Movie Details
| Title: | Alien: Covenant | |
| Director: | Ridley Scott | |
| Year: | 2017 | |
| Genre: | Horror | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 05.26.17 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (10)
- American Gangster
- Black Hawk Down
- Blade Runner
- Body of Lies
- The Counselor
- Kingdom of Heaven
- Legend
- The Martian
- Prometheus
- Robin Hood
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 05.26.17 | Cinemark Pflugerville | Due to several factors (it being slow at work on a friday before a three day weekend, the general revelry still resonating from last night, and me hearing that this was actually good), I decided to cut out of work early today and see this at the good ol' Tinseltown Pflugerville. Not only is this the venue where I saw my first movie in Austin, it also holds a special place in my heart because it's where I used to go to see matinees when i was new in town. Since I'm kind of looking back with nostalgia at the good old days when I watched more than one movie every day, I thought it would be fitting to sit in a non-packed theater, get sick from eating too much popcorn, and enjoy this movie in a most favored movie-going way. That and Chris said he was working so I thought it'd be cool to catch up and chat with him more than I did last night. So... let me just get this out of the way. I feel like this is the third Ridley Scoot movie where i've seen pretty extensive footage in the promotional material that did not fully appear in the finished film. I would say that's cool, except more often than not I've found the promo stuff more interesting than lots of stuff in the films. -The one that stands out the most was those weird The Counselor short/ads, like where Fassbender goes lingerie shopping and Natalie Dormer's shopgirl helps him out. Natalie Dormer wasn't even in that movie! -All that Martian stuff where it's supposedly Watney vlogging the journey so far, introducing the crew, etc. I feel like none of that made it in. -The whole first trailer for this film shows the crew... I'm guessing before they enter hypersleep for the first time, which good bits of interpersonal stuff that sets up the characters and gives them all much more of a sense of actually being colonists. And the weird prologue that was put online right before the film released... it contained some pretty significant visual effects, not to mention a small cameo, that was partially cut for the film. -and this is like a half point, but the amount of deleted scenes from Prometheus that should have been in the film were impressive. I feel like I could've stood a shot at liking that movie if all those scenes had made it in. So I don't know, I just wanted to mention this trend. I don't know if it means Scott has the budget and freedom to shoot any and everything and kind of find the movie in editing or if it's some brilliant multi-platform plan that he has going into production or what... but while I find that I should be thinking it's cool that all his trailers aren't just giving away the best moments from the film, I'm almost finding it like a bait and switch (and news alert, the trailers still ALSO give up some of the film's best scenes so... great) Anyway, all that aside. I thought this was pretty good. It was definitely that missing link between Prometheus and Alien that I wanted/needed. It kind of makes me like Prometheus more in retrospect knowing that it wasn't all just a pointless exercise. There's some nice connective tissue in there that I enjoyed... to the point where I'm not sure what story there is to tell if they were going to do another movie set in between the two films. I think at this point my ideal next Aliens movie would be a sequel to everything where certain planets are just forsaken as xenomorph infestations. Or maybe finally a good aliens vs. predator with no humans and just subtitled dialogue between the predators. sigh... I liked the cast for the most part. I did feel like the story didn't develop much, but that's ok. With the amount of design on display and a handful of nice set pieces, you don't really need the plot to be that complex. Thinking back to Alien, it certainly wasn't a mind-bender. Wasn't most of the movie Ripley trying to get to one end of the ship then get back to the other end? So yeah... liked this one pretty good. Really enjoyed playing hooky and seeing it in a theater. Twas a great afternoon. |
