Think it lost me when David told Billy Crudup's character to look inside the egg - Alien: Covenant (2017) Discussion

[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

People were like "that guy trying to pet that weird fucking cobra thing, is the stupidest thing I've seen anyone do in an alien movie". Billy was like "hold my drink". 😂

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[–] thebricks (292) 8 years ago

I mean, at least the biologist didn't know weird shit that was killing people was going on. This guy goes into this weird robot's lair, full of dissections and monsters, mind you, he's survived this shit for years, and somehow thinks it's a smart idea to go into his lair and look at his experiments.

Who would NOT have noped the fuck out of there or put two in David's head to be sure?

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

The weird thing is he did the right thing only moments before. While David's have a monologue moment he straight up mercs the alien that just decapitated his crew mate. Didn't wait for the end of the monologue, didn't debate anything just fucked it up.

Then David loses his shit, takes him on magical mystery tour of creepy shit and tells him to stick his head in a weird egg thing. At this point I thought some guy was gonna pop up at the bottom of the screen and give us a stranger danger lecture it was so obvious what was going on.

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[–] Smc070913 (36) 8 years ago

I think billy was still under the impression that androids must follow protocol and not hurt humans. All he had witnessed was that David was trying to cull the neomorph. He wanted answers, and as with most humans, curiosity kills the cat.

Its not that far out there to assume its just an egg with some sort of baby xeno inside. He has no idea wtf a facehugger is.

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

No, but he did just see lots of weird things running around murdering the fuck out his crew. He may not know what a face hugger is, but alarms bells should have been going off like a mother fucker. Not least because dead crew mate with head freshly bitten off. And let's not forget the creepy tour David takes him on. I don't know how he couldn't be thinking David isn't batshit. Android or no, that was messed up stuff and should he should be having a fight or flight response. He wasn't a soldier, he should have been shaking with adrenaline and looking to get to safety. At the very least he should have been looking for back up.

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[–] thebricks (292) 8 years ago

9 out of 10 people would not have even walked into that lair of David's. 10 out of 10 would not have put their face next to that egg thing.

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[–] Smc070913 (36) 8 years ago

Dont forget that david saved them from the field attack. Billy was in a totsl wtf shock moment. Theres no way he is expecting a facehugger. Moments earlier, even david touched the pod.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Yea but he just saw the head of one of his crew with her head ripped off and shot at the neomorph that most likely killed her and witnessed david getting all emotional over it yet had no convern for the beheaded human. Most of us would have speculated David has some really bad priorities at this point. David had also told them it was perfectly safe inside and it clearly wasn't at this point.

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[–] Smc070913 (36) 8 years ago

Problem is billy assumed (rightfully) that the neomorph killed the woman crew. David posed no threat, other than being an android. Billy would assume David was a good guy like walter.
But was seriously pissed when he pulled the gun on him. He wanted answers, david had the answers and went to show him. I agree the egg was convenient, but its not far out there when you understand billys character. He was a loser leader.

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

But that's another thing, why would a guy that unsure of himself be anywhere near this mission nevermind part of its command staff, let alone second in command? There's just no way he would have been picked for that mission.

As for being curious, sorry but I can't imagine his curiosity would have over powered his fight or flight response. Regardless of being an android or not, his emotional state would have stopped him thinking straight. It happens all time. People freeze when they should run, they run when they should freeze, they do all sorts of stupid shit, but none of them just calmly take a tour of a creepy horror show nevermind stick his face in davids "project". He would have been angry, he would have been irrational at not only seeing his friend decapitated but at the fact he just killed a monster.

No matter which way you play it out, he would have lost his shit and got the others.

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[–] Smc070913 (36) 8 years ago

I agree with you that he should never have been second in command. In fact most of the crew were seriously flawed.. but remember billy was a religious guy, and they were selected to go to a proven researched planet to start a new colony. They were never supposed to go and fight xenomorphs. Not like prometheus, thete were some kick ass crew there. Knew what to expect. Had protocol. These guys simply werent trained for combat.
I still hold belief billy was more obsessed with answers which lead him right into the dragons lair.

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

Yeah but even just controlling the crew when it came to repairs he couldn't manage. He was right, but he couldn't get the crew to understand why it was nessacry to make repairs before doing something for dead crew mates. It was one of the most easy things to do, but he failed. All he had to do was reassure the people that they would do things for the people they lost, but that there was a danger still present they had to deal with. Running into aliens might not have been a foreseen issue but traversing space and setting up a colony would require someone with a lot more confidence in themselves. That should have been a group full of annoying alphas.

I know it's "just a movie" but when there's so much attention to detail everywhere else, it's really jarring when the plot and characters are cliches, ya know? I really love the look and feel Scott brings to the screen with these movies, but oh my god the dumb characters and plot holes are too much.

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[–] CraigJamesReview (1727) 8 years ago

I watched the old movies before i watched this one and I noticed monster movies in the late 70's and 80's didn't have characters who were as blatantly stupid as the ones today and if they were, they died a quick death and we got to root for people actually worth giving a damn about like Ripley. Here they're all just dummerds.

https://youtu.be/fyYgj2Fpur0

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[–] thebricks (292) 8 years ago

I think it's a reflection of people today. They really are fucking dumb and lacking in terms of common sense.

It used to be back in the old days, you wouldn't go to the hood because there are drug dealers, muggers and carjackers who would do bad things to you. Now, a lot of these dumb kids are saying you're racist if you don't go to the hood, rent an apartment and start a business. They're not smarter than you, nor do they know anything you don't, they still learn the hard way that their decision was pretty stupid.

Also, if you have any sort of view that goes against the hive mind, people get angry at you for it. They'll be like, "where's your proof?" even though it's very clear something shady or fishy is going on.

I think a lot of the self-help speakers like Jack Welch, Tony Robbins, Malcolm Gladwell and God knows who else are responsible for turning people into really gullible suckers who would do something as stupid as looking into an alien egg in spite of the fact there is something out there killing all their men.

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[–] brux (14730) 8 years ago

>> I really love the look and feel Scott brings to the screen with these movies, but oh my god the dumb characters and plot holes are too much.

Yeah, that nailed it. You cannot walk onto a new planet without a plan and most of all a spacesuit. Why did they have only one landing vehicle? Very stupid, but fun too look at. And how can the aliens develop from a spore to a full sized monster in an hour ... that's ridiculous.

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

Yup. Organisms of any kind need nutrients to grow. You could argue they get all that from the host and they carry it around until full size, but it would be a hard sell.

As for the no helmets, that was just about the dumbest thing I've ever seen until later on in the movie that is lol. Everything about this movie was dumb. Having the crew back story as a you tube video. Having David's story as a YouTube video. Having shaw killed off screen in such a way that it really pisses on the character and all she went through in the first film. Having teased us with answers to Prometheus only to then just bomb the fuck out of not only the engineers but any back story they had and any answers that might have been interesting.

But worst of all is fucking with the original movie. The time lime is fucked, unless you make a whole host of excuses. The mystery and terror of the alien is greatly diminished. Who was that space jockey? Where did the alien cone from? Where was it going with thousands of eggs? Who cares , an android did it cause he has daddy issues......😒

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[–] brux (14730) 8 years ago

>> Where did the alien cone from?

What do you mean? The cannisters?

It's just a movie, and in one sense I was kind of happy to
see the Alien movie going back to being just a movie without
the pretensions of "finding where we come from" and all that.

I really detested Prometheus, so perhaps my expectations for
Convenant were so low that this seemed acceptable, after all
it was not more incomplete than the original movie, and that
implicitly said, sometimes you don't get the answer and you
do not understand everything.

So, the question is could the fate of whole planets rest in the
foolish programming of human beings who think they can
create life, ala AI. We have enough problems with each other,
AI is a needless complication until further advancement

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

The alien didn't come from the canisters. you could say the neomorphs and the deacon did, but the alien was created by David. Which is stupid. Part the terror of the original alien was because it was so alien. The mystery of where this thing came from, what kind of place could create such a thing. It brought wonder.

Now it's just another piece of shit movie trying to relive former glory through sequels and prequels that just can't recapture the magic. It made sense to go in the direction Prometheus went, because the risk was being just another alien rip off which covenant has fallen into. Dumb characters doing dumb things for no other reason that to further the plot. Characters that weren't fleshed out at all, and really were just in the back ground waiting to be murdered in some horrific way. Just horror movie cliche after cliche. Prometheus was horribly flawed by much of the same things, but at least it didn't try to just "reimagine" alien.

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[–] brux (14730) 8 years ago

they have the right to reimagine alien ... its been a long time. this movie was a lot like alien, and in some ways better, but always will be a sequel because it came after, so we all knew about it. Alien will always be new because it was the first, you cannot get around that. They just amped it up too much and fizzled on plot and character development, which they also did in Alien, its just that it did not matter at the time because alien was so ... alien! ;-)

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[–] Popcorn Kernel (2368) 8 years ago

EXACTLY.
you don't need to know what a facehugger is to know that whole situation was no bueno. All the crazy drawings and monster specimens, plus the baby bursters they saw running around, plus David's general creepy as fuck demeanor. AND THEN seeing that woman's head just floating in the sink!
And he's still so trusting like "yeah let me just stick my face in this creepy egg thing, David says it's perfectly safe!'

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[–] brux (14730) 8 years ago

Yeah, but by this time the original movie Alien so hundreds of years in the past ... so, how was he to know? ;-)

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[–] lasteven (309) 8 years ago

I think Covenant still pre-dates the original "Alien" in the timeline (although for us viewers, Alien might feel like a hundred years ago, lol). It's hard to remember that characters wouldn't know that facehuggers come out of the eggs, although personally I don't think I'd go near anything on that darned planet after everything they'd just seen.

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

Covenant takes place 20 years before alien.

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[–] brux (14730) 8 years ago

I meant the movie .... not the events of the movie in the movie timelines. that is alien came out in the 80's so in 300 years it will be forgotten ... just a joke.

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[–] Dallas (304) 8 years ago

Ahhhhh, I didn't read the original post that guy was replying to. What he said just caught my eye.

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[–] brux (14730) 8 years ago

Seems to me that the bacteria alien, fungus, spores, whatever is the most dangerous thing ... it attacks any animal life. So one would have to wonder what force would push the wheat to grow so big ... there was no animal to preferentially evolve the wheat to their benefit?

And then, once having killed all the animal life on the planet ... what would the aliens do. And if they were an engineered weapon, they would need to have had a suicide gene so that after they killed everything they would disappear themselves.

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[–] thebricks (292) 8 years ago

Wouldn't the first thing on your mind be that one of those things was going to come out of that egg, or that it would infect you?

He would have been out of there after killing David. Sorry.

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[–] Popcorn Kernel (2368) 8 years ago

I KNOW. He didn't know David at all, why would he blindly trust him and do what he says? If some random robot tells you to jump off a bridge, it's perfectly safe! would you do it? Isn't there any IQ test to be a colonist on this mission?

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 7 years ago

Do you need to know a plane personally before you take a flight to another city?

People already blindly trust their car GPS, their iphones, their video game consoles, their computers and apps... by the time they get as sophisticated as David trust will not be questioned at all....

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[–] FordFairlane (299) 7 years ago

youll just make up any old shit won't ya?

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 7 years ago

No need to make up what's already happening in real life as well as in movie...

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[–] FordFairlane (299) 7 years ago

And yet here you are, once again making shit up. You sound like a 12 year old girl trying to justify being a fan of Justin Bieber.

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 7 years ago

Clearly... its not like these characters know they're in an alien movie and thud are about to die...

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[–] thebricks (292) 7 years ago

There's a lot of really stupid kids on movie boards that like to start stupid fights.

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[–] LordBusiness (120) 7 years ago

That's one shiny mirror you've got there.

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[–] mel2000 (259) 7 years ago

We trust planes, GPS, iPhones etc., because they face government regulation regarding safety, and their creators can be held legally responsible if they don't perform to spec. David was an old model that hadn't been maintained so there was no telling if he was in safe operating condition.

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