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Welcome to the Projection Booth with a special crossover 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. Tell me what were your thoughts on Alien Romulus.
Let's do pre spoilers in any of this conversation, and then we'll talk all about the spoilery 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 age and of a time and of a place to catch Alien and see Alien when Alien was still a thing that people were talking about. 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 it 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 maybe when I'm alluding to because this movie is also a sequel to those movies.
He's on top of everything else. I enjoyed it. I think that it has its pretty glaring issues, but I think, look, I think my one word summary is it's the best Alien movie I've ever seen in theaters. But that's a pretty low barred across in a lot of ways. Then alone, 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 the video game. I think if Fede Alva is a fan of that game obviously, and a lot of the dispine work is just built right.
In the whole scenes and stuff.
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 wanted to go play Alien Isolation.
Again, which is a drag. Look.
The movie has a lot of good points, 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 is akin to watching cut scenes from a video game, honestly, and no disrespect to these actors, but they're all miscast, and they're all cast too young. 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 by you.
Mister Mike White. Tell me everything you know about Navro 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 in the trailers.
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 all her character is used for in the movie as well. 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 purster, no shit movie, No fucking way, it's gonna be an alien movie without a fucking chests person pount. On one hand, the things that are guaranteed to be in an alien movie at this point, chessbursters are one of them.
I don't even know if this is an alien movie, this is more of a face hugger movie. Hundreds and hundreds of face huggers in this movie.
It's like hundreds of beavers, but with face huggers instead.
But I would rather watch hundreds of beavers any day of the week. Were over Alien Rodney List. 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 his 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 botox this week. 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 even the movie just starts off looking almost exactly like Aliens with the salvage ship, but instead of rescuing Rip, they're rescuing the alien who, which was very tough for me to see.
I had no c 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 and I'm just like, I don't know what this is. 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 dead, 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. Okay, I guess it's cool. And 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 of 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, Ian Home as it.
Okay, we're in spoiler terrace.
Yeah, it's no fucking way to avoid this at this point. But from here on out spoilers because yes.
Danced around for a while.
There's a lot going on in this movie that troubling beyond the Ian Home fucking cam Yeah.
But the ian Home thing is 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 look, Peter Cushing in Rogue one was one thing and it was literally one thing, one or two scenes. If that it was not was it two?
Oh, there were more than two scenes that Oh got that movie 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 looked horrific? And
just living in the Uncanny Valley. Here hold my beer, because I'm gonna make this worse than Princess Leah and Graham Moth Tarkin all in one with whatever the fuck they were doing with Ian Holme.
Look, he's a robot, see 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 Holme dragged out and paraded around 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 an Alien Covenant are pretty much just about the robots, which, honestly, you know, the dude's over read letter media. I think they really laid into
Prometheus a long time ago. And I think Prometheus had Govenant are better movies than Romulus, because at least they're movies that are different, 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, but Prometheus is at least 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 gonna give you something that is Resurrection levels of insanity in the last ten minutes in 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 speak broadly about this, because yeah, there's more than just the I at Holme problem. Obviously.
Well, let me address the home problem. I admired the daring in trying if they had built an animatronic and not done any CGI at all, and had a fucked up animatronic that wasas and crazy because they could do it now, they could deprint something that's Ian fucking home, and that they could put mechanisms in it to do every little facial twitch and whatever. Had they pulled that off,
I think I would have been okay. But because they kept doing photo realistic deep fake Ian Home where again it's to me, 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.
It's googlish. At that point, it totally reminded me. I'm not a big video gamer. 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 Evil where she would show up on screens and be like, you're trying too hard. You must do this. Just she felt he felt like an avatar for the video game, coming in and telling you what needs to happen next. Laddos from Portal Adjacent and Father Alone. Alien Isolation is yeah,
I mean I've played it, You've played it. It's fucking amazing.
Alien Isolation is still the best sequel to Alien that's ever come out, similarly to the way that Ghostbusters video game that came out is the best sequel to Ghostbusters because 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 hamfisted, because they have plenty of time to It's so much easier to do fan service in a video game because 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 again, Oh my god, didn't no one in the test screenings think that this was
too much. 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 I just keep constantly being reminded of a better movie at every turn.
Let me double down at 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 and had we had charming actors. I like Kayley Spanney as well. I enjoy her work, but she is not Ellen Ripley, and they're 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 there, the androids have been named alphabetically, So there's Ash and then Bishop and then Call and then David, then and now Andy.
And then you've got Rook. Now Ash's Rook. And I'm just like this a chess reference here? But why Yeah, I want to put out a conspiracy theory here. There was a contest that twenty Century Fox and a group called Tongle put together back in twenty eighteen for a fortieth anniversary of Alien. So in twenty nineteen they released a 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, we'll a service to everything. We'll even mix in some of this commeanant Prometheus horseshit that we have with this black oil which I saw in X Files twenty years ago.
How dare you bring up x Files in this conversation. That's a much better usage of black oil than this could have ever begun to. But that's what they fucking copied there totally as anyone who's watched the X Files, wouldn't that happen in Prometheus? And now it's does anybody in this audience fucking care that they're connecting it to Prometheus?
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 okay. He's happy. We can make the rest of our movie. But the problem is, Chris, as you said, that Alien Isolation video game is the best sequel to the Alien franchise 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 any alliens and you're playing as Amanda Ripley like it's a natural.
Yeah, because the game already exists.
And I know, is there a rights issue where like they want to make their own shit or something like, and Fee Alvarez wanted to do an original, but then he pulls so heavily from the fucking game, even to the point if I don't know if you noticed, Chris, but this anytime there's a saved portion in the game, it's one of 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'll close up the fuck in intercom and then 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 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 the universe. Why would he say, get away from her, you bitch? It makes no sense. This movie's being played straight. This movie's being played straight forward.
There's no fourth wall breaking, there's none of that. Why would he say that this 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? Did she say it because he said it? I don't fucking understand. I prefer artificial person.
That line makes sense, It makes perfect sense. I get that entirely, because that's that makes more sense than get away from her, you bitch. But it's just with the Ian holme of it all and everything else. Fan service needs to have a point within the construct of the movie itself. Otherwise it's just out there for the fans. And 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. I don't understand putting fan service before engaging storytelling, or to your point, Father Malone, engaging in creative character development, 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 and 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, this is really nice and gross. So when the one character who's pregnant, that's all you need to know about her because that's
all she is, just a pregnant person. I was like, all right, she somehow the alien is going to get in there and we're going to have that moments 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. 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 was a thing.
I actually liked that. I thought that was so fucking gieger like. And just because we haven't seen one of the life cycles doesn't mean it didn't exist. Ultimately, these are genetic clones. There's no queen here. These have all been harvested from the genetic contents of the original alien yet big Yeah.
That's the thing.
B Hayden's son, the Big Chat.
Okay, look, we got it.
Movie starts with a 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 bottom.
It's just like my favorite film in the Jurassic World franchise. I'm joking because that's how Falling That's literally how Fallen Kingdom opens. They go to Jurassic World to get a dinosaur tooth, and then the entire movie is based off of that, like legacy sequel block checked again, Like it's not bad here, but it's they've done it a bunch of times.
No, because this is integrable to the plot at least, except Ripley had escaped in the Narcissus and was so far away from that thing whendn't explode it, and then shot the thing with a harpoon and then blasted with the engine, which meant that alien was tumbling on through space forever 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 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.
I like that. Plot wise, 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, like I'm not going to get into other than my one thing about the wall Vagina too much about that because I remember Harry Dean 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 intents the 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 has destroyed this entire planet of LV four twenty six and all
of these people that Ripley knows. Yeah, how well written is aliens that you hear about characters like Drake and a pohone 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 wah eh oh, shut the fuck up? How many times have I heard that in the trailers?
Now, speaking of fan service, would you guys like some cornbread? Don't mind my drinking birding scene? I was like, Oh no, we're not gonna be doing this the whole time, are we?
Oh?
We are. 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 Disney wanted in Home in the movie, like Disney wanted all that shit Fetti Afarez made and wrote with roto psygaiis the Evil Dead remake, which Milege is going to very clearly between the three of us, it's a better movie than this movie, and it doesn't beach over the head with the fucking
fan service like this movie does. Wonder if some of this is just the Disney of it all, which ooy, 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 corporatey and soulless, which is the way Deadpool and Wolverine felt at times. And this feels really like that. This feels like a fan film with a massive budget. Guys liked Alien, right, You like Ian Holme. You like the Newborn in Resurrection. I don't know who liked the Newborn and Resurrection.
I like the Newborn. I like Resurrection a lot, and I think I like it a lot more. I think I like 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 like it's Aliens esque. It's pretty much just other Aliens, but with space pirates as opposed to colonial marines. I'm with you. I was being flipping about the Newborn, but the Newborn is actually the first interesting thing they did in three movies, is what it felt like. Aliens is great, but Aliens sets that standard Alien three is Alien three, and I don't want to draw the ire of the Alien three fan base, but Resurrection has an interesting, weird fucking thing at the end of it,
like this movie does. 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. 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 gonna do the thing with the Prometheus stuff. 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 movies. 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 Newborn in Resurrection, like, I almost wish that had been CG instead. But there are some things that I like in this movie. I
like that newborn scene here. I like the even though that character is pregnant, she follows two stories two and to a point where I actually thought the character was dead when she fell that far. I went, oh, man, that's that's top that she died that way in an
alien movie. But so I like that sequence. I like when they show the aliens doing intelligent things, like there's a scene where we first encountered the adult alien with that girl, where it's chasing her and she wants to be let in through the airlock 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.
I wish there had been a movie like that, a cat and mouse game with an alien instead of 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. The way that she uses the gun to propel herself around was pretty cool as well.
And speaking of acid blood, I like their treatment of the acid blood in the first film, Like a drop of it goes through three decks of their ship. They're word it's going to breach the hull. And then in each successive things, people are getting sprayed with it and they're like, oh, I'll be okay, just wipe it off, and and here it's corrosive as goddamn hell. I love that aspect of it.
Packson 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.
I think you mean Hicks, sir House.
Yeah. 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 so 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 hour 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 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's an hour two hours long, 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 a civil War, and she was in that, and she was completely under
used in that movie. Not that she didn't need to be in it, but she wasn't given much to do. And I think that's the point in a lot of ways of that movie. Here. I think she's fine, But I think this movie does 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 again two people, one human and one one android or
artificial person. But all the other characters are completely worthless. And I'm not saying 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 rible.
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. I care about every member of the crew of than A stra I care about every member of the crew of the Silaca.
We got to talk about those shares.
Yeah. Yeah, It's surprising how little character development is in this movie, given that this movie is two hours long.
But it does just feel what even for a story, is the fucking beginning of the movie solo that remember that it's the same can begin. We've got to get off this horrid planet where we never see the sun. Wait, they're changing my credits. I have to stay another seven years. They have a ship. Leave, just leave.
That was the thing I kept wondering about. I'm like, is the next closest planet really that far away?
Is a really?
What is it nine years in a cryo chamber away? Or can you just hop, skip and a jump to someplace where you can see the sun and maybe there's another M class planet around here.
Come on, guys, You've got a spaceship on a planet, though, and 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, even with the Ian Holmes stuff versus the Grand Moth tark and I was really reminded of just the unnecessary rogue one. 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 his robot companion, who I find
to be more charming than him. And when they finally brought out a show of and Or, I was like, Okay, this is great now I finally get to know this character, even though he's the least interesting character in the entire show. It's really more still in Stars Guard Show. For me. I don't Yeah, I didn't know any of those people. I just knew Donnie Yenne 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. 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, I'm like, these are all just zero charisma. He's zero charisma. The other two are not boy yea ga I love, but he's not given anything to do either.
Scott Eastwood is proto Glenn Powell somehow. Glenn Powell is a much more charismatic guy. And his dad's not Clint Eastwood, which is pretty fucked up but also amusing at the same time. All the characters 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. This has like a prequel problem with the characters. They just they don't want to
do anything interesting with them for whatever reason. I'd die because they're not aliens. The aliens are what you're writing this movie for fuck's sake, I get it. And then the face hugger. 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, probably be just as excited to talk about and write for the aliens than I would be for the humans. I'm not a fucking idiot anymore 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 but 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 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, it takes a while for those movies to get going. This movie, on the other hand, is a horror movie for twenty somethings and
their parents to go see together. Because that's the thing 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 at the cool I'm glad 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. 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, it's 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 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 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. 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. That was never a thing in this franchise. The point of this franchise is very different. Point of this franchise is 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 that didn't get a theatrical run, right, it was just dumped right to Hulu and that was supposed to be this too. This was supposed to be dumped to Hulu, and I remember with Pray, I was like, Wow, what do you like tossing that in on the big screen. I don't think I would have said that for this one. 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 had and Predator two. That's pretty cool. And of course there's other little hints of things, but way better than the Predator where you got, oh, get to those choppers and I'm just like, oh god, this is so embarrassing. Had they taken this idea because the First Alien is very much a horror movie with an alien and it conquered the Earth type of thing or what was the terror beond it terror beyond space
or whatever. It was like, Okay, cool, Yeah, that's great, take it. But please, if you go with the fan service, just have these guys running into another ship or like another alien rather than this particular high end to Ripley and her story just said it 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 where 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 should just adapt those comics into a fucking theories already, or.
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 some audio dramas that are really fucking good.
Alien is a franchise that has so much extended universe material that's still cannon until Disney doesn't want to be anymore. Probably at this point there's so much that they could have drawn from that. They just were like, not Alien
and aliens. That's it the alien base movies. Nobody has read Alien whatever the fuck X Y and Z book, just rip that off, even to your point for them 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'd be a good link between Alien and Aliens Alan Ripley's daughter trying to find her.
So I had a real problem with Alien three in the idea of and this was more in the grips that were rejected for Alien three, but it still ended up being an Ali three. This whole idea of if an alien just states in something that's not a human, it takes on the properties of that creature, which to me just doesn't make any sense. It's that whole idea of if an alien embeds a baby inside of a rhino, it's going to come out with like armor plating in a forlorn and that just doesn't make sense as far
as the DNA of the alien itself. It's cool Kenner Toys mite it does, but it 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 mouse alily 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 we get another cocoon later saying if you see a cocoon, there's something in there.
It's coming for you.
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 Rapas and the third act of that movie where she has the emergency C section and she has the thing taken out of her and I'm a lot of 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 fact 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 at least got directed the goddamn thing and he produced the fucking movie. And to your point, father Malone, 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 that you're right, Covenant?
Yeah, 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 you know, where they're from, there's a planet of them somewhere and 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 sconsin, No, I'm gonna do this like bullshit nineteen sixties concept of space seeding, you know, like a Chariots of the gods man, Like,
that's what you came up with. And by the way, you didn't really come up with it either by come up with stolen.
Things you did it.
No, he didn't come up with any of that. He didn't come up with anything very angry, and either he direct one movie, like, 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 base.
Now Dan O'Bannon is going, where's my check?
Motherfucker?
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, what would he
think about this movie? Kim and Ron Shoes said, really nailed it with that first movie, so hardcore, and then to watch this movie just 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 are 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 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 line is in Aliens. This to your point, father alone, this world that was created is so deep and interesting and it
doesn't need to be exc like. The parts of it that are deep and interesting are not the parts that need to be explained. Those are the things that 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. Oh, how did Harris and Vord get that scar on his chin? How did he get his hat? How did he get his whip? That's
five minutes five to 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 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. Prometheus and Covenant. The parts of those movies that I have enjoyed are Michael Fassbender's performance,
because he's great in those movies. 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. 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. I do you like Boba Fett.
I'm going to show you where Boba Fett came from. He was a little kid and his father died and he was really shad.
Such a cool idea for a movie.
Please.
Pat always loved all the mystery of the space Jockey and the eggs and was he transporting them?
Was he trying to get rid of them? Who set up that beacon? Was it him? Who is that guy?
Is he an elephant? Yeah?
Yeah, exactly.
It's just mystery upon mystery, and I'm fucking totally cool with that.
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 looks up at the sky and his eyes go white and his hands are tremoring, 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, and does it say tilts on his eyeballs when it goes up as well? That's what it reminded me of.
Warning.
Yeah, 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 tall and spin ly. And there's a silhouette where I was just like, Oh, that 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 I disagree with y'all. It was a worse design than Resurrection because it is a full CGI creature that anytime they cut to it, it looks like CGI and there I will be that 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 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.
That's the thing, Like that would have solved mean Home problem too. It's we're not misusing his image or anything. We're using that character based on his look and then to sound alike like I would have bought a fucking 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 within a share or Rook May Rook.
As soon as Rook came on screen, I was very audibly upset. I was 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, do the whole like Bishop from Alien three thing where he's half the half there, 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 habbit with Ian Holme as Bill bo Baggins. This is gonna be fantastic.
Christ don't put that out into the fucking universe, Mike, Why would you do such a fucking I'm gonna show up on Rings of Power. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about, man, And there he is. There's Bill bow walking around no no.
Oh, just on Canny to beat the band.
There's a research ship from Whaling New Twny and it is filled with the aliens. And if there's one thing Whaling New Tunny wants more than anything in the world, that's these aliens. And somehow it's just derelict hanging out above mining colony. They haven't come to get it. There's a dynamic that they could have explored. The Whalen Utani on the way kind of thinks something that they needed there other than rods to power their ship to get I don't know, maybe a plot or something.
Where was the opposing force coming to get the aliens, because that's a thing that was never really been explored in any of us. 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. 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.
What why Rook should have been all about trying to 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 the ship this whole rodmulus remiss thing or whatever. He can crawl around with his arms. We see that too. Why does he try to commandeer at the ship and take off with some of the face huggers in tow. They're gonna leave him alone.
Because they don't care. 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 the 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 playing the discordant tones of Alien over and over again, Bob, just like playing it on a piano and being like this is a new song, Like, no, we've heard this before. Don't try to lie to us, don't try to put one over on me. Because here's the other thing. At the end of this movie, the
story's over, thankfully. That's the one saving grace in all of this is I don't they're what universe do we need to see anymore with these characters? Oh, we don't, And that's good.
You can do like andor and now do a prequel with Rain and Andy on the early days of.
This No wrong, God, No, we want to know why Andy the android is called that, and why is she called Rain? Just 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. 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, Sanya. Pretty soon they're gonna raise a fucking retirement age and they're gonna change this role in that role. And it's just okay, I get it, and I get this so well.
But then once they make the decision, oh there's a ship up there, we're going to go up to the ship. It's okay, cool boom. Five minutes later, we're off and that's it. And they just take off and like you said, it's okay, go someplace else. Then, you know, I don't get why you're so stuck on going to this space station. Okay, great, if it doesn't work out with these cryo tubes, you know what, they got enough power for three years. Let's
go someplace that's three years close. I'm being a horrible person. I'm being awful.
That's not what the script allowed them to do. That's not how the script was written, Mike. That's 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 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. 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
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 burster scene in this movie good? Is a question I want to ask, because I don't think it is. 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, 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 raining from the skies, like it's a fucking Slayer song and evil dead, okay, and this is just a little, just hatch of the alien popping out. What
in the fuck man for? Really, 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 oviscerated anyways, And 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 detail, which, again not saying I need to see guys heads exploding or anything, but the movies rated are 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, is probably what I'm getting at.
Here's how excited for the movie I was.
I avoided every tra I somehow managed to avoid yet every piece of media. So with the axtray thing, when she first picks it up, I was like, Wow, that's cool. Well that's a cool piece of tech, and didn't think it was gonna pay off, So that actually worked for me. But 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. Talk about phallic.
Holy shit, that was the most phallic chest burster I've ever seen in my life. I know, there's basically a foreskin out of 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 now, why I should it?
I like Zeppenises, I like to make every sing phallic. Thanks hr.
But I will say about that chess burster scene, I like the dynamics of what was going on in it with the shuttle and then like slowly crashing. In fact, one thing I really liked in the movie was all of the space stuff, all of the ships and all of it all felt heavy. 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, they're kit bashing in three D rendering. Because yeah, everything feels That's the thing about this movie. Everything feels proper alien. Everything really does. Everything looks like alien, feels like alien. It's just poorly executed. But it's a It's a beautiful movie.
Eighty million dollars produced by Disney. 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. Okay, I can concede that there's a fair amount of money going into that. But again, a movie looking nice in twenty twenty four that the big budget studio movie. 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.
Here's the other thing I like that, and this tying back into what I said earlier about showing the aliens and how intelligent they are. 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 NERD's have a whole new model. They have to go three D print. But anyway, it gives them their guns and tells them don't use them because they have acid blood and they'll
kill kill us all. And they say why do you give them to us? And he says, I think they'll think that it is a deterrent. And it is so that one scene where 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 knocked my socks off, it's just everything else hanging on.
It is bad.
But I will say this because 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, at least for what we're what we were just talking about the production design and like spending two hours in this world.
I will watch it again.
I can't argue that.
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 what she tries to use it again later on it doesn't work, Like, Okay, great, I thought we were going to have instead of flamethrowers, we're going to have ice throwers or prayo fuel, which apparently is very cold. So I was like, all right, great.
You know in space no one can hear you.
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 gets all the scenes
cut out. It's otherwise I'm just left with the lady with the dark hair, and yeah, that's all about I remember.
Or Katharine 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 man, I feel so bad for you. Sam Waterston's daughter is just getting She's like the female Idris Elba. Can you be in something good that the big budget thing as opposed to just being good in all the non big budget stuff you're in.
Because he's Shaw, we want to love you. Stop picking these franchises.
What is wrong with you?
I'm rewatching the slot slight version and just even in that shitty video quality, that Ian Holmes ness of it is just it really disturbs me. I don't tend to just focus on just how bad CG can get, but this just really hurts to watch.
Remember those sales commercials with Humphrey Bogart. Oh god, yeah, remember that's where this all started. That was like the initial onus behind this is like, can we have dead people sell rings, and now can we have dead people be in movies and pay some dude like sag Minimum. He's 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 an Ian Holmes impersonation. He's great.
It's just sad that there's all this other stuff surrounding it because I just, yeah, I don't under would it would not It have been enough to just have the voice of Ian Holme 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 it was, just like it is Ian home on the screen. Please acknowledge. I don't want to. Please stop forcing this down my throat like a fucking face hugger's too, don't do it.
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 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 or sorry, artificial person that looks like Bishop? And I like that they leave it a little bit vague there, but then in this one it's like, oh no, they just have models and they
all look alike. Like, so we're doing a little Picard season one thing here.
And isn't Father Malone birkt me if I'm wrong. That's in Isolation. All the robots look the same, all the synthetics look the same.
I was just thinking that.
Actually it's like a plastic like a plastic burn mask just over a robot body. It's just it's literally the CPR dummies.
Crash to the dummies basically. Yeah, yeah, and they're horrifying.
Yeah, fucking they're more scary that. 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. Whack you twice and you're dead.
No disagree. I think they are very scary. But there is 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 hied and you pray because it knows you're that. It's really scary.
Hiding in the lockers and watching it walking around in the room and you can move back in the locker too to pull yourself back away from it. Yeah, video games are the superior art form for certain things. They just are. And with this 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 because 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. An 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 tried to
even and it fails. It really fails in terms of just being a worthwhile sequel to Alien. It just 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.
Okay, here's what I'm asking for. Here are my two ideas. If anyone from the franchise is listening, make these movies. I would like to see a movie made from the alien point of view.
Hell yeah, in a violent nature.
Yeah, Like I'd like to, yes exactly, like where days we see how horrible we are to them. 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 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 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. That could be really fun.
Anyway, the alien comes up and opens up its mouth and the second side of Jaws is there, and the guy just goes clever. Girl.
I was talking about this last night with Ryan from Someone's Favorite Productions, Like where does this go from here? 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 and there's no overt cliffhanger like at the end of Covenant, which is clearly never going to be
resolved at this which is perfectly fine. But this movie just ends and it's they're not drifting out through space like alien or Aliens. It's just they're going to Yuvanga 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 gonna make aliens again, and like, why haven't they?
Apparently they're supposed to make something called Alien Earth after.
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 realize as it's moving, the thing is moving up, that it's actually the reflection of the Earth on the top of the alien's carapace, like on the top of his head, and it moves up and he goes and it's Alien Earth somewhere twenty twenty five, and that's a Hulu thing. But and now they're finally taking the Aliens to Earth.
Is this the end of that series?
That?
What's the Noah Hawley is doing?
No?
That is that that? I believe that is the series?
Who cares?
I'm going to watch it because it's like an alien universe. He actually knows 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 they've been promising 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 Sigourney Weaver's stomach to be that terrifying. I figure it was going to be Earth, and they even had it was tied in with the poster or with the really early teaser preview, and it was, oh,
this is going to be fantastic. And they've been on Earth with Alien versus Predator and Alien what was it versus Predator requiem? That position nobody saw because it was so dark.
And not lit.
Yeah, you're right. I went to the theater. I can't say I saw the movie, but yeah, it was. Oh god, that was awful. I really liked the first Alien Versus Predator and that was cool that it was all isolated and a little bit like the thing that we're doing this down in Antarctica.
I was like, all right, this is guys, that's its own fucking timeline too. By the way, that exists separate from Alien and Predator. That is not They're not cannon either. Alien and AVP Requiem are their own things, separate from everything on top of everything else.
And I'm okay with that. The thing that was getting me was this hole, we need to explain what Whalen and Utani are and that we have. Oh, mister Whalen'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 it.
I wonder why they've never done another colonial Marines thing, Like why they've never just gone down that road of all the things. Just get a bunch of semi charismatic actors together, throw them into an Alien's esque setting, and just have the radio silence guys who did those Scream sequels and Abigail, have them do it. It'll be they know how to work and write for the 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 grim dark and series. I'm not saying Alien Romulus was grim darkin series, but 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 doing its own thing or trying to just be a horror movie. I think that's where this needs to go. Take that and just do the Aliens thing again. Why not? What's the worst that can 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. 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, okay, we'll just have them shooting aliens a little bit in this movie that's evocative of aliens, not really, but in the scheme of this movie versus Alien. Yes, they have guns in
this movie. They're shooting aliens. That never happens in Alien and he literally goes, what does he say, He's rig up some of those incinerators, which that line always made me think these aren't even a thing that they're ever using for anything other than a technical purpose. It's not to defend themselves.
So oh yeah, they're in a cargo ship. They don't need yippins exactly.
It's okay. Aliens is such a fun movie because 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 you don't think anyone else can do it as well. I mean clearly with something this
they tried and think. Sure, it's scary, it's entertaining, but 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, 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.
Just as close as it's gotten since Alien.
I wanted to take a right turn as well. But I don't think we need to make Aliens again. I want them to do something interesting that we haven't seen before. Stop fucking echoing all of the shit from the past. We've been there already, Do something new.
I have an idea here. What if Kaylee, Spanny and Andy there was a face hugger on board, and let's say that they crashed on a wood planet. Okay, and let's say that the face hugger got Kaye Spanny. How would you feel about that? Father 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 does an alien get on the fucking Silaca.
Magic plot armor an egg?
Don't they show eggs falling over with the wood flames covering and stuff. How did they get there? The Queen, we say here, tear away from her Ova pod and come running after Ripley and then gets on the ship.
Where did the fucking eggs come from?
I wish I knew 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 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 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 fantastic to 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, you idiot.
Yeah. I thought just her through this speaker would be enough to trigger them speak. It would be him going please stop that scene. It should have been successfully, it was not for me. Were the trek through face hugger hollow?
Yeah, it was basically when they swim under the ship, not the Betty, I can't Betty was the ship that they came in on, but in Alien Resurrection, when they go underneath and they're in the cafeteria coming up on the other side, I'm like, oh, this is like that, like we have to go through this impossible area and we don't know what's gonna happen. But no, we'll fuck that up too.
Look it's gonna it's gonna check enough boxes for enough people and we are not.
Oh yeah, I've seen people like oh I'm going to see it for a third time today. I'm like, wow, okay, great.
If we can get a Colonial Marines television series, it's like maybe just a limited show. I'm sure those Marines font more than Aliens. They seem to have a history with aliens prior to the xeno More, I feel like they were clearly unprepared for it, but it doesn't mean that they haven't tangled with other things.
Yeah, is this gonna be another bug hunt? You know? And then they've got that what is it art Arcturian pussy that they're after? Doesn't matter if it's Arturian.
Yeah, man or woman apparently. Yeah. I think about that because I like, like, you've clearly alluded to an aliens in that in the hangar scene, they're like, it's another bug hunt. There might be a xenomorph, Okay, so they know there's some awareness the term xenomorph. These guys don't just go a lot when they hear it. They're a little nonplussed, it would seem so, but again, xenomorphos Again.
That's the other thing about this franchise that immediately, like when people are talking about it, like the xenomorph actually is not the alien. That's just that's just the name that they're giving broadly to aliens in this series in general. The Xenomorph's not actually the name of the alien at all. It never has been. 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 more 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 zenomorphs because it's.
That's because the alien was really selfish and he said, I'll just tank that alien. That's mine. Now, if you refer to an alien, you're talking about me, and you know what, He's right, that's.
That whole thing. 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, just call him Grogu. Don't dead name Brogu. Wow here I am nepicking. 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 just Predator has had, like all these movies have had so many missteps at this point. We have we haven't mentioned the one franchise that this does get compared to and I think now it's broken away from being compared to it. But there was a time where this franchise was compared to Terminator in the same breath.
Oh yeah, 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.
Are you saying one is better than another? What are you saying one franchise is better?
No, I'm saying that. But I think that Alien is as broken free from the problems that Terminator now has more than ever. But I don't think that's a broken free maybe a couple degrees, but I still think 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 how many Terminator movies since 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, yeah, kicks, is still alive. Oh yeah, yeah, like that's.
Books Hicks and Newton are still alive.
Yeah yeah, it's Oh you mean the characters from Aliens, the second best movie in this franchise, they didn't deserve to die off screen? Really?
Yeah? That is all such Hill and Geiler stuff. Walter Hill, I love a lot of his work, but him and Aliens do not go together. 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 doing. But they were successful in other avenues. So they get to say they have their saying that the fuck this shit.
Come on, Look, there were a lot of contributors to that first Alien movie and what made it successful and to their credit, and I think it's Walter Hill more than Dave Geiler. He made it more, working class made it. They're like basically space starkers and give me my shares. Let's talk about the bonus situation that came from them, and I appreciate that, but the rest of it's fucking obanon except for the chest burster. That's wrong. Let's choose it.
But then the next movie is a singular vision because Cameron writes and directs it. And then everything after that is just stumbling and falling down because nobody has shown up and gone, here's what the movie needs to be. And then and them said, and them saying, okay, go ahead and do that. It's all my committee.
Now the committee has spoken, and I guess they wanted fan service until there's nothing else.
If she don't like the comb bread either.
Now me either, None of us do. God, but that dipper bird, guys, I'm glad I saw it again in this series. I was wondering where it was this whole time.
I think it's worth the watch. I don't think you should go out to theaters and see it. It's no worse than a couple of the other Alien movies. What's been passing for the movies. In my estimation, Hey.
I would say, when it shows up on Hulu, go ahead and watch it the way it was intended to be watched.
Watch it dumped on Hulu where it deserved to be. Yeah, I'm 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 gonna 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 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 me 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. There was an Alien movie that came out five years ago. Like, why are we doing SEQL legacy sequel baiting and fan service shit when Alien movies have actually been coming out. 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 an a Alien legacy sequel, I think we would have enjoyed this movie a lot more because it would have 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 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 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 Dead. It really is. 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. Right allsova.
But to be fair, I had a post credit sequence that was the only part of the movie I enjoyed.
With ash at the end you mean, yeah.
Yeah, sorry, I'm not a big fan of that movie.
I get it. I understand the original Evil Dead is say I love it, 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, 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, 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 remember. Oh no, then that's the right way to do it. But that movis came at the very end.
He's just out of my way. I've handled these dead dits before.
Just like Ghostbusters Afterlife, they just show up in the last frame of the movie to save the day. M hm great, I'm good.
Well, I wanted to thank my co host on this episode this week where we are talking about alien rhyme miulss. 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 end of the bargain in terms of posting all the time. But that's okay. 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 Patreon. In mine, which is once a month, we talk about James Bond movies and Father Malone. You're coming up on an episode here pretty quick. 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 franchise run, that'll give you an idea of what you can expect when you go on over to our perspective patreons. So what about you, Father alone? What can people find and
what can find it? Where can they find it?
Mike, y'all, it's Weirdwaymedia 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 you can find us there. Find the midnight viewing. Oh go to if you go to patreon dot com slash fallom 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 for a what?
Wow?
Yeah, you know, I thought I was busy, but 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 bit much, but kudos to you for making it work.
I'm very tired.
Une