It's a two and a half hour long fan-edit of both of Ridley Scott's disappointments: 'Prometheus' and 'Covenant'. The first one tapped into the 'Ancient Aliens' hype as peddled by the History Channel and the second doubled down on this cringe, driving a stake through the Aliens franchise altogether.
The fan-edit is a more clinical/documentary style adaptation of the available footage (including bonus material). It follows the synthetic 'David' and explores his motivations and character arc more fully. It removes much of the cringe, but does not manage to excise all the Hollywoke stupidity. E.g. the study of micro-organisms was apparently never developed in this universe, explaining the complete and absolute stupidity of the characters in removing their protective suits in a xeno-biological environment or never bothering to put them on in the first place (as is the case in the second movie).
It was definitely a good attempt and it even gave off vibes of the original 'Alien' movie, but it also had a lot of smaller narrative plot holes. But all things considered, it was still better than the original.
Weird timing I actually just watched Prometheus last night and I'm watching Covenant tonight.
I consider Alien to be a masterpiece, although I'm not as big of a fan of Cameron's Aliens. I thought it deviated too far from the formula of the original.
Prometheus really was just a pointless fucking movie to make. It doesn't add anything it just seems like an interesting diversion. There's no basis in science or fact and the characters are all dogshit.
I'm watching it chronologically (AVP / AVP 2 / Prometheus / Covenant / Alien / Aliens / Alien 3 / Alien Resurrection) to make sure to end on a strong note. I'm one of the few people who enjoy Alien 3 / Alien 4 mainly because I'm huge fans of the directors involved (finch / Jeunet) and I appreciate them both putting their stamp on the franchise while keeping with the original themes.
But Prometheus and Covenant are just...so unnecessary.
There's DOZENS of us!!
I couldn't stand how a single xenomorph went from a goddamned nightmare in Alien into just bullet magnets in Aliens.
Weakening the main opponent simply so you can churn through them in action scenes was such a stupid choice.
Yes.... and no.
I rewatched the director's cut a few years ago, and one of the key narrative hooks for how they burned through so many xenos so quickly was because they were using I think armour piercing explosive rounds. It's why in Aliens 4 they had such a hard time just killing one xeno, since they weren't using the same kind of ammunition.
Still, it made the xenos in Aliens seem like a cakewalk, even though technically it was due to their advanced weaponry. But yeah, I really wish they would have taken better time to showcase that without those kinds of weapons, humans were easy fodder. That was something they never really properly explored in any of the films, as opposed to say, Predator, where we at least -- multiple times -- saw how small arms fire barely did damage to the Predator and that it was more like annoying flesh wounds than fatal for them.
In the Aliens franchise they never outlined the consistency of just how hard the outer carapace was for the xenos (we sort of had hints of it in Alien 3, and again, a little bit in Aliens 4, but it was completely tossed away in Covenant).
The size always bugged me.
Every single film got the dimensions wrong on the xenomorph from Alien. They simplified the creature from Giger's vision into something more bland and easily reproducible. They also made them smaller and the heads much different.
Overall they turned it from a detailed, interesting, intelligent and efficient stalker into just rampaging zerglings.
I heard that theory a while ago about the weaponry in Aliens explaining their effectiveness against the xenomorphs but explosive or armor piercing rounds would have triggered the cold fusion chamber they were inside that required them to give up their mags in the first place.
They also infer that those sentry guns basically destroys hundreds of xenomorphs considering the population of the colony that was taken over.
I couldn't stand it any other way lol. It's a fully armed platoon of space marines. No lifeform is naturally adapted to deal with that. Then they still got wiped.
Exactly. If your mechanised infantry aren't better at killing things than a bunch of space truckers, then what's the point of having mechanised infantry?