Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

The new Alien movie is coming. Alien: Romulus. I have watched the teaser trailer, which was awesome, a few times, and the full trailer once. And one dude reviewing the full trailer, because YouTube keeps you watching.

I was excited after the teaser. The full trailer gives me hope for the best expect the worst vibes.

Why?

Spoilers from here. I remind you, I’ve only watched the full trailer once, in two formats. I decided over-analysis, and overexposure would potentially ruin the film for me. If you read on from here, I might ruin several movies for you, so be warned.

Too much showing off of novelty. There was good body horror grossness, which in a modern Alien movie you have to expect, but new way to view chest burster (with great sound effects), new shot of ovipositor (alien fans know what I’m talking about) twitching around to find its way inside someone, new shot of acid hanging in zero G. Man I wish that had been kept exclusively for the film. I’ve heard other things have been kept back, with their repulsiveness touted as a selling point. Really? Then don’t half tell us! The acid as zero G lace really should have been kept as an oh-mi-god unexpected moment for the film. Knowing of it in advance will just mean it is a check mark when I see it in the film rather than an “oh SHIT!” moment, which it absolutely would have been. That is just bad trailer design. I hope they didn’t just include it because it looked pretty. Which it did.

Ugh.

I loved Alien, yes because it scared the bejesus out of me, but also because the story was intriguing, and I identified with the crew. The more I watch that movie, the more I want Brett and Parker to survive.

***bad fan fic moment, made up on the spur of this moment***

Kane dies same way – too curious for his own good. Lambert dies because she wants to gripe some more and goes after a packet of cigarettes when she should stay with her team. Dallas dies in the air ducts because Brett says “Right” to Parker on an open comm, and it should have been left, so the alien gets him.  

Parker beats the crap out of Ash after Ash kills Ripley with something other than a random rolled up magazine that is not obstructing anyone’s airway (Ash still gets to give his sympathies speech as Parker juices up the flamethrower after Ash has been disabled). Parker and Brett know exactly how much coolant they need, so no problems there. Brett attracts Jonesy to him with his “kitty crap” line and some kibbles because he was always the cat’s favorite. (Why else would the cat come to him with an Alien right there in the original version?) They get to the shuttle having decided to blow the ship after mother tells them they don’t get any more shares just because the rest of the crew are dead, and immediately see the Alien because they maintain the shuttle and know what should be where. After a teasing shot of Brett getting into his suit, Parker flamethrowers the alien to the airlock and Brett opens it and shoots the alien with a modified grapple that has no cable. Because they are mechanics. The alien’s momentum carries it beyond the shuttle, and so no burn is required. They activate a beacon. Parker asks Brett which freezer he wants. “Right.”

***Finis. Movie history right there folks.***

But anyway. The Aliens movie similarly has a story and characters you cared about. Some of the subsequent sequels became about novelty, new ways to die, new aliens, new environments. Pizza boys. OMG.

I don’t want this film to be about novelty. It needs to be about believable characters facing intense adversity, like the first two films. (and my amazing fanfic)

The trailer gives me cause for optimism in the origin of the characters getting off their grubby no hope home world. They are a team of youngsters trying to escape a miserable future. That it very promising. Presumably they are tricked into a disastrous choice. Or something that may be useful for a sequel.

But then the trailer devolves into teens in space dying. A little. One with a London accent that needs to be explained. Nobody ever explained in Star Wars Force Awakens why Kanja club was Scottish, one of many problems with that galaxy far far away flick, for all it made me laugh to hear an accent from my homeland in that universe.

And it becomes clever new ways to die, as previously mentioned. Yeah, that’s cool, but we got that this would be visceral and tense from the teaser, not lake cabin in space. I wish the main trailer had given us more connection between the characters, more of them fighting for, or protecting each other, not just screaming over each other’s faces (though that was a cool silent moment, and homage). The trailer got so much right, I just worry I’m going to go to the theater and see a whole bunch of new stuff and no real/coherent story, which I have now seen in at least four alien sequels. (3, AVP2, Prometheus, Covenant) I still like the original AVP – it was fun, established some relationships and while it didn’t fulfill them as much as it should have done, it at least gave us engagement between lead and doomed Italian, and then lead and doomed predator which for me worked. And that shot where the doomed predator twisted in the air and impaled the alien queen’s skull was supreme. I felt his journey there. AVP2… just no. I own that, to my shame.

I want Alien: Romulus to work. The set design and effects look great. The inventiveness is there in spades and I think almost overexposed. What I want are the basics: a group of characters we know are mostly doomed to die, but who we might care about, and who we see at some point caring about each other. That is incredibly important. Parker flirted with then cared about Lambert. Ripley and Dallas respected each other. Nobody liked Ash. Apone had the total respect of his squad. Drake barely spoke, did a bunch of physical acting/presence, so when he died defending their retreat we knew it was heartbreaking for Vasquez, who killed him by protecting him without a second thought, her instinct to cover her man fatal. What a nightmare to live through. Drake also presaged Ripley’s use of both projectile weapon then flamethrower. I think his death helped raise the stakes when she went down the same road.  Hicks knew to use more than harsh language. Bishop became an innocent daring more than any soldier would.

It might be a lot, but I want some of that from Alien: Romulus. In film you have 5-15 seconds (in separate chunks) to form character impressions. Two of the Alien movies got that right, the rest failed one way or another, with various honorable exceptions. Charles Dance was awesome, his character was done dirty – a great arc cut pointlessly short. In that continuity he should have survived to tell her story, and meet more aliens. He would have been perfect to get into xenobiology… enough.

This is confessions of an alien fanatic, signing off. Until next week, when we will all be somewhere beyond a new interstellar rim. The unfashionable one, of course.