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Reviewing the Entire Alien Series!
9 Plays2 months ago
Andrew and Jake sit down and discuss a handful of Alien video games (based off the film series) and review every single Alien movie including the newest release!
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Transcript
Introducing the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the gaming blog podcast, your number one podcast for all of the pertinent video game news spinning across all platforms, including Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo and now movies. I am your host,
Special Episode on the Alien Franchise
00:00:13
Speaker
Andrew Raunon. And today I'm joined once again by one half of the bad boys of video games, Jacob Ward, the fan favorite, as he has been named on this Zencaster call.
00:00:26
Speaker
Today, we are doing something special. This might be a two-part episode that is stitched together depending on if people will join us tomorrow. But we are going to start the show by talking about one franchise in particular, and that franchise being Ridley Scott's.
00:00:45
Speaker
Prometheus, what? No. We're going to talk about the Alien series, including the newly released Alien Romulus. So if you have not seen Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Prometheus, Alien Covenant, or Alien Romulus, or played Alien Isolation, or any of the Alien games, and don't want spoilers, maybe skip ahead.
00:01:11
Speaker
But if you don't care and or if you have seen them, stick around. If you are an alien. And if you are a xenomorph. Stick around. But first off, Jake, it's nice to be with you again. It's nice to see you. We're having
Flexible Podcast Topics
00:01:26
Speaker
we're having a half hour long conversation before we recorded about video games. so I was like, wow, this would be great for the video game podcast that we do. um Let's not talk about any of that while we're recording. Let's just talk about movies because what is this podcast? It's whatever we want it to fucking be. That's the thing about it. I wouldn't even talk about anything other than that. Exactly.
00:01:46
Speaker
um But yeah, we're going to talk about Alien. And it's this is, like I said before, tomorrow we will um see if other people can join us and we'll kind of do the normal stuff that we do.
Podcast Length and Structure
00:02:00
Speaker
So I'm not expecting this conversation to last two hours because if this is two hours and then tomorrow is an hour. It's kind of a long podcast, even though we have done three hour podcasts before. um mean Many times. Many a times we have done that.
00:02:15
Speaker
We'll just see how passionate we are about this because I know I have a lot to say about the franchise. You probably have some things to say about the franchise. I actually have seen like three of these movies for the first time within the last week. So I have a lot of got to resurrection yet. Have you never seen resurrection? No, you haven't got the resurrection. No, I have. Oh, you have. Oh, good. So I've seen three new movies. So let's let's just start from the beginning. I haven't seen three and resurrection.
00:02:43
Speaker
God, I want to say since like almost a decade since I've seen those two. Okay. But I remember- That's probably for the best. But let's just start off, I hit my freaking mic because I'm... Let's just start off with some base value. Jake, what is your relationship with the Alien
Jake's Alien Franchise Fandom
00:03:01
Speaker
franchise? How do you feel about it? Are you a big fan? Are you not a big fan? Do you like the games? All that stuff.
00:03:07
Speaker
I wouldn't say I'm like a super fan. Like I would am with like Marvel and Star Wars and stuff, but it's always been a franchise that I have dabbled in my whole life because my grandma really liked him. So we'd watch a lot of the movies together growing up, mainly just the first two and Alien versus Predator. So those were the ones like in the those franchises, I would as a kid watch the first one, mainly aliens.
00:03:37
Speaker
Not so much the first Alien, but we watched that one. And then the Alien vs. Predator movies, because those were coming out when I was a kid. Yeah. um
Director's Cuts and Movie Preferences
00:03:45
Speaker
But yeah. i And then I finally picked up the Alien Anthology in high school, which was like ah all four of the original movies. Yeah. That's a lot of bonus content. It was in one of those like cardboard collector sets like the Star Wars saga was. I think that's the one that- 20 Century Fox was doing that for a little bit. Yeah, I think that's the one that Alien 3, it's the, cause I was reading about Alien 3 specifically. There's an extended cut from that. Yeah. it It's a much better version of that movie. Yeah, that movie was committed to hell apparently.
00:04:16
Speaker
And it's so much that the original director disowned it. yes Is it the writer or the director? Or both? I don't know. but he So the name, the director credit on it is a John Hancock. It's it's just a fake name. It's an alias, I guess you should say. Just like with Borderlands. Yeah.
00:04:32
Speaker
yeah um But yeah, they ah it really sucks. is There's a lot of cool ideas and I think Alien 3, because that's the only conversion I've watched is from the anthology. I've never seen the theatrical cut to my knowledge. I can't remember which one I watched, but I'm pretty sure I watched.
00:04:50
Speaker
that way because at that time and for a long time I was very particular about what cuts of movies I would watch and I would watch like look on the internet and be like okay what is the definitive cut of this movie or if there was a director's cut that's the what I'd watch i'd I'd pick that like for Daredevil I'd watch the director's cut Yeah, for Spider-Man 2, I'd watch Spider-Man 2.1 because I thought that was a director's cut for the longest time until I realized that it was just a marketing stunt to get people like hyped up for Spider-Man 3 and to re-release Spider-Man 2 in theaters. There's some elements I like in it, but I don't feel like I'll ever watch that version again now that I know it's not Sam Raimi's cut. But that was one I was interested in watching up for that. And I don't know. but yeah it's a
Impact of the Alien Franchise
00:05:37
Speaker
I don't have a lot to say about Alien 3. It's a movie. We've we've watched it. We've both seen it happen. That's funny. I have a lot to say about Alien 3. It made some unfortunate decisions. But I think overall, I think the more beast-like xenomorph in it is really cool. So I think I'm kind of there with you about my relationship to the franchise. i it's Alien's one of those things that if you're in this ecosphere of quote unquote nerdum which it seems like everyone it's just now like
00:06:14
Speaker
Consumerism I guess I don't know cuz everyone's in it like who doesn't know Star Wars or Marvel anymore, you know back in the day It's like you haven't seen Star Wars, but there's a lot of people I didn't see Star Wars now TV shows movies all this shit same with Marvel. It's like you haven't seen Star Wars You know like it's interesting you bring up Star Wars because you know that alien exists because of Star Wars I think I really thought was making you had and another movie that he wanted to make and he was so Distraught not in a bad way, but he was so distraught after watching Star Wars because it like he didn't make that like it was something that like I don't know he had like
00:06:55
Speaker
He was embarrassed he didn't make anything that big. He loved it that much that he was like, I gotta do something like this. And then he came up with Alien and he had a whole bunch of people that he was in like, I believe film school with, that he got in college, like H.R. Giger, he was friends with and knew him. So that's how we got him to do all the designs for Alien from that and so forth. And then we got the Alien franchise as we know it. Sorry to interrupt you, but I thought you were going to touch on.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, I know you're good. Um, yeah, but thank you,
Alien in Pop Culture
00:07:24
Speaker
Star Wars. Thank you, George Lucas. but Thank you, George Lucas, once again. Uh, but it's just one of those things that like, if you go to a comic convention, you're going to see alien something. Like it's going to be there. If you play video games, the ABC or Marvel versus the aliens or Godzilla versus alien comic book somewhere.
00:07:40
Speaker
Exactly. And in video games, Xenomorph is prominent in a lot of things, including their own alien games, almost, I mean, not even almost notoriously, ah Colonial Marines was the big game that came out when we were younger. And that was kind of like, a oh, look how bad I was excited for that game. like That was like right around the time I got my first job, and it was starting to like buy my own games and stuff. And I remember I i had it pre-ordered, because I had only ever pre-ordered, I think, Deadpool and Saints Row 3. Those were like the first games I'd ever pre-ordered on Amazon. Shout out to Saints Row 3. It was that summer. um And then I remember I i had it pre-ordered, and then I saw like the reviews coming in, and I canceled it after that.
00:08:28
Speaker
That was another Randy Pitchford, you know, the executive producer of the Borderlands movie. no ah It was Gearbox wasn't it? Yeah, it was Gearbox. But then the whole thing came out of like, well, Gearbox took that money and made Borderlands and then outsourced it to someone. It was a whole, it's just another tick in the I hate fucking hate Randy pitch for a lot of reasons. I love that like recently it's come out that the biggest flaw in the game, which is the AI logic is because of a typo. Yeah, and it's such like an easy thing to fix. And then the game becomes like 10 times better because of it.
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, it goes from like a four to seven. It's like, oh, it's mediocre now, not garbage. um it's you Unfortunately, the only way to play is through PC and modding. So if you have a console version, like, you know, I probably would have had, there's no fixing that. That game is long
Alien Video Games
00:09:21
Speaker
gone. But we did get isolation, which that was the first Alien game I ever bought. And infamously rated a four out of 10 by, um,
00:09:32
Speaker
What's his name? The Xbox guy at IGN? I can't remember. Insane. Insane. It's like he was a masterpiece. It's so ahead of its time and it's funny because it was basically following the Outlast formula.
00:09:47
Speaker
Oh, my bad. 5.9 out of 10, not 4 out of 10. Ryan McCaffrey, who is also a dipshit. And he's a weird dipshit because sometimes Ryan McCaffrey has some really good takes and he seems like a really like on the nose guy. and I actually have like, um ah what is it? Entertainment Weekly magazine or whatever. What are those old magazines called? like eform No, no, no, no, no. Older. Oh, okay. well i have some I have some old magazines in there that are written by Ryan McCaffrey 20 years ago, but he is such a delusional Xbox fanboy. I don't even think he realizes that he is. He is the guy that's like, the series is on par with the PS5 and shit like that. Or Xbox buying Bethesda is a good thing. He's that guy.
00:10:34
Speaker
I got you. Yeah, he's a show. So it's like, uh, and then he has reviews like this where alien isolation 5.9. It's like, you're an idiot. I'm sorry, but you're an idiot. And that's the thing. i've I've never played the game proper. I actually bought them a Stromo edition and only played.
00:10:52
Speaker
that short level where you play as Ripley on the Nostromo. And I really enjoyed that. i've i' watched The reason why, too, I only played that is because at the time I'd watched someone play and beat the whole game already.
00:11:07
Speaker
and So that was a part of the game I hadn't experienced and that's what I ended up playing. but I loved how neat it was because it like on the Xbox, Kinect was but always on and always going. It had a feature with the Kinect where it would listen for ambient sound. So if you made any noise while playing, the alien would hear it through the Kinect.
00:11:29
Speaker
And I thought that was a horrifying concept and turned that feature off immediately. I live in a house with other people. I'm gonna die. it's ah It's a cool concept, especially if like, you know, you get scared and oh and then it hears you, you're like,
00:11:46
Speaker
I don't know if that feature was on the PS4. I know it was pete it built into PC, but I don't think, I don't know if you can do that on the PS4, if that was just an Xbox like exclusive thing. It worked on PS5 with the microphone and the controller. It's true. It worked really, it worked too well.
00:12:01
Speaker
um
New Alien Game for PlayStation VR 2
00:12:03
Speaker
But but yeah, and to go a little deeper into the video game stratosphere of alien before we jump back to the movies, there are the games to like the fire team games. Those are more as you're gotten much notoriety I've noticed. No, but there's been like two or three of them and I've played them and I actually really enjoy them like they're It's, they're that good, they feel like double A game, you know? You remember back in the PS2 era where we got a lot of tie-in games? It was like, these are solid games. That's those games. Like, they're very solid. They're fun to play. They're, I mean, they're kind of horde mode type things. Nothing too challenging. There's no story, I don't think. I don't remember a story, but it's just fun.
00:12:46
Speaker
So, and then of course we're getting um a new alien game this year ah for PlayStation VR too. And that game looks terrifying, alien rogue incursion. And I'm hoping that we're getting alien isolation in VR.
00:13:07
Speaker
They've been neat. I'm surprised they haven't done it yet because it makes a pretty good translation to VR game. Right. It's kind of almost perfect. And also the biggest thing about that game too is how well the AI is coded for the alien. like It is almost perfect the way it works. it's it's I watched something recently about how the logic of it works too, and it's always just close enough to you. like it You can never like get rid of it, like you can never escape it permanently, and there's only ever one.
00:13:42
Speaker
and it doesn't like Basically, the level will inform the AI of where you are, but it won't tell you exactly tell it exactly where you are. So that yeah it's like the AI of the level is communicating with the AI of the alien to give it hints as to where you are. So it's always like hunting you, which I think is really neat. It's fucking terrifying. I know, right? he like Like when they explained it like that, I was like, oh my gosh, this game,
00:14:11
Speaker
is like selling you out to the alien at all times. And basically, it's like, right, it's it's cool. So like, um when you move to a new section, it like always knows that you're in that area somewhere.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, it makes it less boring too because yeah those games where, I can't think of any specific right now, but the games where you are being chased or something and you can just lose the AI and then you're safe for like 20 minutes. I mean, you still have that like sense of like, okay, anytime, but there's always kind of that relief of like, okay.
00:14:44
Speaker
It's gone. It's down there right now. Like Resident Evil 4, the remake. You kind of got that sense sometimes where you could lose the guy for a while, but then you would hear him clomping back over. But in Alien Isolation, I've played probably like four or five hours of it. It is kind of a long game. And I know that was kind of one of its drawbacks in reviews and things like that, was that it was a little too long of a tooth.
00:15:10
Speaker
but um That's why I think that the show mode additions like bonus content is so great because it's like a perfect little encapsulation of what the whole game has to offer basically in a short little yeah burst. It's like your PT. And and it's ah really neat too because like oh my gosh I'm so sad that Xbox purged all your game recordings and stuff unless you saved them and I didn't know about that until months later because I hadn't turned on my Xbox in months.
00:15:35
Speaker
Um, I had this Terrifying clip of when I was playing it and I was hiding around a corner and it was coming at me and Like it hadn't seen me but it was coming closer. I'm like i'm screwed. There's no hiding spot here I'm just around this corner and i'm just gonna go on the will of god whether i'm gonna get caught or not And then it comes around the corner and I believe it like as it rounded that corner triggered like um Some sort of like what a flag that made it go into a room that you're supposed to trap it into So like it automatically started going there. I think it's the only reason I survived in the entire time is like, please please And then I see it like ah they're like hit the button over the radio. and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna hit them It's right here. They hit the button in it
00:16:20
Speaker
Like it does a thing where the cutscene starts and you keep hitting a button, but it's not shutting the door. And I'm like, come on, don't let me die. but And that was the end of that. That's basically the end of that, uh, Mr. Momodish and Juan. Um, but that was like the most terrifying experience I ever had in a video game. But I'm so sad. It's completely lost the time now. You always have it in your heart, right? Oh yeah. That's the only thing I remember from that game is just being absolutely terrified. So I'm,
00:16:48
Speaker
I'll probably actually go and play, since I'm kind of in this alien group now, I'll probably play alien isolation again. Just pop in the Nostromo DLC, I think that's a fun little sit down and play through. and that'll kind They got to buy it, but...
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, it's not anything. I think it was like five bucks when it came out even, so it's it's yeah nothing. And most of the versions of the game just have it on disc if you have the Mistral Modish and stuff. Yeah. I think, did I see, are they making a PS5 Xbox Series X version of the game or there's like an updated version coming out? I don't know. I don't know. That's, I don't know.
00:17:24
Speaker
I can look real quick. That's true. We have the internet. I just ask you a million things. ah This doesn't say that there is no. Okay. I don't know. Maybe I just threw someone wishful thing. Wishful thing. Yeah. I want to be a bad one to bring back and maybe tighten up or now. I don't think it ever sold very well. Did it? It was, it was like popular, but not, so it was never key good. and and Um, you know, again, power of the internet, uh, Wikipedia, how much did you sell alien? Um, but.
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah, I do think with the success to segue back of this new game, um, it sold a little over 2 million units. So, you know, it's it's successful play. Is it like, did did right it Yeah. Like I said, it wasn't ever huge. It's no Wukong or whatever. Oh yeah. That's dead. Didn't say I need to check that game out. 10 million copies in three days. I think a lot of them are in China too. It's like, this is the China game to finally break out, which makes sense journey to the West.
00:18:21
Speaker
um there's
Journey to the West Tangent
00:18:22
Speaker
It's always tried. They've always tried to do a Wukong Journey to the West style game and they don't think they've ever really, ah I don't know if they've all been mad, but they they never really done too well until this one. Oh, I got a Journey to the West game over there? It fucking is like a Pixar game or something. It's terrible. I have a Journey to the West game. It's called Kakara.
00:18:40
Speaker
ah There's another one. Wow, we're really getting so off topic, but there's another one that I have on Steam that came out for like the 360. Alien Wukong Dragon Ball 360. Donkey. Anyways, it this would be an opportune time for Alien Isolation to maybe not come back, but now that you have, I mean, so because Covenant has come out since then, and now Romulus has come out, which Romulus really goes back to the roots,
00:19:09
Speaker
of the original movie.
Return to Alien Movies
00:19:11
Speaker
Hint, hint. It goes back to a lot of movies. Yeah. And let's just let's just now that we've kind of talked about the little video game plug and things like that, this game podcast. let it Let's go into the movies. And I kind of want to go about them one by one, except for one of them, which I'll tell you which one, because there's actually one that I haven't fully seen. But we can start at the original alien movie. And I don't think we have too much to say about this other than it's perfect.
00:19:39
Speaker
um question mark i would say it's pretty good i i would say it's probably my third favorite alien movie and that is i would say it's up it's really close with alien aliens is my favorite makes sense alien and It's debatable. it's it's I've seen it kind of come back and forth between an alien alien and recent or alien and aliens in recent years. But I think it's it's right there with the original alien. I think it would be blasphemous to say it's better than the original alien. But it's it's on it's pretty on par with it for me. The only only thing is, is because i I enjoyed the callbacks. But I think sometimes it went a little too far.
00:20:31
Speaker
in Alien? In Romulus. Oh, so wait, wait, are you talking about, are you talking about Romulus as your third favorite? Yes. Oh, okay, so it's my bad. I started with the first movie, Alien. Oh, I thought you were talking about, I thought you were thinking Romulus was a perfect movie. I'm like, is it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about Alien. I was like, wow, I'm surprised you loved it that much. 1970, whatever, Alien 1, perfect film. Yes.
00:20:56
Speaker
i would say like from start i will say there are as as it is you know a late 70s film there are some effects that are a bit dated sometimes you're the guy in the costumes going uh you're like all right when he gives you the jazz hands when he's reaching out uh but i honestly i i think a lot of that works i've never ah until recently when people were talking about heard of they're seeing that as jazz hands when he does that jump scare to come at him um but i uh I think the only effect that's a little outdated for me is just the chestburster. That's the only thing I think in that movie that doesn't really hold up too much for me. Which makes sense. And it's impressive you know for the time how they were able to do that. And then when he comes out and puts the tap hat on and starts singing Hello My Honey, Hello My Baby. Yeah, that's pretty wild. um The last time I saw Alien actually was ah
00:21:46
Speaker
I think three years ago. And I actually watched it for my film class. And yes, I went to I attended some classes at film school. So I am kind of one of those guys. um But I watched it in a classroom theater with, you know, 100 other people. And it's a movie that I've seen before. But there were moments that got me there were moments that like I jumped a little and I was like, gosh,
00:22:09
Speaker
shit I know this movie, why am I jumping to it? But the way they're able to like use their resources, and it's something that older movies are so good at because CG wasn't a thing, and doing practical things is hard. So a lot of it was built around tension, something that when we talk about Romulus is kind of missing.
00:22:29
Speaker
um but it has that tension, and then when the alien does the jazz hands, that's funny and a gift, but in the movie, you're like, you're waiting for it for like minutes and minutes, and like the music is getting to you, and then it does it, and you're like, oh, son of a bitch. That's one of the strongest suits of that first movie is that it uses the alien so well. Yeah. It doesn't overuse it. There's not like, you know, a horde of them coming out of them at guns blazing. It's not an action movie. It's a horror movie. It's a slasher film.
00:22:58
Speaker
Um, but I think like every scene it's in like that that room, uh, I forget his name when he's there, you know, they're looking for the cat and the is it it the chain ta was it the chains the rain coming and down looks so good. in that scene and There's a reason why they put a scene with the alien and water somewhere, or we're getting drenched because it looks really cool when it's wet.
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah. And then they just start being wet after a while. They're like, i remember that when it was cool in the rain? What if they're just like really, really wet and drooling all the time? And, you know, and I think it's interesting to like, how a film franchise like this that has such so many like,
00:23:42
Speaker
drawing least like sexual art direction is as popular as it is. And it's like, well especially with the new movie, especially in the newest one, like they really went full into like the Giger's or Geiger's, I can't remember how to say his name is Giger, Geiger. I would say Geiger, but who knows? He's dead. we itver I think it's Giger because it's like Geiger is the counter, Giger is the artist.
00:24:07
Speaker
um But I think like this one really went full into like the sexual nature of the alien. Because it's always been kind of like... um what would you say, like a metaphor for sexual abuse, I would say. Yeah, it's it latches onto their face and fucks their hole. fragmates them And then the baby burst out of it. Yeah. And then the mouth is just a penis. yeah That's what it is. The little mouth is like, it's your dick shooting out. Like, yes, very sexual and
00:24:41
Speaker
You know, in later movies like in Covenant, they take it a little too far with like The Shower and things like that where it's like overtly sexual. um But, you know, the first movie, it was that nice blend. And then going back to as an adult, too, because, you know, that's such a fun thing they don't tell you about when you're a kid. It's like, hey, you can watch good movies and enjoy them, but then you can go back and join even more.
00:25:02
Speaker
um but the And this is actually a tone that is consistent throughout the original four movies, is the whole type of like worker abuse, big corporation type. you they're They're just space truckers. Yeah, they're space truckers and and they're working for a company who doesn't give a shit about them they just want that and that's why the whole like mother betraying them and the android and and all that because uh-huh they just care about profit and this new alien thing that they can make money off and crew expendable and shit like that it's almost like disney um but yeah alien one is for all sense of purposes there's a reason that
00:25:50
Speaker
It's still rated at one of the best, if not the best movie, and it came out in the 70s. It definitely holds up. It's so impressive. I think like even compared to like Star Wars, it's its effects hold up really well.
Aliens as an Action Film
00:26:04
Speaker
They really went like all out, because really, Scott, he had of much issue with getting uh funding for these movies um but i i just one thing too like that i'd never noticed i want to go back to like design the design of the alien have you ever noticed the skull underneath its dome like there's a visible skull like there's a visible human skull for its face hmm no i did it only at four i'll i'll save you an image um on discord so you can see it
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, pop pop that over. and let me This is the original Alien suit before they put the dome over its head. Oh damn, that's horrifying. i That's HR Guyger Giger. And the thing was, you know how they the head of the alien shifts to more of like a ribbed one for aliens? Yeah. That was an issue with the molding process for like the more intense scenes. Like they couldn't get it to like, I guess the dome to work right for it. For whatever reason, when they were making the costumes for that movie,
00:27:10
Speaker
So basically it's this image I sent you and then they rounded out the front to get rid of the skull so that like it still looked like the older alien. That makes sense. i yeah i can That's why it's the only one that has alien heads that look like that. Speaking of segway, talk about aliens, which is for all intents and purposes.
00:27:32
Speaker
ah The Perfect Alien movie. it's it's perfect from the It's the Alien I describe as the Perfect Alien horror movie whereas Aliens is the Perfect Alien action movie. Yep. It goes from a horror movie to an action movie about killing scary things.
00:27:49
Speaker
Which, but it still has those moments of horror, like when, so when I re-watched these, we watched Strong Meals, and then I came home, and then the next day, and in sequence, I watched Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection. Because I'd never seen them before. So I just watched all of them at once. And that's not true, actually. I've seen Aliens before, my bad. I had seen Aliens. But I wanted to start with Aliens, because I had tried watching Alien 3 back when I watched Alien 1 and 2.
00:28:17
Speaker
for reasons that are very obvious. I stopped after 10 minutes. um But it we'll get to that. But Aliens is um James Cameron. Yes. And it was funny. He got this movie because of Terminator. I was talking to Susan and she was like, why was aliens good? And these other ones, her words bad. And I was like, because aliens was James Cameron, Terminator, Titanic, Avatar. And she went, oh, it's like they had a good director who was making the movie.
00:28:52
Speaker
And because that's what James Cameron did was he was like, I'm not going to make an alien movie. I'm going to make this fucking Vietnam War movie that happens to be an alien universe it's about the first hour. You don't see an alien, but it feels like you're watching a Vietnam War movie in like the. the with like the heartbeat sensor pulls such an iconic ahha we we do little blips and things like and just the characters you see the one and then there's more and more and more and it's just like a horde of alien like oh shit and that's where it's like even though it is an action movie
00:29:28
Speaker
It's still a horror movie. Like when they're in the vents running away, the comically large vents all of them can withstand it. ah That's scary. Or like Manu in Ridley or, or what's your name in the movie? It's not Ridley. Or is it Ridley? It's Ripley, my bad. Ripley. um With the facehuggers and they're scared, they're stuck in the room. It's kind of a tense scene of like,
00:29:52
Speaker
yeah Are they going to get there? The face huggers are almost scarier than the alien itself in most cases. Right. like couldn say it's like Because you know with the alien, you can get you and you you have a chance. But if as soon as the face hugger like catches you at a moment of weakness, you're done. You're done. You're done. Yeah, that's it. But you're not done too, which is i have i have I can't. It's going to be a minute, but just putting so many notes about Romulus in my mind.
00:30:17
Speaker
because there's so many things that happen in a movie. But yeah, it's just as a amateur film student, really, it was just like three classes. It wasn't a lot at all. Yeah, it was nice. You'd barely call yourself film school. As someone who found an appreciation for movies specifically in the 60s and 70s and 80s, less of the 80s, because that's when they started becoming kind of Hollywoodized. They were getting the blockbusters with aliens like that.
00:30:45
Speaker
But 80s movies are so good because they take inspiration from those older movies, whereas all that I mean, the 70s was the directors were in charge. It was their movie. There was no like corporate meddling or anything. It was the movie industry was bad. So they make a movie. yeah um And that's why we have so many iconic things. But yeah, Aliens is for all extensive purposes. And it's the movie that has a good ending, too.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah. The movie ends. It's the only one with a good ending. Uh, you know, um, Newt and, uh, what's his name? Higgs? Right? Isn't that his name? Yeah. I just know it's snow Michael Bean.
00:31:25
Speaker
Michael Bean and Ripley. are and ansville I think it's Hicks. i think it is hick hicks yeah i then you And then you've got Bishop. And Bishop. They all make it and they head off on and you're like, well, the Alien franchise is over. And I have to like, as I was watching these movies too, in my mind,
00:31:44
Speaker
Alien one through four. This is just like a bad three weeks for
Continuity in Alien Films
00:31:48
Speaker
Ripley. Oh, yeah. It's literally just keeps sleeping and waking up to this hell hell world. It's I found it wasn't even that long. It's like a couple days after the events of aliens is alien three.
00:32:01
Speaker
like yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah, but I meant like between alien and aliens obviously she's asleep, but I think there's about um It's a few weeks or maybe a month that passes between that time She's like I need to go back to that planet. I need to yeah yeah eighty eight um So just in context, and then in Alien 4, like I said, spoilers, when she's like revived, she still has the memories. That's a very beginning of the game. It's a game, movie. I don't know, it's a very big stretch. It's 200 years after the events of Alien 3. Yeah. And they've cloned Ripley to be able to obtain an alien queen because she was impregnated with an alien queen. Which...
00:32:46
Speaker
How does that make sense? We're jumping ahead. We're jumping ahead. yeah We're jumping ahead. That was a Joss Whedon film too. Didn't know that. Really? Yep. Joss Whedon. I didn't I see it. Especially with like Avengers. I see it. um Yeah, yeah, it's. Well, he was a writer writer on it. I'm director. here I don't think right. You know, you know I think he directed aliens or I'm pretty sure alien resurrection.
00:33:20
Speaker
1997. Directed, nope, I lied. I don't think he heard it. So maybe he wrote it down. It's much, it's much Frenchy. I just like always think it's crazy that yeah I find out stuff like that. James Gunn, he like, he wrote the second Scooby Doo movie and I'm like, wow, he went on to do great things. Iconically. Iconically. Monsters, whatever. um So, some would say the franchise died there.
00:33:51
Speaker
Some say there's only two Alien movies. And a part of me kind of agrees. Like, I literally I, I ended up selling that anthology set I was telling you about earlier, because I got I went to Walmart right after after I bought that set, and had to make a digital copy for my voodoo account, because that's what you did, you brought your discs into Walmart. And that's how you converted it for $2 for each one of them, which this should still they the disc Walmart on it, which I paid. And I guess to just to make sure other people didn't bring it in, I'm sure. Yeah, far away. is Carousel that shit. Right. um Anyways, I just shared my password. i By the way, then i sold after that i don't know i was like I don't know your password anymore.
00:34:36
Speaker
I had to sign all of them out, I'm sorry, because I needed a new device and I didn't know and know who all was on there. So I was just like, sign them all out and we're going to start again. people can just have passsword You just had to message me it later. Or tell me right now on recording. Okay. it is
00:34:55
Speaker
um but i ah you sold it yeah sold a bar yeah like Because I only cared about the first two. Yeah, I was like, that's all that's all I want is just alien alien and aliens because I'm not gonna watch alien three and alien resurrection again, it reminds me and I'm stalling because I really hate the next two movies, but it reminds me of like when people talk about Star Wars and like ah the prequels are so bad blah blah blah and then you watch them and you watch them in like episode one. I love it. Is it a lot of nostalgia? Sure. But even when we talk about it as a movie, it's not a bad movie. It makes sense. It's kind of boring. But there is like plot, things are happening, things make sense. It's just got a lot of pacing issues. Jar Jar, you either love them or hate them. A lot of people hate them.
00:35:49
Speaker
Um, that's same with like, you know, episode two and things like, like, like even episode nine for as stupid as it is. It's still like a movie. It still functions.
00:36:06
Speaker
Nothing. And I'm not alone with this and nothing in my life. It's going to piss me off more than the beginning of alien three.
00:36:19
Speaker
and a lot of people feel the same way. bit of a down They basically take, and if you don't know, we said Aliens is the only movie with a happy ending and they fucking slap you in the face right away in Alien 3. Those people that that Ripley risked her life to save, dead off screen.
00:36:39
Speaker
It turns out bishops a piece of shit actually and he put an alien egg and that's where he was when They were waiting on him on the platform. He he went to go find an alien egg somewhere random and then went back and went back for and Newton Ripley. Yep, Newt dies off-screen Hicks dies off-screen. And it's more so like they couldn't get Michael B to do this. And then, yeah, and i and it makes sense because the movie came out, what, seven years later or something? Like, you guys are recast and stuff, but it was still the NES era. It was six or seven years after. in the Because it was a long it was a long time between Alien and Aliens. I don't think there was a long time between Aliens and Alien 3 then. Alien 3 came out in 92. Aliens came out in 86, so six years.
00:37:31
Speaker
Okay, I can't believe they made any escape for that
Alien 3 Critique
00:37:34
Speaker
92. Nevermind, I can. Anyways, that's another thing about Alien I think I love is it never overstays its welcome. Like it's one of those franchises that's always around, but it never gets like tiresome because they always have like almost a decade in between movies. Well, now they're owned by Disney. Just do wait. Just do wait. They've been owned by Disney.
00:37:58
Speaker
But yeah, i and and honestly, it's not even just that. It's the whole concept of Alien 3. I hate it. I hate that the whole movie takes place in this fucking sewer on a planet. Yeah, it's not the most visually interesting place. so Everyone's bald, so they all look the same. they They're all these bald, elderly British guys. but Yeah, they're all like monks. They're these weird prisoner monk things and I don't know, but Sigourney Weaver just didn't seem into it at all. I don't think she was. She seems disinterested. There's just a lot of and i someone discovered the Dutch angle.
00:38:39
Speaker
Because every other shot is a fucking dutch angle. It feels like Mission Impossible 2. Have you ever seen that? Yes. John Woo's Mission Impossible 2? Unfortunately, I mean, nothing against John Woo. It's my least favorite. It's my least favorite of all the Mission Impossible 2. It's everyone's. Everyone's. I find there's stuff to enjoy in it, like, you know, the knife to the eye, the exploding sunglasses, the long hair. Oh, absolutely. It's such a product of its time, and it's insane that it's in the same...
00:39:09
Speaker
Lineage of movies that is all the rest of them because it's such like it sticks out like a sore thumb compared all Yeah, there is a heavy orange tint over that entire movie ah huh And it's the same with the Alien 3. It's like visually, it's just they're disgusting. It's a very brown movie. I think it's the first movie that they really, really use CGI because that alien looks bad sometimes. That's what I wanted to say is that alien is a puppet the whole time. The yeah the bad thing about it is the compositing.
00:39:41
Speaker
It's it's i'm not a CG alien ever. Except for like maybe a couple scenes. um It's 95% of puppets. If you look at the behind the scenes, the puppeteering is amazing for it. It's just the compositing was so bad that it made it stand out. like it It basically undid all of that good work.
00:40:02
Speaker
that the puppeteers did is because they didn't composite it well enough. And I think it is because of the color grading. They didn't light the Alien when filming it and the same way as all the other set pieces. So it they could never get it to match any of the scenes. It just doesn't... Alien had a style. And they completely changed the style.
00:40:24
Speaker
I say I like the dog alien. I think that's a good cool idea because it it it shows that the alien is more than just a humanoid like creature. It's yeah based on whatever it just states in that it will face its ah like morphology on. And I do want to I hate this movie. I really do. But there are some cool things about it. Like the gore in this movie is definitely the best of the first three. Oh, like they really ramp it up with the gore like that. There's a moment where um ah Ripley is she's got this like weird love interest in the movie. First time that they've done that. And well, I guess with with Hicks. Yeah, I was going to say and then an alien one. I think there's like a little.
00:41:07
Speaker
Well, the great thing about Alien 1 is she was not the main character until she was the last character. that was big like She was not marketed at all as or even like written until the end of the movie as our protagonist. So yeah really it's really smart in that way because you never know who's going to die in that first movie the first time you watch it.
00:41:28
Speaker
Uh-huh. But you which you'll never get again. You'll never have that feeling of like, who's going to make it again after watching that movie the first time. Yeah. Cause not that, you know, but yeah, probablyul I could tell since the beginning who was going to make it out. No shit. We're getting there. We're getting there. yeah Um, but yeah, I don't, I don't know. It's interesting the whole, like, there's an egg in her and things like that. It felt like a movie.
00:41:54
Speaker
that wanted to kill the franchise. The gestation period for the aliens varies quite a bit. Very rapidly because she apparently got this thing when she was in cryo. But then she's at this prison for days. And maybe it's because it's a queen. Maybe maybe it's because it Which doesn't make a lot of sense because the queen isn't born. It's me it's you're kind of like from what the other movies have established prior, or aliens, is that an alien will become a queen with the lack of a queen being present.
Alien Biology and Origins
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah. Or like there's, they have the capability of becoming one so that there is a hierarchy rather than one just being born. They just kind of said it too. They just like and they kind of kind of play fast and loose with the whole, like what even an alien psych biology is. Like is as well it's a creature that lays an egg that creates a creature that goes and attaches to a different creature to lay an egg in that creature to make the creature.
00:42:59
Speaker
How did it start? How did it start? I wonder if something will explain that for us. ah its They were always, I feel like, set up as a sort of biological weapon with how they're set up in that ship. They just didn't explain it. But you can always infer that it was it was a weapon being transported. Makes sense. If you ever wondered what that blue light is, it's a shielding to block the eggs from sensing life forms outside of that blue light. ah So once they cross that barrier, that's when they start. That's why they didn't just open up any other time. It was right when that barrier was broken. They're like, oh, there's someone here. We could put a but a spider on his face. Yeah. So yeah, it makes sense that it would be all intentional and stuff, but they ah unfortunately decided to go a different route. It's the perfect immortal life form. Anyways, ah Ripley dies.
00:43:59
Speaker
Everyone dies. She's Terminator 2's herself. Jokes it to the lava backwards. Thumbs up. And I love the shot because it's such, again, going back to the bad compositing of that movie, it's just the slow-mo, very long drawn out shot and she turns around and the alien busts out of her and she's like, no! and Like grabbing it so it doesn't jump out and I don't know how she's still alive, but you know, she's a fighter.
00:44:26
Speaker
She's a warrior. She goes down with the queen and that's the end of the aliens as we know it until they didn't really matter because that they just get aliens anyway. I guess. So yeah. so whale at three By alien resurrection we are shown at the beginning that Weyland-Yutani is finally gotten their hands on the alien xenomorph.
Alien Resurrection Discussion
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah. And in this movie, they're just space bugs. They're big, ugly, brown space roaches. Well, no, they're not. They're head shaped. They're very roach like. roach-like and They're just big, ugly bug creatures. They still kind of look like the alien though. they' not They're probably one of my least favorite designs just because of how like
00:45:14
Speaker
and let me Yeah, because because they use the same design for ABP, and I don't like the ABP look of the aliens either. Yeah, I will say this. So I watched Alien 3, which as I said, I tried to watch it when I was younger. The beginning pissed me off so much. Ten years, it took me ten years to go back to it. And then I felt like I was forcing myself to watch it, and I hated almost everything about it. Although, I will say this, I was watching this on Hulu.
00:45:42
Speaker
And I was watching on Hulu with ads because they had a free month trial. Yeah. And during the movie, Aliens had zero commercials. Alien 3, they're like, this movie is shit. We'll put some commercial. but There's only three commercial breaks. And there was one. I don't know if you remember the scene because you saw it a while ago.
00:45:58
Speaker
But it's when the alien is starting to first kill. There's like these three guys are lighting all these fucking candles and shit like that. And then the wind's blowing or something. And the alien starts killing them. And there's a part where like this dude staring at our dude and the alien drops down, pulls him up and blows his head up. And the other dude starts screaming and I swear, right when the scream starts, a Burger King commercial came on.
00:46:23
Speaker
Whopper Whopper. Yes, it was that one. And I have never laughed so fucking hard in my life. It was the funniest shit. and Like the most whiplash. You just saw the worst, most graphic thing ever. Here's a burger.
00:46:38
Speaker
yeah
00:46:41
Speaker
um So that was pretty that was the um that was my favorite moment of the movie, the commercial. so right But watching Alien 4 right after, I will give Alien 4 props. It does feel more like a movie. yeah um um It definitely has a style. It's very 90s. I was surprised to see that this movie came out before The Matrix.
00:47:10
Speaker
Because if you told me that this movie was inspired by The Matrix, I'd be like, yeah, I can see it. The the Matrix might have been inspired by it. It might have been. Also, it gave us one of the greatest first person shooters on PlayStation 1 ever. yeah Alien Resurrection? Yeah. Honestly, look look at it's it's a it's a pretty neat, it's one of the, I think like Halo gets credited for being like one you know one of the first twin stick shooters. it This was like the first yeah it was the first twin stick shooter on PlayStation.
00:47:39
Speaker
um to do very well. Of course. Because people thought it was shit because of the controls, ironically. People didn't know how to do it. Look at the review. It's almost as bad a review as the Alien Isolation review for it. It's so bad. I think we should IGN again. But yeah, they gave it terrible reviews because this game controls shit. It doesn't make any sense. I can't aim. And it's literally just the modern day Call of Duty controls. I'm used to the N64 with one joystick. I've got to use two controllers to use my twin stick analog.
00:48:12
Speaker
um But you can do. Yeah, but it's got I like and I want to preference it's not good. It's not a good movie. It's better than the last one. It's better than three. But man, is that movie weird? Four? Yeah, four is weird. So as we said before, it starts with Ripley's been cloned. And somehow I think they said they found her blood on like the dropship or something that crash landed. It's something. And that also had the alien DNA in it somehow. And then they clone the alien, which in hindsight is really funny because the alien is just out there. I mean, and Romulus, that takes place after aliens and there's aliens on it. So yeah but no, this is the only way that they could get it.
00:49:06
Speaker
And Ripley's back. Sigourney Weaver's back. She's old. She's like 40 something now. Yeah, she's definitely not like because. you know, in her prime, like she wasn't the other ones. Yeah, you can tell that she's old, but I kind of like it too, because they let her play this like weird type of- She's not with her. She's superhuman. Her DNA is like spliced with that of an alien because of her being impregnated with the queen from three. So she's like, she's got the acidic blood. She just kind of acts a little off.
00:49:42
Speaker
It's definitely a different character than Ripley, which I think is important to distinguish her from. and Maybe this was to Gordon Weaver being like, I'll come back, but I'm not doing the same character three times. I'm pretty sure I remember reading something. it was It was very difficult to get her to come back. She didn't have a good time at three, and she and imagine really didn't want to do this one.
00:50:04
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure there was some compromise in her role. I think she wanted to play like the antagonist or something in it, but then they made her the hero. Which in the movie, it's weird because it feels like she is the antagonist, especially when they first meet. So this movie is- Especially when she plays basketball.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah. So as you said, like the company finally got the alien and all that stuff. And then there's like these smugglers that we meet and, um, uh, Renata whiners is how you say her name on a rider. Yeah. We're not a writer. She's right in it. Rider. Yeah.
00:50:39
Speaker
of Stranger Things fame. Nothing else. There's a lot of sexual tension between her and Sigourney Weaver. Hannah wanted them to bang. But she's on this crew of smugglers and we find out that they're smuggling people to be impregnated with the aliens so that this company keeps using or can keep producing aliens and stuff. And they're like trying to tame the aliens and the training. You're you're kind of seeing the end goal happen of weaponizing the aliens and controlling them and things like that. And they're brown now. But it's very weird. It's shot like a comedy? Yeah. Almost. It feels like a TV show almost. It feels like a TV show and also like satire. Like they're playing it off as a joke.
00:51:27
Speaker
I think, ah you know, there was definitely a vision for it. It almost feels like it was a different movie. And then they were like, let's make it alien. Yeah, yeah. It's because like, the kernels are almost cartoonishly evil.
00:51:43
Speaker
car And they make, I don't remember who it was, but there's some of them that are working for the corporate. They just make dumb faces constantly. Like just weird. And the camera will zoom all the way up to their face. And it'll be a full shot of them like making these weird faces and stuff. And at the Dutch angle returns, watch the Dutch shots. yeah And there's a guy in a wheelchair.
00:52:11
Speaker
And it's not weird that he's in a wheelchair, but his character, he's weird. Ron Crowman's in this movie too. Yeah, who was he? He was a, he was, he was who was he? I don't know. Oh yeah, no, no, he's just the dude. I can't tell you who his character is. Yeah, he he's he's in the movie. He's in the part, I know where, where she- He's the most- Wherever shots the basketball in. He's the most 90s.
00:52:36
Speaker
fucking, uh, misogynistic piece of, you can't believe it. I mean, actually it makes sense that Joss Whedon wrote this movie knowing that he's one of the only ones that survives. Honestly, he's one of the most piece of shit people in the whole movie. And he's portrayed as a good guy at the end. He's like, dude, you were like, he's like,
00:52:58
Speaker
He hates Winona Ryder's character because they find out that she's an android. And he like threatens to kill her constantly. It's a synth. Or synthetic, my bad. He's constantly trying to kill Sigourney Weaver. He's talking about banging her and shit like that constantly. And then in the movie, it's like the sun shining on him and he's smiling. It's just him and the pilot. And it's like, what the fuck?
00:53:21
Speaker
but I want to say something funny about Rob Proven to you before we move on that scene where she shoots the basketball behind her back. She, they like I watched this whole like 20 minute thing about that. So she wanted to do it herself. They were like, okay, we're going to, you know, we can just have you like throw it off screen. We'll have someone ready there to drop it in or we'll have someone else do it. You know, we'll do a cut. i make sure nick it No, I want it. She practiced for like.
00:53:47
Speaker
a month or so to get that shot right and then the first take Nothing but net like and she had practiced before like she was doing some practice on set before they started filming and she kept missing it and they're like I don't know we're gonna be here forever because she's Insisting on doing this if she's got all the power of this movie like she of course like you piss her off She's gonna leave because she doesn't want to be here already. You're not gonna go see alien 4 without her Yeah first stage she throws it behind her back and gets nothing but net to swish and Unfortunately, it does go off
00:54:20
Speaker
the, you know, off screen. They didn't catch the full arc. And the director was so impressed with it too. He was like, Hey, I can go in and manipulate it, you know, make sure like, we'll edit it to make it stay in the frame. She was like, you do not touch that shot. It stays as it is. And Ron Perlman broke character when it happened.
00:54:40
Speaker
Yeah, almost ruined the whole scene because he was like, oh my God! And everyone on set was like freaking out and he got into it. And then he was like, oh, I fucked up. You can hear him like in the shot. Oh, I fucked up. why I fucked this whole thing up. Oh man. He went from a pure excitement to pure dread within seconds because of him reacting to it. And they somehow made it work though. I think they were able to like cut away from that.
00:55:06
Speaker
fast enough. Yeah, and you can still see him like in that scene reacting to her making it like this face. my um That's the best thing about that movie. but whole about it's It's such a weird scene too, because like, it's very nice. It's very of its time. Things just happen. Like I really I kept thinking about matrix because matrix is a weird movie. But I like matrix matrix has a point to everything. In this movie, they show up The, the, the smugglers, there's like five of them. There's this dude that has like these fucking guns that like are like up his sleeves, but there's like this metal bar that they slide down so he can conceal them and shit like that. It's, it's so nineties. Um, the funny thing is it's like, I, I like to go back to franchise. It's like, I watched the first Iron Man yesterday again and I'm like, man, how do we get from here? Yeah. It's a dead pool of Wolverine. Like I would have never fathomed.
00:56:03
Speaker
Yeah, this this universe going that direction and then all the stops along the way and then you look back at alien watch the first movie and you go to resurrection like how did we get here? And that's why I'm like alien is just like ah the weirdest franchise because of all their movies the next one we talked about is crazy too, but um They just walk around and they show up and then they kill a whole bunch of people But then it's like it didn't matter like Like they have that scene where they have like a shootout and then life just keeps happening. They just killed like eight people, but like, whatever, it doesn't matter. And I think the the big thing in this movie is the threat of the alien getting to earth.
00:56:42
Speaker
It's like, it's just the closest the xenomorph has ever made it to earth proper. Yes, the shit bitch. It's a, it's a countdown movie. It's how shitty the universe is. Who even cares? And this is like, and for us, we're like, oh no, they're making it to earth. But when you really stand and think about that universe, it's like, is earth even really like that big of a deal in this? I was gonna say, even in this movie, they're talking trash on earth the whole time. Like, oh, that shit hole. It's like, oh. We know what earth is like in this universe because it is set in Blade Runner.
Shared Universe with Blade Runner
00:57:11
Speaker
Blade Runner and Alien share the same universe. so we know which yes it's the same technology like That's why like the computers and everything are the same. Ridley Scott it confirmed like alien like his Alien and Blade Runner are set in the same universe. That's intriguing. Take that what you will. I don't know if he considers all of Alien and its sequels yeah proper to be in canon, but Blade Runner is the is the standard of Earth, I guess you could say, is like your peak is a what would be lost. ah So, you know, LA.
00:57:46
Speaker
um But yeah, it's it's there are some cool things in this movie, like I've said. there um some of the action scenes, because once the aliens start attacking, all the weird comedic stuff goes away. All the like campy shit, it like, well, I shouldn't say campy because it still can't be in its action moments. But it doesn't feel like it's a parody anymore. It's not like it's kind of joking around and stuff. Honestly, crazy. Because like, when you think about it, I don't think this movie would be an R rated movie without, like, the curse words.
00:58:19
Speaker
Yeah, no. A lot of the deaths are off screen. Like, I like the scene when they're underwater. I thought that was kind of- The swimming aliens. That's the first time you ever see them in, like, that kind of a scenario. Yeah. And then when it pops out and grabs new- But we never saw it. Like, sweet, uh, swimming. There's just water. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:58:37
Speaker
But, um, and then that's also where they just start. They're like, we got to start killing people. So characters that you don't know, just start dying because they're like, well, someone's got to die here. And then like in the very next room, two more people die. Cause that, do you remember the movie or well? Like, um, I, I know I remember with the ending very well.
00:58:56
Speaker
just like I remember they think the Romulus very well. We'll get to that. I remember you know her playing basketball. She's an alien, basically. yeah And then you know the stuff that happens at the end. I can't remember. That's probably the one I don't remember the least because I watched it at like It was very, very night at night. I was, I marathoned all the alien movies and we were going to like clean out my grandparents' warehouse after my, or it was taking my great grandpa's warehouse, but now it's my grandparents' because he would pass away around that time I was watching these. And I just couldn't sleep that night. So I stayed up and watched every alien movie. And so it was probably like four in the morning when I started this one.
00:59:44
Speaker
And and in your like it's probably the most dead tired I've ever sat and watched through an entire movie. So the fact that I gained anything from watching it is kind of a miracle. And it's the only time I've ever watched it. So I've never watched it again. I want to sit I'm going to sit down and watch all through all of me because I I've repurchased the alien theology and I'm waiting for it to come in the mail. And well, something I want with three about I forgot when we got to aliens.
01:00:14
Speaker
The reason I wanted this set is because of the version of Aliens that is on it, because now the modern versions that you buy and all of the digital versions have been converted to the new 4K AI upscaled version, which James Cameron has been doing with some of his movies recently.
01:00:34
Speaker
where they've just gone back and used AI to erase any film grain and pop in detail. It's not a true 4K scan. yeah It is an AI upscaled and it really shows. it size There's a lot of detail that's lost with background characters. yeah Faces look weird. ah Things are just kind of glossed over and plasticky looking now. When I saw that, I was like, shit. Because it's the only version I have is my digital one because of what I did. and i'm like I'm going to buy an older copy because and if I'm doing that, I'm getting all of them. I want this anthology set. It's a nice set. Um, and now I just hate that that is, and it's, I'll be, I also say it's not the worst way to watch it.
01:01:19
Speaker
It's, it's for people like me, I'm going to notice, but the general audience is just going to watch me like, that's aliens. That's fine. Yeah. yeah People would be like, Oh yeah, it looks nice. It looks good for a seventies. They probably wouldn't even know the difference. like it's just selling alien Um, but I think it's one of those things where they would notice if it was still the original and they'd be like, Oh, this looks old, but they won't notice when it is upscaled. Yeah. Uh, which is a shame because it's, it's one of those movies that like, I think deserves a proper, like, really good 4K scan, but it's it's whatever. what the world we live in This is the new but Star Wars special edition. 4K AI upscales are the new Star Wars special edition. Anytime it happens, it's gonna cause an uproar with a small, very loud part of the internet, and then everyone's gonna forget about it.
01:02:11
Speaker
yeah But it's going to happen. I'm going to probably see it with a lot more James Cameron specific movies too. Because he's the one kind of pioneering this. This was um going back to Alien for quickly wrapping it up. right No, you're good. I mean, yeah, throw in all the context you need to. but um Uh, the ending, it kind of returned to the whole cause, um, alien one had like the multi ending thing. Alien two had the whole multi ending thing where the queen was on the ship again and all that stuff. Alien three didn't, but that movie just needed to end. so Um, space for the majority of time. I mean, aliens was on the ground. Yeah.
01:02:54
Speaker
It just feels like space. That's the thing. is it's all It's a night. There's no sun. it's And that's why, like, aliens did it right because that was one of my complaints about Alien 3 was, oh, it's just on Earth or or it's not on Earth. It's on a planet the whole time. But then I'm like, oh, yeah, aliens was as well. But they got the tone right. It's a permanent dusk on the planet. Yeah. And like when they're in the space station, it feels like a spaceship. So anyways, neither here nor there.
01:03:21
Speaker
um But the ending of Alien 4 is god weird. So weird. it's You have been weird an alien queen, you're like, oh shit, they got the queen, they were one. And it gives a natural birth to this disgusting, like fleshy, white,
01:03:42
Speaker
alien man thing but it looks like a person like yeah like it' the most ever like it's you kind of harkening back to the skull behind the dome i was saw showing you earlier but it's it's it's that look but without the dome almost but with a weird flabby man skin over it um who then proceeds to murder its mother because it thinks Ripley is its true mother. And Ripley makes a weird like mother of-son child connection to this alien. thing And then they get on the ship to escape. The big ship explodes. Don't they suck it out of like a tiny hole and it just gets like... And feet and then they're all doing the kumbaya. We're going to go fly to earth and we'll be ah out of this. And there's a thing in the back.
01:04:34
Speaker
First person dies, and then Renona Ryder, Ryder, I'm not gonna say her name right, she goes back and she's just a little synthetic. She can't fight. The alien human big white, it's like this pasty white, if you saw Romulus, think of that, but like half the height and more bulky.
01:04:55
Speaker
Like, more human shapes. It's not the long head of an alien, but it's got a face like a human skull. Yeah. And it's got, like, man boobs. Like, it's got, like, this saggy, like, sad body. And it wails like a banshee. um And it makes it's it makes facial expressions. Like, yeah like it looks happy or, like, sad when it sees It's yeah so so almost like a little puppy. This is the weird part. it's I mean, the again, the movie's weird. It feels like a parody. It feels like a comedy and then it's not and then kind of fizz again, but it's trying to kill the synthetic and then Ripley goes back there.
01:05:34
Speaker
And they're having like this weird connection standoff thing. And I don't remember exactly how they do it, but yeah, they make a hole in the window and it starts sucking it out. And the the alien falls back onto the window. And then it's kind of a cool shot because from the back it's showing like the suction of the alien. And then then it slowly starts like bursting open and all of the dinners are like sucking out and the aliens like wailing.
01:05:58
Speaker
like that or whatever and Ripley's like sad and kind of crying at it and the aliens like crying and sad and I guess you're supposed to feel sad but you're like this fucking abomination thing I'm not gonna feel bad for it um and then it ends up dying because the whole thing goes out of the window, a little goo. It's immense. And then Ron Perlman smiling. He's like, we made it. I'm a son of a bitch, but I made it. And then the movie ends. And that's, and for all extensive purposes, the end of Aliens. That is the last movie in the timeline. What a fucking movie it is. It's weird. And it's questionable that if it if it's even canon,
01:06:47
Speaker
anymore. but That's the thing about three and four, three and four are way up in there. They've ah tried for the last 20 years to make a sequel to aliens that erases the continuity of three and four. But for whatever reason, it doesn't happen. You want to know why it doesn't happen. I could tell you it's not every time. So first 10th, they're gonna do it. They've got Sigourney Weaver get back. They've got Michael Bean back. They've they're gonna i I don't know if they'll get the same actress for new but they were gonna bring them back to make a proper alien, uh, alien sequel. I, I pretty sure James Cameron may have been involved with something, but as this is starting to ramp up production or not wrap up ramp up, like they're getting into it. Freddie versus Jason comes out and does great. So you know what they do? They're like, we own predator. We own alien.
01:07:40
Speaker
Shit, that was a really popular comic series in the 90s. Let's do that.
Alien vs Predator
01:07:46
Speaker
So in like less than a year, they scrapped that and they make Alien versus Predator in less than a year that movie was made. Which I have never seen either of the AVP movies. You need to watch it. I think- Looking it up, Alien versus Predator, 22% of Rotten Tomatoes. There, I will say, like AVP gets a bad rap because it's PG-13.
01:08:09
Speaker
So it's gore and violence is very restricted because of that. I think it's got a lot of cool moments. so Like, I don't care about the story. The story is shit. But I like watching movie monsters fight. Yeah. Same reason I like Freddy versus Jason. The story, who cares about the story? You want to see Freddy and Jason fight. That's what we're here. Same thing with like Godzilla versus King Kong. I don't care about the story. it's I'm here to see a big gorilla fight a big monkey.
01:08:36
Speaker
or being a big lizard, I mean. And so, yeah, that's what we're hearing. But they had to make the molds for the costume so fast that it is straight up the alien resurrection aliens, but in black instead of brown. um And they have like the generic, you know, it's the same predator suit that's always the main predators like mask. There's always other ones, but he's the main one because, you know, he wears the same mask as the one from the first movie.
01:09:04
Speaker
but they just fight in the Arctic. Apparently the aliens have been on Earth since like the Mayan times and the predators come down to hunt them all the time. But interesting about interesting thing about these, they're not in the alien continuity, they're in the predator continuity.
01:09:19
Speaker
So they exist. And it's funny because Predator's continuity is even weird. It's not as crazy as Alien's continuity, but it's it's a little looser because they don't have sequel connections ever. It's always a new protagonist. It's always new predators. It's always somewhere else in the universe or on Earth. But they always leave that connection to Alien versus Predator in future movies by, even even like Predator 2 at the end, their ship has a skull of an alien amongst other like trophies for that they've hunted throughout the universe to tease that possibility someday. yeah Maybe, maybe it was just an Easter egg thrown out there, but they made it happen. And in future installments, like the Shane Blackett Predator movie, they had the, there's a point where the human character in AVP makes a spear from the alien tail and a shield from its, like, you know, the round skull, elongated skull for her arm.
01:10:16
Speaker
And those are shown in a scene in that lab. So that is in that continuity. It's only in the predator continuity. It doesn't make sense that it's an alien continuity because Whaley-Dutani would have gotten all of their alien needs hundreds of years before the events of Alien. So anyways, that's why I choose to believe that those are separate continuities. Alien versus predator requiem. After that, one of the coolest teases at the end of the first alien versus predator Spoilers. Our main protagonist Predator gets picked up. Our human gets left in the Arctic. She probably dies, to be honest. I don't know how you get out of there. and arc But as they're flying away from the planet, they have their comrade on a table and a Predator alien bursts out of its chest. The second movie is called Alien vs. Predator Requiem. Do you want to know why?
01:11:12
Speaker
So they can put R in the name because it's an R rated alien versus predator movie. Wow, that's really stupid. The Predalien is probably one of the coolest character designs I have ever seen for a fictional creature. And it is in the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. I was about to say, Alien vs. Better Requiem. We're approaching Tommy Wiseau's The Room levels up bad. As a kid, I hate that movie. And it's because it's just... overly excessive and tasteless use of its gore. Like it is just like killing kids, like killing the main characters just like, like there's a part where they're like running. It's our main guy and the alien and the predalien and the predator are fighting and like ah something gets thrown off from their fight and just kills them. It's like, whoa,
01:12:06
Speaker
Okay, that wasn't earned. That's stupid. why they just They just died for like nothing. it's in that It was that scene that made me like really, really despise that movie because yeah you know the story is whatever. At this point, I shouldn't be that invested in the characters, but just to have them die in such an offhand stupid way, just so you can have you know their guts fall out of their stomach because they got impaled by a random thing, that's all it was there for.
01:12:32
Speaker
It's pretty stupid. I will say that, like, I don't know if you looked up the design of an alien. It's pretty sick. and I saw it, yeah. I i love that. And I wish it was in a good movie. um But everything is so dark in that movie, too. You can't even, like, appreciate any of it. So it's just it's just not even worth sitting down and watching. Appreciate the costume design. That's it. yeah But that's about all I can say for that movie. It's just it's not worth any time I would love for them to come back and do Alien vs Predator. There's talk with the director of Romulus wanting to like collaborate with the guy who did Prey to make an Alien vs Predator movie, which I think, you know, if there was actual thought and care put into a project. Wasn't Prey good? Yes, I love Prey. I would say it's probably my second favorite predator.
01:13:24
Speaker
It's up there. is good Every other Predator movie is good, and I will stand by that. The first one's good, second one's bad. The third one's good, the fourth one's bad. And then the fifth one's good. well that's what it takes if you If you exclude the Alien versus Predator movies and put them in their own category, every other Predator movie is good. Which I think you should. But there's a path to slash. It's the best way to like live. it Um, but yeah, it's, it's there. They're doing their own thing. It's just best to not even think about them. Well, maybe like a drunk night. I'll watch a vp ah yeah i honest it. Honestly, they're but like the first one I have to say, it's a fun watch. It's just, it's just a ah fun movie for fun. It's a short, it's, I think it's a very short movie too. It's like an hour. as again They're both like, yeah, they're both like 90 minutes because they made them like, like I said, the first one was made in like less than a year. Like they, they literally just slapped it together. They got the actor for Bishop.
01:14:17
Speaker
to be back in the movie as Weyland Yutani himself in the present day 2004. And it doesn't make any sense because he shows up in Alien 3, which is like hundreds of years, of whatever. We'll move on
Prometheus and Its Themes
01:14:30
Speaker
to Prometheus. Yeah, so um Prometheus. Ironically enough, first Alien movie I've ever watched. And I really liked Prometheus when it came out.
01:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was a dumb kid. But, well, actually, I was 15, right? 15 or 16. I was a teenager. I could understand things at that point. It was 2012, wasn't it? Yeah, it's the year that Avengers came out.
01:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, that was when I started really going to the movies. um So I saw Prometheus and I understand the hate, especially after watching the first four alien movies, because Prometheus is weird.
01:15:12
Speaker
It's different it answers questions i don't think a lot of people had. And it brings up a lot more questions that i don't think people wanted. I think it's neat that they explain what the space jockey was from the first alien. movie Which is that thing they found in the ship that wasn't related to the eggs.
01:15:33
Speaker
Um, but there's a thing that was dead on the um, like the turret or whatever, right? Yeah, because it because he was in the like little command when we found out was like the pilot seat basically uh in prometheus, but because and you see the hole in his chest to like they're like, oh what happened to this thing and you know That's what it was. But we always thought it was this weird elephant trunk looking dude, but that's just apparently the helmet um Yeah, I don't There's not a lot that I remember from Prometheus. There are some things i like like... It's got a very like religious kind of... these are the Both alien and alien Prometheus and Alien Covenant have very religious undertones yeah where basically the engineers were our God. And when that one at the beginning you know dissolves himself,
01:16:24
Speaker
it creates humanity on earth is basically what it's alluded to yeah and so the engineers are kind of like gods in this continuity now and then when we see one at the end i love it because the first thing these like very regal kind of noble looking creatures of very little like I don't know, they didn't seem like there was a lot of malintent, they were more like explorers and like scientists. Yeah, they were just chilling. They wake one up and he's like, ah, ah, ah. He just mercilessly murders everyone. It's like, all right, but okay. And he's just like, for no reason. It's us, I'm gonna throw, I don't like Ridley Scott.
01:17:19
Speaker
I don't think I think he used should be his vision. and Again, that's another thing I wanted to bring up. We almost got an aliens sequel with Sigourney Weaver and Michael Bean again. And it got canceled because Ridley Scott was like, I want to make a sequel to Prometheus and 20th Century Fox was sort of bitch we're in. Unfortunately. And that's what we got instead of an alien sequel again, which is I could go on a but with Batman Beyond. It's in the same boat. Every time we almost get a Batman Beyond movie, it
01:17:58
Speaker
doesn't happen or like ah Michael Keaton returned. Somehow it finally happened in the flash of all movies. But they were always trying to do bat, like people trying to get a batman beyond or Michael Keaton returned to the role and it would never work. It never worked out. We're not talking about that. But then now we're like, it's it's like it happened like three times.
01:18:21
Speaker
Because I'm pretty sure there was also talks to do an Alien sequel before Covenant or Prometheus came out. God, I can't talk. Yeah, before Prometheus, I believe so. But then that's what I don't think it ever got. I don't think it ever gotten that far. It didn't get as far as the one before Covenant because they had like the guy who did like Chappie, District 9 and Elysium to direct it. Josh, not Josh Trank. Is it Josh Trank? I can't remember.
01:18:46
Speaker
It's easy, but Josh, Josh Trank's either the guy who did those or he's the guy that like freaked out when he was doing Fantastic Four. And I don't, it's not the same guy. Uh, Neil Blomkamp. Neil Blomkamp, that's who it is. Yeah. Josh Trank. He made something recently, didn't he?
01:19:00
Speaker
I don't know. I haven't really heard much of him since Chappie. Gran Turismo. Oh, he did Gran Turismo? That's right. was good Apparently song like one of the best video it's one of the best video game movies. I wouldn't say it's best it's a video game adaptation whatsoever, but it's technically a video game movie. and But I always loved his movies. I always think he did a really good job and I was so excited. What do you got there? Because they have props made for it. Like he showed off like one of the alien, like the Colonial Marines weapons and stuff like that.
01:19:29
Speaker
like concept art they had ready for it, and then it just got completely thrown away, which sucks. yeah Also something I found out, because we're moving away from Alien vs. Predator, apparently recently it was discovered that there was a completed drawn shot and voice acted done 10-episode Alien vs. Predator anime that got shelved when Disney bought Fox. That's unfortunate. And it's been sitting on a shelf and hopefully with Romulus getting big, maybe they'll dig it up and release it, but like it's just never been got released. it just Alien has like such an unfortunate franchise where it has all of these like great ideas and then something happens and then it doesn't get made and something lesser comes out.
01:20:18
Speaker
And I think it will we we're getting close now. Not to get too far off from Prometheus. I don't have much to say about it when we get there. but yeah Well, spoilers. Covenant's the one that I haven't seen fully. So we don't have much to say about it either. But I think Prometheus as an idea is interesting and intriguing. I could see how the studio would be like, OK, yeah, let's go with that. The cool thing is like it's not technically an Alien prequel. It's set prior to the events of Alien, but it it's its own contained story.
01:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, except for the last shot. for they We all like you have to show an alien. How about Deacon? it his name His name's Deacon. The little alien? Yeah, again what they it's ah it's called Deacon. Oh, I love that. Yeah. um easy little For the longest time, everyone's called him the proto-alien. Yeah, proto-alien. I love that. um I remember as a teenager being like, wow, this is dumb, especially like there's just one scene where there's like a ship that start rolling and it's rolling towards this person. And all I could think of was like, run to the right. But she didn't. She just kept running forward and eventually gets crushed. And I was like, wow, I don't know how movies are made because I'm a dumb kid, but whoever made this is an idiot.
01:21:41
Speaker
I don't know. It's one of those things you can criticize from like a spectator's point of view. But
Ridley Scott's Direction and Alien Covenant
01:21:47
Speaker
like, when I think about if I was in that situation is like, I don't know what I like even think about like, that's, that's fair. I, but like, um as a movie writer, you have that, you know, you can see that as you're making that scene, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, i criticism. I don't know. I don't know if that's what they were trying to go for. or like There's definitely an obvious thing, but So like I said, only I only saw like, I've seen scenes of Alien Covenant and I only saw like the first 30 minutes before I fell asleep and I just haven't gone back to it yet. I will go back since I'm this far. Might as well watch all of them. um But these two movies, Ridley Scott did himself, he was the director. I don't think, did he write them too? ah yeah I believe so these are like fully his stories, like written directors.
01:22:34
Speaker
with these and that's why like those other projects got canceled because when you have the original alien guy come back and fox is like oh he do it it's a new thing with him riding in yeah giving the money giving the money it makes sense um But these, what was that one movie that came out a few years ago? It was like a, not Game of Thrones. I mean, it was like medieval time or whatever. He has recent works. Dragons. No, no, don't talk it back. Not his, his thing. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a, I remember it was a one where it was like TikTok kids or whatever. Like on the TikTok kids, they fucking suck. But I haven't watched it. So I can't. judge that movie. But I don't know. I don't know. It could be good. i but I tried watching it and I like movies like that. I could not. I got like an hour and a half in and stopped. yeah I'm almost done with the fucking movie. I couldn't do it. ah But he feels like that type of director who's like, I want to be thought provoking and I want to be like, I want people to walk out there and go, wow.
01:23:39
Speaker
And wow, I do feel, because I think there was a change in him when his brother died or committed suicide. And I feel like that's really when he started, like, because he kind of stepped away from making movies for a while, I think. And then when his brother died, he, that's when he kind of came back and did like Prometheus and everything. So I don't know, maybe it's like trying to compensate or like keep his mind off of like that, or that's like where these. Or he's tying it in with. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That's the way coping for him. I don't know. I don't know. Regardless, it comes the whole reason we got the new Top Gun movie, though. is he pushed for that to keep getting made. So we can thank him for that. And now we're getting a third one. So thanks. When your movie makes a billion dollars, you make a sequel. But yeah, Prometheus is fine. And again, Covenant, I haven't seen it, but Anyu... So how, like, what was, did you see any aliens in Covenant to the point where you got to? I've only seen the aliens from the clips. Okay. Do you know anything about this movie?
01:24:44
Speaker
little bit. I know that it has to do with Michael Fassbender. So it's the same David Android from Prometheus. Yes. And he's like,
01:24:55
Speaker
But there's also one another one that's, it's it's not David, but it's his same model that's on this new crew that they discover him on this planet, which is presumably the one they went to at the, cause at the end of Prometheus, it's our main hero, and heroin chick and him. lies off Yeah. They're like, we're going to go, we're going to the, the engineers. They want to come to us. We're going to take the fight to them first.
01:25:19
Speaker
I don't know what her plan was just by herself in one ship and a whole bunch of black goo. I don't know, but she didn't make it. I don't know if it was gonna fight them or at least I think she wanted to like, just wanted to know why they were coming after them, I guess. It was mainly her main goal with that. But at some point, at some point,
01:25:37
Speaker
she just dies in between movies a la alien three they fucking alien three girl like i don't know like and then um because sorry they um there's a a lot of weird things so like they there's a short film for this movie that was posted to youtube with the crew of the alien covenant, like before they made it to the planet, like before the events of the movie start. James Franco is credited in this movie because he dies immediately in in his pod because it catches on fire. And he is only in that YouTube short. as So it takes place before they go into cryo. They go into cryo and he just dies and it's not in the movie at all.
01:26:28
Speaker
It's amazing. It's so interesting. that his tatra poor he red eyes This was before he got me to know that shit too. it like movie star It's funny because it's not even like it was because of any of that or like his other scenes were cut. That's all he did for the movie was just that.
01:26:46
Speaker
And I don't know, maybe that's why he did it, because he he wouldn't have to do a lot, and there's a good basis. Yeah, but it's, it's, it's really funny that that that's the guy, that's the husband of the lady at the beginning of the movie that dies. jane franco and but You never forget to see him well enough to even register that that was him. That's funny, though. Mm hmm. Basically, it also shows Michael Fassbender,
01:27:12
Speaker
And then they made sure this is the movie too, I might be getting confused. But they, he shows up to this planet, David, and unleashes all of the bioweapons on that ship on the engineer, like people that are still alive on that planet and kills them all. And kills them all. Yeah, yeah. I remember that.
01:27:32
Speaker
So and i they never really explain how the main chick from Prometheus dies. I can't remember her name, um unfortunately. But i miss it's just pretty much assumed that David probably killed her. And he's been doing experiments on her and ah but the black goo and everything. The black goo is like manifested into plant life with spores and There's all sorts of weird shit on this planet since it got like unleashed So that's your first infection is like they hit they step on one of these spores It goes inside the person's ear and then that's that shower scene where like busts out of their back. That is a gruesome I actually love that
01:28:12
Speaker
ah that first, like, white alien creature that, like, just... It's so so violent. It doesn't buzz out of the chest. It completely, like, just rips out their back fully grown. Yeah, yeah. It just goes wild. And they deal with it. I think they kill it pretty fast. But the main thing about this movie that they market is we're getting back to the alien proper, the xenomorph proper. And unfortunately, this is the first one and the only one to ever...
01:28:42
Speaker
do all the aliens fully CG with no like students or anything like that. So they're very like long and lanky, spindly weird. So like they they can do some neat stuff, but they there's no physicality to them anymore. They don't feel like they're in the room. And ah the biggest controversy too in this movie is that David creates the alien.
01:29:09
Speaker
Interesting. Like, but really, it's it's it's not ever really explained whether he himself created the alien as we know it going forward from aliens, and those are his creations, or that he reverse engineered the xenomorphs from the engineers designs from him studying all their stuff over this, like, whoever knows how long it was between Prometheus and now.
01:29:35
Speaker
So he basically, I think, I like to believe he was just kind of like, because that was his whole fascination was learning more about them, and seeing what that black goo and stuff would do to people in Prometheus, was that he was trying to come up with the alien proper, because you see like a mural of it like on the wall and stuff, of like the xenomorph, which I believe is like,
01:30:00
Speaker
It's there's so much more is like a depiction of the engineer's God. Like that's how they represent their God is in like, or what their religious figure is. I've seen a more fun feature, HR gear style, like on the wall. Um, and that's, I think how, I don't know. I don't know how it all ties back to the, the original alien in this, but that's why they look like that is because he created them to, or I think, um, got that.
01:30:27
Speaker
I think those two movies would be better if they weren't Alien. They're very complicated. There's so much lore in those movies. It's worth watching just for that. But it' it's kind of hilarious too. If you watch it in chronological order and you go from that to fucking alien. fact there's none of that its like from If you're just watching covenant, the only logical thing you could take away from that is David made the alien. Yeah, that
Future of Alien Franchise Under Disney
01:30:59
Speaker
that's just like how you would have to see that. And that's how I perceived it for the longest time. And I thought that was stupid. But it makes more sense that he would have probably reverse engineered it.
01:31:07
Speaker
Um, and then at the end, they end up going on there, uh, getting back to the ship and leaving the planet and the other unit that's with them that looks, it's played by Michael Fassbender. Surprise, surprise. It's actually David and he swapped spots with them and he, everyone goes to cryo and he, you see, he has these little tiny like embryos of face huggers that he puts in when the human DNA samples for like repopulation, whenever they,
01:31:33
Speaker
because they're trying to like colonize a planet it was basically what happened no and that's the last we see of that so like it's just kind of set up like oh he fucked up a whole civilization somewhere at some point or maybe they all died on the ship who knows we'll never we'll probably never get an answer to that or resolution to that storyline no but now that leads us to the disney era of alien after an hour and a half hour and a half um Romulus review. But I feel like the context was important because oddly enough, Romulus is kind of polarizing because I've seen both professional and non-professional people either love this movie
01:32:21
Speaker
or honestly hate it. And I think it's, it's, I think it's fair and or it stands where it's rated as the third best alien movie. Rob tomatoes wise, most reviews were wise. And I think I will i agree. It is the third best Yeah, yeah, I think so too. But people like I was watching the red letter review of it. and They hate it. I know I was kind a show like, I came out of that. And I was like, Oh, I'll be interested to see what they say. And they were just like, straight up, like, this is like, awful. And okay and like, our very own Ida hates it. Really? just like No, she thinks it's she said it's as bad as alien three.
01:32:57
Speaker
She hates, and it's it's ah it's a thing where online, I've been seeing on like Twitter and stuff where it's not just them. There's people that hate this movie or like us where we're like, it's pretty solid. and I want to say the best thing to for me to relate this to is this is like the Star Wars Rogue One of Alien. Yeah. It's very much a fanservice-y movie.
01:33:21
Speaker
Um, I think, uh, Oh, what's his name? The, the synth in this. He is my favorite person in all of this. I think his actor phenomenal. Like I would say he deserves an Oscar for the role he played, like just wait which between like the two personalities, uh, with the data chip that's in him. Um, I, I loved him.
01:33:43
Speaker
Rain um was kind of a flat character. like the fine I like the actress. I think she did a good job, but I just don't think she was written very as deep as like a Ripley type character. You know what, and I think it's the same guy, actually, but you know, it's the evil dead guy. It's reminds me of the evil dead reboot. Yeah, it is.
01:34:05
Speaker
for all extents and purposes, a remake where the main character is not as deep as the first movie, but they're there for the role. And then even the long ending is kind of the same, because in the Even Dead remake, they kind of like draw it out a little bit. yeah Because it has like its natural conclusion where you would think it would end. And then it's like, oh, here's what you're here for, for the last 20 minutes.
01:34:30
Speaker
um but I also I think like maybe that's what they were going for is they didn't want anyone to seem like the main character because you so like it would be less obvious who would die if they did that they did it wrong cuz I yeah from the I know who was getting the face hugger on them because of the poster Yeah. They spoiled that, the trailers and the poster, but it's a great scene. I love all of that. I think that the faceover scene and her getting impregnated in like the X-ray machine. like that's That's cool. Talking, when we were talking about Alien 3 and we were talking about, well, you know, gestation period of stuff, dude, it's like five minutes flat.
01:35:10
Speaker
Oh man, I will tell you something, like that's something I forgot to mention in like the Alien vs. Predator stuff too, going forward. And those, it was like instant, those two. And it's, you know. Oh really? Yeah, it's it's so, it's like fried away. And I think that's a decent choice for the pacing of this movie. Because it's like, you're like what? This is the sixth.
01:35:33
Speaker
a seventh alien movie proper uh or no we're six no it's the sixth it's seven but if you don't count for me because one two three four i count for me theus yeah because for me this is an alien covenant so it's it counts so um it's like we've seen it we don't like it as an audience i think that appreciates our time because we don't have to guess like did she get it out did she it's like no we know it's yeah and the whole point Yeah, the whole point of the first movie is like, you don't know. And then you're like, what the fuck's happening? And then the third movie, for they just needed a thing, I guess. And they're like, ah, there you go. So we got to do something. And I guess it's, ah oh, she wants to die, not die, whatever. But yeah, at this point, we've seen it. We get it. We understand. She's got it. Just do it. And I, I
01:36:24
Speaker
really liked them. It's the first time we've ever seen them get a face hugger off prematurely too. So like it's it's got the A in there, but they there was, I knew it wasn't a chance, but there was a chance that she could have made it out okay. And now I think the events that followed that involving her getting on the ship and locking out their friends and banning them, that was a little irrational. That was kind of like insane. And I didn't like understand why any of the plan of thought that was happening was happening.
01:36:54
Speaker
well because uh she knew that the android at that point or synthetic whatever was trying to get her because that was the one thing leading up to it was failed like they left the other like the other guy had nothing to do it they were just like okay but i don't care like you're just you're gonna kill kill me by and then immediately dies and crashes the ship and kills everyone i feel like i feel like though when that happened it wasn't such an irrational because i never got the feeling that they were like this tight-knit band you know like they knew each other and stuff like that, but it felt like it was an opportunity thing of like, Hey, I know you, you know me. We can all help each other. Let's just go. And then if you're in that situation of, I just need to get the fuck out of here. I don't really care about you. I just like kind of knew you, you know? So yeah I'm going to dip.
01:37:38
Speaker
That's what I got from it. was interesting like' It's a little nitpick for me. I just feel like that it was such a knee jerk reaction and such an extreme, like, and, you know, they're they're teenagers, I guess. So that makes sense. So I don't know. Like, for me, the thing in that situation, I probably more on the synthetic side of acting rationally and keeping calm and be like, yeah, she we should just lock her in the room.
01:38:01
Speaker
And that's the thing too, like if they were rational people, it's like, okay, lock her in the room. You have like, what, 36 hours and just see what happens. And if she dies in like 10 minutes, then you leave. That's true. That's true. But you know, whatever. It's a movie. past What did you think about them bringing back Ash? Not Ash, but it's, you know, the same, uh, actor.
01:38:30
Speaker
digitally. Oh, the the the one guy, it was funny. Because, like I said, I hadn't seen alien for a while. It had been a few years. And when I saw him, I was like, he looks familiar. But I didn't know was it I when I saw it, I was like, Oh, shit, that's, that's ash. um And it's funny, like, there's a lot of people even read letter media, they think it's a very bad taste.
01:38:56
Speaker
Apparently, it was something that Ridley Scott pitched to the director and writer of this. And also, the family was super down for, because the actor's dead. So he didn't do any voice or any work on this. He's he's been gone. yeah But they all he they said he always felt like Hollywood kind of turned their back on him, and because he never really had any major roles after Alien. And they thought that this was a nice homage to him, basically. yeah And, you know, that's that's cool. I think that's that's a better way to look at it. That's a cool way of like how our technology can be used to like brag an actor back to life. I think in an appropriate way, because it dates. I think it's it dates that ships like synthetic around the time of the first movie, because if that synthetic was on their ship, most likely that was the model being used around that time. And you've seen that that ship picked up the first alien at the very beginning, which we forgot to mention the first alien from that movie lived.
01:39:55
Speaker
Yeah. no right away yeah love now That whole intro was great. I don't know if it lived, but it explained that they brought it aboard and then wreaked havoc. And that was the alien that was like in the rafters that they saw. um So that was the first alien alien that was they found dead in the beginning of the movie. Okay, okay. Gotcha. Well,
01:40:20
Speaker
Yeah. Um, the whole thing about bringing dead actors back like again, maybe it's just tastefully. Uh, they're like, you know, it depends on the situation. I think there's appropriate and inappropriate times to digitally replace an actor. When Star Wars did it, I didn't care, but when Star Wars did it, I cared. Um, yeah and that's peter That was a big controversy with Peter Cushing, but again, it was all done with the family's like, yeah. And then like, they did it with Luke. I was like, okay, I don't care. that's That's like, and like they did it with Indiana Jones. The best de-aging I've ever seen in my life in such a mid movie. But yeah, it's, ah I think it was done pretty well here. I think there's some moments where the face doesn't hold up.
01:41:09
Speaker
super well, but he's a robot, so it's fine. He's a robot and he's broken. I just didn't expect him to be such a central character the whole time. He was in the whole movie. I thought he was just going to be there for an infodome and then like Doc. And then no, but he was, he was there like almost the main antagonist of the movie.
01:41:27
Speaker
It kinda was. The hug-facer, both scenes actually, face hug on my bed, where they're locked in the water room and then when they're trying to quietly sneak through. The water room- I loved it when the scent that grabbed its tail. It was like, oh, that was cold. Yeah. I liked the water room. I thought that one was good tension. I felt like we gotta go, we gotta go type thing. Yeah.
01:41:53
Speaker
when they walked through the sleeping ones or whatever. They're trying to be quiet because they realized they don't have eyes. They only react to sound and possibly heat. So they made the hallway match their body temperature. Which is not how that works. That just makes you hotter. I'm just throwing that out there right now. I thought that was dumb. I get what they're going for. I felt no tension. I felt I just thought that was, it was the temperature thing. It was like, that's wrong. It was the part for me when he was on the walkie trying to whisper a yell at his sister and I'm like, shut up, you idiot. But I did like that moment when the the main synth guy turned around and was like,
01:42:37
Speaker
run. yeah no there was a cool moment Yeah. And it does the money shop moment where they're running and they're all flying around everywhere. I did like, and it was very short, but with the pregnant lady, wait, her whole thing on the ship by herself. And then trying to she was, I almost like what's thinking like maybe like, are they going to make her like the main and like hero? Like is there going to be like a, you know, red herring? Like we think she's the main character. and This is going to be our main character, but It really sucks because it literally is like two minutes, but like when she's like crawling out of the ship and then it's like above her and the water shipping stuff, I thought that was so good. Oh, yeah.
Key Moments in Romulus
01:43:15
Speaker
Dude, I love that whole sequence of like the birth of the alien. Like he's like a giant vagina on the wall. And it's so like it's acid dripped on him. Oh, my God. You just float from it. So I love that like that alien is scarred in the whole movie because he like shoved that taser stick in there.
01:43:35
Speaker
So you know it that's the, well, spoilers, there's more aliens at the end. But there we know that's the alien because it's got that scar. And it's get kind of like an i almost an iconic look for it. Like I'm sure yeah people will call a scar or something like that.
01:43:48
Speaker
Or like the toy will be like scar alien Yeah, and the second this movie gets back into the Prometheus shit is the second go now okay when I when they walked into the lab and there was a whole thing of black who was like, oh We're going like oh We're connecting all the dots here. like This is interesting. I would love a whole like TV series of the events that happened on the Romulus because that is such a fucked up place. like They are doing such shady ass shit there. It's interesting. yeah I love all of like just seeing the aftermath of what happened in that place because of their meddling.
01:44:34
Speaker
And then the movie turns into aliens. Yeah, they find a hallway that's that's made of alien gunk. It looks just like it's straight up like that all in aliens, which is There's no But they're being strung up like there is a queen. Uh-huh. So maybe there is one that we just didn't see it but the implication the implication is that it is like a There's a hive or something. There's a hive there, which I'm like, where are all these aliens the whole movie? They're sleeping. But there's not a lot of the aliens in this movie. like they're yeah they They're used very sparingly. And most of the conflict in the movie is with the synthetics and the face huggers rather than the alien proper. There's that one scene where like they're like beating on the door trying to get the sister like in the room. and
01:45:33
Speaker
the synth is just like, no, I'm not, I'm not. It's sitting right there. Look, see, I'm explaining as rationally is waiting for us to open the store. If we open it, we all die. And then they're like, yeah.
01:45:49
Speaker
yeah They foreshadowed that because there's this one character who dies. He thinks he's the one with the acid. He dies fairly quickly, but he's pissed. He hates synthetics because his mom died because a synthetic closed off a mind. But they say it's because if I didn't kill 12 people, it would have killed 200. So you save the most you can. It was the needs of the mini outweigh the needs of the few situation. Yeah. And then that led to that part where the girl We think dies, she doesn't yet, maybe. We find her swimming up in that hallway and should have had an alien in her by how long she was gone if they were going the alien's route. Newt did it though. But that was very quick. They were like straight, like we gotta find her right away. they She's dead and they stumbled upon her like, I guess the movie.
01:46:38
Speaker
No, they knew. They were like, we're going to the Queen. We're going right fucking now. Yeah, but she was probably strung. I would say the amount of time that an Asian- I forget. I forget this movie happens in real time. It takes place over the course of, I think they stretch it there a little at the end. But it's like over the course of like 45 minutes they have to get off this ship once the shit hits the fan. Yeah, no, there's like no real jumps or anything. Like we follow them the whole way.
01:47:08
Speaker
And, um you know, they have their moment, they get the guns, and they have a really cool zero gravity sequence, I think, because you've never seen aliens in zero G. um So, because they have an issue, they're on the bottom floor. if They kill an alien, the acid's gonna open up the vacuum of space. So what do you do? You turn off the gravity and let the blood kind of swirl around. But that that was a neat little workaround to that. I think that the synth saying, get away from her, you,
01:47:37
Speaker
bitch was uh a little much i think it would like i agree with red alert media i think it would have been better if they would have just stopped at get away from her yeah but it's one of the things of like who cares if you know it that was one if you that was one thing it took me out of the movie i would say that was probably If I had the the biggest complaint was the use of that line because because it was like it doesn't really fit. When that line happens, I'm not a big enough aliens fan to have remembered that. I mean, I I knew in my brain because I watched aliens afterwards. I knew that was a line from the movie somewhere. So when he said it in my mind, I was like, oh, that's a cool reference.
01:48:20
Speaker
But that was it. I feel like people get, and not you, but specifically like other, like YouTubers and stuff, get so hung up on. Well, I hate seeing differences. I don't know. It's like if they made a new Terminator movie and the main human character just defeated the Terminator and went like, Asta, LaVista, baby, and killed it. I'm like, with no context. I'm like, why did you say that? because you watch her Did you watch Terminator? Yeah. did Did these people watch Aliens as well?
01:48:47
Speaker
But like, I don't know. It's just it's why do you say it? Why did they say it the first time, you know? Well, it's just a line. It's iconic. is It's when it's when it's done in repetition, when lines like iconic lines are done in repetition as a callback by other characters that have no like context as to how it was used before. It just you know, it's intentionally put there for that reason. and it's It's not it doesn't feel organic in the scene, even like the way they used his stuttering to say it.
01:49:15
Speaker
like felt like he was uncomfortable saying it too. I've never had a problem with Star Wars saying made the, or. Well, that's, that's a thing that, that's almost became a thing in itself. Like every movie has to say, I have a bad feeling about this or really force be with you. Yeah.
01:49:31
Speaker
I feel like it's kind of the same thing, you know, it's just a line that it was just a line. And then they just start saying it to say it. And I don't know, I just never had a problem with it. So I don't know. I'm not i'm not saying it ruins the movie. I'm just saying it's it was kind of a weird like way of using it. But I want to tell you, isn't it hilarious how when the gravity comes back on because they're going up this elevator shaft and the gravity their gravity is off.
01:49:57
Speaker
and they're running away from the aliens. The vacuum of space is opening back up because the blood's kind of hit down and she falls because she can't, she didn't grab onto the thing in time. And this is where she dies. And you think she's gonna die. The elevator's coming down on her. She's gone down and the alien catches her. I don't get the same. And gently puts her on the ladder. I don't get the same. And I was like, is the alien good?
01:50:24
Speaker
And I can only imagine it's like, the only rational line of thinking is like, the alien wanted to kill her itself. I think what this is, and this might be a stretch, but the rest of the movie kind of fits with this because the alien then goes slowly up to her and like almost licks her or something. i am alien three I think he was trying to do Alien 3. Yeah. I think that's what this was, was he's like,
01:50:54
Speaker
And that, because this is a part where I don't like this. I think it's dumb. I thought it was dumb that she fell. i or Or if you're going to do that, have something creative with it or kill her. I don't care. And then have the pregnant lady be the main character. I don't care. But for the alien to catch her. We also forgot a major plot point, but. Well, not yet. yeah It hasn't happened yet.
01:51:21
Speaker
but for the alien to catch her and then to like slowly like lick her and like be right up against her. And then for the dude to drop, I'm like, dude, you're taking 10 seconds. She's dead. She's dead. yeah It's not. Nope. We're not doing this. It made sense in alien three as bad as the movie was. They did make sense with it. She was pregnant. Yeah. This is just.
01:51:49
Speaker
Either A, a bad callback, or B, bad. I think because it calls back to every single alien. Yeah. So where was the guy with the retractor guns? It's just weird. It's just like, I don't know, because this alien here don't have like any connection whatsoever. Like they barely interact. Like if, if at all, like they've seen each other from across the door, that's basically it. I think that's it. Yeah. And it wasn't involved with the hallway fight for some reason.
01:52:17
Speaker
But yeah, that's the only two times this alien is ever, the alien of the movie and the poster shows up is this scene and the scene where it's born. And I kind of wish it was just that alien. I think that having the other aliens there kind of like made it a little bit more schlocky.
01:52:36
Speaker
Yeah, it really does. I mean, comparing this to Rogue One. Because it just goes to the action movies straight up. Like they do the scene with the like the fog and she has got the gun and she's wearing like the tank top, just like the scene where she gets off the elevator and aliens. Uh-huh. And I think that's where like, I don't like the comparisons in Rogue One because I get people saying Rogue One's a fan film, but I feel like Rogue One. It's amazing how good it is. Like,
01:53:04
Speaker
seeing all the behind the scenes drama and like out like the whole creative process he shoots like two months before it came out. it's Yeah. but But but it's not like this movie where this movie I feel like the director was like we have to reference everything. And then It felt like a fan film as in, man, wouldn't it be cool if, like, there's a scene where there was zero gravity and then they had to, like, get through all the acid, or wouldn't it be cool if, like, they had to sneak past a bunch of face huggers? You know, and like, we're just creating scenarios. I thought that would always be cool if we could do that. I think the the funniest thing is when the alien cotter
01:53:43
Speaker
It played like a heroic fanfare. It was like, duh. She's like, what? Is this a good guy? I don't know. It was very confusing. I don't know. I don't know why it killed her. The only thing I think of is that it literally just wanted the satisfaction of killing her itself. I guess. That's the only thing that makes sense. It's literally the only plot hole in the whole movie. And then they had 10 seconds to climb up the entire elevator shaft. Very fast climbers. And they do the whole aliens thing where cryo sleep, we're all going to be good. But I kind of like what happens because then she's having the baby. Well, the thing was, so we forgot to mention the main mission of the sense they wanted the black goo to be returned to Weyland Yutani Corp. And they would be rewarded handsomely for bringing it back. And because our main character has seen all the other fucked up shit. I don't know if did they ever
01:54:36
Speaker
They don't think they ever acknowledged the fucked up rat. I think only we saw the fucked up rat. Yeah, only we saw the rat explode to the big thing. Yeah. And so we know that like we see a video of the rat, the goo fixing a rat that they've crushed in a hydraulic press. And so they're like, oh, so like this kid fixed her because she's been severely wounded by this alien after being struck out. Which again, I and feel like they went too far with the rat.
01:55:04
Speaker
So they're, they're like, oh yeah, i put it in her shell. Uh, yeah, they did. They put it in her that'll heal her and they're like, no, no, we we'll just get her back and get her to the med kits that are on the ship. Like it's, we're not, I don't want to fucking put this weird black shit and to my friend over here. And so she you leaves. That's where the whole like elevator scene happens and sends her friend off to the ship by herself and by herself. And so she just shoves that shit in her neck and.
01:55:34
Speaker
I don't know why, but she did it. Um, so they're getting on the ship, you know, and they're still talking to Bishop. They they reached regroup with her. Um, and they're not Bishop, I'm sorry. Ash or whatever. Ash is in this movie. Uh, uh, Rook, he's Rook in this movie. Um, so they are talking to Rook and he's like, Oh good. Thank you. Just hit autopilot. We're all good to go. You got the black goo shit that we wanted. You're awesome. Fuck. Yeah, you did great. And she's like,
01:56:04
Speaker
Nah, it flips on a manual controls. He's like, what the fuck are you doing? You son of a bitch. This is ridiculous. And then he goes down with the Romulus is crashing into the rings, which I never mentioned the entire time that the ship is about to blow up. and which i look and I like the race against the clock. I think all the effects in this look amazing. Just to pause you for a second because i there are some bad horror tropes in this. i hate When I was talking about the rat, I hate that it showed us, the audience, the rat.
01:56:34
Speaker
getting healed but then the rat dying and even worse death because if they would have like just had it like maybe it's I twitch or something or like you know break a little bit and then cut away then there's a thought in our mind of oh maybe there is something fucked up with us but we don't know but instead there's no tension the second she puts in there like she's gone she's done it because we saw the rat and then there's other thing I think the only reason they show that is for just for people who haven't seen Prometheus, because I've seen Prometheus, and I know what it did to that one dude. He got fucked up. Sure. But even then, in this specific movie, there's no reason to do that, and there's no reason for her to use it, because she's passed out when they're talking about using it, and she hasn't seen that it heals the rat. There's zero reason for her to use it. Other than like than talking about it, maybe healing her. But yeah that's the thing. i
01:57:30
Speaker
the thing the thing was I could have never guessed in a million years what it would have done to her baby because I was fully expecting the trilobite to come back from Prometheus like the big starfish face everything that's what happened when the chick in that movie got impregnated with black goo this chick she had baby She lays an egg, and then ah our person's like, oh, shit. like we got to get like They put her in cryo, and all's good. She's about to get in cryo. It starts beeping, just blood everywhere. she's The egg pops out of her, and she's like, oh my god. And so she grabs. I like this movie because it's just so well made. The blood on the white cryo suit and all that, and her screaming, and it's it's just so well done.
01:58:19
Speaker
Everything else we visually is amazing. I think like that that they didn't use CG like at all for any of the aliens or face huggers, except for maybe like one scene where it jumps, I don't know. um But theyre like the only CG really uses for the space stuff. And that makes the space stuff look that much better because they used all their budget for CG on that. So like all this stuff involving the collision with the rings looks amazing. And the lighting goes like shining off of the rings is so good.
01:58:45
Speaker
Um, but yeah, she dumps it in the cargo hold and then like it like opens up and it's a full of like acid blood and a little baby thing. And she, so she's just like, I don't know why she didn't just dump the cargo there right then and there. I would have. Uh, but she goes up to check on her friend and I sent you the picture and she turns around to see that thing.
01:59:13
Speaker
And I was like, oh my, I audibly was like, oh my God, when I saw that. like I think my actual words were, what the fuck? i was I have never been more disturbed by anything in a movie before. They did. So uncomfortable. they they If their goal was to make something unsettling.
01:59:39
Speaker
They did it. They won. It's the most cursed shit I've ever seen with this Kelly Lloyd in my life. And it's great, too, because that is a real dude. Like, that guy is bat linkke and matt tall the you know that You know who it is, right? Yeah, yeah. I think it's years ago, he was famous for being this like super, it was like seven foot seven high school basketball player. And this is his first time ever in a movie.
02:00:09
Speaker
And honestly, I think after seeing him, his performance as this, I think he could be kind of like the next Boris Karloff who was like famous for being Frankenstein's monster and the mummy and other universal monsters back in the day. He's got that physique to be like a really interesting looking creature like this. So I'm like, I was thinking like, oh, he could do Frankenstein's monster. Like they could do a cool looking thing with him. But like the fact that he's just so lanky and long And I don't know, the way they dressed him too is just so unsettling. he's He's got the tail of an alien. He kind of looks like an engineer almost as well. But he's like crawling on all fours as a seven foot seven man baby thing, a la alien resurrection. Almost, that's I think the closest thing. It was very similar to that thing.
02:01:05
Speaker
but not that it's now you know we talked an hour and a half about other alien movies because it's just there's so much in this you have to unpack um But no, yeah it is the stuff of nightmares. And then he smiles at the end though, like, stop. He kills his mother. He wants some milk. and So he didn't he didn't care about you didn't care about that shit. At first it seemed like she was going to be become an alien resurrection situation because it seemed to have some fondness for her at first.
02:01:36
Speaker
Like he was all up and like, like nuzzling on her and stuff. And she just like freaks out. Like, of course, and like, why wouldn't you when you saw that? So she's like bailing out of the room, getting the spacesuit on, like she's she's like dumped some cryo shit in there. And yeah he he ends up like killing ah the the one lady unceremoniously, which I'm pretty sure the goo would have killed her anyways. That doesn't do good shit to you.
02:02:04
Speaker
um But yeah, it's just, they have the whole fight. she gets She dumps him out in into space. he He hopefully is dead and gone forever and not floating through space waiting for a Weyland-Yutani ship to pick him up. um But then, you know, she makes her little monologue. She gets into cryo with her synth friend, and then they go and drift into space. This was another thing where It's it's got the opposite effect of other movies where this is again, I like this movie and I think it's good and I think it's good mostly for its production because the writing is not great. um Because at the end, the ship is also crashing into the ring.
02:02:54
Speaker
And it's another it's another timer thing because it's set to manual. So like guys the stick is just down. So like they got to get down and like readjust it. And she's trying to unhinge the things and stuff like that and kill and stuff like that. And she's climbing up. They fall out at the end. She's got a tether on and she's got tether on and it's counting down like 60 seconds in impact and she's climbing up slowly.
02:03:20
Speaker
and she's all the way down and there's like 40 seconds 30 seconds she's climbing up and then it just cuts the thing and it switches to like autopilot that's all we see so we have to just assume that she either a made it all the way up there in 30 seconds even though it took her fucking half a minute to Because it grabs her too, like before it fully unlocks. He has a whole like scene with that. Because you think he's gone again. Like time made sense until this part and it seemed it implies that something just switched it randomly. Visually. I loved and really appreciated that when they dumped the cargo along with this
02:03:58
Speaker
I think they call it the offspring. a my Yeah, that you can still see the Romulus like actively like crashing into the rings in the background. I thought that was a really nice touch because I didn't notice it at first. And I was like, Oh, shit, that's the Romulus back. That's that's still crashing. So I like that. I like that this movie was basically the entire runtime in real time. Yeah, it just didn't make sense at the end. When it cut to that, I was like,
02:04:25
Speaker
No, yeah that's a cop-out. You can't, it felt like they were just copping out of like, and then something magically saved them, man. And there's like a
Speculating on Alien's Future
02:04:35
Speaker
whole drama as well of the synth being left behind because he wasn't allowed on the planet they were trying to escape to. We didn't even talk about their whole goal of why they went to this at all, I don't think. Seeing the sun. You know, because of the sun. Yeah, so they they, he gets in a cryopod because he got super damaged by this horrible monster.
02:04:54
Speaker
um And they ah go adrift. they They put in the coordinates and she leaves her little log and she gets into cryo. And then as soon as the ship leaves the light of the lightot star of that system, the engines cut off. And presumably she is adrift, a la an alien. and they So who knows if she'll make it to her destination.
02:05:20
Speaker
ah Will we get a follow-up to this direct follow-up? Probably. I think it's done pretty well. Aliens, Romulus. Well, I think yes that's the new trend, is with the Covenant kind of thing. Because it wasn't Covenant in the name of the ah ship that we came in in that movie. So yeah, that's it's just whatever the main location, that's going to be the name of it now, I think. And I think it's a decent window. Because they have that TV show coming out, Alien Earth. Oh, do they? Which takes place on Earth. Yep, there's a Hulu show coming out. ah And on the timeline, it's first. It's first on the timeline. So are they going to have an alien in it? Do you think? I don't know. Cause that's the thing. Cause the whole thing that I think the one thing you can do to kind of ruin this is have an alien on earth.
02:06:10
Speaker
in this franchise. I agree. I think AVP, it works just because it's its own thing. it's But in it like the whole point is that the aliens can't get to earth. And they never do and resurrection. That's the big thing is they're almost there. And they get rid of them in orbit of earth. Like, so this is really crashing down orbit. Yeah. Yeah. I Um, like unless they have like a corpse of an alien and that's it. And they're just like, we gotta find these cause we got to figure out how they work and we want to do whatever we, whatever the hell Waylon wants to do with these things, which um ah apparently is to evolve the human humanity to become even greater. Um, but that's not, that is not the offspring. That is not what peak humanity is. That is, I don't know.
02:07:02
Speaker
yeah But um yeah, it's set three decades before the first movie and takes place on earth. and I think as like, I don't know, cause like the only thing, well, I don't know. It's like, I don't know what that you would do for that unless it's like Blade Runner.
02:07:24
Speaker
Cause the only thing could be is the, cause I think obviously in the first movie, Weyland Yutani knew what they were going for. Like they knew they were going to find those alien things and they wanted them to bring one back unintentionally. Um, so the only thing I can think of is that this is a setup for alien and them trying to cause wait, so this takes place before Prometheus as well.
02:07:55
Speaker
No, what earth? Yeah, I believe so. I believe that this will be the first in the timeline. Because the only thing I think because they did bring up like Weyland Yutani died for the discovery of that black ooze. The only thing I could think of that would make sense for them to do an earth based one is them. Like I don't know, being inspired by Weyland-Yutani's death and trying to send out ships to those various planets and the lead up to them trying to find what ah happened and discover what happened with the Prometheus and those artifacts that they were after. Yeah, and this one right here is saying it's going to be tied more into alien than Prometheus and Covenant.
02:08:42
Speaker
so awesome Are they just trying to retcon those now? They might be. They might be. Because they have like prequel syndrome. Because I don't think that's fair. Because while I don't love those movies, I don't think it's fair to write them out of continuity. Yeah, because I feel like they are a part of the universe. Because it's Ridley Scott's vision of Ailey. I think it's like with George Lucas too. I think like, you know, you say what you will about the prequels, but That fits more with Star Wars than the sequels did because they are actively afraid of acknowledging George Lucas. this I don't think they're afraid of using Ridley Scott because obviously he was involved with this movie too. He had a lot
Cultural Significance of Alien
02:09:26
Speaker
of creative input in this. absolutely But I think that'd be unwise for them to
02:09:34
Speaker
ignore what was done in Prometheus and Covenant, which this movie, I'm glad it didn't. It fully embraced all of that. It was very much, I think, honestly had more connection to those movies directly than really any of the other ones. I mean, the other one, they had callbacks to those, but without Prometheus, we didn't get the black o or this abomination at the end of the movie. and some monkey yeah so i don't know i think It's definite's the perfect love letter to the alien franchise, I think. Yeah, I mean, looking at it,
02:10:09
Speaker
And again, as someone who, I'm not a big alien person. I really, not i like I said, I saw like half, almost half the series for the first time in the last week. And it's something I've always kind of like just looked at and dabbled with. After watching all the movies, I don't understand how people can be upset with this movie being a pseudo remake because the other movies are so wildly different, like three, four Prometheus, even aliens, they're also radically different. So why not? Why is it a bad thing to have a modern vision of alien? The thing that's perfect about this too, it's it's almost plays it to the point where it's so safe that
02:10:53
Speaker
It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of the original Alien movies, because sure it has that connection to the first one with the original Alien being the catalyst of the tragedy of ra of the Romulus. hu But that doesn't change anything that happened between Alien or Aliens.
02:11:08
Speaker
No. Like Ripley's pulse, like nothing about Ripley's sacrifice or anything, or it wasn't even a sacrifice or her plight, I guess I should say, was changed by those events happening. Well, even her sacrifice in three too, because like, everything's destroyed. Everything, I guess you could argue the corpse of that one girl still there, and she might have some of the black ooze in it or something.
02:11:31
Speaker
But that's what I was wondering. They still have that whole canister of the black goo, and presumably her corpse is just rotting out there. I don't know if she popped her in the cryo bin again, but I don't know. I don't know. I thought I was trying to throw those things out of the airlock before popping it over. That's just a ship drifting off, too. There's a chance that they found Ripley. Yeah. But the thing is, Ripley, I don't know. You really don't explain. I'm assuming she put some coordinates in,
02:12:00
Speaker
She was so far anywhere when they escape pod. Whereas this is a full ship. So I'm assuming it would make it to where it needs to go. um I don't know. But the thing is it's it's left so open that they could really do anything with a sequel. They could choose to ignore her. They could bring her back to be the main character. They could do it kill her off screen.
02:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, let's do that. you franchise you love for do that you're like You know what the actors busy we can't get them. They don't want to come back. and We want to do something different. So they're dead. It's really has the most creative liberties between continuity I've ever seen in a franchise.
02:12:40
Speaker
ah really And it make i I feel now that we're wrapping up that looking at the series as a whole, even though there are, it really has the highest of highs, and especially if you include AVP, the lowest of lows. yeah But it is a franchise, even though i like three kind of made me sick watching it. yeah It was at least- I would definitely try to look at it. You don't think you'll enjoy it anymore, but I think you like someday should at least watch that extended cut of three because this i was the extended cut of three oh one that i watched was yeah yeah okay i can't get good yeah which never been watching i and i was didn't think it was as bad as a lot of people once said it was i read what was in the original cut and i was like oh my that sounds awful like bad bad this at least made sense i just didn't like the style of it and then four
02:13:34
Speaker
I can appreciate four for from what it is. If you look at it as a stupid movie, which but it's Alien 4, it's a stupid movie. It's got resurrection in the title. yeah Exactly. like It felt like The Matrix, or it felt like one of those ah underworld movies and shit like that. Oh, yeah. That's the best thing. Why? yeah yeah Resident Evil, yeah it's it's all that. yeah I feel like that that movie,
02:14:00
Speaker
inspired more of the 2000s than it gets credit for. No, absolutely. because like everyone credits Everyone credits the Matrix. The Matrix like influenced the aesthetic of the 2000s movies, whereas Resurrection, I think, influenced the style of the movies. Definitely. Definitely. so Because I can't think of another movie like that before it.
02:14:22
Speaker
I don't know, it's it's an intriguing series and I mean just inherently with it being an alien and like a lot of movies, franchises from the 60s and 70s, you made it big first, you get it. make who can be make a The best movie in the world, Jaws is still the de facto shark movie. Just like Alien is going to always be the de facto alien movie. It blows my mind to this day.
02:14:46
Speaker
that we still have not got another Jaws movie. Like, of all the reboots and remakes and sequels and whatever they made, never Jaws. Like, everything. It's funny because, like, the only other thing I think of but why it's like Back to the Future, but that has Robert Zermek as protecting it.
02:15:05
Speaker
What is stopping them from doing Jaws? Other than like, was Jaws 4 just that bad? They will never touch it again with a 10 foot pole. I heard Jaws 4 was pretty bad. Jaws 4 is ridiculous. it's like the revenge or whatever it's actively seeking out the group of people that killed it in the first movie and i don't know if it's the supposed to be the same shark or like the offspring of that shark but it's it's it's insane this has a two
02:15:38
Speaker
i warton It roars at the end of the movie. 15 on Metacritic. 3 out of 10 IMDB. Yeah, that kills the franchise. and it's It's really interesting too because ah and't I'm getting off subject. and I'm just intrigued with movie facts. There's two versions of that movie at the end because the theatrical one has the main antagonist like driving the but the bow of the ship into the shark and impaling it.
02:16:07
Speaker
and it roars. And then there's a TV cut, because they thought that was too gruesome, or they just blow it up. And to this day, a it's flip-flopped between what cut you'll get on a home release. like You'll never know which one it is until you get to the end. You get to go, oh, ah shit. Whatever reason, this TV cut has just been like mixed in randomly with whatever like the the africaric theatrical cut gets brought in.
02:16:38
Speaker
Luckily, I think now the newest Blu-rays include both. Like like you would know which version you're going to watch, but it was for like years, whether it was like your VHS copies or DVD copies, you would never know which one was the one you were getting. You know, who's in Jaws 4? Not Ripley. Not the alien. Judith Barsey.
02:17:02
Speaker
I think, um, unfortunately, who's the guy who plays Alfred in the Dark Knight? I'm pretty sure he's in that movie. Is he? Yeah. That has to be one of that girls only roles. Yeah. It's the girl that played a, uh, what's her name and all dogs go to heaven. The girl that was murdered by her dad. Yeah. Apparently she's in Jaws 4.
02:17:24
Speaker
It makes me so sad when I see that line that like the main dog, it was like saying to her, she's going to bed. And you he recorded that after she died. So like, I hate it. I hate thinking about it. It's the saddest thing in a Be Child's movie ever. You already have a sad movie about dying dogs.
02:17:47
Speaker
and And with context, you have a dying girl in that scene. yeah Little girl. Oh my God. It's the saddest movie in the world. You have a conversation between a post-mortem girl and the dog. Fucked up, man. um But yeah, going back.
02:18:07
Speaker
We're both in the same boat. Alien Romulus. It's good. The only thing that hold its back holds it back is its homages and like how forcefully some of it gets put in. But it also is what makes me love it as well. so yeah its I can't hate it entirely for that. it's just I think it just doesn't have as much of its own identity because of it.
02:18:31
Speaker
I if you're in this does I know we've got alien covenant things like that. But this feels like rebooting a franchise. This feels like they're doing the force awakens and I'll give Disney credit better way than they did force awakens to agree agreed but they're planning the children and all that with that stuff. And it really is like wrong word.
02:18:51
Speaker
the Evil Dead remake. And I can't see how you could appreciate the Evil Dead remake, and then look at Romulus and be like, wow, what a piece of shit. Yeah, because it's the same thing if you're taking this old franchise, and you're bringing it back, and you're gonna have the imagines back. And then it's just kind of every horror movie has bad writing in it. That's why the good ones like Alien, the first one are so amazing when they don't have those bad tropes. Yes.
02:19:18
Speaker
And honestly, I think we're in like kind of a Renaissance era of alien and predator now with prey being as good as it was. And now, you know, alien, we just have to hope that predator does not continue the trend of every other one being bad. And alien continues the trend of the next one being fantastic and hopefully not the rest are bad.
02:19:40
Speaker
yeah Because that's I really want to see the same guy come back to direct this next one. I think it'd be nice to have him kind of helm this because I think he gets it. i think Everything about the creature design and how they incorporate how they move and look and sound, it's perfect.
02:19:59
Speaker
yeah um Bring the link. The howard whole scene where the alien birthed from the wall vagina. That was the coolest looking thing ever in an Alien movie. And I wish there was more of that with the newer kind of original Giger inspired looks rather than going and falling back towards like the alien athetic the aliens aesthetic at the end. Yeah.
02:20:25
Speaker
And it could have been something, the this was actually supposed to be a straight to Hulu movie. That makes sense, and because put it in your frame was that way too. Yeah. So I also think there's some. It's funny because it was reversed because Prey was supposed to be theatrical and then it became a Hulu movie. And this is supposed to be Hulu movie and then it became theatrical. And I know like a movie is a movie, but I kind of give it a little pass too. I'm being a little cheeky and corny for being a streaming movie.
02:20:51
Speaker
yeah Like this was supposed to be streaming and it wasn't made to make hundreds of millions of dollars, it's made to be entertaining. which I think it does very well. It is an entertaining movie. It's a little stupid, but it's also alien, which is a little stupid. You know what's funny too about the release of this is when Alien Covenant came out living in Chanu, it didn't come to any of the BMP feeders around there. So i you if I wanted to watch it, I would have had to have gone to like Wichita, Kansas City or Joplin. um But this Romulus did come to Chanu.
02:21:30
Speaker
Interesting. And the thing was, there wasn't, I remember when it came out, there wasn't any like other big movie that would have prevented it from being in either of a the Roxy 4 or the Sterling 6, because they had enough theaters, especially in the Sterling 6, to show it. But they just didn't. I don't know why. Interesting. Well, as of now, Alien Covenant, 240 million box office, Alien Romulus, 129 million.
02:21:58
Speaker
I think he's doing pretty good. I think like for an R rated movies, I feel like are having a Renaissance right now and I am all for it. And Disney getting that R rated money, you know, they're going to, you know, they're going to keep that up. We're getting another Deadpool or get another alien. Yeah.
02:22:16
Speaker
And so they drive it to the ground and they'll kill it for a precise, approximately four years and then just ramp it back up again. That's the thing we'll have to see because alien, like I said, there's always like five years or so between movies. We'll have to see if they hold out that long. Yeah, we'll see. Cause like, if you look at the timeline, like if you don't include the releases between alien versus predator movies, both alien and predator have a decent chunk of time between their sequels.
02:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, no, they do. And I think that's that like alien predator and terminator, I think have enjoyed the longevity they've had with whether how Rocky that was or not, because they don't oversaturate the market with their material. Agreed. But we'll have to see.
02:23:03
Speaker
I think that's it though, two hours, 20 minutes later. I think that'll be all. So I hope you enjoyed this. I think I'm going to call this episode like a review of the entire alien franchise. Cause that's, that's what we did. we were alienatedology Yeah. The alien saga. and no that is something and except for confident The alien collection that I ordered that he used to have, it's called alien anthology. So it kind of makes it feel like they're not as.
02:23:31
Speaker
interconnected as they ah really are. really not Even Alien and Aliens, they're not really. You want to know the stupidest box set name I ever saw because after that release, they came out with like a cheaper like just plastic Blu-ray case with all four of the movies in it. They called it the Alien Quadrilogy. That's not a word.
02:23:54
Speaker
Make it a fake shit now. yeah It's like, we have trilogy. What's a four? I don't know. We'll use it. And we'll use anthology. Well, that doesn't really fit, right? Quadrilogy? Sure. They couldn't call that a square trilogy. people Square, square trilogy? Something. Cubology? One-O? Yeah, yeah. Anywho, thank you so much for joining us. I don't know if we'll do this tomorrow. No, this was the long one.
02:24:19
Speaker
It's just like a full thing. Yeah, so 30 minute thing. I think you initially we talked about alien Romulus for like a good 40 almost an hour actually. We're at the 90 minute mark. We both pointed it out. But I hope you enjoyed this. If you're interested in more video game news and or just media culture, go ahead and subscribe. And or the TV show.
02:24:47
Speaker
One day. um Subscribe to this podcast. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, youtube dot.com slash sightly EMP. And go to the Patreon, patreon dot.com slash sightly EMP and support us there. ah We will be back next week with something. Gamescom did happen.
02:25:05
Speaker
Yeah. I remember seeing like game announcements. I'm like, what did I, did something happen? oh I watched it. There's some big shit too, especially with the Xbox. We might have to do the show tomorrow. It might be a shorter one, but I don't even know like a lot of the things I saw. I think I saw like, there's a Call of Duty zombies trailer that came out and I was like, why did this come out? Indiana Jones is coming to PlayStation. Like, yeah. is that for release I saw that too, like that's like Xbox. And then Phil Spencer, they basically said they're going through like, there's some big shit. So we probably should talk about that. Anyways, that'll be on the next episode, either. so That'll be the shorter one we tackle on the next podcast. So thank you so much. And we'll see you next time. Peace. Peace. Whoa.