ALIEN: ROMULUS (Spoiler Review) - The Black Goo is POISON for this Franchise
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- Опубликовано: 20 сен 2024
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You thought you would be getting a back-to-basics Alien film, didn’t you? Idiot. Behold, Alien: Romulus is here- keeping the Prometheus nightmare alive.
Music by @whitebataudio
#moviereview #alien #aliens #alienmovie #alienromulus #disney #hollywood #prometheus #ridleyscott #fedealvarez
Fuck why couldn't they commit to the isolation inspiration and go smaller scale? Hated that they switched gears to more of an Aliens/Alien Resurrections circus show at the end.
I agree completely, but I would say that Isolation is anything but small scale. The Sevastopol station, alone, is massive and if brought to life in a film, it would be the biggest setting for an Alien film.
I wonder if Ridley Scott was responsible for the Prometheus slop injected into Romulus.
Black goo and the last 10 minutes of the movie would have lifted it from a 7 to a 9 for me.
That movie exists and its called Alien (1979)
@FilipSmallPP Except you could use that criticism for Prey, yet people generally liked that movie. If the point was to go back to the horror roots they could have made a decent suspenseful and tension filled horror movie that felt like Alien. I mean it's not like the movie wasn't already super derivative anyway. They basically just crammed the first 4 movies together into one.
You thought Alien Isolation was small scale????
Holy crap, I had strong criticisms, but you guys picked it to pieces. lol
My real complaint is how recycled this movie is. I was enjoying the 1st act, but once we met the uncanny valley CGI of a dead actor, it was just a constant beat-down of fan service with old lines and the re-purpose of the climax from "Resurrection", which I have hated for 26 yrs..
Be your own movie!!
It’s literally just another synthetic of the same model. Bruh.
@@czechball6641 you don’t think I understood that? lol
The CGI didn’t look good, and it was only done to make you applaud like a seal that they brought back something from before. He even said reused lines from the previous movie. That on top of all of the other fan service call backs that were stuffed in.
Maybe you don’t know the previous movies, which is why it didn’t bother you.
@@76063co2cgi was done bad because this film is cheap and was supposed to drop on Hulu funny how you don’t mention any of it
The last 10 minutes i thought i was watching a different movie called Dead Space. 🤣🤣🤣
Yeah ok but at least resurrection had a good cast lol
Alien 3 not looking so bad now 😂
Facts.
@@hardcutreviews And what the hell was Darth Snoke doing in this movie? 😂 Oh my Gawd, it was so bad.
Alien 3 is shit!
Come on you can't believe that. Alien³ is shit and Romulus is the best installment since Aliens.
Saw the film last night....Woke up with diarrhea. The black goo did it 😢
Well, it can do everything! 😆
You mentioned the 5 minute gestation from facehugger to chestburster, but the full size alien developed from the chestburster even more quickly, and the hybrid developed from a football sized egg sack to full size in just a couple minutes. Development takes place at the speed of plot. In the original Alien story, the alien raided the food lockers on the Nostromo before developing into Big Chap.
Indeed. In the original film, Ash mentions something about the Alien's extremely high nutritional requirements. I mean, how can the tiny alien chest-bursting embryo thing grow into an 8-foot monster within a few hours without massive intake?
I've been getting pumped for Alien movies for decades and I've been disappointed for decades. At this point I'm a sucker after a new trailer is released. Love the first half of this movie but I couldn't roll my eyes more during the second half. Wanted to walk out. The drop off was crazy.
They destroyed the movie will all this BS... I agree about the music tho ... I was expecting OG sounds and got garbage. I feel the really problem here is Scott as always destroying this franchise even further. Best part of the movie was the trailer and likely the only real part Fede got to do.
The trailer to this film was extremely effective and completely hid what involvement Scott had on the story. I wonder why.
@@hardcutreviews SAD DAY for alien fans thats for sure.
Ridley Scott always seemed to lean toward the alien being an experimental bioweapon of some sort, Cameron made them an animalistic hive species in Aliens, the writers of the original Alien screenplay considered them to be the feral remnant of a dead alien civilization adding a tragic element. Everybody thought of them differently.
And Ridley Scott's is the worst
Ridley Scott also thought Blade Runner would be better if Deckard was secretly a replicant the whole time. He's as bad at understanding what makes his own movies good as George Lucas is.
@@frankjones5886 and George Lucas made the mistake by trying to explain the Force with midichlorians.
@@frankjones5886 Hell, at least George can say he came up with the setting and can do what he wants; not exactly true of Scott.
The alien, beast, big chap should’ve never been explained.
Black goo is Ridley Scott’s midichlorians.
He just won’t let it go. At least Lucas had the good sense to never mention it again after TPM.
@@hardcutreviews "Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create… life."
Its the best idea scense the original movie prometheus was the best movie scence the original movie and dont take away from the original at all it builds it up acctually
Its the best idea scense the original movie prometheus was the best movie scence the original movie and dont take away from the original at all it builds it up acctually
@user-hf3bp2gy6d The good idea from Prometheus is that of the Engineers. I just feel that it should have been its own movie rather than being shoehorned into the Alien franchise. They created us and we created androids. Great concept. Lots there to work with.
This was the safest of safe movies. Nothing too creative in there, no new ideas, just beats. The Alien version of The Force Awakens.
The only problem with this Alien movie is Ridley Scott. Really. If this movie had been allowed to be... Almost like a Dark Horse one off, where it was just these characters dealing with the alien, it would have been good to great. Unfortuantely, plugging in those contrived elements in the third act basically ruptures the good will of the audience.
I also have to say, I actually agree that it should have been the big chap by himself. If you're going to bring that thing back... DO SOMETHING WITH IT. It's like they brough the corpse of the movie Alien into the movie to parade it around for a minute, and then it was gone. If the movie had been structured where the team boards the station, discovers slowly over the film what happened, and as they go to get the cryo-fuel they wake up this thing, which had been hastily frozen... and now they're trapped on the station, with multiple ticking clocks, IE: They have to get off before the station crashes and that the company will be coming to get rid of them and recapture the Alien... and they have to improvise and get creative in dealing with the creature.... I don't know, that owuld have been better than what they did, in my view.
It's important for the Alien to be treated as a serious threat. The moment you start dropping hordes of them on the characters, you either need to have the human body count rise rapidly, or you have to get your characters to safety, fast. Having a dozen aliens and a body count of one, doesn't bode well for the aliens.
No what should of happened is to have and actually engineer in the movie not a hybrid baby engineer,
I 100% told everyone to go see it in a theater just to appreciate the level of craft that went into making the movie and the experience. But I also told all my Alien friends to be ready to basically see a really, really, good cover band do an "Alien Franchise Anthology" concert exceptionally well, and that means "ALL of the Alien franchise".
This is a good explanation. Greatest hits lol
It sucked
@Sketch_XR I agree with that but it’s the first time I’ve left the theater satisfied with an alien film ever starting with alien 3
I heard that, cover band. It is true, lol.
Sometimes the band is too old and too philosophical *cough Ridley Scott, to make the old songs sound as good, or make a good new song... thanks Fede Alvarez, for making a top 3 alien film either way.
Ripley getting into the cargo loader to fight the Alien queen in Aliens is one of the most iconic action scenes of all time, partly because no one saw it coming. They introduced the loader at the beginning of the movie, but they didn’t draw enough attention to it for anyone to foreshadow its pivotal role later on. When that epic fight happened at the end of the movie, I was totally "in the moment." It felt like time had stopped, and I was watching a live UFC match.
100% correct. It was a time when writers didn't telegraph foreshadowing.
we can't just have a cool alien movie, it has to be a wanna-be 2001
we can't just have a cool historical conqueror movie, it has to be about his relationship issues
with scott, I'm pretty sure gladiator 2 will be lame too
It will, nothing about it looks good
I’m not sure why the company didn’t go to the planet where they found the zenomorph rather than go search deep space for a tiny alien body.
Any more cracks in this dam and it will burst.
@@hardcutreviews
I’ve never seen two dorks whinge about a good movie ever how about shut the hell up and go outside to a gym or something life’s too short
I've just discovered your channel today and the two of you are my favorite people right now!
Love to hear it. Thanks for watching!
If you hate Prometheus and Covenant for the black goo trope, it's worth pointing out that it's not even original. The first X Files movie did it back in '94 (?) And did it better.
'98. And you're right.
You mean it is not venom symbiote from the very first secret wars comic run? 🤔
It's not the black goo it's the fact that the alien didn't eat the main character when it caught her and set her gently on the ladder just so the movie could continue, also the wheels of the facehuggers could be seen terrible practical effects I've seen movies with less money do more such a shame
I've seen the alien catching her criticism a few times but I thought it was clearly shown why in the movie.... It catches her and holds her as a facehugger crawls towards her, she's just killed a heap of them, it doesn't want to waste her body when it could be used to gestate a new xenomorph
After 3rd viewing : Nostalgia 100%, mood and environment 100%, facehugger action 100%, xenomorph action 80%, Prometheus black goo and hybrid alien 15% 😢 not needed... 85% of this movie was freaking fantastic and I was smiling ear to ear, until black goo and stupid engineer looking hybrid monster... Similar to the one we got at the end of alien Resurrection,... All in all a great movie though and maybe I'll see it a 4th time at the theater 🍿🫶👽
Aliens 1986
Alien 1979
Alien 3
Alien Romulus
AVP part 1
Prometheus
(Alien covenant, AVP part 2, and alien Resurrection.. Ummmm....👎LOL)
At this point, I am convinced that only Dennis Villeneuve can make a good Alien movie.
The black goo is like, It's game over man, it's game over!
The movie for me could have almost been an average alien movie; my believability/immersion was tested when the Nostromo wreckage & the Xenomorph Ripley sent into deep space SOMEHOW got found when the ship blew up THREE TIMES and should have been reduced to atoms as well as the Xenomorph being in some cocoon to "survive" but I told myself to still give it a chance.... But the moment they leaned too much into the past with the unnecessary Ian Holm cameo, cringe uses of dialogue callbacks, and overreliance on homage to the point of almost being predictable as it went on REALLY held it back.
I definitely agree the Production Design, Cinematography, and Practical Effects (when they are used) are the best things about the movie; but the movie really tried to satisfy everyone (even the fans of the movies that are objectively mediocre to bad) and ended up satisfying almost no one at all overall imo.
How does a ship blow up three times? What remains on the third instance?
I felt stupid for being excited for this film too
It's time to give up on Hollywoke
After aliens they should have just left well enough alone.
The name Romulus just gives me the Star Trek vibes. It would make sense if it were titled in a Star Trek: Romulus movie. Alien? Why not Death Star?
Just be glad it's not as bad as what hollywood did to Jurassic Park rip
Took my sink drain apart to unclog yesterday. You wouldnt believe it, more fucking black goo there too.
The opening credits to the original Alien are some of the most tense, anxiety-inducing openings I’ve ever seen in a movie. I remember seeing it when I was eight years old on early cable TV. It caused me a lot of stress just watching the credits. Imagine what the chest-bursting scene did to me.
It switched off auto pilot because of the cryopod emergency. It doesn’t just switch back on to auto pilot, she switches it back on. And Rook didn’t tell her to inject the black goo into her neck.
This came up in another comment thread. You’re right about the Rook injection. One of misremembered that part. The autopilot thing, sure. We saw it once and probably missed that moment taking down a note. Usually we don’t do straight out of theater reviews. We sit on it for a day so we make less mistakes but we don’t really do anything beyond a few notes and just have a casual convo. Appreciate the callouts.
Drink game: 1 shot of tequila for every time you hear “Fu**ckn Prometheus”
We’re already drunk.
Appreciate your review! You guys remind me of RedLetterMedia from 10 years ago. Their current review of Alien: Romulus felt lazy and a little bit boring to watch.
The set, editing, etc. is fantastically done and the pace of your conversation is just a joy to watch. Looking forward to more honest reviews in the future!
Thanks, dude. If we ever get stale, let us know.
Prometheus is a fuckin phenomenal movie. Easily the best in the series after the original film
Oh yeah man, it's so good. I love how all of the characters are smart and make great decisions.
Felt more like an Alien clip-show episode than a real movie.
Like if you want Sigourney Weaver back to the franchise
You guys nailed it. Cursing and all. Ridley Scott BARF.
in a way...we are all black goo now.
I want to slather it all over my supple torso
maybe the real black goo was the friends we made along the way
African American goo.
Instead they should have had Ash speak. With the crew panicking in a frenzy asking how to escape. Then catches on fire and melts. That's how they should have done it.
One scene and done would have been the way. Way too much screen time for that deep fake.
Great video! Thank you, guys! * I love-love Alien(1979) & Aliens(1986). * Every movie since 1992 was a huge disappointment!
As soon as I saw they were being directed to a special lab by Rook my heart sunk. I knew the bullshit was coming. I lost interest after that and just waited to hear the pulse rifle in IMAX.
And a low plausibility pulse rifle at that. It makes no sense. Auto aiming from clamping to your arm 😂
Great review guys, I can honestly say this was the first ever Alien film where I was bored the longer it went on. I'm done with the series after this, deciding to have the black goo as the be-all and end-all of everything is the final nail in the coffin. I too was deceived into thinking this was going to be more Alien than Prometheus but they stealthily subverted my expectations. And the news that Alvarez wants to make an AVP movie? No, just stop now, please (by the way Fede, good luck getting Ridley on board with that one mate)
So what you're saying is you didn't like Prometheus and Covenant? 😂
I do like Prometheus but Covenant, although has it's positives is much harder to defend. Your disdain for the prequels connection in Romulus is totally fair. When it started going in that direction I was thinking do they really need to this? A lot of people are gonna hate it but I was on board for it. In the end it's a 8/10 for me. 2 off for terrible cgi rook, plot hole or two that irritated me, gestation period and lazy exposition.
I definitely like Prometheus and Covenant. I like getting an origin story for the aliens. The David character carries those movies also. That character gives you history into the evolution of the synthetics we see in Bishop and Winona’s android. The problem I have with this movie is it does really serve a purpose. I went in hoping for the film that fills in the gap between Covenant and Alien. I wanted to know how the species ends up on the derelict ship. Instead we got a movie that seemed to be made for the purpose of fanfare. The horrible special effect of the Ash/Rook android completely derailed the film for me. It was so jarring that it pulls you out of the experience. I don’t have any sympathy for bad CGI in this day and age. We get better deep fake videos on the internet. There’s no excuse for Hollywood to mess that up.
This is why the predator franchise has never done the lore thing. Some things you do not need to know. Motivations is all we need. And new situation.
I actually wouldn’t mind predator lore tho… alien lore you really didn’t need… but I feel like predator lore wouldn’t be so convoluted
Warning folks don't go see this one twice, I did and the seams are bursting on a second viewing. Don't even try to understand how the physics work in this movie. And for God's sake can we can the black goo inclusion. Movie looks to be heading for a decent profit however, good holds in most territories, pity about the second week drop in North America. My son asked me this morning what I wanted for Father's Day, easy , a decent writer for an Alien movie.
Haha, it crushed that opening weekend because of the bait and switch. Only way to work that lore in without turning people off. Let’s hope your son knows where to find those writers.
Sounds like your son has a manchild for a father
@@collectiveleak A wild cuck has entered the chat.
@hardcutreviews womp womp. If you agree with this guys whiney comment, then you are a manchild too. The movie wasn't bad aside from some of the unnecessary quote callbacks, you two are just being overly negative and almost spoiled, like you expect them to make an Alien move as good as the original, which is nigh impossible.
Guys, guys , guys. Raine going back for Andy is another one of hollywood's predictive programming stunts. They want the public to become comfortable with forming emotional relationships with AI. Not too different from the movie Her, and Bladerunner 2049 with Ryan Gosling's relationship with the hologram AI named Joi.
Active Measures in full swing.
Don't forget race mixing.
The whole alien gestation period is unfortunately something most contemporary directors just want to bypass and excuse by saying
"iT's An AlIeN" just to move the plot forward. I'm hoping the series that they're doing takes it's time with stuff like that.
The sequels are about more, more, more and that leaves less time for things to gestate.
Never really saw the alien movies, I enjoyed this universe so much I’m watching everything now and I think the order helped me a ton. Very fun movie but a lot of these things would bother me if I was a long time fan
Watch Aliens and you'll understand how much of an insulting cash grab this movie was.
You need to watch Aliens.
40 years later and the most variation of xenos we’ve seen is a dog alien. Cant one of these research stations have a like a zoo or something on board?
That makes too much sense. Why would Hollywood make something like that?
Rook.. Bishop.. Dallas... Tennessee.. See what we did there?! Yay, it's all connected!!! 🙄
😧 We’re shocked.
Weyland-Yutani has better odds of winning every lottery on Earth, 10,000 times in a row, than EVER finding that Xenomorph floating around in outerspace. 😂😂
No shit. It was just a dumb idea all-around. They only did it so the nerds would be like "oHhhHh lOok, iT's BIg ChAp!"
Fede Alvarez and Ridley Scott did one of those pompous 1-on-1-interview-each-other-and-talk-about-ourselves-being-artists videos on RUclips recently.
Then you find out Fede’s “vision” is doing stupid callbacks and references to previous Alien movies.
Yeah, you’re a total genius Fede. 🙄
He just copies a video game and gave fan service to those video game n erds.
@@SmokeNGunsBBQ A fan of that game, I was insulted and unsatisfied.
Ridley Scott has made two of my all time favorite movies, the original Alien and Blade Runner. I have always suspected that he crafted those two masterpieces by accident, as everything he has done since has been mediocre or outright atrocious.
This video is probably the most comprehensive breakdown of this film on RUclips. You guys have officially dethroned RLM as the leading duo-chat review channel.
We cut out 50% of our rant, too. lol. We went way more into depth on a lot of stuff but I don’t think even our fans would sit through that for 80 minutes.
@@hardcutreviews Don’t underestimate the fans, dude. 😎
Hey ChatGPT, write an alien movie combining all the alien movies……
Basically.
@@hardcutreviews this movie is basically the force awakens for alien
Totally agree! To me, this Alien movie really missed the mark by turning into a slasher film with forgettable characters we couldn't care less about. The constant focus on nostalgia and references to previous superior Alien films only served to show how far the franchise has drifted. The idea of discovering the original Alien floating aimlessly in space is completely absurd; was this the ideal solution to reintroducing the famous creature? And don't get me started on the lunacy of the CGI science officer, Ash - really?
Thank you for calling a Space Jockey a Space Jockey.
What else would we call it?
@@hardcutreviews do you really want an autistic rant about Scott, Damon Lindelof, Jon Spaihts and da Engineer?
Prometheus is only good if you pretend it's an Italian Alien rip off from the '80s.
@@Jay828__No matter how much a man may think he loathes Damon Lindelof, it seems there's always a way to find a bit a more.
it's an engineer cope.
You would call it a 7-ft tall,bald weightlifter.... which in no way could be a 35-ft ancient space-faring species....
Thanks for the 35:36 Ship Logs reaction reactions. Still laughing hard every time. 😂
I finally found a review that completely feels 100% the exact same way I did about this movie. The views, edited in clips, everything is just dead on. Believe me, I wanted it to be great along with everyone else, but the reality is that it is not. The way some have bought into the hype is ridiculous, completely ignoring the flaws because it's the current "thing" or lack of anything better to watch.
It really is mind-boggingly frustrating.
14:35 in the theatre I kinda explaned weak state of the facehuggers to myself, but it still dumb. You can say, that facehuggers are weak because they were extracted from weak, beaten and damaged Big Chap. But it was physical damage, not genetic. Sooo… still dumb
Never noticed (until now) how all Ridley's movies avoid the Queen Alien. Even in Romulus, there is a "hive," but not really a colony functioning in service to the Queen and their reproduction.
Ridley never liked what Cameron did with the Queen so he just ignores it.
This was the best & most accurate review yet of Alien Romulus! Right on point in every thing you mentioned. The good, the bad & the very ugly = black goo.
It is very telling that all the prequel stuff was kept out of the marketing. They knew indeed what they were doing. Ironically, they did the same thing for the marketing for Prometheus, pushing the Alien side of it even if it really has none. LOL.
Bringing back "the Big Chap" = the Alien from the first film was SO canon destroying! It diminishes Ripley's victory so much, since she & we have always believed that she KILLED & DESTROYED the damn thing! now she just managed to push it out of the way = Ripley's hero factor is no longer that great. Yay... And why is there so much large debris of the Nastromo still around? After THREE massive nuclear explosions? What the hell is this, the Second Death Star from Ep 9!? No thank you! And even if the Xeno did cocoon itself, it's been 20 years & it now literary looks just like a man-sized rock in the black vastness of space. How the HELL can it ever be located by anything or anybody!? It's not a freaking black box that sends out a signal! HOW!? And, OK, sure, they still find it & through him gets the black shit yada-yada. We are forced to accept that beyond far-fetched BS. So how do they reward us for our patients? By showing Big Chap as a dead corpse that no longer means anything. "sigh" Apparently, he got killed since he woke up & wrecked havoc. Now THAT is the movie I had really wanted to see! If they must bring him back, destroy canon & common sense & laws of physics in that process, at least let us show him again as the only returning Xeno ever in the freaking franchise!? Let him do what he did best & show it to us. Nope. We get the BS & no reward.
Same thing with Rook, really. I don't mind at all that it is the same model as Ash, that is in fact logical. But the deep fake is terrible! They could have shown his face far more damaged, like they did with Bishop in Alien 3, problem solved. And why the hell indeed does he tell the kids anything at all? He tells them far more than he needs to trick them into doing what he wants.
They claimed this was going to be so scary & gory. Where? Watching Alien Isolation still makes me highly uncomfortable with fright. I didn't feel a single second of dread in this film. The only "concern" I felt was the fear of AI turning on us as updated Andy declared he no longer cares about doing what's best for Rain. That was good. But the Xeno's were never scary. And this is so much based on Isolation. Which is fantastic. But you know what's missing in those otherwise great sets? Atmosphere! And here is where the boring score comes in. I love the fact that you guys give us a review that straight up says the score was meh & just not right. It was just noise to me, & I am a major movie score fanatic. Even the score for Covenant is brilliant next to this! And even Covenant was more gory, too. WTF?
The stolen lines from other films was one of the most meaningless canon destroyers yet. So totally unnecessary. Destroys the original lines. And an obvious red flag that Romulus is just Alien the Greatest Hits done by a cover band without ever getting an identity of its own. Even Resurrection, as god awful as that is, still has its own identity, for better or worse.
The "new" plan by Wayland-Yutani to enhance humans with the black goo is maybe one of the dumbest things yet! WHY??? What humans would want to become such things just to be labor? Huh? Besides, they already have the perfect workers = the freaking androids! Just build more of them! Build more of those working Joe's from Isolation if you wanna go cheaper! They don't need payment, only maintenance, & no sleep. Why do the totally unknown with no guarantee when you already have the solution? The weapon division was a good enough explanation, making humans into the not-at-all perfect organism is beyond retarded.
The relationship between Rain & Andy is sweet & interesting but at the same totally illogical. Why is Andy, an android aka a machine, behaving like a child or someone that has suffered a stroke & will never get back to fully normal? OK, he's broken & an old model. So? Why the child mentality? Why was that ever a part of his programming? If he's broken he should have had speech problems, problems moving, maybe being slow with calculations etc. But mentally being on the level of a 12 year old? Why would a machine behave like that? And if Rain's Dad programmed Andy to be like that on purpose than that Dad is f-ed up! Because that means, just as we see in the entire film, that it is Rain that needs to take care of Andy, not Andy that is meant to take care of Rain! This also means that Rain has next to no development or hero's journey! Going back for Andy in the nest is just the same pattern she has done from the very start of the film, she needs to run to Andy's rescue, just in the most dangerous way possible now. But the decision behind the act is exactly the same & not a brand new decision that evolves her character & shows her being more courageous than even she thought she was. She just does what she always has done for Andy, nothing new. If Andy had acted like the actual machine he always was, just a bit slow, obsolete & damaged but still otherwise kick-ass, then Rain's decision to run back into the hive to save him would have made far more sense & had a far greater emotional reward for us. Because if Andy had taken care of Rain from the start then we would want her to go back to save him, no natter how even stupid that might seem.
Don't even get me started on the "Offspring" abomination at the end! Dear good Lord! Alvarez claims he never saw the connection with the Reborn from Resurrection. That is BS, all Alien fans know of it while wishing they didn't. This thing is even worse! Especially with that terrible Engineer head! Am I supposed to laugh or cry when I see it? and, just as they did with Big Chap, what was the pay-off for the audience? What was our reward for getting this thing that no one wanted? Nothing. Not only did they heavily recognize the Alien prequels with this thing. And not only did they make it as stupid & boring looking as possible instead of at least giving it a cool design. What actually happens plot-wise once it's there? Rain plays catch with it. "We run up & down, up & down, after I while I get into a suit & once again flush the thing out into space that we have already seen so many times..." The "action" scene, the "climax" is so stupid & boring! So it never rewards us so we can over-look why the damn creature is even there, what it symbolically refers to & how comedic it looks. Adding more wrong to already wrong does not make it right.
Romulus has a good & interesting start - after the unrealistic opening sequence in finding Big Chap against all Universal odds. And the film is very OK for a while, even if it fails to bring proper atmosphere because the score never delivers. The actors are OK, never Prometheus stupid at least. But once it gets to the "Aliens half" it totally derails. And just proves once & for all that what Cameron did can never be replicated. Which is a damn shame because if there is anything the Alien fandom wants is more Alien action as in Aliens. But they just keep denying us that. The rumored Alien 5 could have given that to us. But Ridley Scott just had to pretend he is the owner & creator of Alien - which is is NOT - & pulled the plug. Because he just wants to toss black goo & the question of creation in our faces as some damn facehugger. Keep Ridley Scott away from the Alien franchise & I swear it'll do much better! He doesn't give a rats ass about the Xeno's, he's said so himself! All he cares about is androids & the black goo.
Thank you for this! Perfectly captures what I think about this!
Uncanny, virtually identical thoughts on this movie to mine. I additionally didn't like that after the chestburster scene, the alien went into a cocoon. Since when does it do that? Just seemed to be an excuse for some gross body horror. The more they mess with Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett's work, the worse they screw it up. The franchise needs a complete reset, cast aside everything that came after Aliens and start from there. And who already had a vision ready to go? Neil Blomkamp.
Prometheus and Covenant has nothing to do with Alien universe, no matter how hard Ridley tries to convince us.
If he hadn’t tried to merge the two very different universes then the prequels might have stood on their own as an interesting exploration into humanities origins. But he didn’t. And they suck.
@@hardcutreviews oldman Ridley needs to chill the eff out. Aliens isnt even his baby.
But there's alot of graphic novels and comics that expand the franchise talking about the engineers and the black goo and even brings in predators too.
@@jonfreeman9682 Yeah, and there's also a short story about Ripley living on Alien homeworld and adopting an alien baby. So what?
Ridley is still trying to make "fetch" a thing. As if!
The explanation for the different technologies in the originals and prequels made sense to me.
Fede Álvarez - "I know a lot of people felt like it makes no sense. But I think we make the mistake when we watch the Nostromo and assume that's how the entire universe looks like. If I decide to make a movie on Earth today, and I go to the Mojave Desert and I take an old truck because a guy drives a Chevy, if you're an alien, you're going to go, 'That's what the world looks like.' But it doesn't mean there's not a guy in a Tesla in the city, which would be the 'Prometheus' ship. The first movie is truck drivers in a beat-up truck. 'Prometheus' is the ship of the richest man in the world."
Sounds more like an excuse to make two completely different cinematic aesthetics work together. They don't.
The worst bit about the space fossil is the time difference between *Alien 3* and *Alien: Resurrection* is about **200 years** in the storyline.. in A4, they developed that technology in the 200 years
Superficially Alien, substantially crap.
Don’t let the Prometheus lemmings hear you say that. They’ll call you a toxic fan.
I mostly enjoyed this movie at first, and tried to ignore all the negative aspects. Now the more I sit with it the more it pisses me off and leaves me disappointed. You’re right, it was a total bait and switch. Which makes me more pissed. We were led to believe it was a complete return to form of the original two and then of course they had to shove Prometheus crap into it. I wonder if that was a Fede thing or a Ridley thing? And the cgi face is baffling and unforgivable. And the dna altering black goo nonsense is predictive programming/social conditioning for…. things we won’t talk about here…. They’ve been feeding that to us for a long time now and are only pushing it harder as time goes on.
I mean rook could have done that info dump just to tell them it was beneficial to humanity like a manipulation tactic
I have never laughed so hard in my 40 years of life during this review.
The goo needs to be shelved just like Star Wars did with Midichlorians. The Aliens should just have been left a wild lifeform.
one of the most primal fears is fear of the unknown.
Prometheus and covenant have pretty much mapped out the entire origin and lifecycle of the xenomorph / Part of not knowing where these fuckers came from adds to the fear factor.
Facts.
We don't know. David just reversed engineered. Just as the engineers played God with the goo that existed long before they did.
First act was ok but this Disney disaster went south fast, how is it in a secure biolab there is an opening large enough to pass the usb stick to upgrade Andy , such a stupid movie overall
The movie was phenomenal, the most glaring flaws were the call back voice lines, and the company wanting drones for mining? Its obviously a weapon as they already consistently wipe out entire crews within hours, and nothing even implies a functional hybrid or any domestication... otherwise a pretty incredible film objectively.
Vaccine damage ?
I wouldn't mind black goo existing only if it wasn't that connected to xenos. Xenos' existence is seriously confusing now. I enjoyed Romulus a lot and to me it's the best nonRipley alien movie (Prometheus is about black goo so it doesn't count). However Romulus gave me more questions than answers. But the offspring was interesting. Ugly, uncanny
David only recreated the Xenomorph though. The Engineers were able to create them too. Who knows from whom they learned it or how they discovered it?
I so wanted to like this movie, but you absolutely nailed its problems. Ash/Rook could have been a cool, subtle nod to the original. In Alien, Ash was cool, quiet, and chillingly rational. Here, he's a babbling exposition machine that all but cackles maniacally as he goes about his evil business. All the tension and drama of the first half is absolutely thrown out of the airlock because Fede wanted to make Alien and Aliens all in one, meaning that suddenly we get Aliens all over the place (although they're really just cannon fodder) in place of the suspense that came with the hunt. The lift sequence is plain stupid and the "get away from her..." an unearned call back that comes off as goofy. All that said, had the movie stopped with all three of the surviving characters getting away on the shuttle, it might have been a decent enough film, albeit flawed. However, that Hollywood obsession with boss battles means there has to be something more, and that something turns out to be a ridiculous CGI cross between an alien and a blue Jason Statham. It's so utterly stupid it sucks you out of the film, leaving you wondering what on earth all the practical effect creators must have felt about the final reel. At least Alien Resurrection had the novelty of being original (if pretty damn bad). This film hasn't one original idea to its name. Even the much-vaunted face huggers ('they're more vicious!" "They've got fingernails") only manage to claim one victim, and that being pretty half assed. The rest are batted away like some high-stakes game of Little League. Overall, this entire movie is a perfect example of how to take something that looks cool and flush it straight down the space loo in a despaired attempt to tie together a bunch of threads that would only ever have been better had they been left dangling. So, yes, really good review - good effort guys!
A babbling exposition machine, lol. 100%. Say what you want about Alien 3 and 4 but at least they stood as their own films. Alien 3 wanted to stand on its own so much it erased any connection to Aliens in the first 5 minutes of the film. They even shaved her head. This started out promising but then had to rely on everything that came before to keep it going. That 3rd act… the Alien 4 / Prometheus mash-up was a massive middle finger. Here are the 2 worst things we can think of merged into one scene.
The movie started to nosedive long before the black goo showed up, that was honestly the least of its problems. I'm okay with weird science fictiony stuff, but when characters don't behave in a compelling way, nothing exciting is happening, and there is no depth or meaning to any of it then that is a problem. It was just a vehicle for memberberries and Ridley Scott's ego, because he can't get over the fact that almost no one liked his prequels. One easy way to see why this movie falls flat, just watch the OG chest burster scene in the '79 Alien movie, then watch it in this movie. The original looks painful, no matter how many times you see it it affects you. The new one, it looks like she has a bad case of dehydration and you feel nothing. It's like the special effects of the x-ray wand were trying to compensate for the flat and lifeless character direction.
Agreed. Alien, Aliens, and maaaaaaaaybe 3 are the only movies that exist in this franchise. Luckily we still have some great games to go along with them: AvP, AvP2, AvP (arcade beat em up), and Alien Isolation. Lots of content which is far away from the goo nonsense.
Edit: Oh and check out the mod for Doom which turns it into an Alien Trilogy style game. Pretty sweet.
once more i refer to the fan story "Alphas aliens above the engineers" as my better headcanon. at least there the jockies are their own species and the engineers are their creation. the black goo is even older than the Jockies and he even brings in the yuatjas (predators) to the story.
Im confused about the part where you say rook tells her to inject the goo... pretty sure she just does it herself while she's in the elevator alone. Andy only briefly mentions it's technically supposed to be synthesized and should in theory help her heal. Idr rook convincing her to take it
I think they missed a very easy way they could have kept the good parts of this film (the suspense, action and return to the original Alien type "feel" to many parts of this movie), got rid of the need for the overly convoluted explanation for the research station existing, wrapped up the prequels and ended the black goo stuff (which I hate) all in one go. You could have literally had the same story as in this movie up until they find the alien infested ship in space, but instead of finding the research station, they find the colony ship we ended Alien Covenant in. David (Fassbender's character) had been creating aliens from the colonists as we expected him to, but the aliens he created have turned on him and killed him (in the same way he turned on his creators and killed many of them), and the ship is now drifting aimlessly in space as a result (as was the space station in Romulus). This way the prequels are somewhat respectfully wrapped up, the knowledge of the black goo can die with David and we don't have to return to it again, the franchise can move on and the characters in this movie still have a whole ship full of aliens and face huggers to play out the rest of this movie with.
The only reason I assume they didn't do this, or something similar, is Scott's continued involvement with the franchise? Maybe he is hoping one day he might still get a chance to finish his prequel? I think this movie is a case of two steps forward and one step back, it's certainly a big improvement on the prequels, but I think they have to cut out any links to the prequels/the black goo etc (and thus probably Ridley Scott's involvement in any future projects) to get the franchise fully back on track.
Scott will never let this go. His origin lore has become more important than the story that made this franchise successful in the first place. Closing the door on the prequels in this would have been nice but they just can’t do it for some reason.
@@hardcutreviews But surely the property belongs to Disney, not Scott? I get that Universal bought him back to do the prequels as "Alien" as a franchise had hit a rut and lost credibility with Alien Resurrection, and they felt that getting him back would restore interest and credibility to the franchise. But, as we all know, in reality the opposite of this actually happened, he ended up taking franchise to an even weaker position than it was post-Alien Resurrection with his prequels. Surely they must recognise that and, as a result, must part ways with him?
It’s under the umbrella of Disney but it was still produced by Scott Free. He’s been around long enough that it’s not difficult for him to meddle with it unopposed.
Love your review guys, you absolutely nailed it on every point and I felt almost exactly the same. But I always knew this movie would never get close to the classics with Alvarez and the cast he chose. The trailer though, wow..that final trailer was a 9/10 for me (dialogue and the lame London accent by Bjorn made me cringe bad though, and I'm British - 'summfin in the f'kin wort-ah'). Too bad the movie didn't turn out like that. Really glad you also picked up on the fairly generic score by Benjamin Wallfisch. I knew when I saw his named attached also, that the score would be very standard and lacking it's own identity like our first three films. I fear until Ridley is out of the picture, any movies in this franchise are unfortunately going to be tainted with the black goo, and it's very likely that shit will pop up in Alien: Earth as well. I actually like Prometheus, (I hate Covenant) but only because I completely remove that movie from the franchise, for me it's a very cool standalone sci-fi.
I pronounced his line like: "I dun no! Dares jus sum dan 'N duh woah-ah!"
@@THambrough 😂 if you can cause YT to add the 'Translate to English' line, then it's pretty good!
Picking up the original xeno from the wreckage would have been the better movie,
Realising it wasn't dead and then seeing it was turning itself into a queen and allowing it to develop, then all hell breaks loose!!!
Thats not original its been done before
Have kay mutate again in a post credit scene where she becomes a proto queen for a new hive she biths several eggs(ovamorphs), than your idea where they find the craft to retreve the accelerant than facehugger time and a whole new outbreak its not original but it would fit perfectly for a sequel to romulus.
I knew they were going to F this up when i watched Prometheus for the first time and the ending pissed me off...
Then i watched Alien Convenient and that pissed me off even more. Had Prometheus stayed with the storyline of looking for God that could've opened up a whole different franchise of Sci-fi that could have lasted for the next decade or so just keep making sequels, and or prequels similar to the Star wars franchise... So now I have to get started with writing the next Predator movies that totally destroys Humans, Xenomorphs, Facehuggers, and Trilobites totally to undo this mess Hollywood has created 🤔 sorry y'all 😔
The Black Goo is basically the get-out-of-jail card for the modern Alien writers. For whatever contrivance, no matter how stupid or contradictary it is, the Black Goo is the go-to reason.
¿How much do the Chestbursters take to grow? Black Goo!
¿Who actually created the Xenomorph? No one, but the Black Goo!
¿Why do the Xenomorphs constantly change from biological to biomechanical? Black Goo!
¿Why can the Engineers now grow out of humans despite being different species? Black Goo!
That's a great point. Total writer's wet dream of convenience.
@@hardcutreviews worst than the Force in Nu-Star Wars and Grumpidriel in Rangz o' Pawah.
The black goo has been the worst thing in the last 3 movies. Ridley Scott started this all.
@@mikerosoft1009 and the worst thing is, the Goo would've been a great plot point in another movie.
Let's start a campaign to get another Alien movie starting Sigourney Weaver, not as Helen Ripley, but maybe as a Ripley's niece or granddaughter or grand grand daughter
And to get Cameron back ....and to ditch Disney
this movie is hot garbage. scott free productions needs to step away from alien forever.
As far as you guys not liking the sped up gestational periods or being able to get a face hugger off without killing the host not being possible well hate to burst your bubbles but in the expanded universe with novels, comics and audio books/graphic audio it's been stated and shown that there is no exact time table on gestational periods it all depends on the host and their DNA...also these are face huggers grown in a lab from the black goo...I'm guessing they made improvements or something to speed up the process. But yeah, gestational timeframe isn't set in stone and there's been successful removals of face huggers and embryo removals in expanded universe.
It doesn't matter what "expanded universe" stuff says (most of that was probably null and void as soon as Prometheus came out and disregarded all of that anyways). All we have are the films to tell us the rules (AvP does not count). As terrible as Resurrection is, it still follows all of the BASIC rules set forth by the first film. Any "sped up gestational periods" is there only because it's convenient for the plot to move forward. It's lazy as hell.
I like Romulus except for the sh-tty black goo and the freaky offspring. I agree with your assessment 100%. The black goo and hybrids ruin every movie it's in. Ridley, just say no bro. Just say no.
Idk, it felt like Rook was lying his ass out in the exposition scene in my eyes. Like he's saying "we need this to make humans more survivable to space"
But in reality WY only want it to accelarate pregnancies and growth of human children, like what happened with the pregnant lady.
Which also ties into the labor shortage they seem to be having on the mining colony down below.
I might be reading way too into it but like- a souless company trying to make humans into labor factories seem to track, doesn't it?
They just adapted the plot to the sense of modern struggle young people feel (property values vs incomes, etc). But it makes no sense considering Aliens is set in the future and working conditions were shown as fairly decent 80's standards.
At last... someone sees this movie the same way I do. Only difference is my rating... 4/10. This stupid alien Slender Man ruins the whole movie.
You guys make some great videos
Thanks for watching man- glad you're enjoying our stuff.
This review is BASED
I think Ridley Scott is the poison for this franchise. At this point he made it clear he doesn't want to do any more Alien movies and shift to his own new thing but at the same time uses the Alien franchise as a springboard for those new things.
He tried and it didn't work but he's not willing to let it go.
There were other ideas for a soft reboot to the Alien franchise. He forced the studio to shelve them forever in favor of his "Prequel Trilogy" that was never intended to connect to the Alien in the first place. After that didn't work out and he was not allowed to make the 3rd movie of that "trilogy" he got to be a producer of the next Alien movie and it JUST HAPPENS to carry over stuff from those "prequel" movies? yeah. That guy just can't let go and is going to drive this franchise to the ground trying over and over again to promote his current ideas with it.
Totally agree with more or less everything you guys have said here. I went with 3 of my mates to see it and we all had similar negative comments of the movie. A big disappointment.
Yup; Worth the wait
After watching this review it really does make sense and helps wrap my head around the whole black goo stuff towards the end. My first thought when it came up on screen was “well shit I watched prometheus but not covenant, I hope I don’t miss any lore.” Which it’s not that deep. Then the engineer baby hybrid thing threw me for a complete 180. The lingering issue of Andy still going to be decommissioned is still there.
I gave it a higher score for myself, but you guys really did summarize it perfectly. I am let down with the missing blood and gore elements. Fede makes some of if not the most fkd up things and it’s nowhere to be see here. It’s an alien, have it rip someone in half slowly or something!!
Regardless I think it is still worth a watch, we rarely get good or even decent at best horror movies so that’s why I had to check it out.
The only lore is the Aliens lore by James Cameron. He perfected it. Alien really didn't explain much which made it great. But if you want lore.. James Cameron is the man.
I totally agree. Short gestation period really really bothered me. Also Rooks cgi was really bad at times, strange because other effect were good.
It’s because of how prominent they made him. The film embraces practical effects but chose to do that when they could have kept him shadowed. Cant resist a powerful member berry I guess.
I heard enough. Thanx guys, saved me time and money
Andy the android said that line to defang Ripley...because now its not her line anymore,it now belongs to an android because this is set before Aliens,this movie screams jealousy from Ridley Scott,he cant handle what Cameron did and this was his chance to take it even though his female lead in convenant was a total ripp off of Ripley from Aliens,Andy saying that line instantly made me hate the film,its just the greatest hits of Alien by Ridley and the Retcons.
For every great idea in this film, there's another so dumb, it spoils it.
Understand the opinion. Still love original alien, prequels and fell in love with Romulus. Can’t wait so see that’s next for the franchise.
Don’t let us spoil a good time. Alien: Earth is next. Another prequel. Would love to actually see something… come next. Haven’t moved forward in time since 1997.
THIS IS RIDLEY'S VISION, ALIENS ON IS A DIFFERENT VISION.