Alien: Romulus

[Toph]

You have to french kiss it to get your popcorn

[The Doctor]

We don't get novelty popcorn buckets in UK cinemas.

-Ralph

[Stomski]

Jul 18, 2024 18:40:25 GMT The Doctor said:

We don't get novelty popcorn buckets in UK cinemas.

Is that really such a bad thing?

Although I can imagine catching one of those Alien heads in the corner of your eye during the film could lead to some kind of scare.

Didn't some cinemas drop plastic spiders from the ceiling during showings of Arachnophobia?

[Benn]

Can't see a general Alien thread, but this popped up on my recommendations today.

[Toph]

Okay, that's spectacular. Can't tell if it's a fan production or one of the officially blessed ALIEN projects.

Now for armchair quarterbacking: horror movie edition- Why did she leap out of the bloody ship instead of closing the hatch?
I'd rather it be outside while I'm inside and deal with the eggs, than let it back in and abandon ship.

[Benn]

Um... budget?

It's possible the door wouldn't close quick enough, or that when it's indoors at least she knows where it is, and it's not found a way to sneak back in.

All unofficial,I believe. Same people as did the Tie Fighter fan animation a few years back.

[The Doctor]

Booked for opening day tomorrow after work so I could avoid spoilers from online twats.

Then I made the mistake of reading some mainstream press reviews so one major surprise spoiled already. Ffs.

-Ralph

[Pinwig]

Hmm. I wonder if I could persuade Mrs P to go.

[The Doctor]

Watched. Glad I saw it on IMAX.

It's...a fan-film. A theatrically released...fan-film. Make of that what you will.

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

But what did Ook thnk?

[The Doctor]

He's fine.

-Ralph

[Stomski]

Just back from my viewing.

I enjoyed it but have some very strong caveats to that.

SPOILER: Click to show

No need for CGI Holmes. You can excuse the uncanny valley as the android should be unsettling as much as you like, but it doesn't serve the film at all in a universe where we're used to seeing different actors in the role of androids.

And to pull off Weyland Yutani android well, you have to be Fassbender good. In this instance they were ok, but just missed the cut.

For all the brouhaha of thinking this wasn't a Prometheus/Covenant follow up and would disregard their entries in the franchise oh lordy lord were we wrong.

Oh great we have the Alien Resurrection ending for the sake of some body horror similar to Prometheus.

To Ralph's point, there's just no need to repeat lines from other entries in the series, or gun briefing. Or a laser at floor level why? Or 70s drinking bird?

Why does gravity turning off make you float without pushing away from the floor?

Related to that, they zero g acid tunnel scene could have been a lot more tense, as could the silent facehugger corridor.

I guess with such a small cast there's a huge amount of plot armour.

Oh 5 minutes facehugging and gestation again, this stuff takes a lot longer!

Are we supposed to think WY would just give these miners a ship capable of space travel?

Largest issue of all from the opening scene... Why make this related to the Nostromo? It's pointless. Just cut the opening scene and add mystery to how the company got another Alien.

Which is quite a lot to complain about despite feeling pretty positive!

[Toph]

Glad I read the spoiler hidden stuff. I have officially lost all interest in paying money to see this. Or seeing it at all. Prometheus/Covenant ruined the franchise for me. Any link to those makes this trash.

[Stomski]

Aug 27, 2024 0:16:34 GMT Toph said:

Glad I read the spoiler hidden stuff. I have officially lost all interest in paying money to see this. Or seeing it at all. Prometheus/Covenant ruined the franchise for me. Any link to those makes this trash.

SPOILER: Click to show

It's not that big a link, there's no mention of engineers, but there is reverse engineering of Aliens into the bio-pathogen vase/vial/black goop seen in Prometheus. But I guess that in itself shapes the final sct threat.

I much preferred it when we didn't know where they came from, it really adds nothing to the lore or world building and that mystery was part of the appeal. The point isn't where they come from, just that they're the ultimate life form (save a few humans and Predators).

[Toph]

Yeah, see... That right there is one of the single BIGGEST THINGS that ruined it all.

Yeah, I'm skipping this altogether.this franchise is a complete lost cause now.

[Stomski]

Yeah, we just need a good old fashioned stand alone slasher or full on action film.

After the initial batch of Aliens comics lines concluded, there was a lot of good stuff that was just unrelated, stand alone stories. Sacrifice for example.

[Jim]

I genuinely don't think there's been a good Alien sequel since Aliens.

Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection both managed diminishing levels of "interesting if nothing else" thanks to good directors, but both were also really quite messy (largely thanks to interference). I don't imagine ever rewatching either of them again.

The best even just tangentially-related movie since Aliens is probably Predator 2...

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I'm not a fan of the Alien(s) franchise. I found Alien and Aliens upsetting as a child, and I haven't watched subsequent ones (apart from the Predator crossover). But I watched Alien: Romulus and apart from a couple of really nasty bits (which I could see coming and went out during - I'm fine with gore and violence on film now except when the attack comes from inside the body), I enjoyed it as a sci-fi horror movie.

I would urge people not to judge it without seeing it.

Martin

[The Doctor]

I judged it by seeing it. The world's most expensive fan film.

-Ralph

[Fortmax2020]

I enjoyed Aliens. Alien was dull as dishwater the time I watched it. The rest were quite forgettable once watched.

[Toph]

I agree. First Alien was so boring. Not bad by a longshot, but just boring.
Aliens was fantastic; great worldbuilding mixed with a good basic story, with compelling characters.

Always felt 3 fell flat, and Resurrection was a hot mess.
AvP 1 was stupid, but with compelling characters and actors and great scenes, it was a lot of fun.
AvP 2 was garbage, with a bad premise that makes no biological sense and characters acting so stupidly I actually wanted them to get killed.

But I have always loved the xenomorphs, and the extended worldbuilding around them, and a vaguely believable biology.
Prometheus and Covenant completely undermined and ruined all that.

[Stomski]

Alien is a masterpiece in tension. Imagine seeing that in the cinema in 79! The planet exploration, facehugger, chestburster, Dallas in the vents, the malfunction and reveal of Ash, the ship countdown, the finale... What's not to like? The slow deliberate pace adds to the uneasiness and feeling of being uncomfortable. FX hold up mostly well today too. The characters are deliberate, well defined and each player a role to the story and audience engagement. Some are less likeable than others, but surely that's deliberate. How would you feel stuck on a ship with these people?

It's not as quoteable as Aliens (but that's up there with Ghostbusters in that regard so wouldn't expect it to be), nor does it have the action excitement, but these are two very different films in very different genres, being slasher in spaaaaace and Vietnam in spaaaaace, so don't judge them by these metrics.

[Fortmax2020]

I'm judging it by what I saw. It was my introduction to the Alien franchise. Was told it was a masterpiece. I couldn't figure out why.

[Jim]

For me Aliens is the more watchable movie by a long way, but I put it down to a matter of taste.

I've gone completely off gore / ultra-violence / horror (the first two being so mainstream these days that it does limit which new things I can watch) so it's been a long time since I saw Alien and I doubt I'll watch it any time soon unless my taste changes again.

I'm not sure James Cameron could make a film I wouldn't want to watch, and he's shown a rare talent for making unlikely sequels that turn out genuinely good.

[Jim]

Aug 27, 2024 22:51:47 GMT Toph said:

Aliens was fantastic; great worldbuilding mixed with a good basic story, with compelling characters.

I think this is another of Cameron's skills, just the right level of world-building to add texture and act as a springboard for the imagination but still having laser focus on making the movie itself entertaining and satisfying.

It's something of a lost art, as seen not only in later Alien movies but probably in mainstream genre movies in the past couple of decades generally with studios desperate to build franchises, and I suspect partly due to social media feedback loops as well.

I enjoyed the scene in La La Land mocking this a bit with the annoying screenwriter at the party talking about how much buzz there is around him, his skill in worldbuilding, etc. "Who knows? There could have been a fourth bear". That was almost a decade ago and there doesn't seem to be much sign of this changing though.

[The Doctor]

For me, the big problem Alien films have had is a lack of memorable characters since Alien 3. Ripley especially is still missed as no character since has been as compelling.

Despite the better efforts of the cast in Romulus (who worked wonders with what they had), I couldn't tell you what their characters were called or...much of anything about them.

-Ralph

[legios]

I've a real fondness for Alien, it has the pacing of a classic "slasher" movie in a lot of ways, slow, deliberate and measured. It isn't an action film, and I think that a fondness for a particular genre of horror does help in appreciating it. (Despite what people generally classify it is I would say that Alien is firmly a horror film, not a Science Fiction Piece. A bunch of people find themselves locked in with something that wants to kill them for reasons that aren't entirely their fault, slowly getting murdered one by one at the hands of a force that can't be reasoned with. In much the way that Aliens is distinctly a Vietnam War movie - a bunch of soldiers go to a country they don't understand for reasons they can't entirely figure out, under leadership that are woefully inept and end up getting massacared despite their massively superior firepower). That said, I can see why that pacing doesn't work for everyone.

Aliens is a very good Vietnam war movie, but it is almost entirely a different kind of film to Alien and it feels like comparing apples to oranges to me to draw any comparison between them.

Alien 3 is remarkable in that anything actually managed to get made under the working conditions it was filmed in. My feelings about Alien 3 are less that I like it, or that I think what eventually managed to limp out of the wreckage is a good movie, and more a deep respect for the fact that any movie exists at all at the end of the process.

I'd agree that one of the big problems is that there isn't anyone in subsequent films that you get to care about. In both Prometheus and Covenant everyone is so underdeveloped that it is hard to empathise with them enough to be involved with whether they survive or not. They don't feel like they are actual, rounded, people and so there is nothing to create a sense of emotional involvement with their plight.

Karl