¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome back midnight viewers to follow Malone's weekly round up. I'm found them alone and with me as always is my own personal alien Stomper Ripley. Any words for the upcoming Onslaught of Xenomorphs? WHOA, Oh no, I know you can do it, but you've got to remember they have acid for blood. Keep it in mind. You know, I have a theory you can tell how good an alien movie is by the potency of its acid blood. Think
about it. And we're thinking about Alien quite a bit around here, what with the release this weekend of Alien a Romulus. I've seen it, Ripley has not. They weren't going to let you in this time. There's only so many times I can sneak you past the same goddamn dosher. Plus you go bananas every time you see an alien or an android for that matter. This movie has plenty of a both. So this is gonna be weird episode Gang.
I'm always striving to get you the latest on the latest releases, and this flick just happened to coen Signed with recordings by my fellow weirding Way media podcast friends, The Projection Booth and the Culture Cast, which should be no surprise to regular listeners of this show that those are hosted by Midnight Viewing co hosts Mike White and Christashie, respectively. I usually just guessed on one of their shows. But since we're a weekly now, thank you, by the way
to everyone for listening. The ratings are significantly up, and it's nothing but appreciation from me. Anyway, since we're a weekly, we're now prime for crossover episodes, and this is our first. So at the end of the usual nonsense of picks by Ripley and myself, we'll be talking alien romulus. So stay tuned. You want to go first? Okay, cool, because
I love your choice. In keeping with the alien theme, we're going back to the source in both of our choices and both of our films like Alien, sprung from
¶ Dan O'Bannon's Legacy and Blue Thunder
the mind of writer, director, actor, producer and all around weirdo mister Dan O'Bannon. Now, if you listen to our anthologies Attack episode about heavy Metal, we talked quite a bit about mister Obannon, and I encourage you to check
that episode out. Okay, Dan O'Bannon. He was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri, and attended USC Film School in the early seventies, where he co wrote and produced the visual effects for and starred in a short science fiction film that was eventually expanded and released as a feature that was Dark Star, and it was co written and directed by John Carpenter. During this time, Obanon was working on a specscript called Starbeast, which would eventually become Alien.
Not only did he provide the original screenplay for that film, Obandon provided the most important piece of the xenomorph puzzle, the one that made the alien such an enduring character. While working as a special effects supervisor on Alejandro Jarowski's Aborted Doune film, Obannon had made the acquaintance of Swiss artist H. R.
Giger.
When it came time to make Alien, there was only one artist in O'Bannon's mind who could design that creature. However, Obannon had to pay Giger out of pocket for those Alien designs because the film's producers didn't want them. Nineteen seventy nine, Obannon's living in Los Angeles, Alien had just premiered, Heavy Metal was in production, and he was working on
a script that would eventually become Total Recall. During this period, Obannon noticed the increased presence of LAPD helicopters in the skies above the frequency of their patrol spurred him to write the film We're discussing tonight. It's about an attack helicopter the US government is testing out, and the LAPD pilot chosen to put the aircraft through its paces in an urban environment. The helicopter's nickname is the film's title, Blue Thunder.
What brings you their support?
Kind of like the idea of it.
No guns, no kicking indoors, and you know, just quiet.
Oh yeah, well, Frank Murphy policing the air as its.
LPs, A spare support turn downs, got a runaway.
I just wanted to say so that that was my fault.
I talked Murphy into taking us there.
You're supposed to be stupid, son, don't abuse the privilege, Roy Scheider is Frank Murphy a lone wolf free?
Oh so, how many regulars come in a French are over a key.
Who's about to become a guinea pig?
I thought it was illegal armed police helicopters.
All I would depend on the circumstance of wasn't it.
Columbia Pictures presents Blue Thunder a flying parson that hears through walls sees in the dark and thinks your thoughts wherever you look at. The guns followed. It was designed for war touring countries.
One civilian dead for every ten terris.
That's unacceptable ratio unless you're one of the civilians. It was assigned to American cities.
Talking about crowd controls from.
There, and that's what this special detail is all about.
They told Murphy to test it. They didn't tell him what it was for because it are these compas and you could run the whole PAM country. Who was behind it? Where are we federal building?
Really?
And you want to find out what's going on in there?
Serf?
You hey, you gotta give you a player.
Want why they chose him?
He's totally unsuitable for our purpose or anybody?
Well? Why they changed their minds?
I never saw this guy before my life. Come on, let's go, f.
That's so fast.
That's but when Murphy went looking for answers.
Every morning, get back to me of the.
Knife, the answer, Oh I h came looking for him.
Okay.
They had the ultimate weapon and the perfect plan, but Murphy stole.
Their thunder.
Directed by John Badham, whom I used to think of as a journeyman filmmaker, but now having seen all of his early experimental stuff on Night Gallery, I've been happy to reappraise his work, and I believe he is really unsung. The action he's able to capture in this film on to sit alongside the works of Michael Mann or Michael Bay for that matter. Roy Scheider lends the film a
sense of gravity heavier than the moon. As pilot Frank Murphy, He's paralleled by Warren Oates, who manages to obliterate the stereotypical angry captain character, actually making him someone with depth in humanity. Warren Oates basically Murphy has a trainee partner in the form of babyface to Daniel Stern, and the heavy of the film is Malcolm McDowell, who's playing a US military representative who is making no effort to disguise his regular English accent. It doesn't compute, but it really
doesn't matter because he is great now. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the other film from nineteen eighty three that starred Daniel Stern and Malcolm McDowell. Weird coincidence, but that film is Alan Arkish's rock and roll comedy Get Crazy. Which recently came out on Blu Ray, and
you should definitely go pick it up right now. I know I'm shameless, So what Ripley's pointing out that I'm only recommending the movie because I happen to appear in a documentary on that disc, But that is not true. I'm in the documentary because I love that movie and I want everyone to see it. So go pick it up and get crazy. Anyway, Murphy is chosen to test out the capabilities of the most badass looking helicopter ever made.
Its boxy, and it's long, and it's weird looking. It kind of looks kit bashed, the way the old special effects guys would take model kits and just slam a whole bunch of random parts together onto other models, creating something new. Blue Thunder is big and unwieldy, and I fucking love it. They'd ripped this movie off a year or two later with a show called Airwolf. They had a more streamlined, contoured, aerodynamic, futuristic helicopter and it sucked.
Speaking of spinoff series, Blue Thunder was turned into a short lived hour long drama with James Farentino replacing Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern replaced with Dana Carvey.
It's wild.
Murphy uncovers a plot to use the helicopter for urban pacification. The group behind that has been murdering its opposition, so he steals the copter and tries to get out word about these batties. What follows is a series of jaw dropping aerial dogfights with jents and police helicopters and military choppers all above the streets of Los Angeles. It's all practical, it's all real, it's all spectacular, and it's a spectacular film. But it gets even better when you take into account
Dan O'Bannon's first draft. Almost everything in the movie occurs exactly as it does in that script, except over the course of the film, Frank Murphy is slowly losing his mind, so in the end, when he steals the helicopter, it has nothing to do with heroism or exposing a government plot or an attempt to keep the government from pacifying the public with a military helicopter. No, no, no, no. Frank loses his mind entirely and becomes an ultimate villain
doing very bad things with Blue Thunder. Apparently it was written because that increased air presence by the LAPD was really disturbing to mister Obannon. He found it to be an enormous invasion of privacy. At least terrestrial police were bound by the property lines. Writing Blue Thunder was his way of hitting back at them, and in typical Hollywood fashion, they gave it a happy ending. But it works either way. The movie works Blue Thunder, Gang go get it. Excellent choice. No, no,
you're not getting belly robes for it. Ribley is of late obsays with belly robes. He just figured out that it's a thing. Anyway, we're gonna go into my choice,
¶ Return of the Living Dead: A Zombie Classic
my Dan O'Bannon choice for this week, and then we'll head on over to the projection booth and culture cast. Prior to nineteen sixty eight, if you were to think of a zombie, it would have been a revivified corpse under the sway of a voodoo priest or priestess. They were mindless, undead drones doing the bidding of living masters. But as the majority of societal norms began to crumble in those late sixties, so too did the image of
what a zombie could be. And that's thanks to George A. Romero and his film Night of the Living Dead back coming to get you, Barbara. As it turns out, they were coming for all of us. Prior to nineteen eighty five, the number of films with the zombie menace can be clocked in its seventy about seventy. Since then there have been some five hundred zombie feature films. That doesn't take into consideration comic books, novels, television shows, all dedicated to
the twenty first centuries first genuine boogeyman, the zombie. Why did I mention nineteen eighty five and what's happened since then? Well, I'll tell you because on August the sixteenth, nineteen eighty five, the Return of the Living Dead was released.
In the dark of the night, something strange is going on.
Why you see that movie Night a Living Dead? Sure? Shop, Well say hello listening from the glove, mister.
Things out there dominated you send And now the question is how do we get them back into the crowd.
Frank, we have a little problem.
For ben right, no.
Time you want your tongue, boy, If you like this, job is job.
Great? Medical science is battling and the.
Suppuzzles because technically you're not alive.
Why do you eat people? Not deeper things.
Is something that's already did well.
I don't want to know, Fred, I don't know.
Let me think. It's not a bad question, Burden. In that movie, they destroyed the brain to kill him.
Is that what they did? The brain right?
Brain right?
The military is nervous, usual crapes are confused.
Same look, God, why a working now? It's not a bad question, Burden.
It's not a bad question, Burden. It's not a bad question. Bird.
The Return of the Mining Dead.
Before we dig into the this movie, we have to go back to Romero and Night a Living Dead. When that film wrapped, the film's co writers, George Romero and John Russo made an agreement that they would each be allowed to produce their own separate sequels. Romero went on to create the masterpiece Dawn of the Dead, which was a continuation of the zombie outbreak through the eyes of
all new protagonists. Russo would later collaborate with two other Knight of the Living Dead alumni, Russ Streiner and Rudy Ricci. They created a script and a novel entitled Return of the Living Dead, which was sent ten years after an isolated zombie outbreak. As it begins to occur again, and it also features returning characters and locations from nighto Living Dead.
You can still find the novel I Have One Script is another story that was purchased by a fellow named Tom Fox, who intended to make it as a film in three D with Toby Hooper directing. That's Texas Chainsaw Massacres Toby Hooper. But when a delay in production occurred, Toby Hooper had to move on because he was already committed to make the sci fi vampire Flagal Life Force. Left with no director, Fox turned to Life Forces screenwriter
Dan O'Bannon. Now Obannon balked at the idea of rewriting a script that took place entirely in a world that had been shaped and shepherded by George Romero. That's a professional courtesy that most would seem to just abandon in later years, looking at you, Robert Kirkman. Anyway, Obannon chose to tak the zombies in a whole new direction, simultaneously commenting on what had come before and creating a whole new,
fresh mythology in this world. Knight of the Living Dead is a film which was based on real events that took place at a Pittsburgh, VA hospital involving the two four or five trioxin chemical and its ability to resurrect the dead. A group of punkers go to pick up their friend from his new job at a medical supply warehouse, which is situated in a burnt out section of Louisville at the end of a dead end street beside a
cemetery and a mortuary. The medical supply place has the corpses because they were shipped there in some of army snaffu, and of course those canisters get opened, releasing the trioxin and the zombies, and the whole thing spirals down into darkness in a plot that precipitates the end of the world. And if all that isn't tense enough, Obannon zombies are unlike nearly every incarnation before or since, destroying their brain
has no effect at all. These zombies are vocal, they're fast, they're smart, and they're hungry.
Listen.
I could go on for hours and hours about this film, but we've got aliens to get to, so I'll just hit some of my favorite bits, the important bits, Like suicide. You know him even if you don't know the character's names. That's Mark Venturini. He's the one driving them all there. He's got the best line here it is, I mean I.
Got something to say.
You know, what do you think this is all about? You think this is a fucking costume. This is a way of life.
Mark Venturini was a high school athlete who was goaded into drama by a high school English teacher, where he ended up playing Awakeye Pierce in a production of mash a performance I would pay any amount of money to see. He spent his whole career playing assorted thugs and strong arm tough guys for just because of the way he look. But horror fans will remember him from Friday the Thirteenth, Part five, wielding that axe on that snickers love. An
annoying guy, you remember him anyway. There's a playful malevolence to his performance in Returning of the Living Dead. Another thing I love about this movie is a bit of a tie or someday I'm gonna get myself a jacket just like the one Freddie wears in the film. Freddy is the friend working at the UNED, a medical supply house, and he has a satin red and silver jacket on the back. In very fancy cursive font is written fuck you.
You have to look twice to see it, but it's definitely there, and it represents a rumor surrounding this film that I hope is true. When he was told that any scene with Freddy's jacket in it would be cut for the television version, and Obannon had a duplicate jacket made for those scenes where it says television version. I really hope that one's true. Now I got to talk about the music here, so I have to pause for a bit of boring autobiography. I snuck into this movie
at the Showcase Cinemas in Revere, Massachusetts. I was twelve, and the movie fucked me up in a lot of ways, but putting aside whatever psychological damage it had done, the first thing I did after leaving the theater was walk to the closest record store and find the soundtrack, and then I checked the listing on the back Surfing Dead by the Cramps. That day, I went home with two albums, The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack and Psychedelic Jungle
by the Cramps. The Cramps are my favorite musical act of all time, and I know if I hadn't run into them here, I would have the next year when Googomuck showed up in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre too soundtrack. Nevertheless, I have so much appreciation for this soundtrack for not only introducing me to the Cramps, but widening my till then narrow musical worldview that seemed to vacillate between top
forty and early metal if and Dead. The Cramp song in this film is used twice, once where our heroes are barricading themselves inside, and it's played again over the closing credits. Now here's the thing about the credits. They use this technique. It's rarely employed these days, but you'd see it a lot back in the seventies and eighties. It was like the greatest Hits moments playing while the
credits are rolling. At the end of this movie, they chose to cut all of the funniest moments from the film and sometimes recut things so they were recontextualized and made more humorous. It's a nice little palate cleanser going out of this movie, but it's helped convince that most viewers that return to the Living Dead as comedy. Don't get me wrong, it's a very funny film. But this is a horror movie first and foremost. It has the
blackest of hearts beating at its center. Like I said, it spirals down into darkness in the way most movies tend to veer away from in the last moments. This is uncompromising, it's terrifying, and it is absolutely devoid of hope. Any laughs you're getting while the film is playing are
nervous ones at best. Because here's the thing. There have been dozens of films since the punk explosion of the seventies attempting to capture the spirit and the feeling of that ethos, and there have been some successes, to varying degrees. I'm thinking of Repo Man specifically, But ever since the nineties, punk has been watered down and diluted to the point of being just another fashion statement because everything claiming to be punk has seemed to have forgotten a prime component
of the original culture, which is nihilism. You want to talk about no future, This movie is no future large and it earns every bit of it. The reason they have those comedy bits playing over the end credits is otherwise you would be too shattered to walk out of the goddamn theater. Return to the Living Dead is great. Go see it right now you've seen it, see it again and again. It really is one of the best zombie films of all time. You know where that dambies
eating brains thing comes from. It's Return a Living Dead. Go see it again. You got anything else to say, little lady, You're gonna wrap up the round up and switch gears and switch satellites. We're gonna head our transmission on over to the protection Booth, Culture Cast Media Circus and we'll catch you next time. I'll probably wrap up again after the Romulus, but if I don't, because who knows, if I will Thank you for joining us.
Are you sure you want to do this? The shoes you want to break and the still highly regulated equipment, this could.
Be already take it out. There should be in and out in thoughty minutes.
Welcome to the Rocky and House space Station.
That's bascise me in the creeps. What the hell is this?
I don't know?
The fuck was I? Yo? Stop playing around? Man to get out? Playing around the some in the water. What do you mean there's something.
You don't know?
It's just something in the fucking war.
You run.
You all right?
Don't work, never work.
You don't know what whatever comes once they sit together.
Dress Girl, any.
Kind any fagend four three.
Two Welcome to the Projection Booth with a special crossover
¶ Alien Romulus Review: Initial Impressions
with both the Culture Cast and Midnight Viewing. On this special episode, we were talking about Alien Romulus, directed by Fetti Alvarez and written by Alvarez as well as Rodo. Sayah, Gwest, that's my best guest on that one. This is a sequel to Alien, a prequel to Aliens, prequel to Alien three, prequel to Alien four, five, six, and seven. There's all the alien stuff in here, which was pretty surprising for me, a brand new movie. Excited to talk about this one
with you guys. So, Chris, tell me what were your thoughts on Alien Romulus?
So I think, as we normally do in these episodes, let's do pre spoilers in any of this conversation and then we'll talk all about this boil bullshit. I look, I think I am a little younger than both of y'all. Alien is a franchise that I not was raised to care about, but I was still of an agent of a time and of a place to catch Alien and see Alien kind of when Alien was still a thing that people were talking about. I don't It's not that I don't think people are not talking about Alien right now,
far from it. It's just if an Alien sequel comes out ten years from now, will have the turnout that this one did? Is the question, because there are going to be less and less people unless they continue to make good Alien movies that are inherently invested in the franchise. And I know that Prometheus and Covenant are kind of maybe when I'm alluding to, because this movie is also a sequel to those movies. He sunned up of everything else.
So I enjoyed it. I think that it has its pretty glaring issues, but I think, look, you know, I think my you know, one word summary is it's the best Alien movie I've ever seen in theaters. But that's a pretty low bar across in a lot of ways. So, Father Malone, what about you.
I love Alien Isolation the video game. It is so much fun and so scary and is so evocative of the original Alien, and this movie is very evocative of that video game. I think if fed A Alvaz is a fan of that game obviously, and a lot of the design work is just built right in the whole
scenes and stuff. Let me preface everything by saying, I really was excited for an alien movie for the first time, and I don't know how many years, twenty years more, And all I took away from it ultimately was I really want to go play Alien Isolation again, which is a drag. I mean, look, the movie has a lot of good points. There's a lot of good good stuff
in it. But ultimately, where this movie breaks down for me on a very fundamental level is there's not one interesting character and there is not one charming actor in this entire movie. It's it is akin to watching cut scenes from a video game, honestly, and no disrespect to these actors, but like they're all miscast and they're all cast too young. Anyway, we'll get into it. That's I
was disappointed by this movie. I'm gonna watch it again, probably just because I'm a Mascus, but it does look beautiful and I love feed Alvarez, but this ain't no Evil Dead remake. Like I was shocked at the poor quality.
Here a boy, you, mister Mike White, Well, okay, I mean let's be honest here, tell me everything you know about Navarro, what did you just say, tell me everything you know about Navro, the character Navro, Oh, played by Eileen Wu She's got short hair.
Oh, I know that they ruined the entire scene that her character has in the movie and the trailers. That's what I know.
Oh yeah, oh with the X ray machine.
Yeah yeah, they ruined that in the trailer. And yeah, that's all I know because that's that's all her character is used for in the movie as well. And that's not a spoiler. That's literally if you watch the trailer for this movie, you see what they're doing. They just
what's an alien movie? It's gonna have a chess burster, no shit movie, No fucking way, it's gonna be an alien movie without a fucking chests person, right, count on one hand the things that are guaranteed to be in an alien movie at this point, chessbursters are one of them.
Well, I don't even know if this is an alien movie. This is more of a face hugger.
Movie, really, it really is.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
I mean there's hundreds and hundreds of face huggers in this movie, which is wild.
It's like hundreds of hundreds of beavers, but with face Huggers instead, but I.
Would rather watch hundreds of beavers any day of the week were over Alien Romulus. I really felt betrayed by this movie because it starts off very strong for me. I was really enjoying the scenes of Kaylee Spainey and David Johnson. I think his portrayal of Andy. I really liked that portrayal. I don't know how he does that with this face where he makes himself look sad and confused all the time. I was trying to do that, but I don't know. I don't think my forehead moves
nearly as much. And I haven't even had my boatox this week. Yeah, it's so by the numbers after a while. And then just all of the fan service with all of the lines and just the I mean even the movie just starts off looking almost exactly like Aliens with the salvage ship, but instead of rescuing Ripley, they're rescuing the alien who, which was very tough for me to see. I had no idea what was going on. In the first little bit. When they pulled in this thing, I'm like, is that an egg?
What is it?
And they're cutting through it. I'm just like I don't know what this is. I was really having a hard time seeing things in this movie. It's so dimly lit, and there were times on the spaceship where I'm like, are there lights still operational? Can you turn on some lights?
Because I'd really like to see that. Like even in the station on LV four twenty six, where you know the colonists are all that, there's a lot more lighting in that colony, even though it's completely desolated than there is on this space station, which I don't understand again why it's called alien Romulus because the ship is the Romulus and the remiss. I'm just like, Okay, I guess it's cool. I guess it sounds cool. So I think that's the whole motivator of this movie.
Is it's cool.
It's gonna look cool, it's gonna be cool if we make this reference. Let's make this reference. And yeah, I'm excited to talk about spoilers because there's one that happens, and that for me is the turning point to the movie.
Oh, is that the one thing that we're just waiting with baited breath to talk about because it feels like someone just coming up to you at the playground and punching you in the face repeatedly and saying this doesn't hurt at all. Right, it's fine, You're fine, everything's fine here, like Ian Holme as it.
Okay, we're in spoiler.
Yeah, yes, there's no fucking way to avoid this shit at this point. But from here on out spoilers, because yes, I've.
Been thinking, danced around for a while, there's a lot going on in this troubling. The ian Home fucking came.
Yeah, but the ian Home thing is like, it's the bridge too far for me. And it happened so early on in the movie, and it happened so frequently in the movie that you know, look, Peter Cushing in Rogue one was one thing and it was literally one thing, one or two scenes if that, like it was not.
There were more than two scenes. Oh got that movie? I mean, that's what I said exactly when the credits started rolling. And by the way, folks, there's nothing after the end credits. Don't bother to wait around like I did. I took the bullet for you. As soon as the credits started to roll. I said, this was like Rogue one. And then Alien Romulus came in and said, oh you think that that looked horrific and just living in the
Uncanny Valley. Well, here hold my beer, because I'm going to make this worse than Princess Leah and grahamov Tarken all in one with whatever the fuck they were doing with Ian Holme.
Well, look, he's a robe. See like he's in an alien in the alien universe. We always have to have a robot movie. You have a robot. David Johnson is a robot. We don't need to see the ghoulish specter of ian Holm dragged out and paraded around over and over, and oh it's happened so much that he's not just
a cameo. He's essentially the main villain of the movie, which again, that makes it more of a Prometheus movie than it makes it anything else, because Prometheus and Alien Covenant are pretty much just about the robots, which, honestly, you know, the dude's over read letter media. I think you know, they kind of, you know, really laid into Prometheus a long time ago. And I think Prometheus and Govenant are better movies than Romulus because at least they're
movies that are different. Oh no, I get it, I get that, I am I get that I am in the minority on this, but Alien Romulus, the fan service stuff that they did is more of an affront to me personally than the missteps and problems that Prometheus and Covenant are just making, and Prometheus less so than Covenant. Okay, Prometheus is at least kind of a movie that's different
than everything else. This is just Alien with some Aliens, a little bit of Alien three at the beginning, and then oh, by the way, you guys like Resurrection, We're going to give you something that is Resurrection levels of
insanity in the last ten minutes of this movie. Hold let me one up the wildest thing in Alien in the entire Aliens franchise with something so beyond that it's that's another thing we're going to talk about, I'm sure, But Father Malone, I want to let you you speak broadly about this, because yeah, there's more than just the Ian Holme problem, obviously.
But let me address the home problem. I admired the daring in trying it. And if they had built an animatronic and not done any CGI at all and had a fucked up animatronic that was spasming and crazy, because they could do it. Now they can deprint something that's Ian fucking Home, and they could they could, you know, put mechanisms in it to do every little facial twitch and whatever, and wouldn't even have to be that good
because it's a broken down Android. Had they pulled that off, I think I would have known, okay, But because they kept doing photo realistic, deep fake Ian Home, where again it's to me, it's it's what's funny is when he's in the scene with the other characters, it's not as bad for me as when they cut to him on a video screen like advising them, because when they ever they do that, it really feels like a cut scene for a video game, and it's it's googlish.
At that point, it totally reminded me, Like, I'm not a big video gamer and so I didn't play Isolation, but even me as a non gamer, when he would show up on screens, I'm like, oh, is this like the Red Queen in Resident Resident Evil where she would show up on screens be like you're trying too hard, you must do this or something. Just she felt he felt like an avatar for the video game in and telling you what needs to happen next.
Gladdos from portal adjacent and you know Father Malone, Alien Isolation is I mean, yeah, I mean I've played it. You've played it. It's fucking amazing like it in a lot of ways, it is the sequel, you know, you
know Father Malone. You and I I think I sent you a PlayStation over the pandemic, right, and so it did, yeah, and so I and some of this is like, well, yeah, like you were able to play some of that because like those things were like things that are not It's not that they're not hard to get, but it's they're kind of ways back in terms of the release cycle
of stuff. But Alien Isolation is still the best sequel to Alien that's ever come out, similarly to the way that that Ghostbusters video game that came out is the best sequel to Ghostbusters, because it's like, this is people making it that understand what the purpose of the original source material was, and they're building on it in a way that doesn't feel forced and it doesn't feel ham fisted because they have plenty of time to so much easier to do fan service in a video game because
you don't have to. It's not that you don't have to hang a lantern on it, but you don't have to hang a lantern on it constantly because it's just there, and it's just there in a movie. When they keep coming back to it over and over and over again, it's like, oh my god, did no one in the
test screenings think that this was too much? Did no one in the test I don't know who they're screening these movies for, because if they had screened this movie for you or I or anyone else who has a little bit of an issue with this AI deep fixed up, they would have said, take this out of the movie, do something with this, do anything but this, because it's so distracting and it gets in the way of the
movie doing anything interesting or different. Because like I just keep constantly being reminded of a better movie at every turn. Let me double again, Oh.
Go ahead, let me double down to my my, my opening statement, the Ian Holme problem and the plot problems and the sort of too often reflecting the earlier better movies would have been softened had we had adults in roles here, yes, and had we had charming actors. I like Kyley Spanney as well. I enjoy her work, but she is not Ellen Ripley and they're kind of making her Ellen Ripley here, and it's a big mistake shouldering this movie on her is I don't know, it's not
a good idea. But then the entire cast other than Andy the Android, by the way, they break the cycle here. If you go through the Alien movies, they're the the androids have been named alphabetically. So there's Ash and then Bishop and then Call and then David and then and now Andy.
Yeah yeah, and it's before yeah, and then you've got Rook. Now Ash's Rook. And I'm just like it, is this a it's a chess reference to Bishop?
Yeah?
Yeah?
But why because and I want to put out a conspiracy theory here. There was a contest that twenty Century Fox and a group called Hungle Too n GL put together back in twenty eighteen or a fortieth anniversary of Alien in twenty nineteen. They were series of six films that were written by fans, shot by fans, made by fans. I believe, And yeah, I think that they probably took some of these fan ideas and made them into a
full length movie. I'm looking to see if the co writer is listed on any of these, because this just feels like a big fucking fan film just feels like, oh, well, we'll pay service to everything. We'll even mix in some of this coming to Prometheus horseshit that we have with this black oil which I saw in X Files twenty years.
Ago, So how dare you bring them x Files in this conversation? That's a much better usage of black oil than this could have ever begun to. But that is what they fucking copied there totally. I mean, as anyone who's watched the X Files, wouldn't that happen in Prometheus? That's all I could think then. And now it's like, does anybody in this audience fucking care that they're connecting it to Prometheus?
Like you know who did Ridley Scott? And they did that for him. I guarantee you for those every Prometheus references and go see we're connecting it all. And it's like, Okay, Ridley's happy. We can make the rest of our movie.
¶ Alien Isolation: The Sequel We Never Got
But the problem is, Chris, as you said, that Alien Isolation video game is the best sequel to the Alien franchise that that we never got, and why didn't they just make that the Alien Isolation. The plot line in that is Amanda Ripley went looking for mom and ended up on this space station that is overrun with aliens and you're playing as Amanda Ripley, Like it's.
A natural Yeah, yeah, I don't know, because the game already exists.
I know, like is there a rights issue where like they want to make their own shit or something like, and you know, Feeddey Alvarez wanted to do an original but like but then like he pulls so heavily from the fucking game, even to the point if I don't know if you noticed, Chris, but like this, anytime there's a save portion in the game, it's one of the like the the intercom things on the wall, and every time you save the game, some shit's about to go down.
And he does that in the movie. He like he'll close up the fucking intercom and then like suddenly swarm of face huggers. So he's drawing inspiration from the game. Anyway, just make the game into the movie.
I think it's because this whole thing of the Ghostbusters, Afterlife and the you know, the Star Wars force awakens of it all. It's like this is the way these movies are made now, which is we got to have all this fan service nonsense that in like in the universe, Why would he say get away from her, you bitch? It makes no sense. It's it's it's this is not dead and Wolverine like, what the fuck? You can't You can't do that in this kind of movie. This movie's
being played straight This movie's being played straightforward. There's no fourth wall breaking, there's none of that. Why would he say that that hasn't even happened yet We're still thirty years removed from that happening because this is only twenty years after Alien, which means it's still thirty seven years before Ripley gets found because she's in space for fifty seven years. So did she say it? Because he said it? Like I don't fucking understand, and you know the I
prefer artificial person. That line makes sense, It makes perfect sense, Like I get that entirely, because that's that makes more sense than get away from her, you bitch. But it's like just with the Ian holme of it all and everything else, like fan service needs to have a point within the construct of the movie itself. Otherwise it's just out there for the fans and it's like, well, are you sacrificing telling an interesting story just to have bullshit
on screen that's already been on screen before. Yes, and that's how you get Ghostbusters. Afterlife with a CGI, Harold ramis running around like, I don't understand putting fan service before engaging storytelling, or to your point, Father Malone, engaging and creative character development and character creation, because nobody but Andy in this movie is an interesting character period.
It's a Friday, the thirteenth movie in the Alien Universe. It's a bunch of teenagers going off to the scary place and then oh no aliens.
Yeah no.
I was thinking of Evil Dead like You the remake, which I am not a fan of. I thought that the second Evil remake, however you want to put that in, which I thought was Fetti Albarez, but found out that it's not.
I like that one.
I thought that was actually pretty good and was like, oh, well, this is really nice and gross. So when the I mean the one character who's pregnant, that's all you need to know about her, because that's all she is, is just a pregnant person. I was like, all right, well she somehow, somehow the alien is going to get in there and we're gonna have that moment like you know, Dawn of the Dead remake where the corpse baby comes out of the woman. We're going to get that somehow,
or like an alien baby in this case. How are we going to do that? Because I'm just like trying to figure out what the alien life cycle and all this.
¶ Alien Life Cycle and Black Goo
That's where the black goo comes in. I'm just like, oh, okay, that's how we're going to do that. Don't put that in your system. Okay, I won't put it right in. And then the alien life cycle, which I thought I was pretty familiar with. I guess I missed the wall vagina part. Didn't know that that was a thing.
You know what.
I actually liked that. I thought that was so fucking gieger like that. And you know, just because we haven't seen one of the life cycles doesn't mean it didn't exist. So and these are like, ultimately, these are genetic clones. There's no queen here. These have all been harvested from the genetic contents of the original alien big chap, Yeah, big yeah, that's the thing I think, Hayden, the big
chat Okay. You know, look, we got a movie starts with the salvage ship finding them remains in this stromo. It's great, right, It's like John's two when they find the orca at the bottoms.
It's like my favorite film in the draft franchise, Jurassic World Dominion. Wow, I'm just I'm fucking or Falling Kingdom. I'm joking because that's how falling. That's literally how Fallen Kingdom opens. They go to Jurassic World to get a dinosaur toothed, and then the entire movie is based off of that. Like Legacy, sqel box checked again like it's not bad here, but it's no because they've done it a bunch of times.
This is integrable to the plot at least, right except I agree, except Ripley had escaped in the Narcissus and was so fucking far away from that thing when it exploded, and then shot the thing with a harpoon and then blasted with the engines, which meant that alien was tumbling on through space forever and ever and ever. They were never going to find that. As much as I liked seeing him and thinking like, oh, all the villains in this are going to be from that guy from the
original movie. Okay, that's kind of cool, and I did like the mirroring of aliens in that case, like a crew went out and found Ripley, but before that, a crew went out and found the alien, because that's more important. Like I like that plot wise.
It also reminded me of Superman Returns where he goes out and I think they cut this out of the movie, or maybe they didn't, where he goes out to find Krypton and sees that it is exploded. But yeah, I agree with you that alien corpse would have been so far away from the Nostromo it doesn't make sense where
it is. I'm not going to quibble about the physics of that, because, like you say, we don't know certain things, you know, Like I'm not going to get into other than my one thing about the wall Vagina too much about that because yeah, I forgot I remember Harry Dean's Stanton. I think picking up the skin of the first one in the first movie, and so we know that it sheds, we know that it grows. We never really see that middle part of its life cycle before becomes a parent,
but before it becomes a real alien. And yeah, it's for all intentsive purposes, a male alien, So calling it a bitch doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. And there's none of that gravitas as far as Ripley protecting Newt and having this other mother who is threatening her and this other mother who has destroyed this entire planet of LV four twenty six, and all of these
people that Ripley knows. I mean, how well written is Aliens that you care about, characters like Drake and a Phone and all of these guys in that intro, whereas with this one. Yeah, a bunch of dead meat teenagers who I don't know and I don't care to know, and they don't tell me anything about them.
That one guy has a really heavy British accent.
There's something in the waw Now shut the fuck up?
How many times have I heard that in the trailers?
Anything?
Of speaking of fan service, would you guys some corn bread? Don't mind my drinky bird.
Opening scene?
I was like, oh no, And we're not gonna be doing this the whole time, are we?
Oh?
We are?
Well, here's the thing, though, it's an interesting question how much of the fan service is him and how much of the fan service is just studio meddling. Is that a thing that we could say, like, oh, Disney wanted and home in the movie, like Disney wanted all that shit.
Like I'm let me put it this way. Fetti Avarez made and wrote with roto psygiis the Evil Dead remake, which you're mileage is gonna very clearly between the three of us, it's a better movie than this movie and just beach over the head with the fucking fan service like this movie does. I wonder if some of this is just the Disney of it all, which, boy, wouldn't that be fucking fun, because I would echo Deadpool and Wolverine.
That movie's problems. A lot of it comes from what I believe to be meddling of a studio that doesn't really understand what they have and never has, which is why they didn't own it up until the last couple of years. And now that they do their meddling, maybe getting in the way of these things actually having a soul of their own, as opposed to feeling prperty and soulless, which is kind of the way Deadpool and Wolverine felt
at times. And this feels really like that. This this feels like a fan film with a massive budget, Like you guys liked Alien right, you like thean Holme, you like the Newborn in Resurrection. I don't know who liked the Newborn and Resurrection other than Born.
I like Resurrection a lot.
It's a fun movie.
Yeah, you know, I think I like res I mean, Resurrection to me is in all of the movies that we've been talking about, other than Aliens, I think that's one of my favorites.
I mean, it's kind of like it's kind of Aliens esque, like it's it's pretty much just another Aliens, but with you know, space Pirates as opposed to colonial Marines. I'm with you, Like I was being flippant about the Newborn, but the Newborn is actually like the first interesting thing they did movies is what it felt like, like, I mean, Aliens is great, but Aliens sets that standard. Alien three, Alien three is Alien three, and I don't want to
draw the ire of the Alien three fan base. Its know how we know how excessive they can be with their love and hatred of people that do and don't like that movie.
So screw up when you're talking about it being puppets rather than CG.
So yeah, sorry, but Resurrection has an interesting, weird fucking thing at the end. Of it like this movie does. It's just it was done better in Resurrection and here it's just it's like a mix of It's like mixing everything into a way. It's like going to a soda fountain and getting all the things in the cup and being like, this is gonna taste good, right, It's like, no, it's gonna be a lot. And none of this was really fine tuned and calibrated to be in the same
thing together. And that's apparent when Alien and Prometheus are existing on the same screen together and one of those things definitely fucking doesn't feel like the other, that being everything from Prometheus. When they go into that lab, I was just like, oh God, here we go. This is where the movie does the thing, right, this is where they're going to do the thing with the Prometheus stuff. Yep, man, yep. It's like the telegraph everything. Why don't you movie please.
Well, there's nothing to telegraph because it's almost just the greatest hits of the previous Alien movie, right. I will say this, I liked The Newborn here better than I like it from Resurrection, just because I think it was creepier here and better executed. Because the man in the suit in that thing. It's so poorly articulated. The the Newborn in Resurrection, like I almost wish that had been CG instead. But there are some things that I like in this movie, and I like that newborn scene here.
I like the even though that character is pregnant, she follows two stories to a point where I actually thought the character was dead when when she fell that far, I went, oh, man, that's a that's tough that she died that way in an alien movie. But so I
like that sequence. I like I like when whenever they show the alien is doing intelligent things, Like there's a scene with where we first encountered the adult alien where with that girl where it's chasing her and they want she wants to be let in through the air lock and the android won't let it in because he can see the alien sitting there because it wants it to open.
It wants them to open the door. And just moments like that are great, Like I wish there had been a movie like that, a cat and mouse game with an alien like instead of you know, like I said, the greatest hits of everything that came before. I also do like these zero G acid Blood sequence.
That was nice that was a nice kind of show piece that they had, and it was nice that they built it up earlier in the film, and I kept thinking, Okay, that's going to come back later on, but I wasn't sure how they would have it. So when it was with the acid blood, I was like, Okay, yeah, that works, and that's pretty nice. And the way that she uses the gun to propel herself around was was pretty cool as well.
And speaking of acid blood, I like their treatment of the acid block. Every each movie seems to dilute more and more that like what the what the acid will do? Like in the first film, like a drop of it like goes through three decks of their ship. They're worried it's going to breach the hull. And then you know, in each successive things, people are getting sprayed with it and they're like, oh, I'll be okay, just wipe it off like no, and and here it's corrosive as goddamn hell.
I love that aspect of it.
Yeah, Bill Paxson gets showered in a fair amount of it in Aliens and he's fine. But Drake, on the other hand, gets a face full of it and is dead, unequivocally dead.
I think you mean Hicks, sir.
Oh, yeah, you know. I want to go back to the thing about the characters, because I watched Aliens last night, and that movie takes forty five minutes to get going, Okay, go good.
I love it. I love the length. And when you're watching the director's cut, it's almost an hour before those Aliens ever show up.
And it's and exactly so that was the version I watched last night, the two and you know, thirty four two and thirty four minute version. And the movie spends so much time getting its legs underneath it to make sure that you care about everything that's about to be happening through the characters that they've introduced, be it you know, the guy loading the missiles onto the ships, to the woman who's the pilot of the little aircraft carrier thing or the little ship that goes down from the Sulaco,
like all of that. They spend all the time and effort, and this movie is an hour two hours long like it, and it does nothing with any of the characters we've mentioned.
Kaylee Spanny, she's in a better movie. This is the best movie I've seen her in this year that she's been in that's not hard given that the last thing that we talked about, the Three of Us was it the last thing we talked about maybe two times ago with Civil War, and she was in that and she was completely under used in that movie to the point of like not that she didn't need to be in it, but she didn't wasn't given much to do. And I think that's kind of the point in a lot of
ways of that movie. Here. I think she's fine, But I think this movie have a horror movie problem, which is there are characters on screen and they're gonna die, you know that. You just don't know how many are going to be left at the end, and I think they picked the right number. I think this is a you know again, like two people, one human and one one android or artificial person. But yeah, all the other characters are completely worthless. And I'm not saying like the
actors didn't do a good job. I think the actors are fine. It's that the writing does not help any of this. There's there's no writing at all. It's not the characters an It's not just any one thing. It's the writing, it's the performances. It's the choice to make them all fucking twenty years old. It's just there's a lot going on there. Like I care about every member of the crew of the Nostromo. I care about every member of the crew of the Silaco, every fucking one of them.
Yeah, yeah, we got to talk about those shares.
Yeah, yeah, turns on the air, turns the air off. Yeah, it's it's it's surprising how little character development is in this movie, given that this movie is two hours long. But it does just feel like.
What we're given our story is the fucking beginning of the movie solo that remember that it's the same and beginning, like we gotta get off this horrid planet where we never see the sun. Like, wait, they're changing my credits. I have to stay another seven years.
Oh woe is me? They have a ship. Leave, just leave.
That was the thing I kept wondering about. I'm like, is really is the next closest planet really that far away?
Is it really?
What is it nine light year or nine years in a cryo chamber away? Or can you just op skip and a jump to someplace where you can see the sun and maybe there's another M class planet around here.
Guys, Well, you've got a spaceship on a planet though they can leave, and they never explain why they don't, and that whole.
Thing of them being on this mining planet. I'm just like, man, I'd rather be watching Outland. I really like that movie so much better than this. And Yeah, I just even with the the Ian Holme stuff versus the Grand Moth tark and I was really reminded of just the unnecessary rogue one. I mean, it's funny that and Or got his own show because I was like, and Or, I barely remember that guy. He's nothing, He's got He's got his robot companion who I find to be more charming
than him. And when they finally brought out a show of and and Or, I was like, Okay, this is great. Now I finally get to know this character, even though he's kind of the least interesting character in the entire show. It's really more stilen Scarsguard show. For me. I don't yeah, I didn't know any of those people. I just knew Donni Yen because he's an actor other than Ian Holme and our main character. I don't know any of these actors.
Nothing to latch onto as far as even bringing things from other movies, you know, at least with that horrific sequel to Pacific Rim, at least I got some characters that I remember. Though. They bring in John Boyega and her and I'm just like, and what's eastwood Son's name?
Scott Eastwood.
I'm like, these are all just zero charisma. Well, he's zero charisma. The other two are not boy Yeah, I love, but he's not given anything to do either.
Scott Eastwood is is proto Glenn Powell somehow. Glenn Powell is a much more charismatic guy. And his dad's not Clynt Eastwood, which is pretty fucked up, but it's also kind of amusing at the same time. All the characters, I mean, I fall them alone. Again, I think we differ on what the feelings are on why they're not great, but I think the feeling, the sentiment is still the same.
¶ Prequels and Unnecessary Backstories
This has like a prequel problem with the characters, Like they just they don't want to do anything interesting with them for whatever reason. I because they're not aliens. The aliens are what you're writing this movie for, for fuck's sake, Like I get it. Like and then the face hugger, Like none of us have ever gotten a chance to write that in a script that anybody's gonna do anything with, And if we did, I'd probably be just as excited to talk about and write for the aliens than I
would be for the humans. Like I'm not a fucking idiot any more than either one of you guys are. We're writing an alien movie, probably gonna want to focus on the aliens. However, that's not how this works, because that's not how this fucking franchise has really ever worked. When it's been that's at its best. Even in Prometheus, Numi Rapas's character is better written than all the characters
in this movie. And in Prometheus, it actually does a little bit of a trick with that movie because you actually kind of care about some of the characters in that movie because they give you a little bit of time with them and Sam Similarly to Covenant, I mean, it takes a while for those movies to get going. This movie, on the other hand, is a horror movie for you know, twenty somethings and their parents to go
see together. Because that's the thing. I mean, what all the articles and information I've been reading is my parents went and saw aliens together, and so we're gonna go see this movie all of us now, and it's like cool. I'm glad that that can be a shared experience and that people's generational things that people have shared with their kids can now be a thing that we all go see an alien movie in theaters together. However, I wish there was more to this as opposed to just alien.
It's alien. It's like that's not enough, but for some people it's going to be. And I'm not saying that those people's opinions are lesser, better, worse than mine. It's just my bar here with alien movies. Alien as a franchise even is probably pretty high, because this is a franchise that I have been watching since I was like thirteen, and that's not for nothing twenty one years now. For y'all, it's a little bit longer than that, but like, this has been a franchise that's been part of our lives
for a while. I'm sitting listening a father Malone rattle off the names of the goddamn ships here, so he's as invested as you and I are. Mike, I know you're invested as well, and at this point, it's like you've got to do more for people like us on top of being able to make a movie for everybody, and people like us, I think at some point are just going to go. You can't just keep doing the same thing over and over again with the fan service that we've seen in all these other fan service movies,
because Alien doesn't need it. Like Alien at its best was not about trotting out the old lines and having people say them knew that aren't to the original actors, Like that was never a thing in this franchise. The point of this franchise is very different. Point of this franchise is kind of all over the place in terms of what movie you're watching or what source material you're seeing. But this movie just wanted to take a horror movie
and put an alien in it, which is fine. That's just not enough for me at least.
Yeah.
I think about the movie Prey, and I know that didn't that that didn't get a theatrical ride. I was just dumb tru lu lulu.
Yeah.
Yeah, And that was supposed to be this too. This was supposed to be dumped to Hulu. And I remember with Pray, I was like, Ah, what do you like to have seen that in on the big screen? I don't think I would have said that for this one unless they didn't. You know, the thing that I liked about Prey was that they had like that little nod with the gun at the end. You're like, oh, that's the same gun that Danny glover head and Predator too.
That's pretty cool. And of course there's other like little hints of things, but you know, way better than the Predator where you got, oh, get to the those choppers and I'm just like, oh my god, Like, this is so embarrassing had they taken this idea because the First Alien is very much a horror movie with an alien in it. You know, it conquered the Earth type of thing or what was the Terror beiond it Terror beyond
Space or whatever it was. It's like, okay, cool, Yeah, that's great, take it, but please, if you can remove the fan service, just have these guys running into another ship or like another alien rather than this particular high end. To Ripley in her story, just said, it's someplace else. And that's what the comic books, the old Dark Horse comics used to do. They had a whole new characters that they had and they were great. Those were awesome comic books. I really recommend those, and I think they
could have learned something from this word. They don't have to just be so slavish to all of the old stuff and just keep giving us these nods, because for me, every time they do it just takes me out of it.
They just map those comics into a fast series.
All the books, or the fucking multitude of books that they've written, all the a. You can go to half Prize Books right now and pick up five or six Alien books for fifty cents that are better written than this movie is. And I get it. It's a two hundred page book and it's not a two hour movie
and all the time blah blah blah. You know what, that's not a fucking excuse, because we have mentioned already Alien and Aliens and even Prometheus actually do some character development that's worth talking about.
You can get audio books of Alien if you don't want to read them, and they've got something audio dramas that are really fucking good.
Yeah, Alien is a franchise that has so much extended universe material that's still canon until Disney doesn't want to be anymore, probably at this point, Like there's so much that they could have drawn from that. They just were like, not Alien and aliens, that's it, And like the alien base movies, like nobody has read Alien whatever the fuck
X Y and Z book, just rip that off. Even to your point, father, like Isolations, you would have thought enough removed, And clearly in a lot of ways it is from the mainstream to rip that off without getting lambasted for it in every review for the movie.
You know what would be a good link between Alien and Aliens Allen Ripley's daughter trying to find her weird the.
Thing that so I had a real problem with Alien three in the idea of and this was more in the scripts that were rejected for Alien three, but it still ended up being an Alien three. This whole idea of if an alien ges states in something that's not a human, it takes on the properties of that preacher, which to me just doesn't make any sense. It's that whole idea of like if an alien embeds a baby inside of a rhino, it's going to come out with like armor plating in a horn, and like that just
doesn't make sense. As far as the DNA of the alien itself, it does cool Kenner Toys Mike it does, but it kind of makes sense with the black goo with the black oil, like that kind of makes sense.
But where, oh, where is.
That mouse alien in this movie? That's what I was waiting for. Once you see that mouse explode in that video footage, I'm waiting for that mouseleally to come out.
Yeah, where was it?
It was just what we got was like a cocoon kind of a thing, and then no payoff, and then and then we get another cocoon later saying if you see a cocoon, there's something in there.
It's coming for you.
Yeah. Well, and and again the Prometheus of it all, we have a direct homage to Prometheus with the pregnant woman at the end of the movie, because that's I've got to assume that's what they're referencing with her laying the alien egg, which is very similar to what happens to Numi ORPAs and the third act of that movie where she has the emergency C section and she has the thing taken out of her and bring a wiggling on the arm like it's just that again, like they're
even the thing in this movie that kind of feels somewhat unique and original, is ultimately a poor fac simile of a thing you've already done elsewhere two movies ago, two movies ago, even, not three, not Alien, two goddamn movies ago. And how do I know this Because Ridley's got directed the goddamn thing and he produced the fucking movie. And this is all. This is all. If it's not Fox meddling, it's Ridley Scott going, I'm producing this, so you better have this shit in here.
Oh, it absolutely is, because here's I haven't said anything about Prometheus or that other fucking Covenant, what was it. I fucking hate those movies, like I hate this whole what I love about the Aliens, and I will continue to ignore those movies. I love the idea that we
don't know where they're from. There there's a planet of them somewhere, and they're just they are the apex predator of the universe and don't go there, and all of the love Craftian kind of connotations involved with them, and instead Ridley Scott's like, no, I'm gonna do this like bullshit nineteen sixties concept of space seeding, you know, like Chariots of the Gods man, Like that's what you came up with.
And by the way. You didn't really them up with it either. It didn't come up technically stole it thing you. No, he didn't come up with any of that. He didn't come up with anything.
For any read and either he directed one movie, Like why is he Why is he charting the course for the rest of these films, and why is he charting their mythology? He's a fucking hired gun man. He was a fucking shoe salesman before this.
Dan O'Bannon is turning over in his grave.
Now Dan O'Bannon is going, where's my check? Motherfucker?
Yeah that's Dano. That's on point for mister O'Bannon. But it was nice seeing his name on screen.
Oh yeah, it always is.
Yeah, always always is. But at the same time, I could just sit and think to myself, like, what would he think about this movie, because like him and Ron Shoest really nailed it with that first movie, so hardcore, and then to watch this movie just kind of again succeed in what it could succeed at, but ultimately, in my mind flail a lot of the time because some of the things that happen in this movie are flailing in a way that's like flailing upward for people, clearly
because we're I would I would say that I might be the most positive of the three of us on the movie, but we are in a minority here of finding this movie to be not as great, because most everybody I've talked to and or seen online is like, enjoyed this movie a lot more than either of us.
Either three of us did, which is not surprising. But at the same time, I wonder the amount of experience and exposure and yearning and wanting that people who have seen these movies, even within the mainstream media and critics, are watching it and have a frame of reference for the other things outside of just I saw Aliens once and I know that that line is in Aliens. I mean this to your point, father alone, this world that was created is so deep and interesting, and it doesn't
need to be like. The parts of it that are deep and interesting are not the parts that need to be explained. Those are the things that I like. To your point, I never asked where the fuck did the alien come from? Why does anyone care? It's the whole prequelization of shit. Thanks to George Lucas and Friends and Indiana Jones, the last Crusade, Like, oh, how did Harry and Vord get that scar on his chin? How did he get his hat? How did he get his whip?
Like that's five minutes, five ten minutes of that movie. And that's the perfect prequel version of anything I think I've ever seen because it's connected to a movie, it's not the whole goddamn movie. And that's this entire I mean, this entire movie is just more of like where did the alien come from? It's weird that I haven't fucking cared this whole time movie that didn't really care. I
mean Prometheus and Covenant. The parts of those movies that I have enjoyed are Michael Fassbender's performance, because he's great in those movies, Like that's really not up for debate in terms of those movies. That's the quality at the center of those movies is his performance and the way he interacts with the other people. But the alien of it all in those movies is like I didn't want to know where Hannibal Lecter came from. I don't want to know Darth Vader's backstory. I don't want to know
any of this shit because it doesn't fucking matter. And for the longest time, nobody else thought it did. Either.
Do you like Boba Fett? Well, I'm going to show you where Bobaffett came from.
He was a little kid and his father died and he was really sa such a cool idea for a movie.
I always loved all the mystery of the space Jockey and the eggs and was he transporting them? Like was he trying to get rid of them? Like who set up that beacon?
Was it him?
Who is that guy? Is he an elephant? Yeah?
Yeah, exactly, Like you know, it's just mystery upon mystery, And like I'm fucking totally cool with that.
How does Ash work without that chip that they give to or sorry Rook? How does Rook work without that thing that they give to Andy?
That's a good question that they probably don't have an answer for Space Magic.
I like that whole transformation of Andy when they put that new chip in, and I like when he, you know, looks up at the sky and his eyes go white and his hands are charmoring, and I'm just like, that's a really cool moment for me. There's some there are some good moments into this in this, but otherwise, I mean, does it say, tilts out eyeballs when it goes up as well.
It's reminded me of warning, Warning, Warning, But things like the creature design for the baby alien, like, I tend to agree with you, Father Malone.
That looks a little cooler than the skull faced alien that we had in Resurrection. It reminds me a lot of the aliens that were in Close Encounters of the third kind, like that last wave of them that come out that are so fall and spin lely. And there's a silhouette where I was just like, Oh, that kind of reminds me of that. That's pretty cool. But then I'm like, oh, and it's got the engineer's face from Covenant and Prometheus. Fuck me.
Yeah. It was when the reveal happened at the end of the movie, I said, audibly along with several other people in the theaters, what the fuck? Because it was it was Oh, I disagree with y'all. It was a It was a worse design than Resurrection because it is a full CGI creature that anytime they cut they cut to it, it looks like CGI and I'd be I will be that guy one time right now and go.
This was where practical effects would have helped because it was already low lighting anyways, guys like you're in a dark hold of a ship like this, I mean, I get it, Like you can do more with CGI than you can do practically. I appreciate it. And I know that there is a gentleman who plays the hybrid in this movie, so there is a person in a suit, but it's also a lot of it that's CGI.
Well, that's the thing, Like that would have solved the fucking Ian Home problem too. It's like, you know, it's we're not We're not like misusing his image or anything. We're using that character based on his look and you know, and the sound alike, Like I would have bought a fucking if you saw if you've ever seen any of the animatronics at Disneyland, like fucking malfunction, it's fantastic, Like they could have done a lot with that with with Ana Share or Hardy Rook.
As soon as Rook came on screen, I was very audibly upset. I just like no, just because it just looked so bad with the way that his head moves, because I understand his head's down on his chest doing the whole like Bishop from from Alien three thing where he's half half they're half not. He did such a better job with Bishop with the way that they did that. And I understand that Lance Hendrickson was still a relatively young man and still alive, whereas with Ian Holme it's
been gone for a few years. But do you know what this opens up? We can now redo the hobbit with Ian Holme as Bilbo Baggins. This is going to be fantastic.
Christ don't put that out into the fucking universe, Mike. Why would you gonna show up on Rings of Power? Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. Man like, And there he is. There's Bilbow walking around like oh no, no.
No, you know on Canny to beat the Bandol, there's there's a research ship from Whaling New Twani and it is filled with the aliens. And if there's one thing Whaling New Tanny wants more than anything in the world, all it's these aliens. And somehow it's just derelict hanging
out about mining colony. They haven't come to get it, Like there's a dynamic that they could have explored the whalen Utania on the way kind of think something something that they needed there other than rods to power their ship to get I don't know, maybe a plot or something.
I say, where was where was the like opposing force coming to get the aliens? Like, because that's a thing that was never really been explored in any of this. I mean we have it a little bit at the end Alien three, not really in Resurrection because again this kind of rips off Resurrection that it's taking place on the space station where they were fucking around with the alien DNA like, but Resurrection does it better because Resurrection shows us where the mutant aliens are hanging out and
where the mutant Sigourney Weaver clones are. In this movie, it's like it's just perfect. It's still perfect. Everything's fine. The alien got loose and killed everybody, but it still looks normal, Like we what what why.
Rook should have been all about and figure out a way to get those aliens back to whaling Utani. And yeah, if there's power on the ship, and you see power on quite a few times, why don't we go ahead and just pilot this ship this whole romulus remiss thing or whatever. You know, he can crawl around with his arms, we see that too. Why does he try to commandeer the ship and take off with some of the face huggers. Inte they're going to leave him alone.
Right because they don't care, because it's just it's just And I don't know why they don't care. Because you have these franchises, and you have these opportunities to do something with them, and you're spending money. You spend eighty million dollars on this movie. It's not nothing. That's a significant amount of money, at least to me, at least
the way I look at the world. Only eighty million dollars a lot of money to spend, and this is the best that you can do is just kind of playing the discordant tones of Alien over and over again, Bomb bomb Bomb, just like playing it on a piano and being like, this is a new song. It's like, Dona, we've heard this before. Don't try to lie to us. It's like, don't try to put one over on me. Because here's the other thing. At the end of this movie.
This story's over, thankfully. That's the one saving grace in all of this is I don't there what universe do we need to see anymore with these characters? Oh, we don't, And that's good.
Well, you can do like and or and now do a prequel with Rain.
No wrong, the early d know, we want to know why Andy the android is called that, and why is she called Rain she was found out in the Rain.
I mean, the whole idea of them living on this shitthole planet and just being stuck in this never ending cycle and trying to break away from this. I mean, this is stuff I can relate to as an American. I'm like, Okay, I get this whole thing. We're gonna keep moving the goalposts, sonya. You know, pretty soon they're gonna raise the fucking retirement age and they're gonna change this role in that role. And it's just like, Okay,
I get it, and I get this so well. But then once they make the decision like oh there's a ship up there, we're gonna go up to the ship, it's like okay, cool, boom. Five minute later, we're off and that's it and they just take off, and like
¶ Debating the Space Station Dilemma
you said, it's like, Okay, go someplace else. Then, Yeah, I don't get why you're so stuck on going to this space station. Okay, great if it doesn't work out, what these cryo tubes? You know what they got enough power for three years, Let's go someplace that's three years close.
That's not what the script allowed them. I know, I know, being a horrible person, that's not how the script was written. Mike, that's yeah. Someone said, let's just make this alien again.
Let's just have them on a space station and have aliens running around and the scariest part of the movie being the face huggers, because that is I mean, the most compelling part of this movie is that sequence that was in the trailer where they're in the cryo room and there are quote something in the water, and those things are the face huggers, And that is the best scene in this entire movie. It really is, like, it's compelling,
it's different. There are some stakes, there are some components going on because there's the Android in there who's rebooting, and then there's the two other guys whose names you couldn't get me to remember even if I tried. And yeah, and on top of everything else, let's mention something else, something we haven't really talked about. I mean, we kind of alluded to it that the characters are fodder. Are
there any good death scenes in this movie? Even with the usage of the way the aliens work other than is the chest burst or scene in this movie good? It's kind of the question I want to ask, because
I don't think it is. I mean, they showed the entire thing in the trailer, and the only thing they didn't show in the trailer is the shot of the alien popping out of her chest, and then when you see it's thoroughly underwhelming in a way that I was not expecting given the guy who directed this fucking movie and wrote it is the guy who had blood blood raining from the skies like it's a fucking Slayer song and evil Dead, okay, And this is just like a
little just patch of the alien popping out, like what in the fuck man? For real? It's it's a waste of time because then when we have the alien doing alien things, there's not a big enough cast to see people getting fucking obistirated anyways. And so we get a quick shot of one of the two guys getting murdered by an alien and it's like the movies rated PG.
Thirteen and it doesn't even want to show you what's happening with any amount of like detail, which again not saying I need to see guys heads exploding or anything. But the movies rated are so you're clearly aware that you can do essentially whatever the fuck you want. You're not, so I just don't understand why you're not. It is probably what I'm getting at.
Here's how excited for the movie I was. I avoided every trailer I somehow believe it Dany thumbhow managed to avoid every piece of media. So with the X ray thing, when she first picks it up, I was like, Wow, that's cool. That's a cool piece of tech, and and didn't didn't think it was going to pay off. So that actually worked for me. But the when the little alien bursts out, Yeah, I think Alvarez was just trying to be different than the John hurt one, and boy he existed. He succeeded.
Wow, talk about phallic. Holy shit, that was the most like first sure I've ever seen in my life. I know, there's basically a foreskin out a chest burster, but you get to see that, you get to see the blue veins. I'm just like, Wow, Okay, we're just not hiding it anymore.
No venus is I like to make every sing phatic. Thanks hr.
But I will say about that chess Burster scene. I like the dynamics of what was going on, and it was the shuttle and then like slowly crashing. In fact, one thing I really liked in the movie was all of the all of the space stuff, all of the ships and all of the it all felt heavy, like there was gravity to it all, and it all felt very realistic and very of that universe. So I think they succeeded one hundred percent there and including in that sequence.
The influence of Ron Cobbs still looms large in this franchise, thank god, because yeah, then while they may not be kit bashing anymore, with the ways that they're designing things, their kit bashing and really rendering, because yeah, everything feels that's the thing about this movie, Like everything feels proper alien, like everything really does. Like everything looks like Alien, feels like alien. It's just poorly executed, but it's a it's
a beautiful movie. I mean, unfortunately, like I d or eighty million dollars produced by Disney, Like, oh, your movie doesn't look good. That's a bigger problem at this point because where did the money go? At least if we can see the visual effects look pretty good. The set design looks pretty great. The production design and the costume
design is great. Like, Okay, I can concede that there's a fair amount of money going into that, But I mean, again, a movie looking nice in twenty twenty four, that's a big budget studio movie. I mean, I'm sure Borderlands looked fine. Clearly wasn't a good movie and execution, but I'm sure it looked fine. But again, low of low bars to cross.
I will here's the other thing I like that that and this is sort of tying back into what I said earlier about showing the aliens and how intelligent they are.
¶ Alien Intelligence and Weaponry
There's a scene where the Android has given each of the characters new pulse rifles. These are before the pulse rifles that the colonial Marines will have fifty years from now, so now nerds have a whole new model. They have to go three D print. But anyway, it gives them the guns and tells them don't use them because they have acid blood and they'll kill kill us all. And
they said why do you give them to us? And he says, well, I think they'll think that it is a deterrent, And it is so that one scene where they there's like a group of full grown aliens coming around the corner, climbing on the wall, and she holds
up the gun and they all pause. That scene somehow that the image of them like pausing and waiting, and I don't know, I thought that was really evocative, like really like worthy of the rest of the series of movies, like the things with the actual adult alien in this movie, like I've knock my socks on, it's just everything else
hanging on. It is bad. But I will say this, Chris, I think I did like this movie more than you because I will never watch Prometheus or Covenant again, and I will watch this again for at least for the for We were just talking about the production design and like like spending two hours in this world, Like I will watch it again.
Yeah, I think the performance that Andy Gibbs is enough to possibly bring me back. And there's a few things.
I thought.
It was interesting that we're trying to fight aliens with cold rather than fire, which again takes me back to Alien Resurrection with the little bread dwarf machine that he's got where it sprays them with the cold stuff, and then when she tries to use it again later on, it doesn't work.
Okay, great.
I thought we're going to have instead of flamethrowers, we're going to have ice throwers or you know, prayo fuel, which apparently is very cold. So I was like, all right, great, but yeah in space nowhere can you?
Yeah at all?
Are there are some interesting things in this film, but I don't think it's enough for me. It's more interesting and more enjoyable. And I actually, for all of my complaints about not knowing these characters, when you get to Covenant, other than David, I don't know any of those people whatsoever. I'm like hard pressed to even remember. I think what doctor Manhattan was one of the scientists, and Danny McBride, and then poor James Franco just kind of gets all
the scenes cut out. It's like otherwise I'm just left with the lady with the dark hair, and yeah, that's all about I remember.
Where Katherine Waterston was just in big franchise movies there for a while, and they were not good because she was also the female lead in those Fantastic Beast movies. And it's like, oh, that feels so bad for you. Sam Waterston's daughter is just getting She's like the female idriest elebents like, can you be in something good that's a big budget thing as opposed to just being good in all the non big budget stuff you're in because we want to yeah franchises, what is wrong with you?
Yeah?
Yeah, I'm rewatching the slot slight version and just even in that shitty video quality that Ian Holmes, this of it is just it really disturbs me. I mean, I don't tend to just focus on just how bad CG can get, but this jet.
Really hurts to watch. Remember those Zales commercials with Humphrey Bogart, Oh God, remember that that's where this all started. Like that was like the initial onus behind this is like have dead people still, Like Ken, we have dead people? He in like sag minimum means into the work of a real actor, because that's the thing. Daniel Betts does the voice for Ian Holmes character, because there's someone doing
like an Ian Holme impersonation, right, He's great. It's just sad that there's all this other stuff surrounding it because I just yeah, I don't I don't know. It would not it have been enough to just have the voice of the home Coming out of a robot that looks different and the people that get it just be like, oh, okay, it's like an Ian Holme thing as opposed, just like
it is E and Home on screen. Please acknowledge, like I don't want to, please stop forcing this down my throat like a fucking face hugger's too, like, don't do it right?
And had they moved on to another model, because that's the thing with Alien three, the whole thing of Bishop coming back and it's like, oh, is this actually Bishop? No, it can't be Bishop, So who is this guy? Is this the guy that Bishop was based on? Or is this another android that look sorry artificial person that looks
like Bishop? And I kind of like that they leave it a little bit vague there, but then in this one it's like, oh no, no, they just have models and they all look alike, like, all right, so we're doing a little Picard season one thing here.
Well, and isn't I mean, Father malonea work for me if I'm wrong? That's the isolation. All the robots look the same, all the synthetics look the same.
Yeah, just like just thinking that actually like.
A plastic like like a plastic like burn mask just over like a robot like body. It's just it's literally like.
Crashed CPR dummy basically. Yeah, like yeah, and they're horrifying.
Yeah, fucking they're more scary that Like, here's the thing, Alien Isolation. It's a great Alien game, but the fucking robots are more horrifying than the Alien is. They kill you in two hits twice.
In my back, I think they are very, very scary. But there is nothing that nothing made me more frightened of the other than the original movie of the Alien than playing that game. You hear it coming, man, they just hide and you fucking pray because it knows you're that. It's really scary.
Hiding in the lockers and watching it like walking around, man, move back in the locker too, to pull yourself back away from it. Yeah, it's video game one or art form for certain things. They just are. And with this, it's like Alien kind of is made for that kind of story to be interacted with in a way that is more closely tied to the person having the experience
is interacting with the alien directly. And that's what Alien as a franchise kind of has always wanted is to put you in the shoes of the people there and by having it be just a spaceship with a small amount of people, you can make that feel like anywhere else other than space where you couldn't run away, and Alien Isolation captures that in a way that, yeah, like we've already alluded to, nothing else really ever has, and now this is the first thing that's kind of tried
to even and it fails. It really fails in terms of just being a worthwhile sequel to Alien. It just kind of ends up being a sequel to everything, not specifically Alien, which is fine, but nobody asked for that. That was a choice that was made specifically by the writers and directors and producers of the film. So we'll see.
Here's what I'm asking for. Here are my two ideas. If anyone from the franchise is listening, make make these movies. I would like to see a movie made from the alien point of view.
Hell yeah, like in a violent nature.
Yeah, like I'd like to, yes, exactly, like where they we see how horrible we are to them, you know, like I'd like that movie. I would also like a Predator style movie. You want to do it on a space station, put it wherever you want. I want to see one person against an alien. They're hunting each other for the entire movie, like like the stuff I was talking about then, I like in the movie, every time we get to see them like plotting and scheming and like like being more than just the sort of beast
that they look like. I'd like to see that like throughout a movie, like setting traps and doing shit, like you know, that could be really fun anyway.
If the alien comes up and opens up its mouth and the second set of Jaws is there and the guy just goes clever girl.
I mean, I was talking about this last night with Ryan from Someone's Favorite Productions, Like where does this go from here?
Right?
I think is ultimately like the final question to answer here the kind of big thing to think about, because, like I alluded to the way this movie ends, there's no reason to return to these characters. There's nothing there. There's no cliff there's no overt cliffhanger like at the end of Covenant, which is clearly never going to be resolved at this point, which is perfectly fine, but this movie just kind of ends and it's you know, they're
not drifting out through space like alien or aliens. It's just you know, they're going to Vanga or wherever the fuck they're going, and they'll get there and they'll be fine and whatever. I don't care about their story, So where does it go from here? There? My mind goes immediately too. They're just going to make Aliens again, and like, why haven't they?
Apparently they're supposed to make something called Alien Earth.
They showed a preview for that, and in my theater,
actually I wanted to ask you guys about that. So there was it was like a three or four second maybe ten at the most teaser, and it was the shot of the Earth being reflected on something, and then you kind of realize as it's moving, the thing is moving up that it's actually the reflection of the Earth on that top of the alien's carapace, like on the top of his head, and it kind of moves up and he goes and it's Alien Earth Summer twenty twenty five,
and that's a Hulu thing. But and now they're finally taking the Aliens to Earth, which means is this in the end of that series?
That what Noah Holly is doing?
No that is that is that is the series? Yeah?
Oh okay, well you know who cares? I mean, you know, I'm going to watch it because it's like an alien universe, but.
Like it's Noah Hawley. He actually knows it's not.
Going to be It's not going to be the Earth war that we want. It's not going to be the Dark Horse comics.
No no, And I promised him that since Alien three. When they first had the posters for Alien three, it said this time it's hiding in the most terrifying place of all I don't find I've said this many times before. I don't find segorting a Weaver's stomach to be that terrifying.
I figure it was going to be Earth and they even had like it was tied in with the poster with the really teaser preview and it was like, oh, this is going to be fantastic, and yeah, they've been on Earth with Alien Versus Predator and Alien What was that Versus Predator.
That the movie nobody saw because it was so.
Dark, and oh, yeah, you're right. I went to the theater. I can't say I saw the movie correct. Yeah, it was, Oh god, that was awful. I really like the first Alien Versus Predator and that was kind of cool that it was all isolated and kind of you know a little bit like the thing that we're doing this down in Antarctica. I was like, all right, this is kind.
Of nice, and that's its own that's its own timeline too. By the way that that exists separate from Alien and Predator, that is not they're not cannon either. Alien and a VP and a VP Requiem are their own things, separate from everything on top of everything else.
And I'm okay with that. Yeah, I'm I'm really. The thing that was getting me was this whole we need to explain what Whalen and Utani are and that we have like, oh, miss Waylan's joining us, Oh, bring that box to mister Utani. I was like, I don't give a shit, guys, just get the fuck on with that.
Yeah, yeah, I wonder why they've never done another Colonial
¶ Colonial Marines and Franchise Missteps
Marines thing, Like why they've never just gone down that road, like of all the things. Just get a bunch of semi charismatic actors together, throw them into an Alien's esque setting and just have like the Radio Silence guys who did those Scream sequels and Abigail, have them do it like it'll be They know how to work and write for like an ensemble cast of people clearly, and they could do it. And look, they actually have a sense of fun to what they do as opposed to it
being just kind of grim dark and series. I'm not saying Alien Romulus was grim darkin series, but it's trying to be Alien, it's not trying to be Aliens. There's not necessarily the sense of fun that you get from Aliens, which is I think a action and fun movie in a lot of ways that almost nothing else in the franchise ever gets to because everything else is kind of doing its own thing or trying to just be a horror movie. I think that that's where this needs to go, Like,
take that and just do the Aliens thing again. Why not? What's the worst that could happen? You get a entertaining action movie with semi charismatic actors or really charismatic actors fighting aliens for two hours. I mean it worked for James Cameron. You're telling me someone hasn't thought in the last forty years to just do that again. I don't get it. I mean, I like Alien, but why do we need to redo Alien? Why not just redo Aliens? Is there not more room with that to do more?
No?
Like Okay, we'll just have them shooting aliens a little bit in this movie. That's advocative of aliens. I mean not really, but in the scheme of this movie versus Alien, yes, they have guns. In this movie they are shooting aliens. That never happens in Alien. He literally goes, you know what does he say? He's like, you'll rig up some of those incinerators, which that line always made me think, like, these aren't even a thing that they're ever using for
anything other than like a technical purpose. It's not to defend themselves, so like.
They're in a cargo ship, they don't need weapons exactly.
It's like, okay, well, and Aliens is such a fun movie because it's like, now the Aliens are the ones that are outmatched, until you realize that's not the case so clearly. But that's because James Cameron actually took a right instead of going left. And I want someone to do that with this franchise at this point, because it's not that the Aliens aren't scary, far from it, but the Alien has been scary in other things so successfully.
I don't think anyone else can do it as well anymore clearly with something like this they tried, and it's like, eh, sure, it's kind of scary, it's kind of entertaining, but like the original Alien will never be matched in actually being unsettling and creepy and disturbing and creating a sense of dread throughout the movie that can't be escaped because you're on a fucking space station cargo ship. However, you know whatever it is.
Yeah, but this one could have gotten there had it not been saddled with all of the worst characters and all of the sort of bullshit fan service and all that kind of nonsense.
Like I want it close as it's gotten. It's Alien.
I wanted to take a right turn as well. But I don't think we need to make Aliens again, Like I want them to do something interesting that we haven't seen before, Like stop fucking like going all of the ship from the past. We've been there already, Like do something new.
I have an idea here. What if Kaylee, Spanny and Andy there was a face hugger on board? Yeah, and let's say that they crashed on like a wood planet. Okay, and let's say that the face hugger got Kaylee spanning. How would you feel about that? Father? In along two close to Alien three. I would you know what?
I would ask? Everything after aliens doesn't make any sense to me, because how how does an alien get on the fucking silaca?
Imagine an egg? Like?
Don't they show eggs like falling over like with the wood flames going and stuff? How did they get there? The queen, we say here, tear away from her ovipositor and come running after Ripley and then gets on the ship. Where did the fucking eggs come from?
I wish I knew? Yeah, you would think that of all the things Ripley would do, she would make sure there's no goddamn aliens on that ship.
Before they they have motion trackers, they would just walk around the ship. And yeah, smart characters acting stupid is a great way to get your sequel to a movie rolling in the wrong direction.
That's that's this movie too. When they're trying to go through first off, it cracks me up that we're still using fahrenheit in space here. That's that's fantastic. Get the room up to ninety eight point six fahrenheit, walk through this thing, and then have your fucking radio on. And that doesn't immediately trigger because they're like oh, they're attracted
to sound, but really more it's the heat. So I'm like, oh, but yet he's just basically having a conversation with the pregnant lady the whole and I'm like, shut the fuck up and get out of there, idiot.
Yeah, I thought just her through this speaker would would be enough to trigger that. It would be him going like, please stop talking, stop talking, stop stop. You know, like that scene should have been successful in it was not for me. The trek through through face hugger hollow.
Yeah, it was basically when they swim under the ship, you know, not the Betty, I can't Betty was the ship that they came in on, but an alien resurrection. When they go underneath and they're in the cafeteria coming up on the other side, I'm like, oh, this is kind of like that, like we have to go through this impossible area and we don't know what's going to happen. But no, we'll fuck that up too.
Look, it's gonna it's gonna check enough boxes for enough people, and.
Oh yeah, I've seen people like oh I'm going to see it for a third time today.
I'm like, wow, Okay, if we can get a colonial Marines television series out of this, like maybe just a limited show. Like, you know, I'm sure those Marines fought more than aliens. They seem to have a history with with with aliens prior to the Zeno morph, you know what I mean, Like they were clearly unprepared for it, But it doesn't mean that they haven't tangled with other things.
Yeah, it's just going to be another bug hunt. Yeah, and then they've got that what is it Arcturian pussy that they're after, doesn't matter if it's Arturian.
Yeah, man or woman apparently. Yeah, Yeah, I think about that because I like, like you've clearly alluded to an al aliens that in Hangar scene, they're like, it's another bug hunt. There might be a xenomorph. It's like these okay, so they know, like there's some awareness the term xenomorph. These guys don't just go a lot when they hear it.
They're kind of like a little nonplussed. It would seem so, but again, xenomorph is Again that's the other thing about this franchise that immediately, like when people are talking about it, like the xenomorph actually is the alien. That's just that's just the name that they're giving broadly to aliens in this series in general, Like, the Xenomorph's not actually the name of the alien at all. It never has been.
That's like, I think the one time it's used in the entire Original four movies is in Aliens when they say xenomorph, because I guess James Cameron's like, we have to say zeno morph for whatever reason. But xenomorph is not the name of the alien. That's never been actually the name. That's just what they're talking about in that scene. But all aliens broadly in the Alien Universe are xenomorphs because.
That's because the alien was really really selfish and he said, I'll just take that.
That's what he is.
That's mine. Now, if you refer to an alien, you're talking about me, and you know what he's right, Well, it's.
That whole thing. You know, Baby Yoda is not actually a Yoda. Yoda is a is something, but we don't know what he is, and so that's not a baby Yoda. Come on, guys, it really makes me mad. Come on, I should call him Grogu. Hey, don't dead name Grogu.
Wow? Here I am that picking. I just feel like such an asshole. Hey, I hope we get more alien stuff. We clearly are, but maybe not this Maybe not alien again, right, I'm not. I just Predator has had, like all these movies have had so many missteps at this point, Like
¶ Terminator vs. Alien: Franchise Comparisons
we have we haven't mentioned the one franchise that this does get compared to, and I think now it's kind of broken away from being compared to it. But there was a time where this franchise was compared to Terminator in the same breath.
And we're like, has fought aliens in the comics?
Yeah, they sure have, And I believe at one point the Terminator and the Alien and the Predator squared off with each other.
But one is better than another? What are you saying one franchise is better?
No, I'm saying that I think that Alien Is has broken free from the problems that Terminator now has more than ever. But I don't think that that's. Yeah, it's broken free, maybe a couple of degrees, but I still think they're they're still spinning in gravity about to slam into the same plan. I think Terminator is just a lot further along with how bad everything has been since
Terminator two, And there are how many Terminator movies. Since, like you said it yourself, father, I'm like, since Aliens, none of this really has mattered in any substantive way to the point where they retcon the beginning of Alien three. I don't know if you guys know about that, but in the Alien Colonial Marines game, which is Cannon Kicks is still alive. Yeah, Like that's it, Like, yeah.
Books Hicks and are still alive. Yeah.
Yeah, it's like, Oh, you mean the characters from Aliens, the second best movie in this franchise, they didn't deserve to die off screen? Really? H hmmm. Yeah.
It's all such Hill and Geiler stuff. I mean, Walter Hi, Walter Hill. I love a lot of his work, but him and Aliens do not go together. Well. Like, every while I was doing my research on Alien three, every bad decision was coming right from those two.
Geiler is such a fucking dick, and he tried so hard to make sure Dan O'Bannon didn't get a fucking credit.
And every time I see him on those documentaries that I watch every now and then about this franchise, it makes me so angry that they gave him any amount of screen time and he can just sit there and talk about this franchise like he has anything to do with it other than being a fucking parasitic fish on the side of a shark or whale, just hanging on while everybody else is going for a ride, because yeah,
I'm with you. So much of this is just attributed to idiots who have no idea what they're doing, but they were successful in other avenues, so they get to they get to say they have their saying fuck this shit. Come on.
Look, there were a lot of contributors to that first Alien movie in what made it made successful and to their credit, and I think it's Walter Hill more than Dave Geiler. You know, he made it more, working class made it. They're like basically space truckers and like give me my shares, Like let's talk about the bonus situation like that came from them, and I appreciate that. But the rest of it's fucking Obama, except for the chest burster.
That's wrong. Let's choose it, and so like you know, let's but then, like you know, the next movie is a singular vision because camer writes and directs it, and then everything after that is just stumbling and falling down because nobody has shown up and going and gone, here's what the movie needs to be. And then and them said them saying, okay, go ahead and do that. It's all my committee now.
So the committee has spoken, and I guess they wanted fan service until there's nothing else coinbread.
If she don't like the coin bread either.
Now me either, none of us do. God, but that that dipper, that Dipper bird, guys, I'm glad I saw it again in this in this series. I was wondering where it was this whole time. Anything else we want
¶ Final Thoughts and Recommendations
to talk about with this movie now that we've thoroughly destroyed it. I liked it.
I think it's worth a watch. I don't think you should go out to theaters and say it, but you know, it's no worse than a couple of the other alien movies of what's been passing for movies. In my estimation of plate.
Hey, I would say, you know, when it shows up on Hulu, go ahead and watch it the way that it was intended to be watched.
That's horrible. Watch it dumped on Hulu where it deserved to be. Yeah, I am in agreement with y'all. I think if this is something you're really passionate and motivated about. If you're a fan of the Alien franchise, I think it might I don't know. I think you're going to be fifty to fifty you might either be able to
overlook some of the stuff and really appreciate it. Because I have close friends that are big fans of the franchise that really enjoyed it, And then there's people like ourselves who are equally as big fans of the franchise that did not enjoy it because we wanted It's not that we wanted something different, it's that the movie should have known better than to do some of the things that just don't need to be trotted out again at this point in the at this point in the history
of the franchise, because we've had it's not like Ghostbusters, where there's thirty years between the movies, Like there was an Alien movie that came out five years ago, Like why are we doing sequel legacy, sequel baiting and fan service shit when Alien movies have actually been coming out, Like,
it doesn't make any sense. This is a sequel to Alien, is what this wants to be, and that's what it is, and in a lot of ways, it being a legacy sequel to Alien is the big overriding problem with this movie. If it had not been a Alien legacy sequel, I think we would have enjoyed this movie a lot more because it's been giving itself a lot more room to do interesting things with and instead it just wants to be an Alien sequel, which is fine. I just need you know what. I didn't want that.
I think what we got here. I think you're right, both of you about the sort of the studio meddling. The more I think about it now, I think in it somewhere in between dealing with a studio that really wants a hard reboot of this series and wants to bring back all the fans because they're trying to put distance between them and the fucking previous two Ridley Scott movies, like you have them on one side, and on the other side you have Ridley Scott, So like, how do
you satisfy both those masters? And like, in that light, this is a This is a tremendous success, but I would like to have seen what Fede Alvarez would have done without any fealty to either side. Just take the characters, take or take the Alien and then do whatever the hell you want with it. I want to see that movie very very much.
That's called twenty Fourteen's Evil Bad. It really is, Like the amount of fan service in that movie is negligible at best. There's an ecronomicon and that's about it, and there's a cabin in the woods and that's about it.
Like and don't forget the yeah, the post credit.
Sequence right also that, But to be fair, I had a post credit sequence that's part of the movie I enjoyed with.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, sorry, I'm not a big fan of that movie. I mean I get it, I understand. I mean the originally they I'm with you, I like, I'm with Father Malone. I like it a lot, but I can understand where someone like yourself, Mike, who's a fan of the franchise as a whole, similarly to this, like either you're either gonna like it or you're not. There's not gonna be a lot of middle ground there.
And I am with Father Malone. I like twenty Fourteen's Evil Dead, but it is the right way to do a legacy sequel without any of the fan baiting and nostalgic bullshit. Because again, like they didn't have They didn't have Bruce Campbell walk in stage right and be like, hey, everybody, it's me. I'm ash rememberly Oh no, I mean, and then that's the right way to do it. But that movie came up at the very end.
He's just like, out of my way. I've handled these dead dites before.
Just like Ghostbusters After Life, they just show up in the last frame of the movie to save the day. M hm, anything else? Are we done with this one?
I think we're telling all right, I take.
Us home, take us to Is that a reticulan four?
Well, I wanted to thank my co host on this episode this week where we are talking about Ilium Rymeulus. So, mister Christashu, please tell us what are you up to these days? Sir?
I am doing audio diversions over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Well, the culture Cast is in its tenth year. It's been a hell of a year for me personally, and I haven't been able to uphold my in the bargain in terms of posting all the time. But that's okay. The sometimes sometimes life happens. But for the most part, yeah, weirding Way Media is where you can find everything that I work on other than one place, which is over at Patreon where you can find ranking on Bond at
the ten dollars level on Mike's Patreon. In mine, which is once a month, we talk about James Bond movies and autom Malone. You're coming up on an episode here pretty quick. But two episodes from now we're going to be talking about Live and Let Die. So if that gives you an idea as to where we are on the Bond a franchise run, that'll give you an idea of what you can expect when you go on over to our perspective. So what about you, father alone? What
can people find and what can they find it? Where can they find it?
Well, MI like y'all, it's Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Check out Midnight Viewing. That's my show over there. That is a twice a week show. Mondays is Father Malone's weekly round up where I do current and streaming titles and every Friday alternates between the horror anthology podcast, which I do with these two gentlemen. Right now, we're looking at Tales from the dark Side. In fact, this Friday, we're starting
off season two of Tales from the dark Side. And the other show is Anthologies Attack, which I do with co host Antonio Lapour, where we look at anthologies of every variety. We just did pulp fiction and I actually don't know what we're doing next, but anyway, you can find us there find Midnight Viewing. Oh and go to if you go to patreon dot com slash Father them Alone, you can subscribe or support me or whatever you want to do.
The Madman that is Father Alone podcasting twice a week now. Holy fuck, bro? What wow?
Yeah? You know, I thought I was busy. Apparently not. Apparently you're the one throwing down the gauntlet now.
Yeah, god he good lord dude, twice a week. It's a bit. It's a bit much, but kudos to you for making it work.
I'm very tired.
I'm just looking on my calendar and I thought we were recording about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in early September, but I don't see that anymore.
Yeah, oh, I have it on my calendar somewhere.
We're gonna have to.
Yeah, well, if you can afford that over Father Blow and I'd appreciate it. But until then, I want to thank everybody for listening. Like Chris was saying, please check out our patreons at patreon dot com, slash Projection booth or patreon dot com slash culture cast. Make sure you make a donation. If you can't afford that, please give us a rating and review over on iTunes. It helps out the show. Thank you everybody for listening, and take care well.
I came back after all. Look at that stranger things have happened. I hope you enjoyed the crossoverness of the previous episode. I'm glad I got to come back, though, to wrap things up, because there's one point I didn't make during the broadcast that I would I had, which is in Fetti Alvarez's movies that really worked for me, when we're talking about The Evil Dead and Don't Breathe. The reason those work so well is because they are centered by Jane Levy, who is fantastic.
She does.
She has all the vulnerability and all the toughness of all the great movie heroines, and if she had been the center of Alien Romulus, it would be a great fucking movie. There would still be plot holes of plenty, but I would care about at least one human being in the course of the film anyway, that's where we leave you and Ripley, anything to say. She's just staring at me because she's hungry. So this is Father Malone for Father Malone's Weekly round Up, saying, well, I'm be
throwing a quote from Blue Thunder. I finally found out what jaffo means. Just another fucking observer.