The Alien Franchise

[Silver Nemesis]

It sounds like you enjoyed Covenant more than I did. My understanding is that Prometheus and Covenant were meant to be the first two instalments in a trilogy. I wish Scott had completed that before the franchise moved on to different pastures. Oh well. Maybe there was nowhere else to go with the David storyline.

Just to expand on something I said about Covenant back in 2017...

The Engineers' home world is dull and anticlimactic. I was expecting some twisted Gigeresque vision of a dark paradise, similar to the Cenobites' home world in the Hellraiser films or the Borg cube in Star Trek. Instead we get an unimaginative planet with a single architecturally-bland city. Where was the dark paradise we were promised? Where was Giger's visionary aesthetic?

A perfect example of the sort of thing I was hoping for from the Engineers' world can be seen in Denis Villeneuve's portrayal of Giedi Prime in Dune: Part 2. That dark, twisted nightmare planet is precisely the sort of provocative and aesthetically-inspired vision I wanted from Scott. The architecture in Villeneuve's film is clearly indebted to Giger.

I wanted to feel disturbed and intrigued by the new planet presented in Covenant, similar to how the imaginative environments in Alien, Aliens and (to an extent) Alien 3 and Prometheus made me feel. Villeneuve achieved that in Dune, where Scott failed in Covenant.

The environments in the Romulus trailer look like the same spaceship settings we've seen in every Alien film. That's fine, but I'd love it if they also introduced a new planet. Somewhere dark and frightening, with a weird twisted ecosystem and lots of bizarre creatures and nightmare-fuel architecture. If Romulus is going to take place entirely on a spaceship or space station, then they should at least make it an interesting environment like Sevastopol Station from Alien: Isolation. They could even bring in the Working Joes. Those guys were very unsettling.

I'm willing to give Romulus a chance, let's say that.

I'll watch it at some point, but I'm not sure yet if I'll bother going to see it when it's in theatres. The critical response won't sway me one way or the other, but I am interested to hear what the word of mouth will be like among Alien fans. I want Romulus to be good. Unlike Doctor Who, Start Trek, Terminator and Star Wars, which are all creatively-dead franchises at this point and beyond salvaging, I still have hope that there are more decent Alien stories to be told. It hasn't yet crossed the point-of-no-return that those other IPs reached.

[Silver Nemesis]

[Silver Nemesis]

[Silver Nemesis]

[The Laughing Fish]

A friend gave me a spare ticket to go watch Alien Romulus last weekend.

The only complaint I have is deepfaking a deceased actor whose character played a significant role. Not only his likeness, but his voice too and the CGI was pretty bad every time he's exposed to harsh light. I don't like this graverobbing trend in the industry, and it's sad that the strikes last year didn't discourage studios from going ahead with this.

As for the rest of the film though? I honestly thought it was really good. It definitely feels that it took place years after the first Alien film and it matches the aesthetics of that period of time, including a science lab that looks straight out of the Alien Isolation game. The film does a great job of maintaining the cruel pattern of the Weyland-Yutani corporation in the Alien universe, as their refusal to grant Rain Carradine her leave was responsible for her and the rest of the characters to look for ways to escape from the planet. Romulus also uses certain plot points from Prometheus to show Weyland-Yutani's agenda to study the Xenomorphs, and to me it makes everything even more consequential. The tone of the film is suspenseful for the most part, and the gory bits don't hold back. One moment made me gag for a bit.

Nothing else to say except Romulus is a worthy addition to the Alien franchise.

[Silver Nemesis]