NOT PYNCHON: the estimable Michael Wood on COVENANT

[John Bailey]

Here's the very entertaining article I mentioned:
http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/william-gibsons-never-filmed-alien-iii-script-a-history.html

"But there’s an alternate universe where the series’ propulsive
momentum only increased — a reality in which the third Alien film
featured advanced xenomorphs exploding in batches of half a dozen from
people’s legs, stomachs, and mouths; where cold-warring rival space
stations of communists and capitalists race to outdo one another with
their genetic experiments on the aliens’ tissue; where a flock of the
phallic horrors flies through the void of space, only to be beaten
back by a gun-toting robot. Oh, and there’s a thing called the New
Beast that emerges from and sheds a shrieking human’s body as it “rips
her face apart in a single movement, the glistening claws coming away
with skin, eyes, muscle, teeth, and splinters of bone.”

On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 1:46 PM, jesse gooch <jlguuch at gmail.com> wrote:
> I’d like to check out that Gibson script, seems like it wold’ve been a neat
> addition, even if it was totally bonkers. Would’ve been hard to be worse
> than the Fincher attempt at Alien 3, even though I like a few things about
> that movie, partly the fact that it helped bring us Finchers later works.
> I feel like horror and theology should be given a lot of license to make
> absolutely no rational sense as long as it is fun and creative, especially,
> as John Pointed out, Cosmic Horror. It’s not like we say Lovecraft was trash
> because of the fantastical content that makes so little sense. So Prometheus
> was enjoyable for me. Regardless of the huge, gaping (absolutely cavernous)
> gaps in logic and reason, I found a lot to enjoy. If that kind of thing
> turns you off, you’ll have a hard time not picking apart most horror, and
> IMHO, certainly all theology will be a wash if you are trying to have it
> make actual sense.
> The first few times I saw prometheus it was edited for TV and I thought that
> maybe some of the irrational leaps in logic “this is a chemical weapons
> factory” and “same-day abdomen surgery flowed by a 10k across alien terrain
> and physical battle” were due to the fact that I was missing things that had
> been edited for content. But nope, that’s just the way it is. Still really
> enjoyed it though. When we go with a decades old franchise, I feel like
> comparing newer incarnations to the original work makes about as much sense
> as saying “it’s not as good as the book.” I try and just let it stand alone
> from what came before and try and enjoy it separately. Blade Runner will
> likely spark a lot of the same debates.
> I still really do like reading the long lists of things that made absolutely
> no sense about Prometheus. I think cinema sins did one. Funny and accurate,
> but they don’t detract from the movie for me.
>
> On Jun 15, 2017, at 6:34 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Also was it here that someone linked to a long article on William
> Gibson's script for Alien 3? It sounded abso-frackin-lutely insane.
>
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 8:32 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm a crazy booster for Prometheus, which a lot of critics are now
> coming back around to appreciating. I think Scott has made major
> concessions with Covenant after the critical drubbing Prometheus
> originally suffered, and amped up the action while making the
> theological and philosophical stuff really, really obvious rather than
> letting it simmer. Covenant is less of a work in my opinion, but I'll
> probably come around to liking it more.
> Both are SHIIIIIT movies if you read them through the lens of science
> fiction, which has to conform to certain kinds of logic and narrative
> realism. I think it's better to read them through as horror
> (specifically cosmic horror) which operates under a totally different
> set of conventions. The original Alien managed to strike the perfect
> balance between horror and SF but Scott's ambitions with the new ones
> are more existential.
>
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 6:23 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If there's bad science there's bad choices--all this exposition and
> background on the Giger's creation/creature just drains all the mystery so
> well used in the first movie (I'm probably one of the few who wasnt a big
> fan of Aliens)
>
> Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The
> perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its
> hostility.Lambert: You admire it.Ash: I admire its purity. A
> survivor...unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
>
> they should've left it that.
>
> rich
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 3:40 PM, jesse gooch <jlguuch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> HaHaHa!
> Yeah, hard to get around the silly science, but I don’t really go see
> science fiction movies expecting them to adhere to logic. Also, since Alien
> has always been a bit of a “slasher in space” thing, you’re always going to
> get the people making really idiotic decisions that no rational person would
> make.
>
>
> On Jun 15, 2017, at 1:31 PM, L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net> wrote:
>
> This is about that really stupid film that R. Scott foisted upon us
> recently? It was that or the Mummy last night, and I suspect I made the
> poorer choice. I can’t imagine being desperate enough to actually see the
> Mummy, so I can only speculate about the choice. After watching the numerous
> stupidities of the humans on board, I came to the conclusion that the group
> being sent to colonize some far off planet must have been selected in some
> future eugenics project to raise the level of intelligence of the species
> left behind.
>
> Interstellar densities are around 10^6 molecules per cm^3. Try figuring
> out the pressure per square cm on that huge sail deployed at the speed the
> ship was going. Talk about drag!
>
> <sigh>
>
>
> On Jun 15, 2017, at 3:30 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> https://twitter.com/LRB/status/875295382401691649
>
>
>
>
>
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