Alien Romulus Has A Problem (and how they could have fixed it)

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[thegregnorton]

This isn't a full review, or me trying to act like the parts of the film that didn't bother me can't bother you, I just wanted to talk about this issue, and how easy it is to avoid, because studios KEEP DOING IT 😡

[djchriscaution]

The synthetic could be just a copy the REAL problem I had with this movie was the was the gestation period. . . Literally annoying me that just down the hallway minutes later it bursts out of the their chest...WTF. Making the gestation pointless. Why do they always do something really stupid in these movies?

[nat]

I don’t know why you claim this will “set a precedence for studios to steal likeness without permission” after acknowledging Holme’s family gave permission.

Sure, he himself didn’t, but his family know him and his interests better than random movie critics.

Also, I’m not sure how deepfaking a character into a production is any worse than having someone with a physical likeness impersonate them. It’s not a threat to actors either, as Alvarez notes: it takes multiple more hires to achieve a deepfake than it does to just hire an actor. So it’s not inherently more cost effective. And I don’t imagine big names would either license their AI likeness for cheap, nor will they get litigious if their likeness is used without permission.

[Julian_]

Since this is the seventh Alien movie. you might want to remember that the nicely packaged 'The Force Awakens' was also Episode 7.

[David-qklc]

Cut out Ridleys pathetic influence the black spunk sequel crap, the pathetic plastic robot, the freak new born 😂😅😅, fan service one liners 🙄, chest bursting within 2 mins, Kane took 2 days 😂. For me, this movie was piss poor Looked amazing, but so many problems. I feel sorry for the director because this had an old man RS, whose work of late has been bullshit! paw prints all over it.

[TheGreatGodPan]

I actually think it would have been a lot better if they'd replicated the dummy from the first Alien film and used some motionless Ian Holm lookalike with his voice likeness. At least then it would be consistent, it would look more convincing than uncanny valley CGI and, given that the film references Alien Isolation anyway it could be a different sort of unnerving much like the rubbery, static faces of the "working Joe" androids. It was a nice idea that could have been handled in a more inventive way than the usual Disney method.

[doylebraeu]

I like the world building when it’s like moody, dark Blade Runner… but I don’t want Alien: Earth to be too much like Disney Star Wars

[dorkknight]

1 thing? this movie was so mid (atmosphere and effects aside) yet i see people praising it and the ACTING. yes the android was great, but they are praising the bland 1 emotion having companion lady. SHE WAS AWFUL

[clutch]

I'm surprised they didn't change it to get away from her you bastard. Lol!

[StoicFlame]

imagine if they recovered ash's head after 3 nuclear explosions

[thechosenones]

The scientists who went and found the alien, did so on purpose, and still all died. They had the tools to study or destroy it, and still all died.
Those kids were straight up ambushed by lifeforms they know nothing about, and 2 of them still survived, within a smaller window than the Marines.
You make the movie better by having zero survivors and letting that ship ultimately crash and be destroyed.

[co]

I'm a huge, long-time fan of the franchise I've come to realize, this wasn't made for me.
I didn't care for most of the cast, but I can get past that, What bothered me most was the beat down of fan service. I was so frustrated by the end of this movie.
From the uncanny valley CGI bringing back a dead actor, the out of character lines that were shoe-horned from previous films, to recycling the climax of Resurrection with the New Born (which I have hated for 26 years)...The constant recycling all pulled me out of this story. I was just depressed by the end of this, with the thought that all we have left is to recycle even the bad ideas.

But again, this wasn't for me, the person that would feel this as an unabashed, unoriginal retread. It was an effort by Fede Alvarez, Ridley Scott, and Disney, using a Gen Z cast, to keep the property and all of the older movies, alive. The original movies...good or bad..were always a way to launch new, innovative film-makers. This was just an attempt to make sure the money printers don't stall.
I would have completely enjoyed simply a well-done, stand-alone movie, that had compelling, well-developed characters, set against the backdrop of the Alien horror aspects. No problem with that. It doesn't have to take the big swings that Prometheus did (which I liked) for long time fans to enjoy, as long as it is well done. I just don't want to feel pandered to.

[lydiaflores]

Ian Holmes wife said he wanted to return to the franchise and would've LOVED To be in this one.. that he had felt like Hollywood or something turned their back on him and only the ALIEN franchise would've brought him back. So she granted permission to kinda fulfil that for him

[neganstains]

Bringing back Lance Henriksen to play Rook would've solved a lot of the issues.

[Hykje]

Tarkin had a point because it couldn't have been any other character and the role was basically re-cast with Guy Henry with a digital mask on his face -Ash was only "Look at this -remember him" and nothing else.

[recetasfaciles]

I wasn't hoping nothing like the originals, but God damn, i couldn't stand how little interest they had in their own story. They had a very interesting idea on the relationships between I.A. and humans, but they just mention it and then go back to the same scenes of always. Killed in mather of seconds two caracthers and then disappear other one to only focus on running and recreating scenes of the previous movies wasn't clever.
A lot of exposition, no mistery. Just a lot of easter eggs.
The ending was another movie completely. It doesn't work as the original or the second. Here it feels like it come from out of nowhere. Also, you csn title your movie alien an not ending with the xenomorph. This was more a zombie mutant from videogames than a creature of this universe.

[TatankaTaylor]

(Looks at the box office numbers, the critic & audience reviews) Fatal flaw is such a hyperbolic assessement. This is objectively the most successful Alien movie since 1986's Alien. Period.

So there's no flaw in the film that will hurt it in any meaningful way. For most critics and audiences, Romulus was a long awaited return to form for the Alien franchise.

Of course, we can nitpick a movie to hell and back. We can do that with ANY movie. I still remember reading how fans of the Lord of the Rings books made similar statements about Peter Jackson's films straying away from the source material in his adaptations. I mean sure, he took many liberties with that. But did it really hurt the films? No.

Romulus is not a perfect film. But its a very good restart for a franchise that had some serious identity crisis during the Prometheus and Covenant phase. Where Ridley Scott at first didn't care if it connected to the previous films. And then when that backfired, with Covenant he tried to shoehorn the Alien mythos back into that storyline. Only to leave fans unhappy by destroying the mystery of the xenomorph.

Romulus is an Alien film 100%. And its success speaks volumes about how its been able to connect with audiences.

[LukeLovesRose]

They stole Ripleys glorious and heroic line. That cheapened the whole movie beyond recovery

[cardcounter]

They could have solved the problem with convincingly better CGI (I'm stunned the Rook CGI was allowed to be released in the state it was)!

[Josh-wexv]

Before you criticise it you should at least know how it was done. It was a full torso animatronic with an actor doing the voice. Yes gci was used on the mouth but from what the FX team said it was to make it more glittery. Could they have got another actor? Sure but it's what they wanted to do. They had full permission from his family and really it's up to them not us.