Hacker Cinema
Alien: Covenant
2017 · Film · 122 min
Part of Prometheus Collection
Directed by Ridley Scott
The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise but is actually a dark, dangerous world.
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18 comments on Hacker News
The order of the movies as I understand is: Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, Alien, Alien Romulus.
The technology of the ship user interfaces in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant seems much higher tech than what is presented in Alien Romulus. Alien gets a pass because it was made in 1979.
So David makes the Xenomorphs and then David uses the colonist and human embryos for further experimentation? So are the events of Alien a trap by David?
Many comments are missing the point here (although the article doesn't properly explain neither); it's not about resolution, but about fixing imperfections in filming:
> The recent Cameron restorations were based on new 4K scans of the original negative, none of which needed extensive repair of that kind. [...] The A.I. can artificially refocus an out-of-focus image, as well as make other creative tweaks. “You don’t want to crank the knob all the way because then it’ll look like garbage,” Burdick said. “But if we can make it look a little better, we might as well.”
The only movies which would require upscaling to 4K are those released between about mid-2000s to mid-2010s, the advent of native digital cinema, but filmed in 2K. Everything before was filmed in 35mm film, which can be scanned to 4K with information to spare; everything after is filmed in native digital 4K or more.
Moreover, upscaling which deal only with resolution has absolutely no need of AI. Any TV will decently upscale in _real-time_ a non-4K movie, and more sophisticated techniques can give basically indistinguishable results. 2017's _Alien: Covenant_ was voluntarily produced in 2K but released in 4K through upscaling and the image look just great.
> We might say there are two Ridley Scotts, expressed in the colour palettes that have come to dominate his later films: a Ridley Scott of greys and blues, of toil and depression and the cold and hostile northern landscapes of Prometheus and Alien Covenant, (..)
Great article, but IMO it's missing the aspect of Ridley Scott apparently being increasingly less interested in story than in visual presentation, which I believe explains especially the varying quality of his more-recent movies.
As someone who was really looking forward to Prometheus and the continuation of the Alien franchise, the final product was quite a disappointment. Not visually but in terms of the overall storyline. Later seeing the making-of [1] of Prometheus clearly illustrates the problem: Ridley Scott, certainly a master of visual storytelling, shaped the story based on the images he wanted to see. Scriptwriters then ghastly had to make these images happen in the story.
The same can also be said to some extend about his later views on Blade Runner, where he destroyed the storyelement of ambiguity whether Deckard is himself a Replicant by blatantly answering it.
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However, it might as well be that some stories actually don't captivate him as much, so he ends up "making the spectacle happen" instead of crafting story and presentation into one coherent piece of film.
[1] https://youtu.be/Emj_-Bx6Qdw
Well you don't need to look far, that's one of the problems with films from the exact same director such as Alien: Covenant.
A few weeks ago I rented the Alien: Covenant movie on youtube because I didn't even know it existed. About 2 minutes in I noticed it was playing at 480p. I paid the extra dollar for HD rental. Lo and behold, if you want to watch rented youtube movies in HD (which you paid for) you can't do it in chrome browser on mac but hilariously safari did let me watch it in HD on the same computer... Those 15 minutes of debugging added about 3 cuts to the 10000 caused by silly restrictions that exist.
I'll try and write some thoughts on this so maybe you can understand where I'm coming from.
I feel that a lot that makes Prometheus a good movie in itself is how it's paced and the graphical effects, albeit it still suffers from bad writing in a lot of places. The story per-se however is a complete dumpster fire because it changes and retcons the Alien universe lore to fit a story that perhaps didn't need to be told. At the same time there were deleted scenes that literally would have added 10-15 minutes to the run time and would have made it at least a 20% better Alien movie.
What makes a good movie and what makes a great sequel/prequel/movie in an established universe are two different sets of things. A good movie can be a good moviein itself but at the same time an absolutely terrible sequel/prequel/movie in an established universe. If you're working on an original idea then all bets are off, but if the work you're doing is in the exact same universe as preceding works then it needs to follow the lore of that universe - or at least NOT contradict previously established things. And you have to ask yourself - is the story that you're telling belonging in this universe? Does it enrich it? Does it bring something new? And by this you answer if the movie is worth actually making from an art point of view.
Would you like to see a modern version of the Mona Lisa painted in 3D on a computer? What if this art would have a blonde woman in it? With curly hair? And skimpy clothing? It can be a great work of art in itself, but has no business piggy backing on the Mona Lisa original.
As another example, there is a school of thought to subvert expectations by writing really dumb stuff, whereas you could subvert expectations in a manner that fits the universe. Star Wars VII, VIII, IX, Prometheus, Alien: Covenant and a lot of other works basically step all over established lore to tell submediocre stories, thus harming the universe in the process. I mean with Star Wars there's a whole 'nother can of worms - they literally made a huge part of the universe that exists non-canon. Why would you discard a lot of good stuff just so you can push your sub-mediocre stuff is beyond me, but hey, it's their IP, they do with it what they wish. I just can't be over the moon about it.
> * it passed the Matrix test. (1. I want to watch the original Matrix. 2. I searched for the Matrix and clicked the result. 3. It streamed the Matrix to me.)
This Matrix test is a great one, I'm going to apply it to a bunch of services and see what I get.
I think I might just have a bit of a hangover from how many times HBO Max logged me out and made me log back in via some contorted system with my cable provider that has caused me inertia with renewing it. Also, now that I think back, another problem that caused me to avoid it a bit was that the HBO Max app sometimes just seemed to freeze up on my Roku in the middle of navigating through shows. Certainly possible they have improved the app over the last year, and will respect my time more if I pay them $15 + taxes per month directly instead of through a shitty cable subscription.
In any case, I freely concede that HBO Max probably does have a higher-quality backlog of content overall – my main point is that a simpler interface can actually make up for lack of content in some cases.
> * that crazy Ridley Scott series with those shrieking harpies that fly around asploding the hell out of atheists
Raised by Wolves? I think the creepy sci-fi vibe of Scott's stuff is just not my thing – everything in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant both just made me uncomfortable instead of interested, even though they had visuals that were technically impressive. The trailer for that series seemed similar when I watched it.
> Edit: reworded so I only use the adjective "fucking" once when referring to ad-based streaming services
I think you were right the first time. Ad-based services these days always remind me of the 15 Million Merits Black Mirror episode.
Yes and no :)
Yeah, they got vented into space et cetera, but I'd say in the first 2 movies humans actually failed to kill the xenomorphs (eggs on LV-426 and aboard Sulaco). At the end of the third movie the newly born xenomorph queen clearly dies. However, in the fourth movie the xenomorphs are again brought back through cloning.
Also, in "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" it becomes apparent that the original crashed ship on LV-426 in "Alien" was not one of a kind, there were tons of ships carrying the gooey secret sauce of xenomorphs.
Also, at the end of the second movie the queen xenomorph was simply vented into space, but whether it died or not was not very clear. I mean, the xenomorphs seemed to be quite resilient and not too picky about things like atmosphere and cold temperatures.
For a 2020 showreal, there sure were a lot of 2019 and earlier movies in there.
I'm pretty sure one of those shots was from Alien:Covenant (2017)
Thank you for this AMA, it was eye opening and made me think a lot about the organizational/tech debt barriers to creating AGI (or creating an organization that can create AGI).
I'm a ML researcher working on Deep Learning for robotics. I'm skeptical of the symbolic approach by which 1) ontologists manually enter symbolic assertions and 2) the system deduces further things from its existing ontology. My skepticism comes from a position of Slavic pessimism: we don't actually know how to formally define any object, much less ontological relationships between objects. If we let a machine use our garbage ontologies as axioms with which to prove further ontological relationships, the resulting ontology may be completely disjoint from the reality we live in. There must be a forcing function with which reality tells the system that its ontology is incorrect, and a mechanism for unwinding wrong ontologies.
I'm reminded of a quote from the Alien, Covenant movie.
Walter : When one note is off, it eventually destroys the whole symphony, David.
If Prometheus and Alien Covenant aren't horror movies, there are other movies that are indisputably horror movies that are, uh, disputable.
Same here. I occasionally rent movies from Redbox and I wasn't aware of the codes. They're typically far cheaper than renting from Amazon. Sometimes I'll find a relatively newly released movie that I want to watch, and Amazon will want $5.99 to rent it (eg Blade Runner), versus ~$2.12 for the blu ray from Redbox. Amazon's digital rental prices are semi obnoxious at times; Alien Covenant is an ok movie that has been out on disc for a while, Amazon still wants $5.99 to rent it, you can buy the used blu ray from Redbox for $4.23 or rent it for half that. I have a box not far from my house, so I'll just grab the disc while out doing something else.
If these count, I enjoyed:
- The Expanse (season 2)
- Sense8 (season 2)
- Alien Covenant
I don't think it does. For instance I notice The Handmaids Tale - what I'd regard as a science fiction - is currently number 3 in their 'Most Popular Sci-Fi' list between Alien: Covenant at 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 at 4 - both films I'd place firmly in the Sci-Fi category. [http://www.imdb.com/search/title?genres=sci_fi&explore=genres].
We're in an interesting cultural moment for narratives like this, between Her, Ex Machina, GITS, Alien: Covenant, the upcoming Blade Runner 2049, and the great TV show Westworld.
This is my favorite essay on these themes, tying together threads spanning from ancient myths to contemporary movies: "The Robots Are Winning!" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/06/04/robots-are-winning/
One interesting thing I've understood when discussing GITS the anime vs the new movie is that in the anime, Motoko embraces her cybernetic body, so the question is: What does it mean to be human? But in the new movie, Major is the first cybernetic body, so the question is more: Who am I? This an interesting essay by Hideo Kojima about the differences: http://www.glixel.com/news/hideo-kojima-on-the-philosophy-behind-ghost-in-the-shell-w475805
By the way, people into GITS might like this post we made about shots in the movie recreated from the anime: https://medium.com/@gitsost/a-love-letter-to-ghost-in-the-shell-how-shots-from-the-2017-movie-allude-to-the-anime-972a7dfb74e8
My 12 yo daughter loves sci-fi movies and we just started watching the Alien franchise in preparation for Alien: Covenant this weekend.
My plan was to show her Alien, Aliens, then Prometheus. I hadn't even planned to watch Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection (or any of the spinoffs like AVP). But after reading this, maybe we should at least watch Alien 3.
Any suggestions?
Without spoiling anything (I hope) for those that haven't yet seen Alien Covenant, there are lot of similitudes between that script and the new movies, it's almost uncanny.
I think you just need to learn to interpret the numbers. For a big Hollywood movie, anything sub-8.0 on imdb in the week after release (where the shill votes still aren't outweighed by the general population votes) is bad. Just for this week, this rule of thumb tells me for example that the "Alien: Covenant" is probably not worth watching, and "The Circle" is a disaster.