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Alien movies
- Thread starter CaptainWacky
- Start date
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Alien: Romulus (2014) - Seven years later, this serves as another reboot for the franchise (which is now owned by Disney, LIKE EVERYTHING) and...it's good! I enjoyed it! The absolute best thing I'll mention right away is the the lead characters Rain and Andy, played by Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson. Both actors do a great job and thier human/robot sibling relationship carries the whole movie. The whole thing works because you care about the characters, like watching them, and want them to survive. They're the best combination of leads since Aliens. The other characters are all decent enough: Isabela Merced does some good scremaing scared faces and the annyoing English guy is suitably annoying before he gets a horrible death.
I'ts obviously going for nostalgia in its visuals and with many references to the prior films. I think this is fine for the most part! The audience brings in a knowledge of Alien films and understands things like the acid burns on the station before the characters know what's going on. But it's definitely a movie that can stand on its own and has its own identity (unlike Covenant, which I now dislike more than I did when I watched it yesterday!) It goes through everything you'd expect with the xenomorphs, but with enough of a twist that it's not all a rehash: I loved the use of the x-ray scanner before the chest burst, for example!
There are parts where the nostalgia does overwhelm a bit: the "get away from her, you bitch!" callback seems to have been much discussed already and I don't really have much to add: it didn't ruin the movie or anything for me but maybe it would have been better if it had come earlier in a more comical context rather than a big hero moment. The use of Ian Holm's likeness for the android Rook is the most controversial inclusion and, again, I don't really have anything interesting to add here except that I think I would have preferred it if they'd just used another actor or Fassbender or something (but maybe Fassbender would have been more expensive than the digital Holm!) I like the way the character is used in the story but he has a lot of dialogue and I found it a bit distracting in the end because I was thinking he didn't sound quite right. I understand they "fixed" the look of him a bit for the home release but I still think I'd be able to tell it wasn't a real person even if I wasn't familiar with Bilbo Baggins. I'm not quite sure if they had to redo the human/alien hybrid thing from Resurrection at the end but it looks so much better and creepier here than there so I'll allow it! Only other minor issue I had was that it maybe felt like Rain had a bit of plot armour in the end, but I guess that can be hard to avoid.
It all looks really nice, I enjoyed the space stuff a lot and the sets were cool. The CGI aliens I think look notably better than Covenant. Crucially the movie does a lot to make them scary: there's no characters talking to them or blowing kisses. If you're worried about it being toned down by Disney then don't be: the acid drip death scene I thought was one of the most brutal deaths in the whole series, and I'll just say "poor Kay" too and you'll understand when you get to the end.
So yeah as the internet's new foremost expert on the Alien movies I highly recommend this!
I'ts obviously going for nostalgia in its visuals and with many references to the prior films. I think this is fine for the most part! The audience brings in a knowledge of Alien films and understands things like the acid burns on the station before the characters know what's going on. But it's definitely a movie that can stand on its own and has its own identity (unlike Covenant, which I now dislike more than I did when I watched it yesterday!) It goes through everything you'd expect with the xenomorphs, but with enough of a twist that it's not all a rehash: I loved the use of the x-ray scanner before the chest burst, for example!
There are parts where the nostalgia does overwhelm a bit: the "get away from her, you bitch!" callback seems to have been much discussed already and I don't really have much to add: it didn't ruin the movie or anything for me but maybe it would have been better if it had come earlier in a more comical context rather than a big hero moment. The use of Ian Holm's likeness for the android Rook is the most controversial inclusion and, again, I don't really have anything interesting to add here except that I think I would have preferred it if they'd just used another actor or Fassbender or something (but maybe Fassbender would have been more expensive than the digital Holm!) I like the way the character is used in the story but he has a lot of dialogue and I found it a bit distracting in the end because I was thinking he didn't sound quite right. I understand they "fixed" the look of him a bit for the home release but I still think I'd be able to tell it wasn't a real person even if I wasn't familiar with Bilbo Baggins. I'm not quite sure if they had to redo the human/alien hybrid thing from Resurrection at the end but it looks so much better and creepier here than there so I'll allow it! Only other minor issue I had was that it maybe felt like Rain had a bit of plot armour in the end, but I guess that can be hard to avoid.
It all looks really nice, I enjoyed the space stuff a lot and the sets were cool. The CGI aliens I think look notably better than Covenant. Crucially the movie does a lot to make them scary: there's no characters talking to them or blowing kisses. If you're worried about it being toned down by Disney then don't be: the acid drip death scene I thought was one of the most brutal deaths in the whole series, and I'll just say "poor Kay" too and you'll understand when you get to the end.
So yeah as the internet's new foremost expert on the Alien movies I highly recommend this!
Last edited:
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Rusty Shackleford
Active member
I watched Space Balls before I had seen Alien so I didn’t know about the chest buster and what it was in reference to. Despite that, I still thought that scene was funny because I grew liking the singing frog from Looney Tunes. Because of that I wanted to know what the reference was so my Stepdad told me it was from Alien. By the time I actually got around to seeing Alien , I had already seen Aliens. Both movies are great, but I like the horror aspect of Alien rather than the action of Aliens. Despite its flaws, I liked Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Alien 3 has some good moments, but mostly sucked and Alien 4 wasn’t any better. I have not seen Romulus.