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

I've got to give a little bit of support to Alien: Resurrection

They tried to do something different without breaking the existing continuity...that would be mocked today as writers take torches to what came before them.

Visually, I think the color palette and atmosphere are perhaps one of, if not the best in the series.

You could feel a kinship between the big ship and the terraforming base in Aliens, which I've always assumed was a deliberate and obvious nod to the "successful" and "praised" sequel it was hoping to mimic.

Similar mimicry included the "team" dynamic...return of actual weapons...and multiple xenos so our heroes got to mow through them on occasion.

Some of the characters in Alien: Resurrection were also great. Ron Perlman is always a casting win. They loaded just about every creepy "X-files" baddy of the 90s into the supporting troop. Even Winona Ryder as an android wasn't terrible. They could've done something better with her arc. Still, the character wasn't terrible, save the one awful line over the loudspeaker where she talks (mockingly, I hope) to the xenos.

The score is pretty decent. The effects were pretty good for their time and much better than Alien3.

If it weren't for 2 things, this movie would probably be #2 on the favorite Alien films for me:

Spoiler: #1

Spoiler: #2 and far worse

I know they were trying to be different...ramp up the weird and add a new horror.

But it brought down the film and nearly ended the franchise.

---------

But outside that, I don't think the film is the steaming pile it is often portrayed as.

 

Resurrection Bioenginering is bad and creates freakish monsters theme is definitely more relevant post introduction of the Prometheus Pathogen

Anyway best bit.

T2Q EDIT- Changed embed to link for video title language

 

The problem is that the second film was meant to be the last and rather than doing what Dark Horse did with their EU, they had to create an explanation that stretched credibility.

The various EU stories went with the explanation that the Queen chestbursters take longer to incubate than warriors and drones.

 

Just finished 4. I completely forgot about the albino offspring monstrosity cringe. Weaver must have been desperate for a paycheck in 97?

Also the last thing I ll say about this uh entry is that Raymond Cruz always brings out Tuco even if Tuco was still 10 yrs away. I kept expecting him to snort a bit of space meth.

I'm done. I'm both curious and afraid of Alien Earth.

 

Ahaha Tuco is in Alien Resurrection that's right! Now I have to rewatch it again

 

I mean it's only for a min or so but you can see it clear as day. The rest of the time he trys his best to be a soldier from the future.

Tuco gonna Tuco though.

 

In the early nineties, European cinema was revived with one movie: Delicatessen, by French directors Jeunet and Caro.

They did it again with City Of The Lost Children. A wildly imaginative science-fantasy. Featuring Ron Perlman. Talking French.

Then they were invited to Hollywood and made Aliens 4 and never worked together again.

 

I thought only Jeunet worked on Alien 4, it was both of them? I was so disappointed considering how great Delicatessen and City of Lost Children are. I thought Alien 3 was awful but I put it aside and decided to go see the new one figuring "how bad could it be?" I was truly surprised. Lesson learned.

 

Only just realised that the new Alien Earth series is set 2 years before the original movie, its going to be interesting to see how they weave everything together.

 

Forgive me, friends, as I am late to the party, but figured I would contribute my two cents to the discussion of Romulus, which I managed to catch a couple of months ago with a friend. We're both pretty big fans of the universe and the original films, but knowing how things have been going in the film world of late, we went in with rather low expectations.

In that regard, we weren't entirely disappointed.

I would describe this film, in a word, as non-offensive, and that is perhaps the worst thing I can say for a film that is supposed to be a sort of soft-reboot for the franchise. It inspired neither joy or despair, and I found myself, altogether, wholly uninterested in the plight of our cast because they're unlikable morons. The only character I felt any degree of sympathy for was Andy, mostly on account of the actor's tough task of having to portray completely different personalities. Even then, I didn't particularly care about his fate. Unlike Alien Covenant, which I despised for its muddying the waters of the Xenomorph's cosmic origin, or Prometheus, which I rather enjoyed for trying something rather new and different, Romulus manages to do about everything I expected it to do - but with MORE(tm), more facehuggers, more aliens, etc. - and it just feels like a tribute and highlight reel to films that were far better than it is.

The constant, insipid delivery of rehashed quotes from the previous entries does not allow for any really memorable quotes from this film to coalesce. The only one I forgive, again because of Andy, is the whole "artificial person" line, which I can write off as simply being a part of his programming, a sort of built-in response that all We-Yu androids might have in their heads.

Easily the most terrifying thing in the film is Ian Holm's CGI lich.

What I can say is good about the film is that the visual effects - outside of the aforementioned lich - are excellent, I especially enjoyed the shots of the station descending into the planet's rings. The set design and direction for the time spent on the Wey-Yu corporate colony are excellent. I also highly commend Mark Zuckerberg for his fantastic debut in feature films as the chilling offspring. Absolutely an uncanny and intimidating presence.

By and large it left me feeling like I had wasted an hour or two of my life that I wouldn't otherwise get back. But my friend and I followed it up with an episode of an otherwise obscure 'comedy' known as Space Precinct, which - for none of the reasons the creators intended - was absolutely hilarious, and a fantastic use of my time.

Overall, Romulus fell flat - at least for me - as a soft reboot of a franchise that dared to do nothing differently from the far more engrossing films that preceded it. It leaves me with little to no confidence in Alien Earth, though I hope that I am very much proven wrong. I don't necessarily need chilling or truly unsettling moments in a horror film to engage me - neither Carpenter's the Thing and Pierson's Conspiracy had any moments that left me with the urge to stand up and yell at the screen to "gtfo of there", but both deeply disturbed me for years afterwards. I just need something - whether something visceral in the sense of Covenant, a film I otherwise abhor, or something cerebral in the vein of Alien 3, to stir some emotion in me, to make me do something besides laugh as the idiot characters manage to careen their ship into the station after some half-baked escape attempt.

 

Alien as a concept is ****in amazing. Absolute genius. The first 2 are classics, no doubt about it and FWIW I really enjoyed Prometheus and Romulus too. But I can't help but think that its limited as a franchise thats being stretched over multiple films. Almost 10 films now, plus a TV series coming soon. Theres only so much you can do. Its like Predator or Jurassic Park. You can't really go much further without rehashing it all over again in each film. Its just the human reaction to it and the situation they're in that can change, but even so there are certain things that you expect to see in every film. So ultimately that surprise factor is gone and I don't think any film going forward will ever be able to be seen to be as good as the originals, its an impossible task.

 

They don't need the homages to the original with a line that harks back to the old films or a close up of an alien licking out heros face. Thats unnecessary for me. We know we'll get an egg, a face hugger running around, a chest burst and acid blood. But its whats around it that needs to be slightly different and I agree with you on Romulus too, I thought the chest burst was inventive with the x ray machine, the acid blood in zero gravity and even a different kind of cast worked for me too.

The same with Prey, a prequel with a more primitive predator and set in a very antiquated era. But you still get the invisibility, the lasers, the big knives, the reveal of the face... all the things we expect to see. Whilst Badlands looks like its set (maybe) on the Predators home world in the future, that could be an interesting change if its got the dynamics of the Predator species in it.

 

They're milking it for all it's worth; just like Lucasfilm has done with Star Wars over the decades. I might say the same for the DCU and MCU, but that might be a stretch (even though it just seems to me like there's a new Superman/Batman/Spiderman movie every 5 to 10 years or so). It is what it is.

 

Aren't there two facehuggers in that film? That's always been my conclusion.

 

I want to see an Alien movie in the concept of like Starship Troopers (minus the fascism bits).

I want to see Earth coming to wipe the Xenos out...and see the creative ways we just can't seem to do it.

I want to see armadas of ships, soldiers, weapons...the hubris of mankind's might on full display.

And by the end, a scattering of survivors are trying to band together to find an escape route and limp home.

Random cool ideas they could try:

• The Xeno's figure out a method to be space-faring (biological in nature, to be sure). Perhaps not able to transit between stars, but they could have nasty surprises awaiting approaching ships to a planet they inhabit.
• If the Xeno's cannot find a host on which to implant to continue to propagate...what then? I want to see the Xeno's evolve to make their own "host" drones...grown for no other reason than to spawn a new generation of proper drones.
• Similarly...a drone at the end of it's natural life...does it just die? Do they implant it so a new drone can be born? Is it used as food? Is the corpse absorbed into the nest?
• Twin Chestbursters.
• The social dynamic between 2 Xeno Queens...war? peace? tentative alliance to fight off the human meatbags?
• I think the general assumption is that the Xenos, left to their own devices, will scourge and destroy everything in their goal to achieve propagation. What if they don't? What if humans learn that the Xenos establish themselves, but somehow live quite harmoniously with other creatures, either because they are no threat/use to the Xenos, or perhaps because of mutual benefit to each other. Kind of the quasi-preachy plot twist of the story, where the nasty, vicious Xenos aren't the all-destructive plague humans think they are...in fact, they are perhaps less destructive than we are (on a global scale).
• A Queen that talks (no, not English...but real communication happens, perhaps with translation from an Android).
• A Xeno city...how far do these nests go?
• Xenos actually eating something (not just assuming they eat their kill).

Point is...I think there are lots of interesting story ideas they could try in this universe, all while staying on brand, with the Xenos (which is what I think Hollywood struggles with...they think they need to be visually different with a new monster...in truth, they can change lots around the Xenos and it will keep them fresh.)

 

Nope. Just one. In the original edit, Murphy finds a large Facehugger next to Babe, the ox. Gillis and Woodruff stated that it was capable of laying two embryos, one that becomes a Queen and then a standard creature. The reshoots replaced the Royal Facehugger with the normal one. Dark Horse retained it for their EU.





You can see the differences.

 

Well, then there might as well be two of them in the theatrical cut