Alien: Romulus (2024)

LiquidDeath said:

I applaud your optimism, but look into your heart.....what does it tell you?

Let me break it down for you.

- Predator: fucked in the modern age
- Star Wars: fucked in the modern age
- Star Trek: fucked in the modern age
- Aliens: ?????

I think we all know the answer.

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Oh!oh!

Fucked in the modem age.

Nailed it.

Voyce said:

This got me thinking about the Thing remake by John Carpenter, which was panned on release by a bunch of worthless critics, despite being a superb movie, better perhaps than Scott Ridley’s Alien.

Cameron’s Aliens, I’d probably place higher but also that was an entirely different move (less horror, more action).

Of course they did the 2011 “prequel”, which was more or less just a remake with a female lead, fairly mediocre.

Outside of the 1982 movie, there’s the short story the Things, by Watts, which is the only material to come out of the “franchise”, that is comparably as brilliant, being written from the perspective of the “Thing” it seems like every 20 years or so, you get a solid action movie and maybe every 30 years a good to great horror movie. I wonder if we see that cycle continue, as the media has become sputal garbage, run by sputal garbage

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A few thoughts on classics that got remade:

IMO The Thing 1982 is probably on the shortlist for best movie of all time. It says a lot that Quentin Tarantino's best movie, Hateful Eight, was heavily based on The Thing and even had the same star and composer.

The 2011 prequel didn't understand what made the 1982 movie great, and turned the monster into a rampaging beast rather than a subversive hidden menace.

The 1953 original is also quite overrated and didn't follow the original short story from the 30's nearly as well as the 1982 movie did.

If The Thing 82 isn't the best movie of all time, it's certainly in the top 2 or 3 in a bunch of categories. Best horror movie, best "space" movie, best survival movie.

I'd put Body Snatchers '77 up there in the same rarified air, though the original 50's movie preceeding that one is much closer in quality than the 50's Thing movie is to its remake. To this day, Body Snatchers '77 fills me with existential Dread, and most certainly functions as an allegory for authoritarian communism or some other subversive religion taking hold in a culture that didn't expect it.

War of the Worlds is one movie that I'd put well above any of it'd remakes. Though the 1990 TV show was actually pretty incredible and functions as the only real sequel to the movie IMO. It's two seasons and well worth buying. The first season is by far superior to the second, if one only gets one.

kroenen said:

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What are the odds that this will be the secret third movie in the Prometheus trilogy? It looks like it transpires on a space station full of sleeping colonists, there seems to be a horde of aliens, and the colonists were being killed in their hibernation pods.

This is pretty much exactly how Alien Covenant ended, with David about to use hibernating colonists to create an army of xenomorphs, using a bunch of face hugger embryos that he had to incubate for a while.

Since Ridley Scott is involved it's hard for me to believe he'd just drop the Prometheus trilogy unfinished to do some random Alien story instead.

Dr.Retarded said:

Was on the 90s but it was the '80s when The war of the world show was on TV. They have the one that was set and at the time present day, but then they did an offshoot show where the the Martian said already taken over and it was this dystopia apocalyptic sort of world, and it was the resistance fighting against the totalitarian alien regime.

I watched every episode back in second and third grade as a kid. Trust me on this.

I do agree with a lot of your statements though...

I did rewatch The invasion of the Body snatchers movie a little while ago and it still holds up so well, and is easily one of the scariest movies from like you said just a dread standpoint. When movies don't have the ability to rely upon special effects and what have you, it's all about story and the ability of the characters to act their part well to sell that willing suspension of disbelief. YouTube has lots of older films that maybe I can watch because I've got premium, but most evenings I've been watching just old movies that pop up from the 50s through 70s, and there's not many that I don't enjoy. Things were just so much better back then.

I had never seen 12 angry Men before, and for such a limited set and number of characters it's fantastic. Probably one of the best movies I've seen all year.

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Body Snatchers '77 hits very differently in the last few years after COVID/Floyd/CRT/etc. It's actually harder for me to watch now because it feels so much like real life.

I also watched all of the WOTW show in 3rd grade ish. It coincided with when I got into the Zelda games, so I was playing A Link to the Past when I wasn't watching the show. I remember that 'cause the aliens in the show used the Triforce as a symbol and their alien leader looked like the Swamp Palace boss in LTTP. Anyway, season 1 is the "present day" one while season 2 is "after tomorrow" whatever that means and is a post-apocalyptic show. They never actually explained what happened between the two seasons, IIRC. Some sort of massive breakdown of society had transpired over several years but I'm not sure if it was because of the aliens or not. The OOC reason was because the show's producers really wanted it to be a dark, gritty, post-apocalyptic show. They tried to do the same thing to Highlander a few years later. Unfortunately S2 of WOTW pales compared to S1, and loses most of what made the show unique (the aliens don't need to jump from body to body anymore, for one thing).

Man, got some real nostalgia going right now for that show. Someday I need to watch the whole thing again.

Dr.Retarded said:

That's a really fantastic movie.

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Never heard of The Descent, but I'm always looking for anything similar to The Thing or Alien. Pretty sure I've seen most of what there is to see on those fronts, but not this one. Just threw it on when I got home and it's a pretty solid movie so far (-20 minutes in). The main chick is super hot.

Rajaah said:

What are the odds that this will be the secret third movie in the Prometheus trilogy? It looks like it transpires on a space station full of sleeping colonists, there seems to be a horde of aliens, and the colonists were being killed in their hibernation pods.

This is pretty much exactly how Alien Covenant ended, with David about to use hibernating colonists to create an army of xenomorphs, using a bunch of face hugger embryos that he had to incubate for a while.

Since Ridley Scott is involved it's hard for me to believe he'd just drop the Prometheus trilogy unfinished to do some random Alien story instead.

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I don't want it to be a sequel but I wont mind if this is the case as long as it's well done.

Chanur said:

I don't want it to be a sequel but I wont mind if this is the case as long as it's well done.

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IIRC if one hadn't read anything giving it away, Covenant wasn't clearly a direct Prometheus sequel until around halfway through when they picked up the distress signal and David showed up. Up until that it was just an Alien movie that happened to have the same model android as Prometheus.

It's certainly possible, I guess we'll see. I'd like to see the trilogy finished.

Rajaah said:

IIRC if one hadn't read anything giving it away, Covenant wasn't clearly a direct Prometheus sequel until around halfway through when they picked up the distress signal and David showed up. Up until that it was just an Alien movie that happened to have the same model android as Prometheus.

It's certainly possible, I guess we'll see. I'd like to see the trilogy finished.

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I'd like to move on personally. They absolutely ruined that trilogy. It could have been amazing.

Arbitrary said:

What, you have a hard time watching people have their bodily autonomy taken away by people claiming to be their friends?

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That's a part of it for sure. Body Snatchers '77 was once my 2nd-favorite movie (probably) and now just gives me a combination of depression and dread.

WOTW TV show was so good. Here's a shot from the first episode. The aliens were being stored in barrels at a nuclear dumpsite, and some terrorists break into the site to take it over. This wakes up the aliens, which then steal the bodies of the terrorists. This isn't like Body Snatchers where you die in your sleep, no, these things body-snatch you by gouging your face out and then melting into your body (which restores the face as well for some reason).


This show gave me nightmares as a kid and is probably a large part of why I avoided dark places for years. Even the AVGN, James Rolfe, who is notoriously hard on revivals of classic movies he likes, really liked this show.

Another cool thing about the show is that the two main guys are a bleeding-heart liberal and a strict military-minded conservative. And they get along great, like brothers, even when they fundamentally disagree about everything. This was 1988 when people were starting to really be politically divided over that contentious election, so a show with guys from the two sides being best buds and covering for each other's weaknesses was a good thing. There was a "we're all on the same side and we can learn from each other" vibe to it. Too bad we can't get anything like that today, it'd get slammed for "normalizing hate" or something.


Good video about the show here.