Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

My apologies. I’m a big Alien fan, so I’m going to blather on about Romulus again. But this is the last time. For now. I have made progress on my targets from last week, will update you later.

The second viewing of A:R. Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers. You have been warned.

My questions were not answered to my satisfaction. Some kinda were, but not definitively. Which is what the first sentence said, but minus nuance, hence the second sentence explaining the first. In a novel I’d edit all of this, but this is a blog, so you get the long-winded.

New questions, and a significant new problem arose for me that made me wonder how much other footage there is as it really feels like something is missing. I’m not going to go into specifics because I don’t want to spend time on it and bore you to tears, (and also I can’t remember every instance exactly) but I would not be surprised if an alternate storyline is on the cutting room floor, and parts of it are poking through into this film: an alternate storyline which would then make some of what we do see and hear from some characters make a little bit more sense.

Why am I being cagey? Because I’m going to get a physical copy if possible, digital if I must, and re-watch this thing very carefully. I am an Alien movie fanboy – never read the comics – so I’ll get and pay attention to exactly what is said and shown at leisure in the future when rewind and freeze frame will be my friend. Then I will either confirm my suspicions, or reveal them as a fever-dream. The exercise will be fun for me, to be honest.

I still really enjoyed the film, the feel of the world is excellent, but I do now think that these props and techniques could have been used to make a better movie than the (and I hate to use this word) pastiche we often got, even if it was exciting and clever at times, and had what I still think are new elements. Rain and Andy remain the excellent heart of the film, and I understand now why she went back for him: he was in reset mode that we saw at the outset of the film when he got attacked on the colony, so she knew she could save him, free him from the company directive (or at least have a chance to), and restore/improve their relationship, which is confirmed when she changes his directive at the end. That was well done, I just missed the visual cue first time around.

Alien 3 broke my heart when I saw it in the cinema on release. I remained angry about it for quite some time. Yes the assembly cut is better, but no-one who isn’t a fan has seen that. And it still kills Hicks and Newt. Resurrection was another disappointment, Ripley as a clone with DNA guided memories of her former self (??), and a proto Firefly crew (courtesy of Joss Whedon) that are interesting but don’t quite gel and all get lost in a eccentrically interesting (looking at you Brad Dourif) but messy film. It had its moments that I enjoy, but even Winona couldn’t save it. AVP was refreshingly straightforward after that, but I wasn’t invested in the comics and book lore, so wasn’t maddened by the way it ignored those. It was a tight quick story with a ridiculous premise, but some cool moments, and I liked the lead, and her relationship with the Predator. I’d have seen another movie with Sanaa Lathan interacting with Aliens and Predators, she kicked ass. The Queen in that film clearly would have lived (given what we now know, and I was never convinced Antarctic waters and a spear through the head were enough) and we’d have alien whales etc. etc. by now. I assume some Predators who received transmissions from the AVP crew did some analysis and came back for her, or earth would have been overrun in a few years. AVP2 was awful. Prometheus was a beautiful badly written disaster, with nothing but mock profundity holding it up. Mystery box Von Daniken hell with a smorgasbord of stupid actions taken by supposedly intelligent characters. I watch it every so often because it is so pretty, and every time am astonished by how spectacularly flawed almost everything aside from the visuals are. I suspect the bones of multiple other films are poking through what we got, due to too many rewrites. The unreleased scenes do not make it any better. Covenant has a similarly pretty start, and then manages to both crap on Prometheus and the wider franchise. It has some moments, but again, the betrayal of Shaw, like Newt and Hicks, is unforgivable. Alien baby miming. Ugh.

So what that long paragraph is saying is I have a history of being disappointed by Alien movies, and by them not just being disappointing or heartbreaking, but also disjointed messes that betray what came before. Maybe I’m deadened to it, but what betrayals there are this time around are outweighed by the positives in action, tension, novel alien moments, world experience, and characters who aren’t complete morons, just desperate young folk out of their depth. This film is more cohesive, and I’m grateful for that. Obviously I think how the young victims got there should be totally different (company manipulation all the way) – the end result would be the same, but framing is very important, and a change to the set up would have made the whole film far more satisfying. That and not linking it to Prometheus. Sorry Prometheus fans. I just can’t with that movie.

So that’s why I don’t have the visceral dislike of this film that I had for 3, or Prometheus. They are still the high water marks of awful in this franchise, for me. The films that followed each of those were both flawed because of what preceded them. The AVP stuff is a side show, the first one a fun (for me) popcorn flick with a lead and some supporting characters that worked (briefly), a few good Alien mash up fights in it, and the best individual xenomorph character in the whole series! (Mister cross-hatch!) The second one is so bad you could choose to watch it once just to see how low the alien franchise can go. You can borrow my copy, because of course I bought one.

Alien: Romulus didn’t break my heart. The world is alive again, the tech looks awesome, the movie making was solid. Andy and Rain have a great connection, and they power the film. The story presented was still exciting second time around, even with my gripes (you know I like griping – how does a farmer (she gets transferred from food production to the mines I think) space virgin know how to put on a space suit? I just can’t help myself, dammit!) because it did not fail in any egregious fashion in the way almost every film since Aliens has. (Rain’s buddies showed her how off-screen as part of space basic safety. Film should have showed or said that.) Yes they should not have used those retread lines, and I caught a couple more beyond the obvious three this time around, yes Ash-Rook looks awful – worse on second view, and yes the implications of using dead folk (even with permission) for film making are bad, but those implications have existed since at least Rogue One, which I’ve never rated by the way. In the end, I came out of the theatre happy both times, which is a rare thing for an Alien related movie in my adult life. Even with the Prometheus references, haha!

So there you have it. The second viewing is done.