Monday 15 May 2017

MORE ALIENS

I went to the cinema today. I mean I had to. Richard (of RBB) let the side down yesterday by going to see a Chick Flick see here:



I had to balance things out a bit. Up north in Whangarei there wasn't a Gary Cooper or John Wayne Western but there was a new Ridley Scott film - Alien Covenant showing. I like Scott as a film-maker. He made Alien in 1979 which was outstanding and spawned the Alien business with many so-called sequels until the real sequel/prequel Prometheus was released. Alien Covenant is more a sequel to Prometheus that was a prequel to Alien. Got it?

Old Ridley did a better job with this latest film than he did with Exodus: Gods and Kings which I saw and didn't like a couple of years ago. See here:




The film was pretty damn good with once again great special effects and good acting. If I had to complain about anything though it would be:

  • Borrowing from James Cameron's Aliens sequel with the dumb, gung-ho attitude shown by the crew.
  • Too many Americans.
  • No Chinese or Eastern Europeans (even old Star Trek had some of these).
  • Being a bit too formulaic and not having any 'new' surprises.
The early parts of the film were filmed in New Zealand (Milford area). This being a depiction of a new planet where settlers were going to colonise. This to me seemed to be a metaphor for Americans fleeing USA for greener pastures.





This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing except for the fact that:
  • There was already a former civilisation there that had died out.
  • It was pretty dangerous in places.
  • There had been introduced plague and environmental damage.
  • There was a nasty predator with scary teeth about that was destroying everything.


Mmmm. Maybe a good metaphor after all.

4 comments:

Richard (of RBB) said...

Those teeth need cleaning!

THE CURMUDGEON said...

That rat needs cleaning out.

Robert and the Catholics said...

Yes I agree about the effect of virus's being under estimated. Orwell's "War of the world's" showed genius here. Of course no alien civilization could come to earth. Our ever changing bacteria and virus's would infect them in moments.. Another case where God thought of it first?

THE CURMUDGEON said...

"Another case where God thought of it first?"

What?

So your god only looks after humans on earth?

Other possible entities aren't condoned or not allowed to travel to another planet?

Pretty narrow-focussed your god.