I agree, and also felt the Stranger Things vibe - I believe the plan was to get young people onboard with the brand by making them the main characters rather than grizzled space truckers. Same with Prey - a young, pretty female somehow outwitting the deadliest extraterrestrial entities to have ever existed. I’d rather see jaded, experienced older characters who are more likely to be scientists and miners played by older actors, but I think I’m in the minority. We instead must suspend disbelief and invent head-canon reasons for this once more. And to be fair, that was one of the least of the criticisms I have.
Also a quick one - why is the pulse rifle more technologically advanced in Romulus than in Aliens, which is set later? Why do the marines get the bog-standard manual aiming version, when Romulus/Remus get this awesome auto-targeting model? I’ll tell you - it’s so they could set up the derivative scene in which our hero essentially acts as a sentry gun straight out of Aliens Special Edition.
Still, I enjoyed the movie a lot, there were great set pieces (one or two of which were original) and overall it’s a step in the right direction for a beloved series. I hope we get some writers who are aware of the wonderful Aliens: Earth War saga and wish to bring that to our screens.
I would also be interested in a Lovecraftian protagonist who is an intellectual trying to outwit and survive an encounter with a Xenomorph. But that’s never been what these movies are about. Unfortunately, scientist characters are either early game snacks for the aliens or evil villains.
I think the “advanced” pulse rifle was supposed to be a defensive weapon for untrained colonists and settlers. In theory, the space marines are highly trained professionals and don’t need help aiming (ya know…in theory…)
That’s some good thinking! Not sure if it’s gonna be my headcanon but it does make sense. White auto-aiming variant is for untrained colonists, murdered-out black version for hardened marines who can aim for themselves… Unless they use a smart gun.
Was in there yesterday. Liked it. Story is not something uber new but solid.
A new take on the android. Before every android was either good or bad. This time both.
Visuals: Goddamn good. Love it how much of it looked real. All the dirty old tech. Just perfect.
Stunned by: Facehuggers in the beginning. Especial the sceene with the many huggers hunting after the heros running all over each other (the red torch! Great!)
And of course the acid spiral path in zero gravity. Nice idea.
I really enjoyed it.
The final “fight” was foreseeable but good.
I rewatched every alien movie together with my girl in the past days before romulus to prepare
all in all: I really liked it! Not perfect, but I really hope this restarts one of my fav franchises!
It’s worse than that even, their settings wrecked the filmgrain so peoples’ faces are smoothed out like bad facetuning, they fucked with dynamics of the light levels like an amateur wedding photographer, it’s baaaaad. These modern “stewards of IP” really could not give less of a fuck about the properties they spend billions of dollars to acquire.
As part of my adventures in Glasgow today I went and saw this. So, whilst I’ve enjoyed various Alien films over the years, I’m not all that well versed in the ‘lore’ as some of you are… so there were only a few of the self referential bits that stood out like sore thumbs for me. The Reeboks on the ladder I thought was clumsy product placement for instance…
Anyway, I enjoyed it well enough. There were some great moments and the overall vibe was spot on. That said… the final half hour had me bored to tears. Yay! They’ve escaped… Oh no they haven’t… Yay! They’ve escaped… Oh no they haven’t… Yay… you get the idea. I’m not saying it was a carbon copy of other films in the franchise in that regard. Because normally carbon copy introduces some variation due to the imperfect nature of how the duplicates are created. Ok, I’ve exaggerated a bit there but the deja vu towards the end was real.
Overall then, and a bit like Alien Covenant. It was a film of two halves… really enjoyed the setup and there was some great moments, but it flagged towards the end.
The big question, should anyone review a film after a couple of pints of Hacker Pschorr? Probably not…
I’ve read a bunch of comments in this thread noting the success of the future aesthetic, so for those interested there is an excellent talk/writing on the “Future Mundane” by Nick Foster, a speculative designer, and really relates to design and storytelling about the future. Highly relevant to sci-fi and how believable it is or isn’t. I watched the talk in-person in 2015 and it really stuck with me.
I enjoyed it! It wasn’t as good as Alien or Aliens and some of the callbacks to the previous films were a bit overdone, but it was pretty well done and enjoyable, and no weird pretentious mysticism like in Prometheus. I liked the zero g stuff and the characters were good. I’d give it a solid 7/10. It’s worth going to see at a theatre imo, it’s a good big screen experience
The countless billions IP-holders have riding to not take any risk whatsoever and “soft reboot” over and over and over and “they said the thing” loredumping and “don’t you want to know the secrets of why blah blah” no I don’t want every reference spelled out.
the new Bladerunner wasn’t perfect but at least they didn’t diagram every reference of the Tears in Rain monologue to weakly flesh out names and places.
Found it to be a but of a mishmash tribute to both Alien and Aliens. Enjoyable but could of been better.
I think it did a great job of initially the suspense of Alien but fell down where it went down the Aliens route. In fact I wish they had kept it to a single Xenomorph. Didnt like the “get away from her bitch” rehash - seemed unnecessary cheese!
Casting was a bit iffy - the gobshite boy seemed a shite actor and the lead lady seemed a little too young.
Not sure if my cinema screen was poor but some parts of the film were a little too dark to make out some details. Also they rushed some cool bits like the egg / birth scene at the end - guess they wanted more bums on seats and aimed for a 15 certificate cut.
I rank it around Aliens 3 (not a fan of 4 at all) with the first two of course the best.
I though it was ok, average i would say compared to the first 2 Aliens. The aesthetic was excellent and the special effect was top notch, some great action scenes too.
It feels like Alien for teenager, those are supposed to me miners on a very hostile planet , nope i didn’t believe it at all. There was no tension like the 2 first movies imo everything was just too fast, the pacing was wrong and some plot hole that felt so meh.
I thought it was way better than Alien Covenant and Prometheus !
It was entertaining and had a great time in the Cinema anyway but im kinda disappointed a little TBH.
