ALIEN / PROMETHEUS / COVENANT / ROMULUS - SPOILERS INBOUND!!

  On 8/17/2024 at 4:12 PM, Wunderbar said:

chris cunningham paints ?

He worked on Alien 3 & 4, and did a lot of sketch, paint, and sculpture concept design work, and he was a cover artist for the UK ALIENS magazine, It’s enough to fill an entire comic book issue, if they would just do one. I can PM you a file of jpgs if you’re interested. 

  On 8/17/2024 at 4:36 PM, Rubin Farr said:

I can PM you a file of jpgs if you’re interested. 

I'm interested!

got tix for Tuesday

  On 8/17/2024 at 4:36 PM, Rubin Farr said:

He worked on Alien 3 & 4, and did a lot of sketch, paint, and sculpture concept design work, and he was a cover artist for the UK ALIENS magazine, It’s enough to fill an entire comic book issue, if they would just do one. I can PM you a file of jpgs if you’re interested. 

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No thank you. But this explains rubber johnny's look.

  On 8/17/2024 at 7:11 PM, Rubin Farr said:

got tix for Tuesday

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Hah! Brilliant

I've sprained my arm (can't straighten it without wincing in pain) and got the worst dose of hay fever I've ever had in my life, but that made me chuckle and smile for the first time today. Thanks Mr Farr. Now I will go back to feeling sorry for myself

  On 8/17/2024 at 4:36 PM, Rubin Farr said:

He worked on Alien 3 & 4, and did a lot of sketch, paint, and sculpture concept design work, and he was a cover artist for the UK ALIENS magazine, It’s enough to fill an entire comic book issue, if they would just do one. I can PM you a file of jpgs if you’re interested. 

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Looks like he's a fan of Simon Bisley.

To put it mildly.

I've just got back from watching it. 

I won't comment on it until I've seen what some of you lot think.

idk i liked it well enough but it was definitely a modern sequel, with all that entails (tails, get it? get it??)

the RLM guys really didn't dig on it but who cares what they think https://youtu.be/z8gqBTphMJk?si=LkAWMuRmvd9nHgkE but also they're not wrong (well except for some of the alien lore they referenced but they're not Alien franchise nerds so whatever)

  On 8/19/2024 at 12:18 AM, auxien said:

idk i liked it well enough but it was definitely a modern sequel, with all that entails (tails, get it? get it??)

the RLM guys really didn't dig on it but who cares what they think https://youtu.be/z8gqBTphMJk?si=LkAWMuRmvd9nHgkE but also they're not wrong (well except for some of the alien lore they referenced but they're not Alien franchise nerds so whatever)

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spoilers ahead

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no, really, SPOILERS

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seriously, spoilers:

i think it started okay, opening silence with some Alien-era vibe/backstory was cool enough but idk that it needed to happen. then jumping to such a populated place of the mining colony was a bit different, the franchise has smartly stayed away from these set pieces basically all the time (unless you count AVP2 which no one does). different isn't bad, but i didn't love that aspect.

characters were set up well enough, but given there's only like a half dozen characters the fact that some were barely in there other than to get killed wasn't a good thing. characterization doesn't take long, and the actors/script for them was decent but i think they got chopped down heavily in editing most likely. tight is good, too tight means i don't give a fuck when their character's entire existence is just setting up their death 17 minutes from now...maybe this would feel better on a second watch. the android guy was pretty great, main girl was pretty great, others were solid in their parts, cool. the Ash model of android tho, wtf? looked horrid, every second it was onscreen. the AI voice only worked because it was a mostly destroyed android ffs....just, no. agreed with the RLM guys on this, it was a stupid choice. a bad android antagonist, okay cool, and Andy switching from good to bad to good? okay, i'm with that. just no Ash model, that was trash.

i've always had issues with the magically super-fast growing aliens when they've done that...it just doesn't make sense. this was taken to an extreme, maybe the fastest in the series in fact. i had some issues with the reality of some stuff but i can mostly look past that shit, if it's for the sake of the movie/story. i'm annoyed that they brought in extraneous aliens...just what a dozen of them appeared when they were at a certain part of the ship, then did nothing but get blasted into (terrible-looking CGI) floating acid within seconds. where the fuck were they for the time before that? why weren't they already attacking? it was equivalent to a group of ninjas standing around the action movie hero and then one ninja at a time approaches to get roundhoused to the face again and again. dozen aliens, y'all just line up and all attack at once, without any thought. they don't care if there's gravity or not either btw, they can operate just as dangerously without it, that wouldn't have fucked up their attacks more than a second. just silly.

characters always have some plot armor in these, that's fine i get it, but for the first encounters with the facehuggers to have been so good, the starkness of how rough/weird the alien attacks were stood out.

RLM got it right that the lifecycle aspect was pretty muddied here. honestly, the alien setting up its cocoon to grow in right in the middle of a fucking main hallway? really? how did it have time to craft this cocoon anyway? and grow 10x its birth size in the span of what like...idk 45 minutes or something? just silly. these motherfuckers just aren't thinking. i could go on but anyway...

there were some genuinely good bits in there, Rain's noticing the alien was watching and following, her character doing dumb shit because it's a difficult world and life, i get that, real people do real dumb shit too...but  it all still felt a bit rushed and unfocused. the story spark going to this derelict vessel, great, young kids trying to get the hell away to a paradise, great...stumbling upon some unimaginable hellcreature, great. all of that is set up well enough, good points to hit. actors delivered there, storytelling from the sets/directing/etc., great. it's just like they had to rush to finish the 2nd half of the movie and couldn't work out good points to hit that felt legit and unique in the franchise...this one fell too much into the mashup territory, it felt weighted down by the history rather than propped up by it, which is honestly sad.

and so, that ending...it was telegraphed so hard that there was gonna be a weird thing from pregnant girl popping out one way or another. the actual birthing was horrifying, well done there, but it wasn't a surprise, it was a truly weird bastard kind of thing which was good, but again....it grew 10x its size in literally like 3 minutes or something. i just, idk, that shit takes me out of things. did the same with other movies so i'm just blabbering...anyway... the slenderman alien-baby was creepy enough so effective, touching on the weirder side of things in the franchise, cool...but it felt more substantially dangerous to our main characters than the dozen+ aliens & few dozen facehuggers. idk, seemed to be off the mark. that ten minutes of it at the end would've been better cut to nothing and teased as ending up on the planet or something? but then take that ten minutes and frontload with characters and some more breathing space in the main portion of the film.

anyway...the physics of the ring system was pretty silly, i don't think it's really possible for a ring system to be that tightly populated as it was shown (for any amount of time when it wasn't already raining down/violently dispersing literal tons of debris everywhere, at least), which would've taken the wind out of the countdown clock unless it'd just been replaced with something more....realistic? it was like a planetary sized buzzsaw the way it was portrayed and just...no that's not how that works.

the action of having to shoot up aliens stood out to me as particularly...bad, along with the CGI Ash model, and the ludicrous ticking clock/physics/etc. that was just inserted/changed arbitrarily. that stuff didn't feel natural within the actions/consequences of the story and its characters, and that really hurts.

it sucks that Alien movies have to be action movies. it should've been a good small tight horror film with some philosophical/whatever underpinning. it tried to be everything and ended up being nothing. it's not bad but it's not very good either. it feels a bit too empty for the series imo, that was maybe the major sin. maybe that'll change on rewatches, idk, some of the character stuff and vibe stuff was good.... but as of right now i'd rank it just above Resurrection probably (not counting the AVP films which no one does...at least those know they're silly fun and have at it)

edit: OH THE MUSICAL CUES quit being so fucking cute with the callbacks that even the goddamned music was overburdened with them

 

 

 

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I watched it on Saturday. One of the worst cinema experiences since I had the pleasure of seeing Prometheus and Covenant... I agree with a lot of the points you raise, though I thought the film was utter crap.

David Jonsson was great as Andy, though there were some problems with his arc, he really was engaging. Gen Z Ripley was good too, for the most part. 

  On 8/19/2024 at 2:09 PM, Scaramouche said:

I agree with a lot of the points you raise, though I thought the film was utter crap.

fair enough, i can’t blame anyone for not digging it…i guess i went in expecting this, basically….tho i was hoping the ‘horror film auteur’ reputation of Fede Alvarez was going to shine thru more…

to me the Alien franchise is kind of known to be this bad/weird mashup/twist on the idea every time, so i never expect anything but some interesting worldbuilding & cool scenes, maybe some good character work. the franchise is rudderless, so it’s sorta flopping around, has been since its inception really…they just got lucky with three world class directors helming the first three films. 

i sure hope for more, for better, but i know even when we get some of it, it’ll be weighted down with some meh/bad (Prometheus…)

agree w/ the spoilered note you made too, but i liked that one & this one well enough (my film tastes are unrefined, i know)

  On 8/19/2024 at 2:09 PM, Scaramouche said:

I watched it on Saturday. One of the worst cinema experiences since I had the pleasure of seeing Prometheus and Covenant

It saddens me to say this, but I agree with you.

I didn't expect it to sit side by side with Alien and Aliens, but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

I liked it. I got the sense it was made by a talented team composed of, at least partially, fans of the franchise. Great care obviously placed upon caturing the original gritty, industrial, worn-out space setting right down to the CRT monitors and switch boards. The predominant use of practical fx was a game changer for me compared to covenant, where the Xeno was portrayed unambiguously in full daylight running around like an overly aggresive big cat. The soundtrack tastefully calling back to the Goldsmith orchestrations, but with subtle electronic elements during specific scenes to ratchet up the grotesque horror of it all. It wasn't the most original story and they obviously had to thread a needle balancing new ideas with established franchise & genre tropes, but I'm pleased overall with how they handled it. Also... *spoiler*

That ending though... It stuck with me out of the theatre. I was nervous walking around my dark house last night thinking I would run into that... thing! 

  On 8/19/2024 at 10:33 PM, Goiter Sanchez said:

That ending though... It stuck with me out of the theatre. I was nervous walking around my dark house last night thinking I would run into that... thing! 

  On 8/19/2024 at 10:33 PM, Goiter Sanchez said:

Great care obviously placed upon caturing the original gritty, industrial, worn-out space setting right down to the CRT monitors and switch boards.

Now that I did like about it. 

  On 8/19/2024 at 3:55 PM, auxien said:

fair enough, i can’t blame anyone for not digging it…i guess i went in expecting this, basically….tho i was hoping the ‘horror film auteur’ reputation of Fede Alvarez was going to shine thru more…

to me the Alien franchise is kind of known to be this bad/weird mashup/twist on the idea every time, so i never expect anything but some interesting worldbuilding & cool scenes, maybe some good character work. the franchise is rudderless, so it’s sorta flopping around, has been since its inception really…they just got lucky with three world class directors helming the first three films. 

i sure hope for more, for better, but i know even when we get some of it, it’ll be weighted down with some meh/bad (Prometheus…

agree w/ the spoilered note you made too, but i liked that one & this one well enough (my film tastes are unrefined, i know)

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I too hoped that Alvarez's ‘horror film auteur’ chops would come into play. It doesn't feel like a horror film to me, more like a fan movie meets computer game. 

Alien has been blighted from the beginning by Ridley's ideas, he suffers from Luca's Syndrome, and Studio interference has clearly played a damaging role. I wanted to like Prometheus but there's just so much that can't be forgiven. However, in retrospect, as shit as I think the prequels are, at least it was an attempt to build on the lore; as much as I didn't think they needed to. (Never thought I'd defend Prometheus)

Romulus feels like a fan movie. A very sexy looking one, well directed and technically executed.. however, once you remove the member berries, fan service, line inserts* and callbacks, there's not very much left. …there is an idea of an Alien Romulus, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real movie, only an entity, something illusory, and though you can enjoy the direction and practical effects and you can watch and feel excitement gripping you and maybe you can even sense Romulus is probably comparable to the Alien and Aliens films: It's simply not there.

*this really pissed me off no end,  each time took me out of the movie. 

  On 8/19/2024 at 9:14 PM, Caged Element said:

It saddens me to say this, but I agree with you.

I didn't expect it to sit side by side with Alien and Aliens, but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

Interested to hear your bugbears with the film. @auxien had a comprehensive list I wanted to reread and revisit. Some food for thought in there. 

Might go back and watch Alien 3 and Prometheus before watching this, I can barely remember them at all, they'll soften me up before this

Watching it this afternoon. Looking forward to it. Then I'll read all the posts above and see what the watmm jury has decided and see if I agree 

I reckon it's split down the middle...

Good but flawed. I enjoyed it but it was far from perfect. Though I hated Prometheus because of the terrible script, dumb characters and the hacking to death the myth of the Space Jockey, Engineers and the myth of the Alien, I realised for the first time how incredible the visual aesthetic of that movie was. If you combined the artistic element of that film with the story for Romulus then your onto a winner. Thought the main lead girl and her 'brother' were brilliant, the rest (especially geezer bruv) were forgettable. I guess it's a 6.5/10 from me. Worth watching though.   

Loved it, absolutely awesome. A Gen Z update was what this franchise needed, Alvarez really nailed everything, maybe a little too many close ups, but otherwise it was the best movie of the Summer, way better than Deadpool. 10/10

I thought the alien hive at the end looked like a load of black bin liners scattered about. Wasn't happy with that at all. The xenomorphs were fucking cool though. 

  On 8/20/2024 at 8:59 PM, beerwolf said:

xenomorphs were fucking cool though. 

Cool yes, but a bit dumb. Plenty of chances of killing thier victim, but instead just stood there snapping their jaws until they got attacked!

I still don’t know if this movie is great or utter garbage but it seems to depend on what you expect 

Not sure what to make of the last 30 minutes. I kept on seeing that mentioned on social media, even though I was trying my best to avoid any spoilers. Pretty trippy.

But as oOOo say not sure if it was great or utter garbage.