Alien Romulus & Alien: Earth
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Ghost X
Moderator
I wish marketing folk would use the trailers to hint at whatever new ideas are in the film that would make it worth watching. My current stance based on that trailer is: I've seen this movie before... in 2 recent video games, re: aesthetics at least. If it can't sell me on aesthetics, it has to sell me on story, and there's nothing really ground breaking on that front evident either, imo 
. To be fair, it could be shitty marketing and it is only one trailer.
...I'll probably watch it anyway
.
. To be fair, it could be shitty marketing and it is only one trailer....I'll probably watch it anyway
.
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
It's set between Alien & Aliens which is interesting since it means that Ripley's still out floating through space so exactly how much is known about the Xenomorphs by the company is still an interesting question, especially given how Ripley's account about her experience isn't immediately believed. The utterly MASSIVE scattering of Facehuggers coming through that door was quite the surprise, and I'm really curious what kicks this all off.
There was some news back in October that seemed exceptionally promising which is that – despite being notoriously tough and critical of things that follow his films, like Blade Runner 2049 – Ridley Scott's feedback on the director's cut was, "It's fucking great." Given that I've quite enjoyed his follow-ups, I think it's highly probable that I'll enjoy this.
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There was some news back in October that seemed exceptionally promising which is that – despite being notoriously tough and critical of things that follow his films, like Blade Runner 2049 – Ridley Scott's feedback on the director's cut was, "It's fucking great." Given that I've quite enjoyed his follow-ups, I think it's highly probable that I'll enjoy this.
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GamerSkull
Pro Adventurer
I'm really hoping this is good. I have only really liked the first two Alien films.
I'm willing to give this one a shot though.
I'm willing to give this one a shot though.
Rankles
Pro Adventurer
GamerSkull
Pro Adventurer
Indeed. It’s pretty neat that they’re doing another movie after all this time. Hopefully, it’s as good as the first one.There were only two Alien films…
Raphael78x
Rookie Adventurer
I feel like I'm in a minority of people who really liked the Prometheus, Covenent movies. I don't mind them taking a different approach but this feels very safe. I could go play Alien Isolation right now and probably have a better time with this kind of vibe. That's if the whole film decides to go back to basics. We'll have to see.
GamerSkull
Pro Adventurer
Personally, I've only seen Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3. I've only liked the first two.
What I hear about the rest don't really fill me with much excitement. As I watched these films in only recent years, I am interested in checking one out as it comes to Theatres.
What I hear about the rest don't really fill me with much excitement. As I watched these films in only recent years, I am interested in checking one out as it comes to Theatres.
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
The first two episodes of Alien Earth are out, so I figured that I'd just attach it into this thread for Romulus.
About my only criticism of the first two episodes is that the fade into the rock music as an episode outro is kinda weird. Substance-wise without spoiling anything, I really like the way that they established the state of things in the world being controlled by 4 (5) Mega-Corporations, the current technological race happening between the Synthetics, Cyborgs, & Hybrids, as well as that showing that Weyland-Yutani is huge, but it's not the only player in the space at the moment.
There are some echoes to things about how W-Y operates as a company towards those under contract that have strong echoes into what the off-world was like at the start of Romulus, and along with the synthetic that is functioning as the go-between for the protagonist & audience in Predator Badlands, it finally feels like the non-modern Earth canon for any Aliens Vs. Predator content feels like it has a well-developed and consistent portrayal that stitches together all of the films, as well as games like Alien Isolation and knows how to both enjoy them, but also that the most important part about playing in a sandbox like this is being able to add to it – which introducing a number of species beyond just the Xenomorph does really well. The Xenomorph isn't the only alien, it's just the one that becomes of very particular interest to W-Y as it becomes more dominant.
Overall, I really like what we've gotten to see so far from Trypanorhyncha Ocellus, which is the first of the new aliens that there's a snippit of computer data on one of the ship's monitors during the second episode that I transcribed (spoilers), and all of the other little dangerous things that we haven't gotten specific information about or names for yet which the trailer showed glimpses of. Even just in the taxonomy & flavor text, they're doing a good job of taking real world biology and combining interactions between organisms to make them just sci-fi enough to feel really alien.
Insofar as the settings, I figured I'd toss out a little bit of timeline information for where everything lands:
AvP & AvP Requiem both occurred in 2004, with the former having Charles Bishop Weyland dying during his expedition, and the later leading to the Yutani Corporation acquiring the Predator's plasma pistol establishing the loose groundwork for what type of extraterrestial ambitions and/or advanced knowledge & technology they're working with. In Prometheus, Peter Weyland dies in 2099 and after the failure of his mission to become immortal, Yutani takes over the Welyand Corporation to form the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Then 5 years later in 2104, David takes over the colony ship in Alien: Covenant. It's 16 years after that event when Alien Earth takes place in 2120.
This gives a fairly interesting spread of time for David to have gotten up to who KNOWS what sort of fucked up things with an entire colony ship of test subjects to start spreading Xenomorphs all over the place, but it also helps to give a background on what the overall state of technology is at this stage. There's the potential that there's little-to-no known information by anyone about the Engineers on Earth, nor about anything about David either, but the presence of the Predators and Yutani leveraging that technical advantage may start to make itself shown since the former competitor mega corporations have been merged together for two decades.
This gives a lot of context around WHY Weyland-Yutani would start prioritizing missions to capture extraterrestrial species for their bioweapons program. The Yutani corporation knows all about the Predators, and almost certainly sees them as an active threat that they'll have to scale up to confront, and the Xenomorph is the key answer to that, which would drive a rather singular obsession over it especially once all of the information is in one place and not being guarded by one mega corporation against another. (This overall setting also makes me even more excited for Predator Badlands and how/when it fits into things). Insofar as where this puts us with the other films:
This gives a fairly interesting spread of time for David to have gotten up to who KNOWS what sort of fucked up things with an entire colony ship of test subjects to start spreading Xenomorphs all over the place, but it also helps to give a background on what the overall state of technology is at this stage. There's the potential that there's little-to-no known information by anyone about the Engineers on Earth, nor about anything about David either, but the presence of the Predators and Yutani leveraging that technical advantage may start to make itself shown since the former competitor mega corporations have been merged together for two decades.
This gives a lot of context around WHY Weyland-Yutani would start prioritizing missions to capture extraterrestrial species for their bioweapons program. The Yutani corporation knows all about the Predators, and almost certainly sees them as an active threat that they'll have to scale up to confront, and the Xenomorph is the key answer to that, which would drive a rather singular obsession over it especially once all of the information is in one place and not being guarded by one mega corporation against another. (This overall setting also makes me even more excited for Predator Badlands and how/when it fits into things). Insofar as where this puts us with the other films:
- This is 2 years before the Nostromo sets down on LV-426 in Alien, making it clear that W-Y was running a number of these types of alien retrieval missions simultaneously both with & without the crew's awareness.
- That puts it 7 years before the designer of the Bishop model androids be born (who we see as an adult when the human Bishop shows up during Alien³ in 59 years later in 2179).
- That's 17 years before Ripley's daughter, Amanda Ripley-McClaren ends up on Sevastapol station in Alien Isolation during 2137.
- It's 22 years before the wreckage of the Nostromo is recovered and the Romulus station is destroyed in 2142.
- This is 59 years before Ripley is recovered in Aliens and dies a month later in Alien³
- Alien Resurrection would be ~250 years after this at which point Earth may-or-may-not be an absolute disaster (depending on which ending you're going off of), so Alien Earth has basically free reign to push things as far as it wants insofar as the escalation of conflict & disaster from the crash.
Insofar as the other elements in the first two episodes and my thoughts on them:
I dig the Neverland & Peter Pan parallels, as well as the idea of a trillion dollar mega company using terminally ill kids for the initial test subjects because of their higher brain plasticity, and seeing their humanity as a disposable asset since they're dead either way. I also like that they address that the brains of the hybrids don't actually have neurotransmitters and the other chemicals that the body would produce for them as they age, so they're tuned to attempt to synthetically mirror that and guide them into adolescence. Wendy & the Lost Boys make for a really interesting juxtaposition against the Synthetic who's helping to keep them in-line and on task, and all of the actors for the Hybrids have done a SPECTACULAR job of portraying themselves as genuinely being kids who were like 11-12 placed into more adult artificial bodies. Their body language, the way they sit, little mannerisms for how the walk, and the delivery of their dialogue is great.
It makes them feel like they're something REALLY odd that isn't at all like the classic Ash, Rook, Bishop, David, Walter, or Kirsh who all are the more classic W-Y synthetics. Despite the child-like qualities, they don't feel like Alien Romulus's Andy either who really seemed like he was a model that was something that was closer to the era of more rudimentary Seegson synthetics in Alien Isolation, but also breaking down. I feel like the Hybrids most harken to Alien Resurrection's Call who was a second generation – a synthetic built by synthetics, so she has a different type of feeling to who and what she is in a way that Boy Kavalier talks about in this as a technological intelligence race around human immortality, where the fear is those intelligences building more advanced intelligences, (which we know eventually happens with Call).
The differences thus far in the way that more classic synthetics like Kirsh interact with technology through a visible arm port (like the one that Call has but not as recessed under the skin), compared to how Wendy connects to things wirelessly and through just tossing screens of camera feeds around or unexpectedly interfacing through the technology also create a dynamic that I think reflects the actual technological rift between Gen X & Milennials who grew up around wired analog technology as compared to Gen Z & Alpha who grew up with wireless & touch interfaces.
This then gets juxtaposed with Morrow being a Cyborg, where the extent of his artificial biology isn't entirely clear beyond what we're shown with his arm, but the way that the Xenomorph ignores him in the second episode makes me think that he's a LOT more heavily modified than what it shows on the surface. He has a very close and loyal relationship to the ship's MUTHUR and by extension to W-Y, and his generally ruthless approach to dealing with any others with either a loose disregard for anyone not a priority or his willingness to put them in known danger feels much more along the lines of what we got with Ash and others loyal to the Company before. It'll be interesting to see how the juxtaposition between the Cyborgs & Hybrids end up debating their humanity against one another especially given the lack or presence of biological flesh.
It feels very similar to some of the themes that Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GiG touched on in its own universe of Cyborgs being common place upgrade paths for humans and Cyberbrains being their core biologiy, as well as Androids/Gynoids being robots akin to Synths, and Proto being the first Bioroid made with organic components. It's always fascinating to look at how lines blur between the emergence of artificial intelligence that qualifies as sentience along with the integration of biology into artificial life vs. the integration of artificial parts onto biological life, and with the Weyland Corporation's initial forays being focused around immortality in the form of legacy (Charles Bishop Weyland in Aliens vs. Predator) or literal (Peter Weyland in Prometheus), this is a really satisfying way for the series to grow its overall universe where those existential questions can still be at the center of deeper conflicts that overlap with the cutthroat profit-driven corporations.
So far, Alien Earth is hitting that mix fantastically, and its premise along with all of the performances have managed to really balance that tightrope of making the synthetics different to who came before but still feel like a piece of the same quilt is IMMENSELY interesting.
It makes them feel like they're something REALLY odd that isn't at all like the classic Ash, Rook, Bishop, David, Walter, or Kirsh who all are the more classic W-Y synthetics. Despite the child-like qualities, they don't feel like Alien Romulus's Andy either who really seemed like he was a model that was something that was closer to the era of more rudimentary Seegson synthetics in Alien Isolation, but also breaking down. I feel like the Hybrids most harken to Alien Resurrection's Call who was a second generation – a synthetic built by synthetics, so she has a different type of feeling to who and what she is in a way that Boy Kavalier talks about in this as a technological intelligence race around human immortality, where the fear is those intelligences building more advanced intelligences, (which we know eventually happens with Call).
The differences thus far in the way that more classic synthetics like Kirsh interact with technology through a visible arm port (like the one that Call has but not as recessed under the skin), compared to how Wendy connects to things wirelessly and through just tossing screens of camera feeds around or unexpectedly interfacing through the technology also create a dynamic that I think reflects the actual technological rift between Gen X & Milennials who grew up around wired analog technology as compared to Gen Z & Alpha who grew up with wireless & touch interfaces.
This then gets juxtaposed with Morrow being a Cyborg, where the extent of his artificial biology isn't entirely clear beyond what we're shown with his arm, but the way that the Xenomorph ignores him in the second episode makes me think that he's a LOT more heavily modified than what it shows on the surface. He has a very close and loyal relationship to the ship's MUTHUR and by extension to W-Y, and his generally ruthless approach to dealing with any others with either a loose disregard for anyone not a priority or his willingness to put them in known danger feels much more along the lines of what we got with Ash and others loyal to the Company before. It'll be interesting to see how the juxtaposition between the Cyborgs & Hybrids end up debating their humanity against one another especially given the lack or presence of biological flesh.
It feels very similar to some of the themes that Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GiG touched on in its own universe of Cyborgs being common place upgrade paths for humans and Cyberbrains being their core biologiy, as well as Androids/Gynoids being robots akin to Synths, and Proto being the first Bioroid made with organic components. It's always fascinating to look at how lines blur between the emergence of artificial intelligence that qualifies as sentience along with the integration of biology into artificial life vs. the integration of artificial parts onto biological life, and with the Weyland Corporation's initial forays being focused around immortality in the form of legacy (Charles Bishop Weyland in Aliens vs. Predator) or literal (Peter Weyland in Prometheus), this is a really satisfying way for the series to grow its overall universe where those existential questions can still be at the center of deeper conflicts that overlap with the cutthroat profit-driven corporations.
So far, Alien Earth is hitting that mix fantastically, and its premise along with all of the performances have managed to really balance that tightrope of making the synthetics different to who came before but still feel like a piece of the same quilt is IMMENSELY interesting.
All-in-all, very much looking forward to next week's episode!
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Rankles
Pro Adventurer
It’s a real shame that the only one of the alien species’ we’ve seen so far that doesn’t look good is the xeno itself. It’s not that it looks bad, it’s that it looks so bad that it immediately takes me out of the show whenever it appears. Probably more in those first two episodes that I liked than I didn’t, but that’s a pretty big problem…
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Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
I don't know how I'd managed to never think of it as the Monodrive alien, but I'm never un-thinking that now because that is perfect.
Also, yeah. I like that they've really managed to deliver the "Alien" experience all over again by having the unknown fear of parasitic body horror still there by introducing different aliens aside from the Xenomorph. After the original you can't really recapture the shock of the Facehugger/Chestburster because everyone knows about it, and while you can re-tread it as a horrible experience, it doesn't hit the same way as not having any idea what it's doing, or how, and only being able to guess moment-to-moment about things like whether it's seemingly just a horrible bug with a really nasty self-defense mechanism (like the Ticks), or if it's also frighteningly intelligent as well (like the Monodrive).
The Official Alien Earth Podcast is ~30 mins per, and they release them after each episode and end up talking to the director, actors, FX folks, etc. that covers a lot of neat elements about the production overall. I went through it the other day after stumbling across it, and I rather like their approach with things even when it doesn't always hit the mark perfectly for me, it's interesting to see what various motives they have here & there.
While I'm not THAT much against the Xenomorph's appearance in this, it does have some really odd behavioural differences around when it's being an absurdly relentlessly efficient murder machine eviscerating a room full of people in a matter of seconds... vs. when it's inexplicably toying with someone that it's fighting in a way that's very uneven – and doesn't appear to have any discernible pattern. In the original Alien it's always capturing subjects live and walling them up to be implanted by eggs, and it's only when Ripley goes to blow up the ship that it pivots to just outright murder Parker & Lambert, and leave their eviscerated corpses to terrify Ripley, which leads to her attempting to stop the self-destruct sequence. I initially thought that we'd have a bit more nuance around that, and not being able to have a clear sense of that always makes it feel like plot armor is the underlying purpose, and it's got a delicate balance to try and tread with the main focus drawing from Alien & Aliens where the nuances of those behaviours are present a bit differently especially as the second has the presence of the Queen & Hive to factor in.
When it's in the suit, it moves VERY much like the original Xenomorph from Alien, but a lot of those shots also are when it feels the most strange. There's one scene in particular where it goes from that and switches over to the digital model running through the Maginot's corridors in a perfect recreation of what it felt like playing as a Xenomorph in the old 2003 AvP2 game. There's an odd disjointed feeling to those two being very different – not because of visual differences between practical & digital, but just in how they represent the capabilities of the creature itself because of the underlying technological limitations affecting just how much you can actually get from one vs. the other.
If anything, I think that both this and Alien Romulus end up stumbling a little bit when they're making use of practical Facehuggers or using certain suit shots for moments where even extremely sophisticated puppets can't always move as realistically. Meanwhile things like the Monodrive always being digital ends up working in its favor because it has this constant fluidity to it that isn't hampered by a need to have it "in camera" al the time, so it doesn't have this difference in behaviour connected to where it's operating around technological limitations half the time the way various scenes with the Xenomorph are. (I'm quite glad that the Chestburster we got to see was digital, as I think that it emphasized the right things about allowing the audience to read the different nuances to its behaviour).
While I also do like more than I don't about the Xenomorph, it's helpful to remember that this is a weakness that Romulus had as well, and something that also happened back in the AvP when the Xenomorph & Predator were first brawling. There are a lot of scenes where the Xenomorph won't always have the most consistency because of those technological swaps. Even while I think that, visually the movements of the Rod Puppet in Alien 3 are just magnificent – it gets marred by the VERY aged compositing of those into the scenes (which is why I made a point to especially point out the running scene in Alien Earth).
This is all to say that, I don't know that there are many films where we actually SEE the Xenomorph working well so much as we've cobbled together a large number of different pieces of its best moments from the films in our heads for how we understand the Xenomorph as a creature. It's a bit tougher beyond just that, since the games really end up being more glue to how we're used to seeing Xenomorphs look consistent to all the other effects around them, ranging from pixel graphics to current gen tech and all levels between, so that over time we just really remember the best bits of any of them all stitched together by whenever any various medium really nails one or the other, and create the perfect organism in our minds. That then comes back to the complexities of getting those individual component parts right by using the right tech for the job between various scenes when making one of these movies/shows, and going with what they think works best which is difficult to tell until you've got it in the editing room.
Really looking forward to the next 3 episodes to see where things go (and what other horrors we'll get to witness).
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