Alien: Romulus (2024)

One thing it might be is an honest-to-god revisiting of the original - an infestation of a ship in deep space and the crew reacting to the horror. No military, no new biology, no origin stories, no conspiracies.

That might be refreshing.
 
Very cool. I am looking forward to this. And the thing is, Romulus is set between the first two films, but it shows elements like the facehugger swarms that are not present in the other stories. Except in the games, but in there, the individuals have been under 10 in numbers and can be easily caught with shotties and flamer. The smartgun absolutely counters them, but we don't see it present in the movies. Only the trusted, classical pulse rifle.
 
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The director says that the story takes place in a space station, with one part being older than the other. So a very cool, but not an unique situation as it has been explored both in the Alien Isolation and Alien Dark Descent. Expect Seegson droids making a big presence, and being ignored by the bugs.
 
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It's set between the first and second movies, but in the second movie it's shown that no one encountered the creatures, which is why no one believes Ripley. In this one, it's implicit that lots of people and organizations know about them.
 
I have read nothing about this film, and will probably enjoy it more if I continue to read nothing, and if I have no prior expectations, however, I did read that it is set between Alien and Aliens.
Swank said:
No military, no new biology, no origin stories, no conspiracies.
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You would think so, but that would be a rather boring film.
ctg said:
Don't count that out, WY is somehow involved in this.
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I would expect that the Romulus Lab is owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. They wanted a Xenomorph. They presumably got one.
Toby Frost said:
Maybe if they went very robot-heavy it might be interesting. I actually find the androids as sinister as the Alien. Otherwise it looks like more of the same.
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Weyland-Yutani also manufacture the androids.
paeng said:
It's set between the first and second movies, but in the second movie it's shown that no one encountered the creatures, which is why no one believes Ripley. In this one, it's implicit that lots of people and organizations know about them.
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But the Weyland-Yutani Corporation knew about the xenomorphs long before the first film, that's why Nostromo was diverted. And space is big. There are colonies with very patchy contact, there are sleeper ships on long voyages. I can accept that the general population is unaware but that para-military corporations could know. There had been contact before the first film - the 'space jockey' alien's ship had encountered them first. The question is why 'once met an alien' Ripley was sent on the mission as an advisor in the second film, if the marines were never going to take her advice. Some think the idea was to deliberately infect the marines, but there was no guarantee that they would return infected with the xenomorph. That seems too complicated to me. And if WY already had a xenomorph in Romulus Lab, then they don't need another one.

When add sequels and prequels into a series that was only ever meant to be a single film, you always have these problems with canon (unless it is time travel when you can say that an alternative reality was created.)
 
The only logical conclusion on continuity I can think of is if the Romulus lab is destroyed and nobody survives. That might explain the need for Ripley in Aliens as a subject matter expert and the need to mount the expedition in Aliens in the first place (ie to get more aliens to study).
 
Alien isn't boring because it did have some of those things and back then, they were new. There is a very complex alien life-cycle, an attempt at an origin story with the 'jockey alien' and there is a conspiratorial android. I agree, we don't need any more than that, but if not we just get some recycling. And if @Foxbat is correct and the Romulus lab is destroyed and nobody survives, then we get a reset button at the end of this film which makes it totally pointless. Except that it gives an explanation for the Aliens expedition with Ripley on board.
 
Dave said:
Alien isn't boring because it did have some of those things and back then, they were new. There is a very complex alien life-cycle, an attempt at an origin story with the 'jockey alien' and there is a conspiratorial android. I agree, we don't need any more than that, but if not we just get some recycling. And if @Foxbat is correct and the Romulus lab is destroyed and nobody survives, then we get a reset button at the end of this film which makes it totally pointless. Except that it gives an explanation for the Aliens expedition with Ripley on board.
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But all that stuff I listed has already been done to death, so it is odd for someone to say that the only way of making a new and original film in the series is to recycle that stuff.


The aliens themselves have never been really revealed in terms of their actual intelligence and deeper motivations aside from reproduction. That's just an example of the kind of new territory a lab film could venture into. Or camouflage that makes it possible to hide among them, etc
 
Dave said:
I would expect that the Romulus Lab is owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. They wanted a Xenomorph. They presumably got one.
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Look at the door closely, and you'll see the WY symbol in the middle of it. So, of course they have one, but it is to be seen if they'll bring the special coffins seen in the Alien: Dark Descent into the film. It would make sense to them to show that the facehugger swarms were done by the corporation, as the same game shows the special WY facehugger containers as well.
 
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Swank said:
it is odd for someone to say that the only way of making a new and original film in the series is to recycle that stuff.
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Who said that? Not me, I said the exact opposite. But I don't think that they can make a new and original film, you have some good ideas there, but I doubt we'll see them.
 
Dave said:
Who said that? Not me, I said the exact opposite. But I don't think that they can make a new and original film, you have some good ideas there, but I doubt we'll see them.
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I thought you said that not including the items I listed would make for a boring film. My mistake.
 
Swank said:
The aliens themselves have never been really revealed in terms of their actual intelligence and deeper motivations aside from reproduction.
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True.

I’ve often wondered why they kill. Perhaps it’s for sustenance but we never see a xenomorph actually eating a human. It can’t be for reproduction because humans are kept alive to host the offspring. Even the shark - one of our most misunderstood earth creatures - might look like something evil but kills for a very specific reason. The alien reason is unclear at best and, at worst, has simply been disregarded by lazy scriptwriters.

Another area that confuses me is their origin. It looks as if, in Prometheus, they accidentally evolve from some kind of microscopic life form that comes in contact with the Engineers’ fluid. Contrary to this, I’m left with the feeling that they were developed purely as a weapon (which would explain the Weyland Yutani interest).

And where does Covenant fit into all of this?

I suppose this confusion is the problem with extending, what was meant to be a single movie, into a multi-movie franchise.
 
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