*BEWARE SPOILERS* Alien: Romulus

Listening to some of the hardcore nerd reviews on YouTube has been amusing, really got their knickers in twist.
I’m a nerd, but the nit-picking joyless psychopathy of the internet crowd is really fascinating.
It’s entertainment, and art for sure but the pleasure from displeasure is really getting out of hand.
Catharsis is one thing, but the whole “ I don’t like it and if you do I’m superior to you” mindset is really puerile.
Star Wars has been ruined, really there’s 6 films I love and even if Disney have had a few misses there’s still a few that have hit.
Ridley Scott has ruined Alien?
If it wasn’t for Scott Alien wouldn’t have been the seminal movie it was, nor would be Aliens.
But we now live in a time where we’ve seen it and heard it all.
It’s hard to be a seminal force, but we can have entertaining and well made and for me Romulus was that, nothing more and nothing less and that’s alright

As the constant bombardment of mediocre has brutalized this and many other franchises over the course of time, it brings to mind something Emperor Ming once said: Let's just say, they will be satisfied with less.

YoNoSe said:

I don't like to rain on parades but absolutely do not pay theater price for the amount of Engineer lore/expansion in this movie. This is primarily a greatest hits/cover album. The visual risktaking amounts to a skinny Newborn and face huggers in sandwich bags.

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This is unfortunate to hear.

Rotfish said:

They did?


Deadpool is a fourth wall-breaking meta comedy, it's built into the character.

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Wor-Gar said:

I see where crows is going though -- Romulus is kind of funny. I didn't get it until the ridiculous ending. Alienized Slender Man. The jack-in-the-box Ash with big ears. And all of Andy's bad jokes. The movie is like one of his jokes. It's a play on ... Alien.

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no, I'm talking about a script that relies on nothing but callbacks and nostalgia instead of a real plot which is what Deadpool was. and Jurassic world was as well.
its like member berries nostalgia porn with those two. people loved wolverine so everyone loves the Deadpool movie just because it has wolverine lol.
people loved the t rex and the raptors so everyone loved Jurassic world even if it didn't have a good plot.

I'm not defending this alien movie, but it feels crazy to me that this summer, one movie is being praised for the nostalgia callbacks and then alien is being trashed for the same type of callbacks lol.

the plot of Deadpool was awful ( without describing any spoilers) and barely existing. but it's being praised for the nostalgia callbacks

One of them is fun.

I haven't seen this yet, but I was spoiled about the final scene in the film. At this point, I probably don't even care. Is the Slender Man Alien thing even inspired by any of Giger's designs? It's more reminiscent of a monster from Resident Evil, or Dead Space.

Solidus said:

I haven't seen this yet, but I was spoiled about the final scene in the film. At this point, I probably don't even care. Is the Slender Man Alien thing even inspired by any of Giger's designs? It's more reminiscent of a monster from Resident Evil, or Dead Space.

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Been a while, but I've seen a lot of Giger's art, and there's not much there that recalls his work, IMO.

One of the more disturbing aspects of a lot of his pieces, was the blend of bleak, nightmarish imagery with *beauty* and eroticism (symmetry, elegant lines, sleek, bio-mechanical aesthetic mixed with darkness, predation, parasitism, death). It's what made it very unsettling.

Not all of it, certainly. But if I'm remembering correctly, it wasn't often he made something merely grotesque. His imagery generally carried other elements within it that made your psyche itch in unpleasant ways.

Solidus said:

I haven't seen this yet, but I was spoiled about the final scene in the film. At this point, I probably don't even care. Is the Slender Man Alien thing even inspired by any of Giger's designs? It's more reminiscent of a monster from Resident Evil, or Dead Space.

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IMO it’s an interesting design. Was basically an Engineer/alien fusion.

Mondragon said:

Hey, I still wish we'd gotten Kenner's supposed Operation Aliens cartoon!
Though minus the outrageous toyetec color schemes and 90s eXtreme gadgets they gave the "Space" Marines.
And who the freak was O'Malley? And WTF they did to Bishop!?

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Someone can correct me if I am wrong, as this was the early 90s or so. And some of us saw these figures for 2 for 5 dollars or 3 for 5 dollars at KayBee toy stores all over the country.

IIRC, O'Malley, Hudson and Vasquez did not make it to US markets. Later the molds were reused to make 2 packs for those characters with an alien figure. It was cheaper to just acquire the character license, but not the individual releases/licenses of the actors. Also there were likely no go zones for certain things depending on other agreements in place for other merchandise. Last factor was Kenner would want to, if it could, reuse accessories or concepts from other toy lines. Reduce R&D. Interesting that Vasquez is the only one with a true classic "Pulse Rifle" Had every character had a "staple" like TMNT did with their weapons trees that came with figures, these might have sold better (i.e. I remember the facehugger accessory was inside the Gorilla Alien set when it should have honestly been in all sets) If you gave everyone a pulse rifle, smart gun, facehugger, chest burster and egg, maybe it sells better.

There was a classic 2 pack, with the Predator that was mostly P1 but with a laser rifle, and a warrior Alien from Aliens. It had the most "classic" aesthetic. Of course it was the hardest to find and probably short packed. Had they made more of those sets instead, again, might have sold better. I remember collectors back then affectionately called the Warrior Alien in the 2 pack as "Deion Sanders" LOL. The Alien toys at brick and mortar didn't make a generational leap until Alien Resurrection. The aqua alien and warrior alien that set, IMHO, are still better than some of the NECA ones.

There was so much demand for Aliens stuff back then, but no one was making much of anything.

The original wave of figures came out in 92-94 ish, if we are talking stuff that made it to KayBee. The Aliens vs Marines sets came out in 96 or so. I remember getting this set because I wanted the pulse rifle. Also had not seen a Vasquez before. These sat on the pegs probably except for the set I bought. 9.99 was a big outlay back then for toy set, especially mold reuse with just some paint changes. However this set was the best of the AvM 2 packs. The Night Cougar Alien was one of their top designs that looked feasible to find in an Alien film ( like the Scorpion Alien set)

Credit where it's due, this movie has a great looking chestburster. SWS pulled the edges of the mouth a bit further back in Aliens and ADI pulled them even more in Resurrection through AVP-R until it looked like a dinosaur.

Romulus' Chestburster is excellent. Like an evil little larval cherub, as it should be.

These figures are heading close towards being 30 years old now. For the time and place, for mass market release, the end result IMHO is pretty stunning. I had the Newborn, and while I hated the concept in the film, the paint aps were phenomenal for that era in our hobby. Also look at the generational leap from the Kenner Gorilla Alien to something like this.

Say what you will for Todd McFarlane. And his endless narcissism. But he changed the game for all of us as collectors. He had hit and misses, but he opened the door to what was possible in terms of high level detail (relatively) for that time.

The Alien/Aliens/AVP concepts are all basically huge merchandise cash cows. If you do it right, you can literally just starting printing money for yourself. It's why the more recent films are befuddling. Even if the film is mediocre, the potential for cool concepts to be made into merchandise was there. Just a 40 second scene of Idris Elba walking past all kinds of mechs, weapons, firepower, vehicles that couldn't be taken on the mission in Prometheus would have been legitimate merchandise/action figure fodder.

That's the other element to Romulus that often gets passed over in discussion, even by collectors. How much stuff in it are cool things that you want to buy if you can?

Kebron said:

I’m a little conflicted with this movie. I enjoyed it, but talking about it afterwards….its like a really good cover band. They play all the hits you like, even improve on some things the original band did. In the end you’re not listening to anything new, but you still had a good time.

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That's the director , See The Evil Dead remake. Typical Hollywood hack playing it safe for nostalgia ...

Solidus said:

I haven't seen this yet, but I was spoiled about the final scene in the film. At this point, I probably don't even care. Is the Slender Man Alien thing even inspired by any of Giger's designs? It's more reminiscent of a monster from Resident Evil, or Dead Space.

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ZE_501 said:

Been a while, but I've seen a lot of Giger's art, and there's not much there that recalls his work, IMO.

One of the more disturbing aspects of a lot of his pieces, was the blend of bleak, nightmarish imagery with *beauty* and eroticism (symmetry, elegant lines, sleek, bio-mechanical aesthetic mixed with darkness, predation, parasitism, death). It's what made it very unsettling.

Not all of it, certainly. But if I'm remembering correctly, it wasn't often he made something merely grotesque. His imagery generally carried other elements within it that made your psyche itch in unpleasant ways.

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it's very freaky and has a freaky body. pale white, but the face is dumb, it has human face and teeth. that did not work for me at all.
the human smile with teeth looked really silly.

also the actor playing the offspring is interesting looking lol..... I was, surprised
he's a little peculiar

I will say that as a minority Prometheus fan I did enjoy the miniscule (and somewhat confusing considering I don't know how anyone would know what Peter Weyland died looking for) reference. I agree that mystery is a great tool to a point. But for instance i was watching Quiet Place 3 and those creatures are tediousl and the opposite of scary at this point precisely because it's movie 3 and I know nothing more that I did in movie 1. At least I have a kind of ALIEN canon gumbo in the back of my head that I can speculate with while it doesn't necessaritly effect if the film in front of me is entertaining.
I don't know if any of that makes sense as I have not even had coffee yet.

Jmek said:

But we now live in a time where we’ve seen it and heard it all.

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If that's the case, there's literally no hope for humanity and we should just all end it now.

Sorry, but all you're doing by saying this is reenforcing the idiocy of the Hollywood system of greenlighting a movie.

If your sentence is true, we've hit the peak and there's nothing ahead. There's thousands of amazing, innovative scripts and stories out there that will never see the light of day, because sheeple keep going to these derivative movies and expecting nothing more than a bit of entertainment.

And, Hollywood is full of a bunch of kpi driven clowns that wouldn't know a good/original idea if it hit them in the face.

Just saw this and popped in here to how it was being received. And wow! Tough crowd!

This was the first time I've been in a movie theater since before the pandemic so maybe that added to the experience but I enjoyed it.
I wasn't expecting much after the cookie cutter trailer, which made it look like another "group of stupid kids in danger" cheap horror flick.

It tapped a little into all of the first four (& Prometheus] a bit, either with story elements or quick visual cues. It looked gorgeous and not cheap like so much Disney products do these days. The young cast was actually pretty good & the leading lady did not just turn into another "know-it-all, do-it-all" character that women seem to be in most H-wood flicks these days.

The only glaring misstep was bringing in a classic character via uncanny valley. The same story effect could have worked with a new character. It's just strange that after all the years that H-wood has been doing this, it still doesn't look right and just distracts.

I loved the world building & Fede has a great eye for composition. I recommend it if you're a fan of the series.

**** THIS MOVIE

Seriously like…

**** THIS MOVIE!

I initially said the same thing about Deadpool and Wolverine when I came out, but then I realized I wasn’t being fair to the movie because I was judging it based on my fantasy of what I wanted to see instead of judging the movie on its own merits and I reversed my review to be very positive about it, it did ITS OWN THING to perfection.

This movie WILL NOT be getting that reversal.

Saw it. Pretty good. Had all the elements you'd need.

Mandible said:

If that's the case, there's literally no hope for humanity and we should just all end it now.

Sorry, but all you're doing by saying this is reenforcing the idiocy of the Hollywood system of greenlighting a movie.

If your sentence is true, we've hit the peak and there's nothing ahead. There's thousands of amazing, innovative scripts and stories out there that will never see the light of day, because sheeple keep going to these derivative movies and expecting nothing more than a bit of entertainment.

And, Hollywood is full of a bunch of kpi driven clowns that wouldn't know a good/original idea if it hit them in the face.

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Whoa momma! Just to clarify you had two seminal movies in Alien and Aliens, movies like that don’t come around very often and are getting less likely to be produced.
The point I was trying to make is that there’s nothing wrong with something not being original, seminal or mind-blowing, just good is sometimes good enough.
You don’t like the movie, fine that’s your taste and the only critic you should listen to is yourself.
But calling the folks that do “sheeple” is a bit silly is it not?
And derivative? Alien nicked a whole heap of ideas from elsewhere as did Star Wars, as did Apocalypse Now as did Blade Runner etc.
Art feeds on itself and mutates into new forms and I’m sure something will come along eventually and blow or collective socks off.
But you’re dead right about Hollywood execs, most of them would’nt know a good script if it danced the fandango in day-glow draws in front of them.