Alien: Romulus - Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead) to write/direct

Werewolf said:
1: So was Alien in terms of actor numbers, and even the actual age of the primary cast - but these are meant to be young adults (mid 20's) stuck on a planet that won't let them leave, basically change in language since the 70's.
It's worth noting that doing a bit of a dive in the alien lore, the main character is about the same age that Ripley was when Ripley signed onto the Nostromo, but different background.

2 They were workers on a planet that did mining, one of them was a pilot for the company and the space craft can't do 9 light years without substances and equipment the company controls extremely carefully normally (hence the trip to the abandoned ship/station) at least with a live crew, not to mention the whole thing the company that owns the spaceship also basically owns the planet and everything on it so normally any misuse of the equipment would get you in such serious trouble "security" for the space ship is not a question. IIRC the likes of large passenger aircraft in real life also have little in the way of anti theft measures, as the fact they're at a secured airport is enough (and the pilots can disable them enough to stop someone who doesn't know what they're doing from starting them). Even military fighter aircraft that are armed usually have at most a symbolic lock, as the real anti theft deterrent is the number of armed security around it.

3: The aliens come fast or slow depending on situation, they're stalking hunters a lot of the time when they are unsure of the threat level or are trying to be stealthy whilst their numbers are slow, also as you say they messed with gravity if you're unaware that's going to happen and get caught out you're very much stuck unless you can basically throw/squirt something or "swim" against the air.

4: fair, but that's often the case if you've seen enough films of a similar type.
a: IIRC you sweat to try and cool down as your normal skin cooling isn't enough, once you hit about 30c ambient you tend to struggle to cool down, so having the room at skin temperature is going to cause you to sweat as you and the room are now the same temperature.
b: I think I remember a couple of scenes similar to that from the other films, the alien doesn't always kill and will often prefer to injure/capture the prey alive to increase the hive, and in the other films that's shown to have given people a chance to do something.
c: a little lame, but a call back to Alien and one of the only ways you can kill/deal with a xenomorph without access to weapons - find a way to get the environment to do it (or at least incapacitate it). In Alien Ripley got it out the airlock and tried to fry it, in Aliens 3 they set an elaborate trap.
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thanks appreciate the commentary. Maybe I need to watch the original again since its been quite awhile (I watched aliens just last week to get ready for this one). Makes sense what you said; next time I watch it perhaps I want be so judgemental and perhaps wrong on some of my assessments.
 
Werewolf said:
It's worth noting that doing a bit of a dive in the alien lore, the main character is about the same age that Ripley was when Ripley signed onto the Nostromo, but different background.
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It's one of the odd effects of the modern age, either people nowadays look far younger than their age, or alternatively people 40-50 years ago looked far older than their age, as this kind of shows. It's a well recognised thing apparently - https://www.boredpanda.com/past-young-people-look-older/
 
ianh said:
It's one of the odd effects of the modern age, either people nowadays look far younger than their age, or alternatively people 40-50 years ago looked far older than their age, as this kind of shows. It's a well recognised thing apparently - https://www.boredpanda.com/past-young-people-look-older/
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Yup, I remember reading stuff about that in the past, IIRC it's basically partly down to how we associate certain styles etc.

It's weird when you realise that there are actors you put at being in their 40's or 50's when they were 30 or so because of things like their dress and hair styles, or how so many actors from say the 60's seemed to look around "50" for 40+ years.
It throws me when I'm watching some older films and recognise actors from stuff they did 30 years later and they basically look the same (I go look when the film was made and go "WHAT!")
 
ianh said:
It's one of the odd effects of the modern age, either people nowadays look far younger than their age, or alternatively people 40-50 years ago looked far older than their age, as this kind of shows. It's a well recognised thing apparently - https://www.boredpanda.com/past-young-people-look-older/
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It is a weird one, relevant to that article - a lot of my school friends are now at the point where their kids are getting married, etc. and putting pictures on Facebook, etc. and they look so young at ~19 compared to the pictures of my parent's generation wedding photos at a similar age. I'm twice the age now my dad was when I was born and I still feel like I look younger than he did then!
 
8.5/10

I thought this was really good.
Much better than I expected from the reviews and the comments here.
Saw in Imax last night.

It borrowed from all 4 films but made a new film.
It wasn't trying to be clever and change things.
It was a new film based on old original stuff.. And that's exactly what I wanted.

Best film since alien 3 imo. And a nice addition to that trilogy.

I appreciate the use of physical effects.


I've never seen an alien film in cinema before, and the Imax definitely helped!
 
Rifte said:
Saw it in IMAX yesterday, and both me and the missus liked it.

Was it as good as Alien and Aliens? No...

However after the average at best to dire outings we have had since 1986 this felt like a return to form.
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Agreed.
I loved alien (1) but I find as I've watched it once I can't really rewatch it and get the same 1st time feel. Aliens is more rewatchable. I think this will be too.
 
Just got back from seeing it, feeling rather whelmed.

On the good side it was more Aliens, more lore and some good explanations of how certain things have come to be etc. I watched Prometheus and Covenant this week and there were good nods to all films. As well as Alien Isolation.

In fact this film might as well have been called Alien not-so Isolated.

On the down side I could not (there you go @VincentHanna :D) care less about the characters, aside from Andy. In either guise, he was likeable or sensible but after he returned to simple Andy he seemed to gain 100 IQ points which was a bit jarring.

As for Fede's take, I think he got lost in fan service purgatory and that overtook the ability to tell an original story. The result was a very formulaic one girl and her synthetic type story, which in the process of telling undid the ending of Alien, possibly Aliens and Covenant.

5.5/10
 
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Oh Ed not again. said:
On the down side I could care less about the characters, aside from Andy. In either guise, he was likeable or sensible but after he returned to simple Andy he seemed to gain 100 IQ points which was a bit jarring.
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Andy still retained the O/S upgrades, but no longer had Rooks personality chip thing over-riding his directive.

By the way "could care less" is the American way of saying "Couldn't care less".

It makes no sense the way they say it, because if you could care less, then it means you do care somewhat.

If you couldn't care less, you are already at the lowest point that you can care about something.
 
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VincentHanna said:
Andy still retained the O/S upgrades, but no longer had Rooks personality chip thing over-riding his directive.

By the way "could care less" is the American way of saying "Couldn't care less".

It makes no sense the way they say it, because if you could care less, then it means you do care somewhat.

If you couldn't care less, you are already at the lowest point that you can care about something.
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Fair, was tired/on mobile when I typed that. Should have checked that garbage, gotten myself into a state there. /runs
 
IvanDobskey said:
Copy pasting scenes and dialogue from the original is pretty creatively bankrupt in my opinion.

Alien Romulus is guilty of this atrocity too.

It's a hard pass from me.
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Good thing about multiquote, is you can quote posts from other threads.

Re: Alien Romulus. I listened to a spoiler special interview with the director.

"Get away from her you bitch" wasn't in the shooting script but the director asked the actor playing Andy to say it on the day, but with a stutter. The actor did not want to do it, but eventually had to relent and that's the take they used!

Using a similar scene of 'Rain' getting in a spacesuit did feel pointless though.
 
A few bits like that didn't have any convincing development behind them which was a shame, I guess the premise was mining ships were coming and going all the time but still it sticks out.

I thought it was about as good as we are going to get short of something revolutionary, the themes and motifs which were a nod to Alien and Aliens were good, reusing quotes from those movies though I'm not a fan of, just far too on the nose.
 
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