Alien: Romulus

The things that annoy me about Aliens: Why would Ripley trust anything the Wayland Corp tell her.

Context?  She worked for the company and then was in cryo for years.  Why would she not trust her former employer?  We don’t find out – she doesn’t find out – that they’re shady until Burke locks her in with the facehugger.

In any case, she is sceptical.  Ahead of agreeing to the excursion she makes a point of asking, if we do this, we’re going to kill it, not to bring it back?

Why go all the way to Hadley with just a platoon of marines, why not take a Company?

What do you mean by a company?  Like an army?

The official narrative is that they don’t know what’s there, LV-426 is a colony which went dark.  The marines are self-proclaimed badasses, they’re arguably overkill even to take down one xenomorph.

Why do they all go down to the compound leaving no one on the Sulaco.

To do what?

Why do none of them wear the trackers that Hicks gives Ripley

Pass.  Are you sure they don’t?  Is the issue here perhaps that he had it at all when he wasn’t supposed to have (and if so, why?)

why doesn’t Gorman tell the Sergeant that they’re under a nuclear reactor,

He does, when it’s relevant.  It’s a plot point in itself that Gorman is incompetent and totally out of his depth.

Context?  She worked for the company and then was in cryo for years.  Why would she not trust her former employer?  We don’t find out – she doesn’t find out – that they’re shady until Burke locks her in with the facehugger.

Surely the fact that Ash was installed by the company and given orders by ‘Mother‘ (essentially the company) that sentenced the crew of the Nostromo as ‘Expendable‘ was a strong indicator that Weyland was at least a bit “shady“. They then gaslight her in the investigation, and take away her right to work…

She’s has it demonstrated that the company are a shower of bastards 70 odd years before the events of Aliens, and yet still trusts Burke on the basis of being back to LV 426 sent with some Marines, and the promise of her flight status being reinstated.

He’s right, she should definitely have known better. of course that wouldn’t have helped move the plot along though…

He’s right, she should definitely have known better. of course that wouldn’t have helped move the plot along though…

I dunno, it’s totally plausible Ripley thought the weyland corp were just ignorant/dismissive of the alien problem, especially with burke playing ‘good cop’, but of course it was all a ruse to obtain the alien DNA/embryo/whatever to use as a bio-weapon.

The bit where the entire entorage left the spaceship unmanned and in orbit is a bit of a plot hole though, it would be more realistic it there was a sleleton crew left on the ship that kept making up excuses as to why they coldn’t do an evac from the planet.

But then they wouldn’t have sent Burke down to the surface either, just the Marine squad with Ripley as advisor.

But then the plot mechanism of remote piloting the spare drop ship down to escape wouldn’t have worked.

Aliens is a sci-fi action film first and foremost, so some artistic licence is allowed…. I mean acid for blood, strong enough to melt through several floors? yeah that’s not exacly plausible either… but so what …?

Also…

There’s a couple of snappy lines

C’mon now its got more memorable quotes than most of the shwarzenneger films put together..

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/quotes/

 Why would she not trust her former employer?  We don’t find out

Ash tells her after they fight when she see the message – “Bring back specimen, all crew expendable” that mother tells her. Plus she’s deduced that Ash has been “protecting it all along”

What do you mean by a company?  Like an army?

A company is 4 platoons. They’re sending that giant warship all that way, it’s carrying all that ‘stuff’ and its got just 10 soldiers on it? What if they need more than that? Hadley has what? a thousand people in it? What’s a squad going to achieve?

To do what?

Anything they need to, if the group you send down to have a look see run into trouble/need backup. If you send down half your troops, they get into trouble and the drop ship is lost, that’s a problem, if ther’s no one on the ship, and everybody’s on the ground, that’s a disaster.

 It’s a plot point in itself that Gorman is incompetent and totally out of his depth.

That’s not a plot, that’s a cliché of every war movie

Anyway, Burke knows, or at least suspects, what’s happened, after all he’s the one telling them where to look for the alien spacecraft, and he’s read Ripley’s report so he knows what they’re dealing with, he’s not going to be going down to the surface with just 10 marines, he ain’t that stupid.

Oh no wait, apparently he is…

C’mon now its got more memorable quotes than most of the shwarzenneger films put together..

Bill Paxton was the best bit of casting for delivering those lines.

James Cameron had a habit of reusing whatever/whoever worked best back then…

He does, when it’s relevant.  It’s a plot point in itself that Gorman is incompetent and totally out of his depth.

I’ve long assumed that Burke (or Wayland-Yutani more generally) ensured that Gorman was assigned to the mission precisely because he was inexperienced and they assumed he would be easy to manipulate to their advantage.

The big ship, tiny squad thing is quite weird, beyond the meta reason of the squad being a good number of characters to have in the movie.

Why go all the way to Hadley with just a platoon of marines, why not take a Company?

The Tories austerity cuts to the armed forces.

Why do they all go down to the compound leaving no one on the Sulaco.

Save on life support until they return, it’s not like anyone is going to steal it.

Why do none of them wear the trackers that Hicks gives Ripley

Only management get those in case they get lost.

I quite like the idea of finding out where the Aliens came from & how they ended up on LV-426 but Ridley’s later life David is God obsession kinda ruined both those movies for me – especially the You blow & I’ll do the fingering line.

Save on life support until they return, it’s not like anyone is going to steal it.

Completley inplausible though.. the Sulaco is a gigantic* ship, there’s no way they’d just leave it floating abondoned in orbit, without at least a skeleton crew of flight crew and engineers… it makes no sense at all’ given Wayland wants some people to return, hopefully with an impregnated Ripley.

*edit, actually not that gigantic, https://alienanthology.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Sulaco

But it’s a hefty and expensive bit of kit, and if wayland wanted thier sample back, theres no way they’d just leave it un-manned.

I’ve long assumed that Burke (or Wayland-Yutani more generally) ensured that Gorman was assigned to the mission..

That does make sense actually. But I’ll stand by the point that you wouldn’t send the smallest unit out to situation that you know nothing about in that giant ship. That still makes no sense.

The marines are self-proclaimed badasses, they’re arguably overkill even to take down one xenomorph.

Oh, forgot this one. Ripley tells Burke that Kane had reported that he saw hundred of the eggs on the ship. So Burke knows its probably not just one they’re going to deal with.

 I don’t really know why the majority seem to be so down on Prom/Cov

I don’t like them because the cast are all idiots for no good reason and trying to explain the origins of the Xenemorph takes away the unknown element that makes them scary. Having them created by a mad android who plays the flute is a really shit origin that nobody wanted. Also Ridley Scott clearly didn’t watch his own film. The Space Jockey in Alien is massive. The engineers in Prometheus are just pasty basketball players with massive neck muscles.  The Space Jockey was best left as an elephant faced unexplained species too.

Terrible films on every level. Apart from “you blow and I’ll do the fingering” inadvertent comedy gold.

Pretty impressive Alien anime to keep you ticking over

I don’t like them because the cast are all idiots for no good reason

Covenant is the worst for that, no one would put such a bunch of clueless morons in charge of a trillion $ spaceship, with no plans or contingencies in place for anything

no one would put such a bunch of clueless morons in charge of a trillion $

I take it you’ve never worked for a large organisation, private or civil, then?

Romulus was the first ruler of Rome, clue’s in the name. I hope the title indicates that this will be the first film in the franchise where the xenomorph wins and just kills everybody.

Either that or it’s a metaphorical wolf and someone ends up suckling from it.

Completley inplausible though.. the Sulaco is a gigantic* ship, there’s no way they’d just leave it floating abondoned in orbit, without at least a skeleton crew of flight crew and engineers…

Isn’t it kind of established in the first film that interplanetary space craft like the Sulaco or Nostromo only really need humans for the mundane bits at either end of a given journey, tightening up bolts, landing on planets that sort of thing. ‘Mother‘ is quietly in charge of any ship’s functions.

Send the crew down, if they all die the Sulaco will just ping a signal back to base when they’re overdue and is eventually ordered home and/or a second vessel is sent.

I reckon the logic stacks up fine, and is consistent with the wider Alien cinematic universe, i.e. humans are treated as expendable by big organisations…

Point of order, It’s MU-TH-UR not Mother.

Anyway.  This sounds promising:

https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/sci-fi-movies/alien-romulus-director-reveals-he-wanted-his-movie-to-look-like-ridley-scotts-original-fede-alvarez-interview-exclusive/

Oh, forgot this one. Ripley tells Burke that Kane had reported that he saw hundred of the eggs on the ship. So Burke knows its probably not just one they’re going to deal with.

I love Aliens, but the plot is holier than Rome, the whole movie was about having a proper shoot em up and war style stuff, the Sulaco thing was always annoying, why not more synthetics to staff the sulaco, in case of any issues with cryo or losing connection and so on, it was all a plot vehicle to have them have to send Bishop away on a big chase, then last minute save with the drop ship and so on.

Kind of reminds me a bit of the current Deadpool movie, the plot is there to support and stitch together the action, rather than the other way around, and it works for the audience it was made for perfectly.

Whereas it seems odd to me that we’ve developed interstellar travel and somehow a major sticking plot device is that there is no-one around to push buttons on a ship presumably ~60 years newer than the Nostromo which had a fully functioning AI.  Why should it need staffing at all?

It’s a convoy ship.  Fly through space, rescue colonists (hopefully one impregnated with a xenomorph but don’t tell anyone), fly back through space, profit.  We have Redundancy and High Availability in systems today.  What’s a synthetic going to do whilst they’re away, shove the Hoover around?

Aliens is different from Alien in this regard.  Everyone on that ‘rescue’ mission, with the exceptions arguably of Ripley and Burke, were expendable.  The most important things were the alien and the Sulaco itself because Corporate Greed.

I feel a rewatch of the series coming on. ?

Maybe the Sulaco was sent with a relatively small crew as there was a possibility that the colonists would need evacuating and thus a sizeable craft required?

The bigwigs would know that was unlikely but the fiction of the mission had to be portrayed. If a whole company of marines – currently 243 persons – were sent then the Xenomorphs would almost certainly have been defeated/eliminated. A squad as shown in the film was enough to seem reasonable for a “rescue mission” but probably small enough to not win a battle against the number of Aliens likely to be extant from the colonists.

The colony was deliberately placed, or at least placed on a planet which the Corporation knew was a nest-site for the xenomorph. The squad wasn’t sent as an actual rescue mission, but ultimately sent to fail, but with the aim of retreating with ‘infected’ colonists, Ripley, or marines in cryosleep.

I’ve watched all the alien movies, the predator movies and the alien pred movies.

not really a fan of this director and as teaser trailer it’s done nothing to make me want to watch this at the cinema. Really disappointed, but I’ sadly expect the movie will disappoint when I do see it. I do however really hope I’m wrong & it’s brilliant. At least they’ve stopped flogging the Prometheus Fassbender storyline now, that should have been much better than it was.

the pred movies stand the test of time better than the alien series.

I feel a rewatch of the series coming on. ?

In Alien-Universe chronological order or in release date order?

the pred movies stand the test of time better than the alien series.

That’s because there are only two of them, and they are what they are…  …pure 80’s/90’s cheese… unless you mean the ‘other ones’ which are best forgotten, just like the ‘other’ aliens films.

In Alien-Universe chronological order or in release date order?

The 1-4 Alien movies don’t differ here.  Beyond that, eh.  I’ve little desire to watch/rewatch the AvP franchise, Prometheus I should probably revisit at some point now that sufficient time has passed for me to be not cross about it.

I rewatched Alien a couple of days ago.  Honestly, it was better than I remember but my god there’s a lot of plodding.

That’s because there are only two of them, and they are what they are…  …pure 80’s/90’s cheese…

I also watched Prey for the first time last week, on the back of this thread.

It’s flawed, yes.  But it’s a good film, I enjoyed it.  The lead actress played a good part.

The colony was deliberately placed, or at least placed on a planet which the Corporation knew was a nest-site for the xenomorph. The squad wasn’t sent as an actual rescue mission, but ultimately sent to fail, but with the aim of retreating with ‘infected’ colonists, Ripley, or marines in cryosleep.

Hence being led under the command of a very inexperienced Lieutenant. Had they been a larger group, a company say under a Major or Colonel, he might have arrived, decided the colonists were fubar,and retreated back to the mother ship to nuke the entire site from orbit.

Honestly, it was better than I remember but my god there’s a lot of plodding.

I think you’ll find that’s called pacing. Modern movies made for the TicToc generation have to have something happening everything 30 seconds otherwise they loose concentration and start to fiddle with their phones

Sorry, what? (-:

I understand pacing, this isn’t my first movie.  But it could do with a trim.  IIRC the ‘director’s cut’ actually removed scenes to improve the pacing.  (I’m not 100% certain which version I just rewatched.)

Yeah, the directors version cut some of the slower panning shots to make way for the inserted scenes, I think there’s only a couple minutes difference. Thing is, Scott’s on record saying that he did it to make the film more to the tastes of modern audiences, and he prefers the original. #ismynerdshowing

Ah, ultimately though, who cares? It’s a great film whichever version it is. It’s one of those films that if you stumble across it on the telly, you feel compelled to watch a bit, even though you can recite the lines along with the characters and its way past your bedtime.

Scott’s on record saying that he did it to make the film more to the tastes of modern audiences, and he prefers the original. #ismynerdshowing

(-: That I didn’t know.

I know Aliens way better.  It’s one of those films I could broadly write out the dialogue from the entire script from memory.

I know it’s a contentious opinion but I prefer Aliens to Alien, yet I prefer The Terminator to T2.  Most people I speak with seem to either prefer both originals or both sequels.  Maybe it simply boils down to which I saw first?

Both Aliens & The Terminator have a very 80s aesthetic so they have that in common!

I’d say Alien was the “better” film, once you’ve seen it and know the plot twists though, it loses out to the sequel in terms of re-watchability as the latter is a (brilliantly done) straight-up action film.

The Terminator is just better than T2 full stop.

Both Aliens & The Terminator have a very 80s aesthetic so they have that in common!

Honestly, that might well be it. (-:

Shouldn’t be surprised, but forgot to look until flicking through channels, Ressurection on itv4 now.

Just seen the new film 🙂

I liked…..

Covenant just started on Film4, if you feel life as an Alien fan, is no longer worth living. 😉

Just seen the new film 🙂

liked…..

Me too. Bloody ace.

Visually pleasing. All the franchise tropes on display and used to good effect. Gritty.

Expands a touch on Weylands ‘Prometheus’ vision.  Any development in the Xenomorph Wiki is interesting.

It’s not bad technically. But it suffers from a few things I hate most about modern cinema. 1. Fan service and 2. Lack or originality 3. It lets the audience get ahead of the plot.