Alien: Romulus

I think it’s always going to be awkward as Alien sort of created the genre so it’s going to be hard to come up with something new.

I wasn’t old enough to see it at the cinema as I was too young :-), it was released as an X so you had to be 18+ but that would have been great to see in the cinema.

(Alien was also pretty low budget and they basically went to a scrappy that had lots of airplane parts and built the flight set out of that which made it realistic)

I can’t wait to watch it again on streaming 🙂

I’m officially Excited about this now. It might have to be my first cinema trip in about five years.

There’s a multi-page spread in this month’s SFX. Their editorials are always positive even if the film gets a shit review later in the same issue, but that said it sounds like they couldn’t have done a better job. Half of the crew are the originals from either Alien or Aliens, some dragged out of retirement. It’s pitched between the first two films, so they’ve tried to make it look as if it was filmed between those two movies to a point where they’ve dug out the original 35mm print of Alien to do frame-by-frame comparisons.

Early days always skew numbers, but it’s the highest-rated Alien film on Rotten Tomatoes aside from Alien(s).

It got a bit of a kicking in the Guardian film review*

I am still going to see it next week.

*this is sometimes a good sign 🙂

It got a bit of a kicking in the Guardian film review*

I am still going to see it next week.

*this is sometimes a good sign 🙂

It’s nearly always a good sign, who gives a toss what the Grauniad thinks about SF movies. FWIW, the people behind Alien: Romulus had a lot of help from people who worked on the first two movies, and they were determined to use physical effects, rather than digital, for fairly obvious reasons. There are a great many connections between the three movies, quite apart from Romulus sitting between the other two in the timeline, there’s an actual character connection, with the character Rook, for example, as well as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Quite looking forward to it, I took my then girlfriend to see Alien on its first release – she spent most of the film with her hands over her eyes… ?

It got a bit of a kicking in the Guardian film review

But also not a kicking…..Graun film reviews a bit schizo between different reviewers. Bit puzzled about the 4 * in this review as doesn’t quite up match with the text.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/18/alien-romulus-review-thrillingly-gruesome-new-instalment-gets-a-shot-of-young-blood

One’s a review from the Guardian film critic; the other is from the Observer.

But yep, it can be frustrating. Much like any Alien franchise film after Alien, to be fair.

I watched it yesterday and really enjoyed it.   Felt closer to the original Alien film in atmosphere.

I never read the reviews.

This looks good if you have VR! https://youtu.be/PY2YqgDUvFk

Watched it earlier with 16 y/o son. I liked it a lot, he absolutely loved it!

Milking the cash cow or in Hollywood speak reaching a new audience, something something reimagined.

With that being said I will most likely go and see it 😀

TBH Alien was about 44 years ago which is mad and they did wait 7 years till doing the first sequel so it’s pretty old .

I don’t mind the prometheus stuff but it’s a bit too weird compared to the original  and similar to the Star Wars prequels when people just wanted to see more Han,leia and  Luke but got jar-jar-binks.

I can confirm that I will be seeing this film on the coming Wednesday. My friends and I are now discussing the pros and cons of iMax vs. normal screen. It looks like the more comfy seats in the normal screen is winning right now.

I thought it was great, would recommend!

I went to see this movie last night, I enjoyed it, big fan of the first two, pretending the next 17ish didn’t get made. Anyway:

Some notes. No slow warm up into the action, which was a virtue of Alien/s.  Painful exposition, whap straight up there for the monsters.  Which I get, tik tok generation 15 seconds to get people interested.  Very derivative of The Expanse in the early stages but that’s not a bad thing SF by it’s very nature is derivative.

Lots of vaginas. Just saying.

Also, sorry spoilers but it’s been out a couple of weeks now, I think they cut away a bit when the baby/xenomorph went for his mother, breastfeeding surely? Too much nip for a 15 rating?

But aye good film, jump scares might work if you haven’t seen the first two and know what is happening.

Also to finish,  the female protagonist was super bland, I blame Taylor Swift,  can we have some more grr please? You get it’s all about angry women and childbirth yes?

Well, saw it.

I have to say that I think the cinema experience has really changed since I last went about 8 years ago. This was a “luxe” screen, but even then I did not expect so few seats with such large leg room and the reclining backs & footrests. So, for that alone, nice!

Film-wise: It’s an Aliens film. I love the aesthete of it, the dirt, the old/new technology, the sound design, the music. Many nods to the original two/three films (maybe a bit too much fanfic nodding) and I approve of the casting choice of essentially unknown actors, but it does make the film seem a bit “young adult” and, if I am honest, for an environment where people are allegedly indentured and worked to death, they are a bit clean and healthy.

BUTT… It’s not a bad film. I enjoyed it despite the things that made me doubt the reality of the Alien universe in some places (timelines, etc). Overall, worth a watch. I also ate enough pic n’ mix to nearly go into diabetic shock

I really enjoyed it but agree with lots of reviews that the last 15mins could do with a re-write or mostly adding to the virtual cutting room floor.

BUTT… It’s not a bad film

It kinda is though, the first 20minutes or so makes no sense. There are flashes of innovation, but the 2nd act is almost entirely fan service and the direction it takes in the 3rd act is just there to shoehorn in some of the Prometheus/Covenant story-lines, and in of itself is bonkers, and while that can be good, in this case it’s not really.

Agree the sound scape and sets are great, and at the end of the day – more alien. Not my favourite, but I can see why it’s getting generally good press.

The inclusion of the Prometheus stuff was odd. I thought that even Ridley Scott had said that Prometheus was an alternate timeline/universe, so the inclusion by Ash/Rook of that bit was odd to say the least. It also bugs me that, if that is now true, why is ll the tech in Alien/Romulus/Aliens/Alien3 so shit and old compared to the holographic loveliness of Prometheus/Covenant?

One point my friend brought up was that, compared to Alien, Romulus seemed hectic. Alin had a single thread that tied te whole film together, building slowly to the finale with flashes of events that were all part of the build. Romulus had more, more distinct events that made the whole film feel like someone had tried to cram too much into a single film. I agree that this made it seem hurried and a little chaotic, but would just the “Go to station, get in trouble, leave station” part have made a compelling film on its own, with a second film expanding on the [cut] bit about the baby?

The fan service stuff seems to be ‘the thing’ now for classic IP. I dislike it, but it does make the film happen I guess. A shame it stifles really innovative creative writing and screenplay (or seems to).

Why didn’t they stop after Aliens? Because money.

Prometheus was the biggest letdown of my cinema going lifetime.

Covenant was laughably terrible.

At least they gave us a couple of great Pitch Meetings though.

Still, much to my surprise, some people on here seem to like Romulus so I’ll give it a go.

I saw it last night with my 20yo daughter – she’s seen Alien and Aliens in the cinema, so knows the theme. She enjoyed it, said it was scary. I thought it was such a bland, throwaway film that I’m not sure I’ll remember it next week. She said maybe it’s because it’s better if you treat it as a stand-alone film, but then that doesn’t work with all the fan-references to earlier films – Get away from her, you bitch, Ian Holm and all that.

Somebody above said it seemed aimed at a YA audience, and that felt about right – everything was too simplistic, too Marvel-like. I’m amazed that Rain didn’t start doing Marvel style chop-fuey on the aliens. Common sense and internal logic was thrown out whenever a good set-piece was deemed necessary. And the fact that they needed a constant narration of what’s happening was really poor, That either means that the plot makes no sense – it didn’t – or the storyteller doesn’t trust the audience.

Sad that this may be the last Alien film I go to the cinema to watch. Most of the others had something good about them – this was just meh. You shouldn’t get bored in a film like this, especially one this short.

Seeing it at w/e. Will report back…

Someone showed me the social media wanksters “guerrilla marketing” expecting me to be impressed. I’m not going now.

This load of American look-at-me errugh sick in my mouth cringe tossers

Just saw on SM the actor who played ‘The Offspring’ – Robert Bobroczkyi – 2.31m (7’7″) tall.

Not been to see the film yet.

Saw it. Crap.

No need to expound upon it when Ryan George does it so much better.

Enjoyable actioney romp.

im sure there’s still scope for sequels.

but I miss the more cerebral themes of Prometheus and covenant.

I actually thought it would pick up right where David left off in covenant.

I liked it. Not great, but worth seeing on the big screen for sure.

This day & age it seems there are some folk who have too much time to overthink things, be very critical & yet offer nothing up themselves.

Yep, i liked it….big fan of the originals but went in with open mind, didn’t overthink it, didn’t try to pick holes in it and came out happy

Watched it on Thursday night. Enjoyed it and thought it was one of the better films since the original two. Definitely a step in the right direction and the third act was a bit of a surprise. Still not sure if I liked it to be honest but the first two acts were great in my opinion. Describing Prometheus and Covenant as cerebral is a bit of a stretch. They were two of the dumbest films in the entire franchise.

3rd best Alien film.  Good fun.  Best not to overthink the plot.

Worst part is Andy yelling “Get away from her you bitch” for no real reason – I thought the other nods to the franchise mostly made sense and weren’t overly in your face, but that just seemed to be there to get excitable Yanks whooping at the screen.

It’s a movie about aliens in space.

Amazes me that people get so **** high-brow about this sort of thing.

I imagine they’re also really fun at parties.

Thumbs up from me. Well worth the ticket price. Scary, fun with sufficient nods to the other films.

Nah, felt like the aliens were phoning it in to be honest. Threat was there, but not visceral.