AArdvark wrote: Fri Nov 29, 2024 6:45 am Wouldn't it be super cool to find out cats are the only thing that can stop the aliens, like maybe they are super allergic to cat hair

Steven King already did that in Sleepwalkers.

Wouldn't it be super cool to find out cats are the only thing that can stop the aliens, like maybe they are super allergic to cat hair

No, the one thing we would have enjoyed seeing brought back, that was the one thing they left out.

Was there an orange cat named Jonsey?

I am the biggest Alien fan on this BBS. I have seen the first two movies more times than most of you have seen any movie. I was accidentally wearing an Alien hoodie while I watched this tonight. The first movie was written by the guy who played Pinback, and was essentially a serious-minded remake of the middle part of Dark Star. I bleed two things: acid, and Alien movies.

I challenge anyone to name any character from any Alien movie other than the first two. I just finished watching this one ten minutes ago, and can only name about three characters, and two of them were robots, and one of them was a fake Ian Holm.

Every Alien movie past the first two is "throw a bunch of random people you could not possibly care about at the alien and watch 'em all die." This was that, plus intentionally copying every scene from every previous Alien movie for pandering fan service. The end of the movie was the exact same as the end of Alien RESURRECTION, for fuck's sake. Everyone hated Resurrection! Don't copy stuff, but definitely don't copy stuff everyone hates!

There is no point to any of these movies. The line I heard was "Romulus is the third-best!" For me, they're all tied for third. Maybe Prometheus at least tried to introduce a couple interesting ideas, but ultimately it's still throwing a bunch of people you don't care about and will never remember against the good ol' Perfect Organism.

They are all tied for third. They're not aggressively BAD movies, which I can give some lukewarm credit for. There's just no point.

Boooo.

Taking the acid damage to the Nth degree like that just feels like they're introducing ramifications that they're not going to be able to keep up with.

They'll just do the vampire / Star Wars thing and change the rules to fit whatever movie is next.

I feel like I have the opposite view on several things. For instance, I thought the backstory and presence of Andy was pretty cute. It's true that this movie is full of stock sci fi trope characters, and I thought Andy was the closest thing to originality (even if I guess even that was done before in the show "Raised By Wolves"... and done better, too).

I didn't hate the existence of Rook, nor am I offended by the fact that they CGI'd a dead actor into the movie, but damn, I thought that was just about the worst CGI example of such a thing I've seen. I just thought it was distractingly bad. I thought he looked too young, but yeah, it's been many years since I last watched Alien and maybe Ian Holm was more babyfaced in it than I remember.

I've only watche Alien and Aliens in their entirety. I tried starting Prometheus once but turned it off after less than 20 minutes, so I'm not well-versed in the suspension of disbelief that all of the other movies expect of the viewer. There are a couple times in the movie where an alien doesn't attack humans. One of them was explained, and sure, if we want to make the aliens strategic masterminds instead of just creatures to be feared purely because they are biologically perfect killing machines, that's okay. But I didn't understand the scene where they're walking through the nest hallway and aren't attacked the entire way until the end when it becomes important to the plot. Maybe it was explained in-movie. I had the movie on while doing other things and wasn't paying full attention. Still, it felt like scenes like that lowered the suspense of the entire franchise.

And the gravity/acid stuff was both kind of interesting but also kind of weak. If the death of one alien caused enough acid damage to take out this entire space station, why didn't that happen in pretty much every other Alien film ever made? (I know, the Alien doesn't die in every movie and often gets ejected into space, but still). Taking the acid damage to the Nth degree like that just feels like they're introducing ramifications that they're not going to be able to keep up with.

My last gripe is tone. The direction/writer is most well known for having previously done an Evil Dead movie (which I thought was a fine addition to the series), but I thought the horror aspects near the end of this movie leaned a little too far into his previous Evil Dead style.

In the end, it just felt it concludes like a horror movie, where the only takeaway is that the survivors got away from the killer. Nothing in the world has really been changed. I kind of feel like the original Alien movies left us feeling like we were walking away with more.

Ah man. Well, at least I didn't pay to see it in a theater. I was a bit concerned if anything due to the last 2 Alien movies but damnit I want a good Alien movie even if it is slightly bad so I will still watch it ;)

The rest of it, when everything starts to go off the rails - it was fine, I guess.




MILD SPOILERS




I liked seeing the android that had Ian Holm's face on it. Creepy! A real company man, and of course, it was great to sort of see it get its comeuppance. He was written perfectly. I stand by what I wrote in my first message about the bad characterization choices for most of the other characters. When the stoic chick gets attacked by an alien, I didn't care because she was a stock trope character. She did not have a single identifiable traits. It was almost impressive. When the renegade guy (nobody's name is really worth remembering in this, except for the other android Andy and I guess I just realized why his name is "Andy," it is because he is an android) reaches the same fate it's not remotely satisfying. A couple hours with someone to help with the script could have really made the movie pay off more later.

The only thing that is remotely clever in the last hour is the point of view character's ("Rain") inspiration to turn the gravity off at once point, which sort of came about via the godawful "dad jokes" that Andy the Android says when he gets his personality back. The payoff would have meant more if the writing was better.

The alien / human baby which becomes an unkillable monster at the end is completely inexplicable and without motive. Babies like their mothers. They won't shut up about them. I'm not getting why he wanted to kill his.

Anyway. This movie was fine to have in front of me as a series of still images sent to my television at a fast enough rate to give my eyeballs something to look at while exercising. It doesn't sound like it, but that is high enough praise. It was a little worse than the "Reacher" TV show, which I saw recently and came to the same conclusion. It was better than the TV show "From" which I couldn't get into recently and didn't write anything about.

It really did look fine.

A "C" grade for Alien: Romulus, then, I guess.

I have more to add but I did observe that things picked up almost exactly at the 30 minute mark and I wrote my first post after 29 and 30 seconds.

Guys, how does this compare to Aliens 3? I can't stay awake through that one.

I watched this tonight, and I think I liked the first half more than the second half so I don't know what that means for your experience.

I don't know why everything after Aliens has to be so bad with these movies.

I have now watched the first half hour of Alien: Romulus. Nothing has, as of yet, happened. That is not a huge problem because it is two hours in run time and I will be honest, I have time this week. But we have....

A character repeating the dumbest "Dad jokes" you've ever heard. This is not endearing. This is not characterization. Oh, the writer / director thinks it is. If you use lazy garbage like DAD JOKES to show how awkward a character is, you have failed. I refuse to believe that someone working on the Alien franchise can't do autistic correctly. I am avoiding even mild spoilers here, so I won't get into why the character is acting this way. But it insults the audience to have this be the character's defining trait.

Almost everyone else so far looks exactly the same. I promise it's okay to cast people that at least look differently in your movie, Alien: Romulus casting lead. They sure as shit don't act differently. You have the YOUNG ASSHOLE guy and then the YOUNG SLIGHTLY LESS OF AN ASSHOLE guy and then the INSCRUTABLE, MYSTERIOUS, STOIC Asian girl, who you know is tough and stoic because she also shaved her head. The lead is a total cypher so far too.

Why is everything always so bad with these movies? They are trying to collectively solve a real problem - get off Slave Planet - but I don't want to be around these people and I don't really care if they make it or not. This is a bad movie. Maybe it gets redeemed later and because it helps me consume media while moving my person it's fine because it at least looks nice.

It would have taken less than a day to fix the script at the 30 minute mark.