Amph On Earth, Everyone Can Hear You Scream: The Prometheus / Alien Discussion Thread (Romulus)

This flick takes awhile at the start but, frankly, every dang Alien movie takes awhile. Most of them are just 40 minutes of people wandering around before the bugs show up, and that tradition continues here.

The Chestburster scene in Romulus is freakier than usual. dang thing just slowlllly unraveled and the camera lingered on it, usually those bastards flee quickly which is probably why it was so unsettling.

 

When someone says a movie “takes a while” at the beginning, I usually take that as a sign that it actually tells a story instead of rushing through set pieces.

 

A hopeful assertion.

 

Usually. It’s a criticism that has the opposite effect on me than what’s intended by the critic.

 

Usually when i hear someone say "it takes awhile to get going", I take it as there being a lot of prep-work in staging the plot.

I'm a sucker for world detail, so the more immersive the better. But that is also why many of my favorite films bore others.

Great films strike a balance.

 

In this respect, at least, we’re the same person.

 

I normally take it as the film is unnecessarily slow to start, which is why I don’t think this did take a while to get going. If it got going in the first five minutes it wouldn’t be very good because you’ve got to build the tension and the audience has to start caring for the characters. Arguably the first 30 minutes is the best of this film.

 

This movie did make me want to seek out the Alien Isolation game.

 

The beginning 40 mins are the best part of the film because yes it attempts to tell a story...then fumbles all of it in spectacular fashion. Comparing it to the first 40 mins of Alien or Aliens is hogwash though ...those films have compelling characters and verisimilitude in every scene despite the environment. This film is about a bunch of kids who somehow gain access to a space ship on a labor camp planet where they aren't allowed to leave who then somehow are the first to find a Weyland Yutani research station with what might be, by a characters own admission in the film, the greatest research in the history of humanity and said station is just left floating above a Weyland Yutani planet. It's dumb on dumb on more dumb. When I saw a piece of Nostromo wreckage with the literal word Nostromo painted on it in the beginning of the film, I knew what I was in for.

 

The Company wasn't going to retrieve the station because they were too busy oppressing people in the acid mines!

 

Finally seeing this tonight!

 

I saw Alien Romulus last night, and I didn't feel the slow burn at the start of the film. I was drawn in by the opening scene, the savage operation, followed by mining colony featuring Rain and Andy. I was admiring the set design and the living situation on the mining planet, and thinking to myself that this is more of my Alien type of movie, gritty and grimy; lived in, much like the original Star Wars film. The last two Alien films felt too clean and clinical. The part about a workers shortage and "moving the goal posts" on debt repayment was one of the most messed up parts about this movie. Life on this miserable mining colony was the key motivational factor for the main characters for this film. There's a Gooney's like quality to the start of the film.

 

Just got back from the theater. Movie was awesome!

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kinda wish they woulda just used Michael Fassbender or some other living actor instead of Ian Holm, but it didn’t ruin the movie for me too much.

 

Glad you enjoyed it. I'm going again Friday.

 

I think that if there is another film that would be the time to bring back David and have

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Rain and the others confront him.

 

If this gets a sequel please use David and The Covenant. This film didn't try to bury the Prometheus of it all, they even called it The Predators Pathogen

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and the director said yes that the Offspring was supposed to look like a bit of an Engineer at the end

 

There wouldn't be anything left of the Nostromo. I'm not sure when you last saw Alien but that was an atomic bomb level explosion. And these Aliens are essentially indestructible now. The station crashes into the ring and they encase themselves in a self made meteorite. The original xeno survived a atomic bomb with not one but three blasts. Leaving the station to crash with all those Xenos on board makes no sense consider Weyland Yutani knows the OG xeno survived that explosion in deep space. Sure it got pushed out the air lock but it's superbly evident when Ripley looks out that window how large that explosion is...miles and miles and miles long.

 

You have not watched the film in a while, either because Ripley jettisoned the Xenomorph from the Narcissus. Which had traveled a distance before the Nostromo exploded and then Ripley traveled further before she discovered that it was on board.

The Nostromo would be blown up, but pieces could survive because it's designed to travel to planets that have a higher gravity than Earth. It would have to survive crushing pressures.

 

I went back and watched some of the Alien trailers and it is interesting to see the evolution of film trailers. The first 2 Alien films are iconic trailers. The Alien 3 trailer has that weird opera music that was prevalent in the early 90's trailers that sounds so over the top today. Now of course, it seems like every dark movie has some kind of ironic happy pop music playing in contrast. Romulus used You are my Lucky Star from Singing in the Rain, although it is distorted and creepy.

 

Technically people are likely allowed to go into orbit or leave the perimeter of the colony (the ship they used is transporting some kind of mined material, and Aileen Wu's character is clearly a trained pilot)... there's just no where to go without needing cryotubes. If not for the fluke of the W-Y station set on a collision course toward wackiness the planet, they'd be forced to work as contracted and only get to leave on W-Y transport once they have the company's permission. Also, they're not kids.

Tbh that was dumb and I hated it. An accretion of wreckage is plausible (for all we know FTL drives leave a gravity well behind after they go nuclear, and matter in space tends to clump together); the wreckage being anywhere near identifiable and the ship's name helpfully placed in the path of the probe? Nah.

 

LOL you are absolutely right. Forgive my ignorance. Brain fart on my part. Wasn't trying to be a prick by saying "not sure last time you saw Alien" btw and I'm sorry if that came off condescending. After Romulus I went back and rewatched a clip of the explosion myself to remind myself of the blast. But yes you are completely right so my airlock bit makes zero sense. She gets plenty far away to avoid the blast before she even realizes the xeno is present.