CINEMA: Regal Warren East, Wichita, KS AUDITORIUM: 14 PRESENTATION: Warren Grand Auditorium Digital with the WAVE (as in Bill Warren waving goodbye while laughing maniacally with a suitcase full-o-money) PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Stale barely buttered popcorn RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)
It's probably just as well. I was running out of WAVE jokes anyway.
THE PLOT: A colony of Tennessee rednecks invade kansas and ruin everything. Wackiness ensues.
Despite the fact that the original film's poster is to this day one of my all-time favorites, I've never seen any of the "Alien" movies and hadn't planned on seeing this one...until yesterday's tragic events unfolded. Then I decided I needed to see at least one more feature before the place lost all it's Bill Warren charm. And for the most part, it was business as usual. The upstairs lounge is temporary closed while Regal gets a liquor license, and the Warren logo they project onto the Grand screen curtain was absent, but that was it. Same concession prices (which I expect will soon rise by nearly 50%), same Warren policy and promotion trailers (sans Oscar's Lounge). I videoed the Voice of the Theatre and curtain rising for remembrance. I also kept my Warren popcorn tub, drink cup, and mints.
Oh...they also showed a movie. It was full of dumb men ignoring the advice of the women, slimy aliens, and backstabbing androids. A friend on Facebook said "it's like Alien's plot with Aliens' action in Prometheus's setting."
Yeah, okay.
It's visually spectacular for sure. Didn't hold my attention span all that well, though. Then again, I was sort of distracted.
FUN FACT: I saw exactly 100 shows in this building under Bill Warren's ownership. Will I see 100 more under Regal?
That's up to Regal.
Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 05-21-2017, 08:15 AM:
Sam, you should really watch the first two. But you need to forget everything you know about the franchise first.
Sorry about what's going on with Warren. Sucks.
Alien Covenant was dumb and forgettable. Beautiful cinematography though.
Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-22-2017, 01:59 AM:
I've seen this thing in IMAX with Lasers, the particulars of that show are described in great detail in the other topic about "IMAX with Lasers", so I won't repeat them here.
The first two Alien movies far outreach anything else ever done with the entire franchise. The stunning H.R. Giger designs, combined with almost impeccable cinematography and great special effects made those movies into one of the more believable encounters with an alien species up until now.
Let's not talk about anything that happened after Aliens until Prometheus. I usually pretend those movies were never made.
While Prometheus tried to add some depth to the franchise, it failed miserably by falling into the same plot treadmill all other Alien movies have fallen into (including those which I wanted to ignore), and it even doesn't bear the Alien name. So it could easily have done much more to advance the story. Unfortunately it did not.
The same is largely true for this movie. While some of the shots are pretty horrifying, the cinematography is also pretty stunning and there's nothing bad to be said about the special effects, the whole story around it is just another setup for a classical Alien-movie "core". People being stupid and reckless, Aliens trying to hunt people into extinction and androids which can't be trusted.
So, regarding this franchise, it would be great if we could have a movie inside this universe with another "core". There can still be those human-devouring alien dirtbags, but maybe we can just omit the whole hunting part for once. After so many movies pulling essentially the same trick, the concept is getting beyond stale, it's already rotting through the inner "core". Franchise meltdown is imminent, if it didn't already happen with this movie.
Posted by Jason McMillan (Member # 5542) on 05-22-2017, 03:43 PM:
SPOILER WARNING!!
My two big complaints about Alien: Covenant were...
First, the plot was 100% predictable from the moment they said "Colony Ship". Oh how convenient, a bunch of hosts in suspended animation.
Secondly, if David created the eggs, then how did they get on the derelict ship on LV-426? That ship was believed to have crashed on LV-426 several millennia prior to the arrival of the Nostromo.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the Alien franchise. But those aforementioned items bothered me. Still, it's better than Alien: Resurrection for sure.
Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 08-02-2017, 04:48 PM:
^ ^ so true. I think it did well enough to secure it's next story since it felt like a middle movie