2019s interesting that in a movie that\u2019s basically trying to create the perfect species, they still can find a way to demonstrate how humans are far from that&nbsp;\u2013 the idiocy of all the people who got killed, essentially.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alan Boyle:<\/strong> Right, as I was watching it, there were a lot of questions that came to mind. For example, why don\u2019t those spacewalkers tether up? And the planetary protection measures were just terrible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Daniel Rossi:<\/strong>&nbsp;They stick their faces over plants they know nothing about.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AB:<\/strong> They deserve what they got, almost.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR:<\/strong> Well, it was entertaining. Those aliens are amazing killers. Even little baby ones. The blood in this movie, the explosions of blood, were pretty impressive. The gross factor was excellent.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KS:<\/strong> They came out every which way but loose. \u2026 For something that makes such short work of its victims once it\u2019s out, it sure does make a dramatic entry.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AB:<\/strong> Any thoughts on the technology? I was thinking that surely by 2104, the crew should have better guns.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR:<\/strong> Something that shoots a flash of energy?<\/p>\n<p><strong>KS:<\/strong> Or a force that just turns something to particles. Instead, they\u2019re still just essentially firing bullets. They should have a complete exoskeleton or something, so they can curl up into a ball and that thing would just bounce around. \u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR:<\/strong> You know what I was impressed with? The amount of booze and tobacco they had up there.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"icon-quotes-left\"><\/span>&nbsp;It\u2019s like the tech community here. Yeah, they\u2019re the smartest people, but they\u2019re wearing hoodies all the time.<span class=\"icon-quotes-right\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>KS:<\/strong> They\u2019re always such a motley crew. They\u2019re like a version of washed-up soldiers, slash, the smartest people you\u2019ve ever met.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DS:<\/strong> It\u2019s like the tech community here. Yeah, they\u2019re the smartest people, but they\u2019re wearing hoodies all the time. They had Jack Daniels, they had drinks. Tennessee&nbsp;[played by Danny McBride] had a chew in every once in a while, plus one of the guys had a cigar.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KS:<\/strong> But they\u2019re always repeatedly, and thankfully, rescued by a strong female character. \u2026 I do think that after all these years of watching these movies, there\u2019s really no way for these people to die at the hands of those aliens that will surprise me or scare me anymore. It\u2019s part of the storyline, and they have to die, but it doesn\u2019t scare me anymore. You know it\u2019s coming. And you know who it\u2019s going to be.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR:<\/strong> That\u2019s why I was focused on the gore. OK, you know it\u2019s coming, but how well do they pull it off?<\/p>\n<p><strong>KS:<\/strong> It doesn\u2019t lessen the entertainment for me, because I think Ridley Scott is doing a good job of weaving in this fantastical notion of who gets to live, and who gets to die.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AB:<\/strong> So we have to come up with a grade for this movie. \u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>DR:<\/strong> I\u2019m going to go with a B to a B-minus. I was entertained. I wasn\u2019t surprised. There were some delightful parts, there were some parts that dragged on. I won\u2019t see it again. I don\u2019t think it was as good as \u201cRogue One.\u201d&nbsp;I\u2019d say it was better than \u201cPrometheus,\u201d or on par with it at least.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KS:<\/strong> I\u2019m going to give it a B also. We\u2019ve gotten to this point where there are boxes to check on these big sequels to keep the audience happy and keep them coming back. Ridley Scott checked a few that surprised me with a couple of characters. I thought Tennessee was kinda fun. I liked Daniels [played by Katherine Waterston]. And Michael Fassbender was more human than human. He was a great AI.<\/p>\n<p>For me, a lot of these movies are about the believability of that point in time: Is this what 2104 is going to look like? Ridley Scott is the king. He did it with \u201cBlade Runner\u201d 30 years ago, with what was supposed to be 2019, and now he\u2019s going to do it again with \u201cBlade Runner 2049.\u201d I like to get a really crazy idea of what space exploration should look like, and his movies do it.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"BLADE RUNNER 2049 - Official Trailer\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gCcx85zbxz4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>AB:<\/strong> I\u2019m going to go with B. I like the idea of trying to put it on the scale with other movies. Definitely not as good as \u201cRogue One,\u201d maybe a little bit better than \u201cPrometheus.\u201d Better than \u201cPassengers,\u201d better than \u201cLife.\u201d You know what you\u2019re going to get, though. I\u2019m not sure how memorable it\u2019s going to be compared with the first two \u201cAlien\u201d movies. To me, that says it\u2019s not an A, and it\u2019s not a C.<\/p>\n<p><strong>KS:<\/strong> Maybe the distance between movies makes us complacent. I think Ridley Scott needs to go somewhere else other than having the thing springing out of the pod and landing on your face.&nbsp;\u2026 But at least there\u2019s no Jar Jar Binks in a Ridley Scott movie. Not yet.<\/p>\n<p><em>Want more \u201cAlien\u201d? Besides the latest movie,&nbsp;you can watch a video clip&nbsp;that helps bridge the gap between \u201cPrometheus\u201d and \u201cAlien: Covenant,\u201d from the android David\u2019s point of view; another clip that sets the stage for the action in \u201cAlien: Covenant\u201d; and a 360-degree virtual-reality video chronicling an alien\u2019s gory birth \u2026 from the alien\u2019s point of view.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAlien: Covenant\u201d expands the film franchise\u2019s monster menagerie. (Twentieth Century Fox) Spoiler Alert: This item avoids discussing major plot twists in \u201cAlien: Covenant,\u201d but wait until after you see the movie to read it if you want to stay totally in the dark. We\u2019ve seen enough \u201cAlien\u201d movies by now that we pretty much know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5347,4903,5406,4550,5407,4482,21],"class_list":["post-18953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alien-covenant","tag-geekwire-at-the-movies","tag-movie-review","tag-movies","tag-ridley-scott","tag-science-fiction","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}