*** ALIEN ROMULUS *** (Spoilers)

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TCTTS
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So we don't ruin the movie in the other thread for those who haven't seen it yet...
TCTTS
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From LB12Diamond in the other thread...

Quote:

Anyway, I don't really get that part or how they had face huggers on the ship if that were the case. Makes no sense.

Here's what I've gathered from reddit (which is just a sample)...

Quote:

I read it as kind of the opposite. Xenos don't come from black goo, black goo comes from Xenos.
Rook was able to harvest black goo from Big Chap, like DNA.
This had the genetic data in it to create Facehuggers.
He also "distilled" it into the black goo what was supposed to jump start human evolution.
I viewed it as the black goo being part of the Xenos genetic make up that makes it so adaptable. Engineers, David, and now Rook, have all extracted this compound for various uses.
Quote:

Considering there's a whole Xenomorph mural in Prometheus black goo room, yeah.
The chicken comes first here.
Quote:

So my take and the take i think they were trying to convey was that the black goo came from the Xeno. They found big chap and were able to reverse engineer it by taking samples of its DNA which was the black goo. Which is shown in better exaple when they get to the Romulus lab and the facehuggers in the water tank are all hooked up to IV's which are sucking out the 'non newtonian fluid' black goo.

As to where the facehuggers came from and why they are different, when Tyler, Bjorn and Andy go to the cryo fuel room where they first encounter the facehuggers there is a panning shot with what looked like either an egg or a facehugger being 3d printed to me, but basically since theyve got the black goo from big chap they have been able to manipulate it to create huggers similar to how David did in covenant.
Quote:

The station was cloning them to drain the black goo from them. We see a screen with an image of a Facehugger with "printing" flashing on it and a device in the flooded lab with a half-built Facehugger in what looks like a sci-fi 3D printer.
Later, the tank in the 2nd lab seems to have tubes running from the tank full of Facehuggers into a big tank of the black goo, and Rook explains that they derived both the Facehuggers and the black goo from Big Chap's DNA.
Basically, Big Chap's DNA seems to have given W/Y the information on Facehuggers and the black goo, then they used this to clone the Facehuggers on a massive scale and in turn to develop the black goo serum for human use.
Quote:

I didn't feel like this film was confirming that ALL xenos came directly from the black goo since the beginning of time. Just that that's one way they can be brought into existence. After all, they procreate in multiple different ways - a queen laying eggs, a drone creating eggs out of human victims, etc. - just like some real life species.

As far as I'm aware, the expanded lore that has essentially unified the franchise at this point has left things somewhat vague.
As of right now it's basically a chicken or the egg type scenario. Did the Engineers create the xenos via black goo experiements? Or was the black goo whipped up out of extracted elements of the xenos, and in return the xenos' building blocks can be found in the goo. The latter seems to be the direction things are leaning. At any rate, it seems clear that they originated long before Rook, Ash, David, Peter Weyland, or anyone else in the 20th/21st centuries was around.
I would be shocked if Fede was unaware of all of this, considering the dude seems to seriously know his **** when it comes to this franchise.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/1euafn3/spoilers_questions_about_the_lore_now_that_ive/
LB12Diamond
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Can you please move all of the other spoiler statements from the other posters to this thread. LOL

You know, when you act like this. It's not a good look. But I assume this is not the first time so others are probably used to it.

TCTTS
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Dude. I'm literally just looking out for my fellow posters.

You're the one who seemingly doesn't give a **** about spoiling them.

That, and I not only created a spoiler thread, I went out of my way to research/answer your question.

And your response is to say "It's not a good look"/take personal digs at me?

Seriously?
LB12Diamond
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Dude

You have got to be kidding me

Why Are you just ignoring other posters posts with spoilers to justify your stance.

So the other thread is basically supposed to just be a liked it or did not like it discussion now based on your rules. LOL. That sucks
LB12Diamond
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And as far as the chicken or egg thing

That's sucks as well

Just as bad as marvel doing multiverse.

Allows them to do whatever they like without solid planning or things making sense.
TCTTS
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It's not based on "my rules." That's literally how we've been treating every thread for every major blockbuster for the last decade+ if not more, with next to no problems/pushback. I'm sorry you've somehow inexplicably missed that, but it's not out of some ego trip on my part. It's been an agreed upon, board-wide practice that damn near every one has adhered to so people don't get spoiled. Why are you so against that? Why are you seemingly so hell bent on not giving a **** if you ruin someone's movie-going experience?
TCTTS
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LB12Diamond
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You are still missing my point. They had tons of face huggers. Face huggers come from eggs. That come from a Queen. No Queen in this one but tons of face huggers.

Here's what they did. Decided to place a move between Alien and Aliens as far as the time frame. Most likely bc those were the two best.

Wanted lots of face huggers for all those cool scenes with tons of face huggers chasing them.

Wanted the original Alien in the movie for whatever reason. Probably bc they could not go to the planet and just get eggs from there bc that would mess up Aliens. And they brought back original copy of artificial person. Most likely bc he was such a sold f up that caused major problems in Alien. Wanted lots of nostalgia.

Again it was a fun movie. Not scary at all. And the inter weaving of everything together was a mess.
TCTTS
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I'm not "still missing your point." Granted, your post is damn near incoherent, but the above tweet had nothing to do with you, and was more a follow up to the black goo aspect of the conversation I posted earlier.

That said, Alien: Romulus is now, obviously, franchise canon. Not only is it produced by Ridley Scott, but he contributed ideas to it/signed off on the concepts presented in it. And in the movie, the existence of facehuggers no longer requires a queen to lay/hatch them. Weyland-Yutani has since figured out how to essentially 3D print facehuggers, as is clearly evident in the lab scene. You can ***** about the implementation of the idea all you want, but "Face huggers come from eggs. That come from a Queen" is no longer a factual statement in the canon of this franchise. They updated the science.
Cinco Ranch Aggie
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Regarding the origination of the eggs, the original Alien did not speak to that at all. Aliens introduced the Queen in a move that, biologically, makes sense. But Alien had a deleted scene that gives evidence that the species is not dependent on an egg layer for its propagation.



This scene contains imagery that we would see front-and-center in Aliens, with alien prey embedded into the secretions the critter cast over the walls and ceiling. It also shows the remains of Brett transforming into an egg, with Dallas intended as the host for this developing face hugger. The process is not fully explained - does not need such explanation.

What we see in Alien Romulus speaks to Weyland-Yutani having an ability to create face huggers through a process that seemed related to the black goo in Prometheus. On the surface, I don't have a problem with that, but it seems that it does have an impact on the canon. The canon includes Alien Resurrection - a story set 200+ years into the future where WY has developed several clones on Ellen Ripley in an attempt to obtain an alien Queen. If the Company had the ability to create face huggers in the years between Alien and Aliens, they why would they need to clone Ripley to obtain a Queen? Do they not have an ability to save data in this future (which undoubtedly would have been done on that space station from Alien Romulus, with that data likely backed up to Company servers back on Earth). Perhaps that's the kind of question best left unasked in movies like this.
h1ag
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Did anyone else expect the black goo to affect the pregnant girl by turning her into something like a proto-queen? Seeing the mouse transform into something resembling a mini deformed xenomorph had me convinced that's what we were getting instead of a birthing scene.

Zero basis in alien lore that I know of, but that's where my mind went.
Cinco Ranch Aggie
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I'll share some more of my thoughts on Alien Romulus.

I loved the attention to detail. As an example, many of the display monitors were images we saw in Alien aboard the Nostromo. Fan service, probably, but the use of these display images makes sense given the space station would have been as the same vintage as the Nostromo, with similar systems installed.

Another example. If you look closely in many scenes in Alien, you will see iconography on walls or panels. These were designed by Ron Cobb, and they spoke to real life issues - such as airlock or hazard/warning (which was what younger me always thought was the Purina Dog Chow logo).



Ridley Scott is a stickler for details like that. Blade Runner is chock full of similar details. And so is Alien Romulus.

The line of dialogue stolen from Aliens was eye-rolling to me, but my 18-year-old seemed to cheer it on at that point in the movie. That was definitely fan service, but gee, the robot character could not have known about it since Ripley hadn't actually said it yet. Just an example of ultimately harmless fan service, nothing more and not a reason to hate on the movie.

I loved the inclusion of an "artificial person" who bore a strong resemblance to Ian Holm's Ash. I suppose this was another example of fan service, but I'd argue that it makes a bit of sense as the Company quite likely produced different models of robots with similar facial features. I also found it interesting that his name was Rook. The android in Aliens was Bishop, who might have been named after a real person. But I love the naming just for the chess theme.

I believe I already spoke to this on the other thread, but I really enjoyed the look on life on one of the Company's outposts, with all the technology seen visibly working as intended. It was a look at how Hadley's Hope in Aliens might have looked had Cameron spent half an hour showing all of that - he did have some deleted sequences that included a bit of this type of footage, but for Alien Romulus, we got the whole thing.

Something else that I mentioned in the other thread that I really liked - the opening sequence where a Company ship has been dispatched to locate the remains of the Nostromo. I'm not sure why I was so pleased to see this, other than perhaps confirming a long-time thought I had that the alien from the first movie was not dead simply because it was blasted out of the life boat's engines. It actually might poke some holes in dialogue from Aliens (the inquisition sequence in the Company board room). I'd be curious to read others' takes on this. Alien Romulus seems to imply that Big Chap (the original alien) was cocooned in some kind of chrysalis and that, once freed, it wreaks havoc on the crew of the space station just as it did with the crew of the Nostromo. So the Company in Aliens time has no knowledge of the alien? Perhaps it goes back to the issue I pointed out with data being stored, or perhaps it's a compartmentalization of such data that only the very top executives know of it?

The hybrid alien/human - meh. I didn't like it in Alien Resurrection, and I didn't particularly like it in Alien Romulus either. The sequence was done well, but I guess I just don't like the idea of it. Yes, the alien grows quickly, in mere hours. But this thing was born one moment, and in the next moment was far larger than its human mother. I had read some of the quotes about the movie in the days before it was released, and was curious what could happen that would be considered "divisive". Then when watching it, when the mother character announces her pregnancy, I had an inkling of what would come. I didn't let that color my opinion of what I was watching. I did tell my 18-year-old, who was surprised by that development in the movie, that it was an Alien movie - of course it would have some additional sequence when you think it's over. Alien did it aboard the life boat. Aliens did it with the Queen on the Sulaco. Alien Resurrection did it with its alien/human hybrid. Prometheus did it with the Engineer attacking Elizabeth Shaw on the life boat. And Alien Covenant did it with the alien getting aboard the Covenant at the end.

One other thought that I have here is about the idea of a series of Alien movies. Alien is a lot like Jaws. It really should have been a one-film-and-done idea. I don't care who the filmmaker is, but there is no way they could ever hope to capture the sheer terror of Ridley Scott's initial film. Even he couldn't do so in Alien Covenant. We know what the critter looks like, we know what it can do, and frankly, it just is no longer scary. My wife disagreed with that statement, but I stand by it. And I say this as one who suffered nightmares for years after seeing the original movie (even many, many years later, on occasion I would wake up from a dream about that ****ing monster). Alien 3 was the last movie in this series where there were some shots that were legit scary (although like Aliens, Alien 3 as a movie was not particularly scary). Cameron avoided this issue largely by making his movie an action movie, but to his credit he did pack in a couple of sequences that I considered frightening on 18-July-1986 when I first saw it. But then you get Alien Resurrection, the first film where the aliens were basically cartoonish monsters. Alien Covenant avoided the cartoonish monster aspect, but nothing in that movie was remotely scary. But, when Alien made the kind of money it made, and then Aliens did likewise, I suppose more sequels were inevitable.

So was Alien Romulus a great movie? Overall, I'd say not really. It was definitely a worthy addition to the Alien movie series, but that last act holds it back from getting into the same stratosphere as the first two films. I might try to get back to the theater to see it again. 20 years ago, I would have already seen it 2-3 times, but these days I just don't have time. And couple that with how quickly movies become available on video, I'm usually content to just see a film once and then wait for the video release.

My current ranking:
Alien
Aliens
Prometheus
Alien Romulus
Alien Covenant
Alien 3
Alien Resurrection
LB12Diamond
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I understand what they're saying how they created face huggers. Just don't like it bc, again they come from eggs.

They could have figured out a way for them to find eggs.

TC I see you are a sensitive soul. Hopefully that's not to incoherent for you to understand.

Just bc you don't like someone's stance does not mean it's incoherent or incorrect. Something that's is clear you struggle with.

There does not need to be two threads for a movie once it's released. It's nothing like a movie or series that's also has a book following. Those clearly need two threads.

But movies without books do not.
Cliff.Booth
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All very well said.

To me, it's always been kind of characteristic weakness of Alien movies that everything incubates/is born/grows unrealistically quickly, but in terms of keeping an action movie going, it's necessary.

I find it crazy that you didn't find anything in this scary. For me there were at least 4 or 5 good jumpscares and overall it had that old fashioned foreboding feeling that they're mostly all doomed. Some of it scared the **** out of me!

I agree with your ranking.
Cliff.Booth
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He's always abrasive and rude, but I do agree with TC that spoiler tags are useful for newly released movies. It's nice to be able to see people's reactions but have potential spoilers concealed. I was careful to include them in my initial thoughts night before last.
LB12Diamond
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Newly released

Alrighty. So, that I can work with. Two weeks, should be fine. But it does temper the convo that first weekend which is going to get the most traffic.


FYI
Others did not have spoiler tags as well and he went after me for whatever reason.
LB12Diamond
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Guess I'm getting old but there was only maybe once it made me jump. The sound of this movie was great but face hugger scenes don't scare me at all. I mean the worse thing that can happen is they get on your head. It made me laugh that one average guy figured out how to get one off quickly where it was never figured out how to do it in any of the past movies with supposedly much more intelligent characters.

Maybe it's bc there have been so many movies the scare factor is just gone. Can never get that same feeling of the first movie.
Cinco Ranch Aggie
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Cliff.Booth said:

All very well said.

To me, it's always been kind of characteristic weakness of Alien movies that everything incubates/is born/grows unrealistically quickly, but in terms of keeping an action movie going, it's necessary.

I find it crazy that you didn't find anything in this scary. For me there were at least 4 or 5 good jumpscares and overall it had that old fashioned foreboding feeling that they're mostly all doomed. Some of it scared the **** out of me!

I agree with your ranking.
Thanks.

I guess with regard to finding nothing scary in Alien Romulus, it is because I know what to expect. I have been watching these movies since I was 12. There simply isn't anything they can do that hasn't been done in previous movies. Jump scares have not been a part of my viewing experience for most of these - Alien for certain, but there might been a few in Aliens as well.
General Jack D. Ripper
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I agree that it's no longer scary. I liked the direction that Prometheus took. I thought they were going to dig deeper into the history of the engineers and the creation of the monster.

I watched Romulus last night. It was weird, I kept waiting for the movie to start but then again the action started pretty early on. Overall it was entertaining but I don't feel it was necessary or added anything to the franchise.
Well…you sounded taller on radio.
LB12Diamond
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As far as the speed up thing. They put something in place that made everything have to be fast. The asteroid rings future collision. They do not make that so urgent than everything else does not have to be super fast with regards to alien aspects.

Alien, the pacing was done great.

Aliens as well bc all the aliens were in place.

Alien 3 pacing and story were similar to Alien and done well.

But every movie after that required certain if not all Alien aspects to become super quick.

This movie should have been set up more like Aliens, then its story makes sense and alien aspects as well. But nope, they continue to want to repeat certain items, thus everything has to grow, impregnate, hatch fast.
Rocagnante
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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:



My current ranking:
Alien
Aliens
Prometheus
Alien Romulus
Alien Covenant
Alien 3
Alien Resurrection


I'd flip the top two
Aliens
Alien
Prometheus
Alien Romulus
Alien Covenant
Alien 3
Alien Resurrection

I think Prometheus should get more love than it does for the fact it is a very cool sci-fi premise.
TCTTS
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Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

Regarding the origination of the eggs, the original Alien did not speak to that at all. Aliens introduced the Queen in a move that, biologically, makes sense. But Alien had a deleted scene that gives evidence that the species is not dependent on an egg layer for its propagation.



This scene contains imagery that we would see front-and-center in Aliens, with alien prey embedded into the secretions the critter cast over the walls and ceiling. It also shows the remains of Brett transforming into an egg, with Dallas intended as the host for this developing face hugger. The process is not fully explained - does not need such explanation.

What we see in Alien Romulus speaks to Weyland-Yutani having an ability to create face huggers through a process that seemed related to the black goo in Prometheus. On the surface, I don't have a problem with that, but it seems that it does have an impact on the canon. The canon includes Alien Resurrection - a story set 200+ years into the future where WY has developed several clones on Ellen Ripley in an attempt to obtain an alien Queen. If the Company had the ability to create face huggers in the years between Alien and Aliens, they why would they need to clone Ripley to obtain a Queen? Do they not have an ability to save data in this future (which undoubtedly would have been done on that space station from Alien Romulus, with that data likely backed up to Company servers back on Earth). Perhaps that's the kind of question best left unasked in movies like this.

Wow, that's super interesting, and yeah, kind of debunks the whole queen/egg thing. I'd never seen that. Thanks for posting.
TCTTS
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h1ag said:

Did anyone else expect the black goo to affect the pregnant girl by turning her into something like a proto-queen? Seeing the mouse transform into something resembling a mini deformed xenomorph had me convinced that's what we were getting instead of a birthing scene.

Zero basis in alien lore that I know of, but that's where my mind went.

Yeah, I thought the black goo was going to transform her and her baby. It's kind of weird that it did nothing to her and only affected her baby, but whatever. It still worked as a fun, final act monster.
TCTTS
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LB12Diamond said:

I understand what they're saying how they created face huggers. Just don't like it bc, again they come from eggs.

They could have figured out a way for them to find eggs.

TC I see you are a sensitive soul. Hopefully that's not to incoherent for you to understand.

Just bc you don't like someone's stance does not mean it's incoherent or incorrect. Something that's is clear you struggle with.


There does not need to be two threads for a movie once it's released. It's nothing like a movie or series that's also has a book following. Those clearly need two threads.

But movies without books do not.

I was referring to this paragraph, specifically...

Quote:

Wanted the original Alien in the movie for whatever reason. Probably bc they could not go to the planet and just get eggs from there bc that would mess up Aliens. And they brought back original copy of artificial person. Most likely bc he was such a sold f up that caused major problems in Alien. Wanted lots of nostalgia.

I'm sorry, but I've read that like five times now and still don't fully get the point you're trying to make. It's unintelligible not because I "don't like your stance" (what a dumb thing to say), but because it's poorly written/reads like a text sent from a nine-year-old.
TCTTS
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Quote:

There does not need to be two threads for a movie once it's released. It's nothing like a movie or series that's also has a book following. Those clearly need two threads.

Again, we've been doing it this way for a decade+, if not far longer. Like, literally hundreds of times by now. I genuinely don't understand how you could have participated on this board and missed that. Hell, Cliff.Booth clearly can't stand me and even he agrees with me on this.
TCTTS
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AG
As for my own ranking, I'd probably have to go...

1) Alien
2) Aliens
3) Alien: Covenant
4) Prometheus
5) Alien: Romulus
6) Alien 3
7) Alien: Resurrection

I think I've only seen one of the Alien/Predator movies, and don't really count them regardless.
Cinco Ranch Aggie
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Alien versus Predator is a fun one. In a comic book, Godzilla Versus King Kong way.

The second one titled AvP Requiem) sucks donkey balls.
TCTTS
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Good to know. Looking up the plots, I don't think AvP is the one I saw. Literally all I remember is either an alien or a predator attacking some dude at a community center pool? Was that Requiem? Or am I dreaming?
TCTTS
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This, 100%...

Cinco Ranch Aggie
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TCTTS said:

Good to know. Looking up the plots, I don't think AvP is the one I saw. Literally all I remember is either an alien or a predator attacking some dude at a community center pool? Was that Requiem? Or am I dreaming?
You are not dreaming. That was Requiem.
TCTTS
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Awesome, thanks. Then yeah, I somehow saw that one in theaters without ever seeing the first one.
cr0wbar
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-Casual Alien fan here-

I'll agree with the scary take- this felt more suspenseful than horror to me.

Really enjoyed the last cargo ship sequence. Human Alien was trippy as hell. When they finally revealed it's face, a woman very audibly said "WOAH" in this dead quiet theater. Affect achieved

Visuals of the station colliding into the ring belt were awesome.

Made me want to revisit the Alien lore again.
unimboti nkum
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The Rook CGI was laughably bad.
Soso nikinombiki maaki dii.
Rocagnante
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It was creepy as hell when that human/alien hybrid started smiling…
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