TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 10: ALIEN: ROMULUS (2024)

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

You wake in a bleak new mining colony and what they're mining is the remnants of the Alien franchise. We discuss the new Alien franchise film, ALIEN: ROMULUS, getting into what we enjoyed, what we didn't enjoy, and how the film struggles to situate itself within the franchise's recurrent Scott-Cameron dichotomy.Content warning: body horror, death, sexual violence and rape, biological experimentation, colonialism, slavery, pregnancy.Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: ⁠https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remix⁠Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/94FHVXNC

Get away from her, you bitch away from her, you bitch! Hello, and welcome back to the Xenapod, a podcast where we're watching all the alien franchise films in order, contextualizing them, and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. Hello. So we're back. We've emerged out of our stasis pods.

because we've been awoken by the arrival of a new alien film. Alien Romulus, which is fresh out just this past week. Did we have a title for this film when we did the last episode? Because I think we knew it was coming, but I can't remember. I can't remember. I think we did. I think we might have just had the title, not like a trailer or anything. If we mentioned filming and then this Noah Hawley series, which is supposedly in the pipeline, but I'm not sure we got the title of Alien Romulus show.

No, maybe not. But I have given a title to Alien Earth, the Hawley series. But we're not here to discuss that today, and my possible problems with it. We're here to discuss Alien Rambulus, and my definite problems with it. You're definite problems. Yeah. So, this, I think this episode will be a little different because this film just came out. You know, this is, we've only seen it, I've only seen it once.

You've only seen it once? Yeah. We've only seen it once. And so we don't have a kind of detailed. structure to run through the narrative like we did on previous episodes. So I'm going to give some basic facts about the film. We're going to talk a little about how it came about. And then I think we'll just have a kind of, I'll give the brief plot outline,

but we'll just go through a discussion of the film and what worked about it and what didn't work about it. So this is Alien Romulus. This was released. The LA premiere was the 12th of August, and the UK premiere was 15th. of August at Edinburgh International Film Festival, which I believe you're familiar with. Yeah, no, I'm very familiar at the festival. I think the grand eye, and I think I said this on one year after I've moved away from Edinburgh, pretty much on a permanent basis, having done an entire

series of podcasts about the alien films. Yeah, let's premiere the latest alien film, Edraside, you mother-frey. They were just waiting, waiting and watching. Yeah, exactly. And the film went on wide release 16th of August, which as a recording is just a few days ago. The budget was $80 million and we don't know what it's taken in yet because it's still in cinemas.

But the first weekend estimates from what I have seen were very good. It seems to have made what they projected it to make in the first weekend and it seems to have done better in China than they expected it to do.

Yeah, I think also anecdotally, so I went to see this on on the Friday but I went to see it on at it's like a 2pm screening or something so not exactly peak time and it was actually surprisingly busy like normally I go to films at that sort of time and it's

you know even if a new film is half dead because I mean it's the middle of the it's the middle of a typical work day so you know that anecdotally I think that probably bodes well for it but you know we'll see yeah yeah and Saturday afternoon for me at one of the big chain cinemas they'd optimistically put it in one of their bigger screens

and it was kind of half full because it was Saturday afternoon. But yes, we've yet to see how kind of well it will do in total box office. But in terms of how this film came about, from what I have read, Fede Alvarez, the Uruguayan director, of, what is it, Evil Dead, and Don't Breathe,

and the girl with the spider's web? One of the extensions of the Millennium trilogy. He got in touch with Ridley Scott and he pitched this idea, which he hasn't said what he pitched, but I assume it's pretty close to this. From what I've read, it seems to be based around the idea of artificial intelligence and the kind of synthetics and this character of Andy, who will discuss. I think that's a fair bet with Ridley Scott, because we know he loves the synthetic stuff

from the Prometheus and Covenant. Basically, at some point, Ridley Scott got in touch with him, called him out of the blue, and said, that pitch you sent in, how would you like to develop it? Which he went on to do. So Ridley Scott is a producer. James Cameron served as a kind of uncredited consultant, but they ran everything past James Cameron. Scott and Cameron was kind of the first people to see the film and give notes.

And I'm sure we'll discuss how it merges alien and aliens, but there's an interesting quote about Cameron and Scott's approaches, which we'll get to. And Fidei Alvarez was also very influenced by Alien Isolation, the video game Alien Isolation, which I am on record as saying is the best sequel to Alien. So he said Alien Isolation was kind of what made me see that Alien could truly be terrifying and done well today. I played a few years after it came out. I was like, fuck, if I could do anything, I would love to do Alien and scare the audience again with that creature and those environments I was playing and realizing how terrifying Alien could be if you take a lot. it back to that tone. That is from a

Slash Film article by Jeremy Maffi and you can kind of see that there's some Easter eggs about alien isolation in the film. I don't think he matches the tone as accurately as he would have liked to have done. But it was

an influence on how he put together the film. I think it's interesting actually talking about the influences on the tone because we'll get into kind of like the quality of the different aspects of the film, right? Because I think I don't want to feel like I'm engaging confirmation bias here but one of the things that we said about all the other alien films

as we went through them is how to a certain extent they reflect the times in which they were made and I think that's also very true of this film and I think in a way that is different to in particular the last two Ridley Scott prequel ones you know I I think this really really does

in some ways, you know, what we're talking about, I mean, it should be self-evident because I looked at this, right, because, you know, the original alien was 1979, right? We're now 45 years removed from the release of that film. And I just, you know, I went back in time, Luton, it's like, you know, there's a longer

gap between alien and this film, which is worth pointing out, I think, based on the timeline, is technically, like, chronologically, it's, you know, the first one after the original alien, kind of in the You know, in the fictional world's timeline, right? There's a longer gap between these two films,

and there was between the original alien and things like, you know, Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and Wizard of Oz, right? You know, that's the scale of time we're talking about here. And I think it does reflect some of the concerns of modern filmmaking, and we'll get into them. I don't want to jump the gun because it pops up in a few different places.

But I think that reverence to the point, of fault, I would say, of what came before it is one of those things, right? And the tone thing, the reason I brought this up at this point is you mentioned kind of like what, you know, trying to recreate that tone. Now, I haven't played alien isolation, so I can't really speak to how well or not Feddy Alvarez's film recreates that tone. But it really struck me in the opening strands of the film, how much it felt to have a little bit more of an alien feel than some of the other recent films. Now, whether it does that well or not, I think, is a secondary concern. Yes. But at the start, it has that same idea. Like, the main characters are introduced over

a meal in their kind of, like, their work setting. You know, there's a lot of set up around kind of like, you know, Whalen Dutani as a company and its impact upon its work. You know, like, and it's a slow build, right? It is a little bit before we get to the point where we would, the cold open where they're salvaging the Nostromo, right? That's the opening choice. Like that, not withstanding. Once you get into the main actual strand of it, it has a similar

kind of feel to it in my view there, right? And as I say, we'll discuss how well it does that. Yeah, that's clearly what it's going for. Yeah, clearly going for that. I don't think it reaches that, but it is clearly going for that before sort of

shifting into a more alien's like tone later on. I've referred to it in my notes as Alien 1.5 in that it's sort of trying or attempting to bridge the gap between the two alien and aliens. But yeah, Alvarez is very clear on kind of he does seem to have a good idea of how these films like you say reflect the time period in which they're made.

So in an interview with the National, which is an Australian paper, with William Malali, he talks about how Alien 3 comes out as kind of bleak and crude because that's the kind of 80s that it was coming out of whereas Alien Resurrection is more comic booky because of the late 90s and because of the influences around it. So Alvarez says he's reacting to an era when Blockbuster's around 80% animation,

everything's CG, the more animated movies than actual films. So he wants to go back and embed it in a kind of production design of alien, of real sets and real physical things. Again, we can talk about how successfully is, but there we go. So I'll give a quick overview of the plot. Worth noting that since this film is still in cinemas, this discussion is going to be full of spoilers. Like, we're not going to hold back.

I think you can review a film without spoilers, but I don't think you can critique a film without spoilers, so we're just going to have a critical discussion. The film, like you said, opens with Wayland-Eutani-Sk, scavenging the Nostromo. They pick out the body of the original alien from alien. We cut to a mining colony where Rain, played by Calais Sperine, is living with her brother, Andy, who is a synthetic. They attempt to, they get in touch with some friends of theirs who say that there's a Wayland-Utani vessel above them that they can use to escape the planet. They go up to the Whalen Dutani Vessel and, you know, it's wrecked, it's been decimated by some kind of alien creature.

They escape facehuggers, they escape xenomorphs aboard the ship. Ultimately, the ship crashes into the rings of the planet. They escape. Yeah, it's sort of fairly standard alien franchise fair, I think it's fair to say. sort of the biggest most effective part of the film for me the part that worked the best is Andy Andy is played by David Johnson who was great in Rye Lane and I think his performance works well for me he is kind of the centre of the film or should be the centre of the film I don't think it's as effective as it could be but he's supposed to be the centre of the film

and he's this kind of android who becomes torn between his commitment to reign his human sister and his directive to the company, to Whalen Duttony. And David Johnson gives this great performance where he's kind of autistic coded. He's kind of joining the summer of autistic coded protagonists along with long legs and I saw the TV glow. And I was just really affected by his performance. Maybe I'm just more sympathetic than most for robots with flat emotionless affect, like Lieutenant Commander Data or Andy or David in the

Prometheus and Covenant films Yeah, I liked Andy coming out of it. It is my main thing I enjoyed. I think that's the strongest performance in the film for me. And I say that's somebody who likes Kaylee Spaney a lot. I thought she was superb in

Priscilla, for instance, right? And I think She's good in Priscilla. It was a fairly low-key performance in Civil War, right? I was going to say, yeah. Yeah. So I'm a fan of hers. I think she's a good actor, right? But I think David Johnson's role as Andy is the most interesting one.

I think he gives the best performance. I'm not convinced the film makes the best use of his abilities, right? And we'll talk about that a little bit more as it goes on. But I would agree that that's the most compelling character for me. Yeah, he actually has a journey. Like he goes from being relatively quite flat, but obviously cares about his sister. he is changed when he takes on the hard drive of another android that they find aboard the station and becomes more, he's more focused, he explicitly says,

is focused on the interests of the company of Whalen Dutani at that point. And then his arc is kind of getting rid of that and discovering that he needs to care for his sister and himself towards the end of the film. But I think he gives a great performance, I think he works well, he is the heart of the film for me, how effectively that ties in with the rest of the film is another question. You see, I mean, that's the thing for me, right? I mean, just to focus on the Andy character for a minute, right? Because I think some of the most interesting things about the film are through him.

And you've said he's the heart of the film. That's the thing for me. I'm not convinced he is the heart of the film, and I think he should have been the heart of the film, right? I think the film is a lot more hinged upon basic And you know, and tell me if I'm beginning to jump the gun here I'm kind of like some of the stuff we'll talk about But I think the film is a lot more focused on basic

And I don't mean basic in the pejorative sense necessarily, right? But basic scares, right? And I think it does them very well. I think it's very competently done, right? and I think we've both made a note of the production design and I think a lot of that plays into how effective that is I think what it's lacking for me is the connection of those basic scares

to a deeper terror or a deeper sense of dread I have in my notes that it was all just a bit flat so for me it was just there's obviously highs and lows in how the film is supposed to be structured but I never really felt the highs I never felt the lows I didn't feel much of anything I didn't feel tension I didn't feel scared

perhaps because I didn't care about any of the characters I think it's competently done I think it's put together with some degree of competence but that a good film does not make you know I needed more I needed a connection that I never got Yeah, it's that overarching sense of something, right? Which I think is missing, right? And, you know, Alien, I think, and I think Alien is the film in the franchise.

It most closely resembles, right? We've already spoken about the fact that it tries to kind of, or it ends up marrying the tone of alien and aliens. I think probably better than any other film in the series, but I think that's possibly because it's the only one that really tries to do it. to be honest what alien hood that this doesn't is that it's just that sense of unease through the whole thing

yeah right now maybe part of that is because you know but even then it doesn't really work for us watching it like them 40 odd years later like you don't really know what's coming in alien right you know like the strongest part of these films overall

across all of them right kind of remains the creature designs right and that you know that obviously this film weens into that and I think that's where it more closely resembles the first two films that were made but what's lacking

the alien HUD is that kind of like that just that sense of dread and tension and I think it it doesn't maintain that between kind of set pieces let's say I think it doesn't have that those same sort of like

character dynamics that intrigue in aliens I don't think it has the same nihilistic sense maybe the Alien 3 HUD it doesn't have the same flair as Alien Resurrection. Now, Alien Resurrection, as we discussed at the time, is not a film I particularly like, but it did have some arresting imagery. But at least it's doing its own thing, and it knows it wants to do something original,

and it wants to say something about this world that is different. I don't like it, but at least it is doing something original. We're in a franchise context where originality is bound by, know, the strictures of the franchise model, but at least he's doing something interesting. This all felt like it wasn't doing something interesting. Yeah, and that's, that's, and we'll get into this a little bit later on in the episode. No one is it not doing anything interesting. I'd actually say it actively eschews doing anything interesting at point. But, like, to go back to the Alien Resurrection example,

like you're not going to get Brad Doerf's performance from Alien Resurrection in this film, right? For better or worse, right? And you're not going to get that image of kind of like Ripley sinking into the alien you're not going to get those in this film now for some people that will be a better thing right and I think and I think you know

I think towards the end of the episode we'll probably talk about where this is going to slot into those rankings we did on the last episode previously right but for I think it's maybe a it's maybe a better inverted commas air quotes

film than alien resurrection is it's definitely a less distinctive one I think it's a less interesting one. Yeah. You know, so there is that, that to it. It's a very well-made film. I think it does moments of horror very well. I think it does, some set pieces anyway, I think it does quite well.

I just, I don't think it really does a huge amount with them, right? Well, while we're on this kind of discussion of originality, I think it's a good time to talk about the nostalgia of this film and the kind of what I'll call nostalgia bait of this film because I think I certainly think the filmmakers are aware of this the subtext of this young group of people going to an old abandoned wreckage in space and stripping it for parts is not lost on me

there, there's some clear subtext there about what they're doing with the franchise and how they're picking up this old crusty franchise us. But I think they're stripping it for parts in a way that makes all the parts very, very visible and deliberately so it would seem. It's an unsubtle film generally, but particularly in incorporating those nostalgic elements. So, first scene that introduces us to Rain and Andy, there's a little drinking bird in the background, like appeared in the background of Alien. They mentioned the colonial marines very prominently and echo the shot.

are they from aliens of is it Hicks teaching Ripley how to use the pulse rifle and there's a an absolutely cringe moment where Andy jumps down an elevator shaft falls on a xenomorph shoots it in the head and says

get away from her you bitch and there is an odd pause you know the way I've done it there as if they're waiting for the audience to stop applauding yeah it is a real sort of say the line Exactly.

There's others, you know. At one point, one of the characters is playing a little game and the game goes Game Over Man. And again, that's Bill Paxton from aliens. It's just also in your face about the nostalgia. And that's without even getting into the entire structure of the final bit of the film, where it just copies Alien straight off.

You know, Rain gets into a space suit and has to deal with one final monster after she thought she was safe and they eject it out of the state of base ship and now we've been safe blah blah blah this is also an element of me saying you know the the film reflects the times in which it's made because this is a huge thing in mainstream cinema at the moment right so to give you that right for various different house move and patenting reasons i hadn't been to the cinema in quite some time before i went to see this but because i'd finally made the time i I saw two films this day, right, the day I saw

Alien Romulus, and the one before, it was Deadpool and Wolverine. I'm not going to go into that, because obviously, they're completely different films, but, like, that same thing of kind of, like, you know, exuming, you know, exhuming the carcass of 20th century Fox films. Yeah. And pouring over them in detail and having nostalgia for things. Like, it was right there in the film that I saw mere, you know, hours before this one. And it's just a case of, I don't know,

don't, I don't get why film, I don't get why people lap this up so much, and I don't get why films keep doing it. The, the one that really stands out to me, because things like the drinking bird and, you know, game war man on the screen, like, yeah, like, they kind of make me roll my eyes a bit, but they don't really, you know, how much they impact the film, I don't know. But the one that I'm going to focus on briefly is when Andy says, get away from her, you bitch, right? Doesn't it even make sense in the context of the film? Yeah, right, that's

the thing. It doesn't make sense in the context of the film, and if anything, it really is just one of these ridiculous Easter eggs, so the people go, oh, oh, that's the line from aliens, because in my view, it kind of, like,

can we take a step back and think about, why did that line become memorable? Why did that line become memorable? It's because, there's so much wrapped up in that because you've got, basically it's a fight between Ripley who's become this like surrogate mother figure

to Newt the, you know, her in that statement, right? And the alien queen, right? It's this kind of like weird battle between mother figures, right? Trying to protect their offspring. Exemplifying

the themes of motherhood and femininity in that film and the different expressions of femininity that that film portrays. and, you know, crucially in text, the Queen is a female. Yes, exactly, right? And it's just, the point is the reason that line becomes memorable is not because it's just her seeing a badass line. It's how to build up to it.

That's why it is. It's like, you know, she's been, you know, and then it's found, like, you know, like hitting her adversary straight on. It's like, it's had a buildup. That's why that line became memorable, right? here it's just a throwaway piece of nonsense. You don't even know

if the thing he killed was female. Why would he call it? It's another one of these things which I spoke about on a previous edition of the pod where it's kind of, I understood the reference. It's the, you know, the delivery and the framing of the blowfelt

revelation from Spector in the Bond films. It is you know, it's Benedict Cumberbatch lingering on the name Cannes in Star Trek and Emmett. Those are the genesis. Those are the genesis points in my head for this sort of thing like it started happening like a decade ago and it's still happening and you know there are a lot of things that are done well in this film to comment with and I'm sure we'll get into them right but there are a bunch of things it doesn't do well and

this is a very minor example of one of them right but it just kind of encapsulates that one moment encapsulates for me what this film is doing wrong in quite a lot of places yeah so I saw an Ursula K. Le Guin quote this morning. The person quoting it is actually talking about Deadpool and Wolverine. But I think it also applies to this. So Le Guin says, Commodified fantasy takes no risks. It invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes.

The passionately conceived ideas of the great storytellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken junk, replaceable, interchangeable. And I think that applies to this. It's commodifying elements of this franchise and turning them into, you know, the stock moments, like you say, people will recognize and say, I know that. I get that reference and will clap to see. And it's just too in for all to those. Like, I think you can make something which acknowledges those kinds of things.

I was playing alien isolation just this weekend. and there's little drinking birds in that died in the background, but they are just in the background. They're not structural, they don't force their way into your mind in the way that get away from who you bitch does in this and the other nostalgic elements. And maybe this is a good time to get onto maybe the biggest nostalgic element in the film

is the android that they resurrect on the space station. Yeah, the creepy deep faked elephant in the room. The creepy, deep-faked elephant in the room is the Ian Home likeness that they use for the science officer on board the station, who is called Rook and is the same model as Ash from the alien films. Ian Home is dead, so it couldn't provide a performance for this. So it is a creepy deep fake, you know, CGI version similar to Tarkin in Rogue One or Harold Ramos in one of the new Ghostbusters. that I haven't seen I don't think he had any lines in that one I don't think he had only lines in it

from what I've heard he just appears but anyway Ian Holme appears in this so this was a conversation between really Scott and Fedi Alvarez who had discussed the idea of androids in the film because obviously Scott is obsessed with that and that was core to Feddy's pitch

Alvarez says we came up with the idea with Ridley when we realised that the only actor who had never made a second appearance as an android was Ian Holm, who we both believe is the best in the franchise. I'll just stop and say that that's not true, that there are other androids in the film who haven't occurred, principally Renona Ryder as Call in Alien Resurrection. It's funny that they would forget the only woman to play an android.

But they then contacted... You better watch. You're going to have angry nerds coming at you in the comments, seeing the set in the far future, so how could it be a Rona Ryder when that's completely not the point of couldn't be, but that's not the point. I'm not making a point about canon. I'm just, yeah, yeah, yeah. If I were making a point about... If I were being very persnicketed,

I would also say that I don't think Lance Henrickson comes back as a bishop android. I think in the text of Alien 3, he's clearly meant to be a human version that is overwritten by Alien vs. Predator. The point is, Alvarez contacted the Ian Holm Estate and talked with Ian Holmes' widow.

She felt that Ian was given the cultural, her by Hollywood in the last years of his life. He would have loved to be part of more projects after The Hobbit, but he wasn't. So she were thrilled about the idea of having him back. That's from an Entertainment Weekly, interview with Alvarez. Simon here in the edit, just to note that I've seen this quote about Ian Holmes Widow from Entertainment Weekly go around quite a bit, and it always refers to her as Ian Holmes Widow. Ian Holmes Widow is a person in her own right.

Her name is Sophie de Stemple, and she is an artist. So they, you know, digitally resurrected him. Fortunately, they had a mould, his head mould. According to Cinema Blend, they had his head mould from the Lord of the Rings. So they used that head mould to kind of put it in the computer and recreate him on screen. That's how he comes about. He is, I would say, a major part of the film, because he becomes a major antagonist for kind of the last half of the film, I would say. Yeah.

I think that's an important note here. it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a five-second cameo, like, you know, like the dead-eyed Christopher Reeve in the Flash or something. Yeah, another good example. That's not, that's not what we're talking about here. Like, I wouldn't, it kind of falls maybe just short of a supporting role, I'd say, but, like, you know, it's, it's a major point. He delivers some major expositional points in the film, and the film comes back to that character multiple times. Yes, this is not a fleeting thing. No, he's a villain in the film essentially doing what he did in the first film.

He's looking out for Whalen Dutani company interests. They want to save the xenomorph. They want to save the Prometheus virus, which comes back in the kind of latter half of the film, and he wants these people to do it for him. So he's helping them to the extent that they can get all these biological materials onto their ship and back to Whelan Uthani. So the kind of corporate themes from the first one are there, but kind of writ large in a very unsuttle way. So Ian Holm, you know, this creepy digital corpse of Ian Holm appears in both physical form, as a kind of android severed at the waist, and on screens.

He's on kind of grainy screens later on. And at all points, this doesn't look good. Yeah. I think it's the other, you know, I mean... There's no shot where it looks good. It looks worse when he's kind of in person. and not on the grainy screens, because the grain takes something away from it, but it all still looks fake. Like it doesn't look good.

Yeah, it is a little, even when he's coming through the retrofuture screens, it's still, he still looks very dead behind the eyes. And I find it remarkable this is the route to go, because the obvious thing that comes up with this is Tarkin and Rogue One, right? I think that was the first really high profile example of this. So simpler things that kind of happened before, right? You know, but I think that was the first one where it formed part of film. I have to be honest, I still find myself in two minds about Tarkin and Rogue One. I think it was actually quite well done. I actually think it still is a lot better than the things that have been done.

Yeah, I think that's the best one to have come out of it. And maybe it's because they had, it was based on an actor who looked quite a bit like Peter Cushing. I forget the actor's name, but they had a young, moderately young actor who looks a bit like Peter Cushing. He's been in other things. I can't remember his name, but I know his face. Guy Henry. Thank you. Guy Henry, who provides the kind of physical movement on which they kind of map the the Cushing face, I suppose. And I still think that's the high watermark. I quite like the Tarkin in Rogue One. I didn't have the problems that some people had with it. And that is just

a cameo. Yeah, I take people's points with that. But I mean, I think I said, I might have said before, I saw that film in the cinema with somebody who didn't know really who Cushing was, like, you know, they weren't really, you know, they hadn't seen a lot of films of his time and they weren't a, you know, Star Wars Superfan. They didn't actually realize it was CGI.

As soon as I said it, they went, oh, yeah, okay, but like, it obviously hadn't bothered during the film, but it's one of the production of that film would have been nearly 10 years ago now, like, it's remarkable like, it's remarkable that hasn't come on fire, and the thing is you can't do better than that now, because I've actually seen

funnily, I've seen videos of kind of like people deep faking Peter Cushing upon the CGI Peele Cushing, right? And because there's such a close match, it actually comes out quite well. Now, you can talk about the ethics of that, right? And I think the route that this sort of thing takes to screen plays

a part in the ethics of it, right? And I think in the case of this one, Feddy Alvarez, had consulted Ian Holmes' family, so from an ethical standpoint, I'm not going to go too deep into that, right? There's a lot of things original like the AI, you know, mimicking of dead actors where I think I have a lot of ethical

concerns with it, there may be less so here, so I don't think necessarily that's a way to, the way to kind of like critique and analyze it. No, I'll say, you know, I don't think going to the family and asking them for permission makes it right. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's right. It certainly doesn't make it better in any way. Yeah, not particularly well. I mean, I think that's the other thing here. Yeah, you know, this leads. covers you for, you know, using someone's likeness on film. I don't think that makes it ethically right. But... Yeah, and that's the thing. I think it's legally fine here. I personally found this. As somebody who I think is maybe less reactionary to this sort of thing than

a lot of people, I found it grotesque, to be honest. I honestly found it grotesque, because there is absolutely... And admittedly, you could level this at the Tark and Rogue One example as well, I think, but I think it's more the case here. There is absolutely no reason beyond engaging in empty nostalgia for this to have

the likeness of Ian Holm. And frankly, even Feddy Alvarez inadvertently admits this in that entertainment weekly interview, right? The quote that I pulled out of it was it was, right, where are we? Talking with Ridley, both of us came up this idea,

what if it has the likeness of Ian home? which is different from being Ian Holm or even being Ash. We would never have dared to reproduce that because you cannot reproduce with any technology the talent of an actor. You can never capture the nuance of someone's performance and their choices. And this is the crucial bit for me, this last bit. So we designed a different character, but it shares the same likeness. With respect, I really think that last sentence is completely intellectually dishonest.

Completely intellectually dishonest. if you want to design a different character but it shares the same likeness, right, you are trying to ape that performance, I'm sorry, because you could have, you could design a different character that embodies the same thing that Ash did, you know, which is the kind of like, you know, the rejection of your co-workers and the advancement of the corporate objectives above all else, right? And to a certain extent they do that with Andy, right, when he has the module from the rook. character in his head and it conflicts with his directive from before. There are other ways to do this, but they chose the way which allowed them to engage in, oh my God, that's Ian Holm. When it's not Ian Holm. Yeah. It's not. You know, so I personally, to me, I don't want to go too on it because I can't get inside Feddy Alvarez's head, but I find that quote incredibly intellectually dishonest because you had so many different ways to do that. Well, we talked a bit about this before we started recording, because we both had the same idea,

is that Rook should have just been another Andy. If he had been played by, what's his name, Daniel Johnson, played by the Andy actor, and it was just an older version of Andy or a version of Andy who has worked for Rail and Dutani for longer and who clearly has different programming, that would have brought out the themes around Andy's character so much better. He would have become in conflict with kind of himself, his kind of deep programming, and his found family in the shape of reign, of Kayla Spaney's character, in a much more literal way, in a way that is more emotionally resonant. And, crucially, as you've put it in the notes, resonates with the title of the film. Because the title of the film is Romulus, Romulus and Remus, it clearly would have played with those ideas of twins.

of having, you know, a kind of, for lack of a better term, evil twin, and it just would have worked so much better. It would have given the actor more opportunity to play with different ways of playing this character, and like I say, would have been more resonant, and wouldn't have involved digitally resurrecting someone who is dead. Yeah, and I think, you know, I mean, so at the time we record this, I'm kind of in the middle of doing a written review of this, right? And as you say, I'll probably try to avoid spoilers in that. So

I'm not, and one of the things I don't like to do in reviews is criticise a film for not doing something I think it should have done, right? So I'm probably unlikely to mention that in the review. That's fine. We can do it here. We can say what we like it. But I think the point we're making with this

here is that's one way it could have gone, right? So I'm not going to criticize it in essay for not doing that. What I will criticize it for is not developing the ideas that led us to both kind of come up with that, with that particular ang yeah. Another thing I like about Andy is the kind of subtle subtext, the implication that the first mass-produced androids used for colonization were black. Because I think that's, there's good kind of symbolic resonance around slavery and the use of black bodies in historic actual

colonialism that makes that interesting and resonant. And I feel like using, another version of the actor, of the black actor, to bring out those discussions and those themes would have been more interesting. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, the one thing I said, that line, which again is not something that's necessarily developed hugely, whether you would develop it that hugely, I don't know,

but there is something about kind of a well-spoken, elder, white Englishman delivering that line to him, which gives it a certain kind of, it gives it a certain potency in terms of, of like it seeming disingenuous, like the phrasing being disingenuous, I don't think it would have in that scenario. Yeah, he says, he says what, and you were the... Well, he says our, of our colonial efforts, and it's like, well, who's... You were the backbone of our colonial efforts, yeah.

You know, given that he's also synthetic, so there's interesting angles there that I don't think they say go anywhere, they don't necessarily need to, but it's more a case of, you know, the, the station that they're on, it's in two halves. and Remus, right? And clearly, you know, the basic interpretation of the titles, it takes its title from the name of the part of the station where they spend most of the film in the same way that Covenant was the ship in Alien, Cometheus was the ship in Alien Prometheus. But there are certain things that play into deeper ideas between those titles, right? Prometheus and, you know, stealing fire from the gods and all this sort of thing, being punished and, you know, Covenant and the

idea of kind of like, you know, the contract between creator and being broken. Like, there's stuff there. Now, how well those films developed them, we've already discussed and you can debate, but it's there. Here, I genuinely don't really see anything beyond some nods to it with Andy's conflicting nature, but even then it's embodied within the one individual, and the fact that there's quite a lot of brother-sister relationships in the, kind of the, you know, the core of the group that go to the station. It doesn't really go anywhere. No.

And there's a lot of things that could be developed better in that regard. The one that stands out particularly is the idea of, well, why isn't the Rook character or another model of Andy? And I don't really see why they haven't gone this route because, or something similar to it, because it's not like it's not something to see he hasn't done before. We're just off the back of two films, where the second one had the whole Walter David. thing with Michael Fastbender's characters, you know. Now, maybe that's why they didn't do it, because they didn't want to obviously crib from that, but they saw obviously crib from other

films in other ways that we haven't even mentioned yet. Why not this one? Including Prometheus. Like, it's not like they're ignoring the prequels. Exactly, right? So that one I find a very, a very confusing one. Combined with the fact that if you link into the Romulus title, there are a lot of things that you could link into here very subtly that it doesn't, right? You know, towards the end of the film, so one character is introduced quite early on the film's being pregnant with, you know, Chekhov's fetus, basically, right? We'll come to that again in a minute. Yeah, she's a woman who is sick one time. Yeah, cinema code for this woman is pregnant.

Yeah, and the camera lingers on her stomach while somebody holds it, right? So she's pregnant. you know and like one of the things that one of the kind of the legends around Romney that like you know you've got the rape of the Sabine woman and the abducting of women and this character is one of the ones that is abducted by xenomorphen cocooned at some point right there's there's a lot of things you could have here but it doesn't really and it's just like it kind of speaks to the whole I don't know whenever classical literature is brought into films it's to lend it a sense of being on

austere and having gravitas and I think that's what this film does I don't think it really does anything with that notion Yeah, interestingly I didn't pick this up but I got this from the Xenopedia Wiki

The outpost as a whole is called Renaissance but it's divided into these modules Romulus and Remus I think Alien Renaissance part I didn't pick up No I didn't get that I didn't pick that up in the film

I got the Romulus and Remus part but not you know But I think Alien Renaissance would have been a better title. I think it kind of suggests a kind of cultural flowering coming back to prominence, the way we're resurrecting the franchise. But again,

something that I would have done that the film doesn't do. But I mean the thing you know, as I say, I don't like to criticize films for doing not doing things that I think it should have done. But I think the reason that these criticisms that you and I have at this one are coming up is because

I think the did, and this speaks to my issue with the film. Because Because we haven't really got into it too much. There are a lot of things I like in this film. I think it does a lot of things very well. But I think the key thing that it doesn't do well is the feeling that there's some sort of deeper feeling or meaning underneath all of this, right?

Because alien, yes, it is a horror film in kind of like its most superficial layer. But then once you get into the ideas that we've already discussed on the episode for the episode for the episode for the, that film and that overarching sense of dread and what that dread is about and what it is we're actually horrified by. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on. I think you can say the same thing with aliens, with the, you know, the maternal themes. I think you can say the same thing with alien three, frankly, with kind of like, you know, the very nihilistic ideas there and, you know, the way that Ripley is interacting with the cast. Resurrection, less so,

less so, is there. You know, and then, you know, the alien versus predator films, we would discuss that and mean. That's basically one of the major issues with that. Beyond kind of like the fact that those are also not particularly well-made films, that's a major issue with that. And if anything, Prometheus and Covenant went too far the other way in some regards, right?

And it doesn't always deliver on it being the immediate story in favour of trying to focus on those more philosophical things. I think this film does suffer from that issue. There are plenty of things it does well but linking its ideas

and moments together with something that means more is not there right? Because yeah it because the one thing I will say just to talk about some of the things it does do well in my view

a lot of the set pieces are pretty good right and they are done well what I would say is it definitely engendered some of the same spontaneous reaction that I felt watching alien and aliens the first couple of times right

that like revulsion horror shock, all that sort of thing. And it does that in a way that I... I don't think even necessarily aliens did, to be honest. Certainly not Alien 3 or Resurrection. Basically,

basically what I say is the ones that weren't directed by Ridley Scott, right? Because Prometheus and Covenant do have a couple of those moments. But I think the other sequels do not. So it does that well. But as I've already discussed, it doesn't have that same dread hanging

over it, that same sort of like nihilistic ambivalence to your role in the universe or something. You know, there's not something that you can hang all of that on and have it linger with you after. That's the thing. Yeah,

I think even the prequels, you know, Prometheus lesser, to a lesser extent, but I think certainly Covenant does that very well. I think it ties its action into these kind of grander themes and you come away thinking about something, you come away thinking about what it's trying to say in a way that

this didn't. But yeah, let's, you know, we've been quite negative. Let's compliment sandwich this and talk about what we did like. So, yeah, some of the action set pieces were pretty good. I like the acid blood zero G sequence to, I think this film does interesting things with the acid for blood that previous films haven't done. So there's a real focus on kind of how acidic the blood is you know we don't want to shoot them because we're on the bottom floor of the station and if we shoot them there'll be explosive decompression throughout the station that's interesting so they turn it to zero g and there's floaty blood and whatnot fine that's good uh the first face the other thing being that's that's set that that entire sequence is set up quite well right

because they establish the whole kind of you know the fake gravity cycles on and off and it's not reliable thing quite early on right so so when they turn off you get into that set is you know what's happening, and then it uses it in quite an inventive way. So I agree. That's one of the ones that actually stands out to me, I think. Yes, that works well. I think the first facehugger sequence is good. I'd like the facehuggers generally that they're done in this film,

because you get more of a sense of, you know, the facehugger grabs onto people and you see the, I don't know what you call it, probiscus or whatever, going down the throat, you know, this real visceral kind of implied rape that the first film very much implied, but doesn't really get into seeing, you don't really see it on screen, but here you see the kind of

mouth rape of the facehucker and it's quite full on and in your face, and I like that grittiness. So the facehugger going through the water is quite good. The funny thing is, in terms of the greatest hits of the franchise being played out in here, that

first scene with the facehuggers where they're kind of like in the water and you can't really see them, I'd rather like that, because for a couple of reasons. Like one, it's not, I don't think, a situation which we've seen facehuggers before, right? Because we've had, you know, in reserve, we've had like xenomorphs in the water

in a very kind of like, you know, full-on way. And it actually reminded me in some ways of the scene from the chamber in Prometheus. Yeah. Right? When, you know, the hammer peed and kind of like, you know, the black goo and all that sort of thing. Which is one of the most memorable scenes from Prometheus in something that's

done very well. So I like that. And it's like I say, that moment in and of itself is very well done. Speaking of Prometheus, I was just about to say, I quite like the design of the creature at the end of the film. So towards the end of the film, the pregnant woman injects herself with the virus from Prometheus, the kind of black goo.

The crew of the ship managed to reverse engineer from the xenomorph. So they get the black goo and she injects herself with it. I'm not sure why, but let's go past that. I think I picked up on it is because it's so, in one of the many exposition dumps that, you know, creepy E. and home CGI delivers, it's posited as kind of the cure for all illness effectively. Accelerating human evolution, we can't wait for evolution anymore was the line. I'm not sure. She's basically bleeding out. So I think it's kind of like an act of desperation.

Fine. I'm not sure that character would have known that, given where she was at the time. but yeah, they show this rat being squished and then the rat comes back to life from the alien goo. So she injects herself with the alien goo. I think it's implied that her fetus that she's carrying is overtaken by the goo

and she birthed it in a kind of very visceral sequence that worked quite well and it becomes this kind of half-engineer, half-zenomorph creature, the engineers from Prometheus that is called in the credits off-spris So this offspring is kind of

It sort of plays the same role as the newborn in Alien Resurrection where it's this kind of new creature gangling around Which is the way this film harks back to resurrection And I quite like the design of the offspring The Offspring is played by a Romanian basketball player called Robert Brovarski

And he's this tall, gangly kind of half engineer, half xenomorph I don't know how scientifically that comes about from a human fetus but I don't really care. It looked pretty good I think the whole sequence where Kaylee Spenny is fighting it is derivative and we've already talked about it being derivative

of the end of alien, but I quite like the design. Yeah and I think the offspring thing actually kind of worked for me right? I've seen a few things where it's kind of like oh you know it's just the same as resurrection because it even dies in a similar way to it does in resurrection right, you know, in terms of like That's true, she has some acid and she puts it on the floor.

Yeah, so, like, yes, the structure of the last set piece, like, you've pointed out it has the same as the other with her creeping into the, the space suit and all the rest of it, but also it kind of like apes alien resurrection, that respect, but that being kind of like the logical end point in the film actually

kind of worked a bit better for me, because the whole lead into this is kind of like, you know, it's the perfect organism, because that's another bit that's cribbed from alien, putting to you hones my out the whole perfect organism thing and you know a point is made about humans not being designed for space travel and colonising you know you know exploiting for want of a better word other worlds so the idea is we can't wait for evolution anymore so we've taken this uh this and synthesize it and refined it to you know help us you know become that that's where it linked

into me, right? This idea is that this corporate goal and this desire to literally alter ourselves in the pursuit of Whelan Jutani's goals births this horrible

creature which is reminiscent of a human but it is in all ways more immoral more animalistic, more horrifying and just in its desire to consume and destroy. basically, right?

That's the one... And the funny, so the funny thing is, I've seen a lot talking together, like, they didn't like this part of the film, it felt like attacked on Andy, what's this all about? That, to me, is the only part of the film

which really potentially links in with a bigger idea, right? This, you know, because, like, you've got the thing going on with Andy where kind of, like, his more human instincts and his humanity is corrupted quite literally, in this case,

like, you know, through the introduction of a corporate imperative. This to me was the only thing that merged that with the body horror aspect of certain things that worked better in the film. It doesn't really go, and you get a chance to go anywhere, but it's the only part of it to me that actually in any way really kind of like start to link that together.

So I find it interesting that that's the part that a lot of people I'm seeing popping up on I don't seem to like. Interesting. I like the design of it, but I also kind of like the idea behind it a little bit more than some of the other things. Well, I think that's a pacing problem more than anything. It does feel like the film ends and then carries on for a little bit. So I think that's a script problem,

rather than a kind of potentially not liking the design or the themes of it. The themes which are very good. I didn't pick up on any of those, but I can totally see your point about how they work. Because I think that would marry the kind of anti-capitalist, anti-Waelan Dutani spin that is put on Andy throughout the film. So Andy, if I can go back for a moment to kind of Andy and his arc, there's one scene that didn't work for me

in terms of him becoming more of a Whalen Dutani android where he's supposed to be depicted as monstrous. Like one of the scenes where everyone reacts as if he's a monster at this point is when he won't open the door for this pregnant woman. He won't open the door because there's a xenomorph on the other side. and so he kind of allows her to be sacrificed. Like it seems to be waiting for them to do precisely that. So that scene didn't work for me because it doesn't show him as monstrous.

He is correct. He is absolutely correct in not opening the door to a xenomorph because they would all die. Or it's not so much he's monstrous, it's the trolley problem. Yeah. You know, which is constantly put up as kind of like a classic moral dilemma. but yet here it's presented as if... Which is literally presented... It's a simple choice, right?

And it's not. That's the thing. Which is literally presented earlier in the film when another character is revealed not to like synthetics because one of the synthetics closed free people, including his parents, into a mine to save 20 people. That's just the trolley problem, like straight up. Those are the kinds of...

This is the kind of discussion of AI that the film is kind of pedaling in. But it didn't work for me to present Andy as monstrous because that is the rational decision and so it was interesting to me to compare that with how Ripley is portrayed in Alien where Ripley is the one who wants to enforce strict quarantine procedures and in that film she is positioned as a hero

for trying to do that for trying to make the rational tough decision to allow other people to survive here in 2024 making that tough decision and making a sacrifice to save other people is seen as a monstrous thing to do.

I don't particularly have a wider point about this. I just think it's interesting and I think there is something deeper there if you chose to read into it a bit more. Yeah, I mean I think the point you made there though, it kind of, like to circle back to what we were talking about, the start, right?

And when Andy has to deliver to get away from her you bitch line, it kind of, it represents to me a misunderstanding of why that some things in the other films worked, right? It's that thing, it's not

at the same time as it's cribbing from all the other films, which I'm not necessarily, you know, and I spoke about kind of like my noines about kind of like, you know, these nostalgia, you know, the nostalgia Easter eggification of mainstream cinema and all that, but you know, I mean, this is like

the umpty thrumpty sequel to this film, right? I think to expect it to not call back to the other films is is unrealistic right but it's all about how it does that and this is an example of where it's calling back to

iconic moments in those films and using them in an unearned fashion rather than trying to build to something or kind of honour the films in a different way and this is a good thing that what you've brought up there is a good example of how that consideration is clearly not there because it's a contradiction

right it's a contradiction of some sort of like central character can see it's. And so to me, like it's a very subtle thing and it's easy to miss. I mean, certainly it's not something I picked up on when I watched it the first time, but now that you mention it, it's one of the, it's another little example

of how it's not capturing the spirit of the other films. It's not capturing what worked about it or it's not creating its own idea in a way that is in any way consistent. Yes. Well, I think we were talking. about things we liked about this film

so is there anything else that you liked yeah yeah I do let's yeah let's say this yeah let's talk about the things that we liked and we end up circle about it I thought I do think I did like the production design of the film I do like you I like

about it a little up front yeah I like the production design I like how they tried to ape the design of the original alien and the kind of interfaces you know the computer interfaces or all that kind of 80s, 70s vibe. Yeah, I think on the production

design aspect of it, and like I'm not one of these people who, you know, said like, I prefer practical effects are for CGI, everything too reliant on CGI. But what, you know, so, because like, there's plenty of bits of this film. Like, you know, obviously there's like, you know, there's so many effects shots, right?

They're all over the place. But what I will say is I think this film uses computer, well, CGI, right? And computer based VFX quite intelligently. I don't remember any particular point, apart from Ian Holm, right? And as I say, that's the creepy, deep, faked elephant in the room whenever you talk about this with this film. If you put him to one side, I think in general, outside of that, it makes

very effective use of visual effects, right? There were never any effects that really took me out of the film. I think there's quite a lot of animatronics here. Obviously, it's going to be augmented by CGI. It's a modern film, there's a lot of effect shots but I think this does a particularly good job of marrying it with slightly more tangible

onset aspects right? You know, like the facehuggers are a good point. I think a lot of them are obviously practical. A lot of them are clearly CGI, particularly when they're skittering across the floor at high speed but I think it marries those two elements really very well.

Same for the xenomorphs themselves you know, spoke about the offspring, I think it does all that really pretty well. If anything, that's actually why, you know, again, not to spin off into things I disliked about the film, but I think that's what actually makes the Ian Holm thing so frustrating for me,

frankly, right? Because I think it does everything else in that area really well. I think it does it, you know, it doesn't have that same fake feeling to it that, you know, a lot of modern films do, and I think some other films in this franchise have Hudd at times.

So that aspect of I liked really well I think it feels, if you think about it kind of like the colony at the start, right? And what's it called? Jackson's Star right? I think it does a really good job because it kind of evokes that same sort of feeling and impression that I think Hadley's Hope did in aliens

and even the Nostromo did in alien, frankly, but it's a different setting, right? You know, it's a colony. It's a populated one. There's people everywhere there's activity, you know, but it feels, to me, it felt, it felt, you know, of the same sort of, like, world as those two things in the alien and aliens. So I think in that respect, it does very well. So it makes the Ian Holm thing particularly, particularly frustrating. But that's why, in the first, in the first, like, the opening scenes of the film, I was

feeling pretty optimistic about it, because I'm like, oh, okay, you know, like, maybe this is going to get it. I don't think it necessarily did in the end, but I think that shouldn't shy away from commanding the film on that aspect of it. I think in that respect is a very well-made film. No, in terms of the colony, the kind of mining

colony where they live, where it's all grim, Wayland-Jutani, keeps them essentially as exploited labour and there's no daylight. That was a seed from aliens that Alvarez has talked about in an interview with Yahoo News. He's talking about

looking at these kids in the colony in the original aliens and asking what would it be like for those kids to grow up in a colony that still needs another 50 years to terraform so he was very much thinking about what happens to kids in a colony when they reach their early 20s you know what do they want out of life how do they escape well and jutani how do they escape this life that has been prescribed for them how they escape the exploitation of their labor that comes out it's not developed particularly in any interesting way but it is there And that kind of brings us back to production design because there's an interview with screen rant

where Fediovarez is talking about moving between these different areas and different production designs. So he's talking about the areas that look like the Nostromo in Alien and areas that look like the colony from aliens. And he's talking about this cross-pollination between alien and aliens because fundamentally he didn't want to choose between the two sort of poles of the franchise, Alien and Aliens. He wanted to cross-pollinate them and make, as we've talked about, a kind of Alien 1.5, which merges the tone of Alien and Aliens. And I think that's clear from the way he talked to Scott and Cameron to get their ideas on the film.

He's trying to bring these two together. He's trying to, I think, kind of centrally, resolve the identity crisis that we talked about throughout the xenopod that we talked about as one of the key driving forces behind the franchise is this contradiction, this identity crisis between the horror of alien and the action of aliens. And we talked, I spoke in the aliens episode about how I can't fault aliens is a good film.

is an exemplary well-made film, but I don't like it for what it does to the franchise, which is transform it into something else and pull it in a different direction than it could have been. And so it's interesting here that Alvarez attempts to fix this crisis by merging the two. I think unsuccessfully, but he is trying to bridge this gap that is clearly there in the franchise. he has a very telling quote for Yahoo News he's talking about talking to James Cameron about the film Alvarez says he's now seen the movie and loved it

it's fascinating because Cameron and Scott's notes and comments are completely different they were all super smart comments notes and thoughts on the film and the filmmaking etc but both of them have completely different approaches and I think he's absolutely hit the nail on the head there in that Cameron and Scott had completely different approaches to the films. And that is what has driven this crisis of the franchise, veering between the kind of Cameroonian poles of the Alien versus Predator films

and the Scottyan poles of Alien, Prometheus and Covenant. And Alvarez is trying to bring them together here, and I don't think it works. I don't know that it proves that you can't bring them together. but for me this approach doesn't work you see the funny thing for me is I wonder if it does prove you can't bring them together because yeah I mean this is why I say it

because maybe it does I don't know and it's a case of it kind of speak that I mean there's another there's another Fedi Alvarez quote on this I thought was quite and he was talking about when he I mean I say was pitching alien Romulus but he kind of says in the quote he wasn't

pitching alien Romulus right you kind of like stumbled into it and kind of said oh, I hope the film does X, Y, and Z when he was learning about, you know... Yeah, I think he was a fan of the franchise talking to Ridley Scott and kind of giving some ideas. Yeah, and he says, actually, no one was actually asking me to pitch, believe me, it was more that they were intrigued about what I wanted to see as a fan. And that, to me, you know, I don't want people coming at me saying, like, Jim, it's not that deep. but it's a case of that that's a problem right I feel like you should be coming at this with

with an idea of what you want to say right and how you're going to use the iconography of this franchise to say that thing yeah right because if you if you do what you want to see as a fan it could make for a good film I'm not going to say it wouldn't but generally speaking recent examples

and to talk about kind of like the film reflecting the times in which it is made again, recent evidence of that would indicate that does not result in a good film. Right? Or maybe even another way of putting it is it doesn't result in an enduring film.

It may be results in a little bit of a sugar rush enjoyment at time, but it doesn't result in an enduring film. And I think that's the thing I find about Alien Romulus. There was plenty of things I liked about this film in the moment. I think it is one of the ones in this series I will find myself thinking about the least 20 years. Yeah, I thought that just yesterday and how quickly it was fading from my memory.

I only saw this on Saturday, which is a few days ago as we record. And I'm already struggling to remember bits of it. Whereas there were still music cues that I can remember from Alien Covenant, which I really enjoyed when we went back to it. I couldn't tell you anything about the music in Alien Romulus. There's one sting, there's one bit of Prometheus music. Yeah, exactly what I was going to bring up. That's the only bit I remember.

The fact you're talking about musical cues, right? The bit where they mention, you know, where it actually delivers its connection to Prometheus. And that's actually kind of like a fascinating thing about this. The fact that I'll come back to that in a minute. But you're talking about musical cues. That's one of the things. It's like the music from Prometheus is so kind of memorable in its own right that if you've watched Prometheus like even vaguely recently

you recognise that when it happened you get that you get that musical signature when that's being delivered and yeah it's just one of the it's one to say I don't think it particularly works

I think the one thing that's fascinating about it in the franchise as a whole right because obviously part of what we're doing here is trying to kind of you know connect the dots between it I do find it fascinating that in a film which is called Alien Rom you know because one of the things that we spoke about it would like the idea of being

Alien Covenant when that came out. It was kind of trying to veer more to back towards the more alien-type toad and the horror aspects of it versus the sort of like slightly more loftier minded sci-five Prometheus. So you would think with the title Alien Romulus, this is doing the same thing. And it is, right? Let's not, let's not beat around the bush here. But same as Alien Covenant. It does make nods to that. And I find it fascinating, I found it fascinating that it did choose to try and connect the original kind of mainline alien films and its sequels through to the prequels

that Scott has been doing, right? Because it didn't need to do that. No, it could have ignored. I mean, so it was maybe actively not wanting to do that. So I find it fascinating they actually did in the end. Yeah, yeah. I still found myself thinking about this when I was playing alien isolation again at the weekend

because that uses the music from alien from the original alien and it's so distinctive and it works so well and I immediately recognize all this music and maybe that's what I maybe this is just what I want maybe I want to be pandered to

in that kind of Scottyan way I want my alien rather than my aliens you know I just want a sequel that fully focuses on the Scott pull that ignores the Cameron pull and that

that has that horror element that really focuses on it and that's alien isolation that's not this film which tries to merge 2 it's not aliens it's certainly not any of the other sequels with the exceptions perhaps of Prometheus and Covenant which go back towards that Scott that's Scott Paul

I think what this film is really what's that and we've discussed it already so I'm not going to go into death but if I think about kind of like what I liked and disliked about the other films where they sit in the franchise and kind of like you know, we did a ranking at the end, right? And if I look at kind of like where I actually ended up putting the films,

I'd argue it's always a balance between the quality of the filmmaking and, like, does it have an idea? Like, is it saying something, right? Or is it trying to say something? And if you look at it, I think the order in which they go in, right, once you take kind of like the objective, you know, to whatever extent you can make it objective, the objective quality of the filmmaking out of it, It kind of goes in kind of the odd of whether they have an idea, right?

It's like, you know, do I think that Alien Resurrection is a objectively better film than Alien versus Predator and kind of like on a technical level and things like that? You know, maybe. Like, yeah, no, maybe. But it has a little bit more of an idea. I don't think either of them are good films. But Alien Resurrection is the more interesting film, right? Is Alien 3 a better made film than Alien Covenant, for instance?

No, I don't think it is, and I think kind of like the production troubles that Alien 3 would speak to that. Do I think Alien 3 is a more interesting film? Yeah, I actually think it is in some respect. Yeah. And then I ended up putting Covenant ahead of Prometheus, and I think the reason for that is because I thought Alien Covenant was a better, made, more coherent film. But I think they both have good ideas, and that's why they both sit ahead of Alien Resurrection, despite the fact that, you know, there are plenty of kind of logical errors in both that would make it kind of difficult to do that. Alien versus Predator and Alien Versus Predator

are both crap films. I don't think either of them are particularly good. Alien versus Predator has some slightly better ideas in it so that's why it sits ahead of alien. So this film I think it will actually end up sitting pretty low in my ranking, but the reason for that is not because of how

well or badly it is made on a technical level, right? I think we've discussed there's a lot of things that it does very well, but it's because it doesn't have anything underlying it that you can really come back to and ruminate over and will link with you. It doesn't do much. You know,

that doesn't mean it's not about anything. This is another thing that I've seen about it. It's like, oh, well, you should say the film's not about anything. You're not engaging with the film. No, I think the film's about plenty. I think it plays with plenty of ideas. I don't think it coherently builds anything around them. Yeah, it's not doing it a particularly powerful way or impactful

way, but it's certainly trying to say stuff. I think in its own unsuttle way, it's trying to say stuff about capitalism. And Whalen Dutani as a embodiment of this corporate mindset. I think it's doing it in a lot less subtle way than alien. I think it's a...

Wayland Dutani is far more in your face evil in this film. You know? That first scene where she, Reyn goes to the Raylan Dutani rap and says, I've done my hours. I need to... I should be able to leave this planet now.

And they say, no, the owls have just doubled. That's just... I'd rather it being some corporate... It's literally doubled on the computer screen. It's gone to 24,000 hours or whatever to earn your transport off the planet. That's a very unsuttle way of showing this kind of corporate evil in a way that the original was a lot more subtle. But it's an unsubtle film.

So I'm almost not holding that against it because it is. It's just an unsubtle film. And I think it gets into this era of unsubtle filmmaking we're in. Like, you know, I haven't seen Deadpool and Wolverine, but it doesn't look particularly subtle. No, I mean, in fairness to that, like, you know, I mean, you know, we're not going to review Deadpool and Wolverine on here. The thing I will say is the tone of that film and the whole fourth thing, like, I think that all that sort of stuff works better with that film. It doesn't mean it's good, but like, you know, what comes to mind is, is Civil War is this other Kelly Spaney film. Alex Garland's Civil War is not a subtle film by any stretch of the imagination.

It's got a red-tied authoritarian president who is taken out, who becomes dictatorial and has to be taken out by the security forces or whatever. But the way that Garland talked about it as if it were a subtle film, as if it's not saying anything political, was what annoyed me about that film more than the actual film. I was like, if you just say this is about Trump, and it's about Trump waging a civil war and having to be forcibly removed from office

and fucking shot in the Oval Office. Fine. That's fine. This looks back to my point about intellectually dishonest. Intellectually dishonest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's... It's to save the ferry average. Oh, well, we didn't want to use Ian Hohn's or we're using Ian Hohn's likeness, but it's not the same characters. It's like, give me a break.

No, you're not. You know, you're bowing to... corporate whims, I'm sure Disney wanted, you know, some deep fake in the film to fix it as this kind of legacy sequel. I'm sure the marketing people for Civil War don't want you to say it's about Trump getting shot in the Oval Office. But that's what these films are about. That's what these films are. They're not subtle and, you know, don't insult my intelligence by pretending they are. I think my problem the thing about kind of like

the objective quality of the film making versus the ideas behind it I think my issue with this film which I'd say it has a lot of things I like right it just doesn't feel like it marries the two you know like I think all the other ones they do to an extent right

it's kind of like you know something the way in which the story is told kind of links with the ideas that are there I don't think it does here You know, like it does have ideas. Like we've said the thing about kind of like capital's exploitation, you know, corporations and the pursuit of capital perverting humanity and humane instincts, the, you know, the way in which, you know, the way in which we can talk to the whole, the human spirit and the pursuit of capital, right? You know, like there is stuff there, but it's not strung together in a way where the idea builds with the story. or it calls back to it during the story it's all it's the same as the film it's in moments right you have the moment where her contract is extended you have the moment where the offspring is birthed you have the moment where this happens and the moment where that happens you have the moment where the synthetic prejudice of one character is like these things aren't strung together they're not built to they're not called back to properly um you know i mean honestly they're callbacks and film i've already said how kind of like the gravity thing

the zero g blood was called back to it like it does have them but it doesn't do that with the ideas in the same way that it does with some of the kind of the set piece moments they're not set up in the same way they don't build and call back in the same way and that's what ultimately makes the film a little bit more hollow I think than the ones that do endure yes so yeah I think I'm just a little bit meh on the whole film I think I text you afterwards and said it was just a bit there so so where which is always what you want to do before you record on an entire podcast about

about your film is it's the text the person you're talking about then you both go yeah it's fine okay you know no strong feelings yeah yeah yeah honest to God though

I in some ways when I saw the E note because I managed to avoid spoilers going into this right and I saw this the synthetic who turns out to be Rook and Ian Holm, kind of like, when they first appear, you don't really see it's them.

It's kind of like, there's a bit of a horrible, because he's like severed in half, and he has to kind of... He's severed in half his face down. Yeah, right? And there's kind of like this kind of like, you know, jump scare moment where they're getting the module out and it kind of like, you know, it goes like semi-ferral for like half a second before it shut down or something, right?

And at that point, I was looking at going, I hope that, genuinely, I'm not making this up, I was looking at going, I hope that's not meant to be Ash, or like, some sort of ash-like thing. And then as soon as he got propped up on the table, and it was this rubbery-faced Ian Holm was like, oh,

for fuck, say, really. So I had seen some discourse about deepfakes on blue sky and some discussion around the ethics of this. And I'd thought, hmm, what franchise film could they... Oh, it must be

alien. It's the only one that's coming out. And the only... The only Weaver's not dead Yeah, the only character I really think you could do that with is Ian Holm

because the android is so easy to fit into that scenario. So I'd intuited that it was Ian Holm beforehand. Interestingly, I went to the cinema with my friend Nick to see it, Nick and my partner. And Nick had heard

that there was a deep fake and he thought it might be John Hurt which would also have been terrible. But yeah, I did. No, I had to manage to avoid it. I did that. It was just, I'd just roll my eyes at it. I think that's clearly the low point of the film for both of us.

But yeah, let's fit this film into our rankings, into the kind of rankings that we did in. You can go back and listen to the last episode for a full discussion of our franchise rankings. But do you want to tell me where it fits in yours? Yeah, so to run through

what I had before, I've got Alien then Aliens and Alien 3, right? So the first three I've put in the top three slots. I then, after much kind of deliberation put covenant ahead of Prometheus which is ahead of Alien Resurrection which we've actually kind of obliquely discussed here

and then the Alien versus predator films in release order after that is the two worst ones. As ever and I think I said this on the ranking one if you catch me on a different day I might have a different ranking right I always kind of like agonise too much over these things because I don't like ranking and rating

things too much. I opened mine just now for this bit and thought why did I put that before that what? Yeah. I'm not sure I'd do that today, but I'm not messing with the whole list. Yeah, yeah, no. That's not. It's actually a different day that I could maybe shift that. I think I'd kind of roughly stand by the order here, but I think what I'm going to do, and yeah, no, okay, I'm going to go over this. On a different day, I might put this differently, but I am actually going to put it behind Alien Resurrection. I am going to put it as the lowest ranked one that isn't an Alien versus Predator film. Now I have a couple of reasons for this The first one being If you put a gun to my head

I think I'd be more likely to want to watch Alien Resurrection again Than Alien Romules If I'm being honest, right? I think... Alien Resurrection is delightfully weird With its ideas And some of the things it does

In a way this film isn't Right now does that make it a better film Today? Yes On a different day? Maybe not what I will say is I think in terms of how well it might the quality or not quality how memorable its visuals are and how

interesting its ideas are and how those visuals linked to those ideas to me it sits firmly below Prometheus and I wouldn't be putting it above any of the other alien films so I am going to slot it in at the number seven out of nine slot after alien resurrection As I come to me on a different day, I might put it ahead of Alien Resurrection,

but I certainly don't think I'd put it above the ones I've gotten that top five at the moment. Totally good. Yeah, for me, you can find this ranking on my profile on Letterboxed, letterbox.com slash Simon X-A-X. But I have got Alien, Aliens, Alien Covenant, Alien Free, Prometheus, Alien vs Predator, Alien Resurrection, and then I'm slotting in Alien Romulus at the number 8 slot. Behind Alien versus Predator. Behind Alien vs. Predator, which is the head of Alien Resurrection. Yeah, I just, I struggle to imagine going back to this film.

I struggle to imagine watching it again. I struggle to imagine thinking about it in any meaningful way once I press stop on this recording. I just can't see it being memorable. And I don't think it, you know, it won't be as horrible. as horrible as Alien versus Predator too. But it's just not going to be memorable for me. Even Alien versus Predator, I can remember moments and set pieces I enjoyed

and imagery that worked for me and the kind of broader themes that I didn't particularly like, but I remember the broader themes around kind of Charity of the Gods and there was some interesting racial stuff in there, as I recall, that I just don't think I'll ever get out of Alien Romulus. Maybe, you know, in 20 years, we'll come back to this and we'll do the xenopod again and I'll rediscover it like I rediscovered Alien Covenant because I hated Covenant when I first watched it, but now really wish I had been watching it instead of Romulus.

Yeah, I mean, the one thing I will say, it's also, in terms of like doing this exercise of trying to rank them, the whole, you know, and I'm trying not to damn the whole film as a result of it, but the Ian Holm thing does knock it down the peg, right? It does make me a little bit less sympathetic to its kind of standing and quality or whatever relative to the other ones anyway, you know. It's a gross thing to do. It's a gross thing. Like it is a, I think a morally bad thing to do, a morally repugnant thing to do that feels very corporate driven, doesn't feel very, I don't know, human. No, well, I mean, it doesn't. And we've discussed there are other ways that it could, of it could have. It feels needless and

it feels needless and exploitative in the same way I think Alien versus Predator Requiem did it points, right? It did it differently with kind of like its politics and the way it treated certain characters. It's not as bad as that, but it's certainly further down that end of the spectrum than alien or aliens is. Yeah, exploitative is a good word. Yeah. It feels exploitative. It

it feels morally repugnant, it feels evil, it feels very, um, wail and dutani. Like, you can't criticise wail and utani when you are also doing this. You know what I mean? It makes a fundamental moral contradiction at the heart of the film. Like that's, exactly, that's the grand irony here. The very thing that has been depicted in the film, right? And I've said, you know, it has its ideas in moments and that's part of the reason it doesn't work. But one of those is kind of like, you know, creating abominations of your

humanity in the name of corporate pursuits, right? And that's exactly what they are doing. That's exactly what Disney is doing here. Yeah, the best, one of the best examples of what the film is depicting is a very metatextual thing about what they've done within the film to make it itself. And, yeah, when it comes to, like, considering this film or all the other ones, yeah, it does make me slightly less sympathetic to it than I otherwise would be. No, that's that's that's fair

I also want to end with a quick round of xenobiology Which is where we talk about what we learn about the alien Xenomorph creature in this film What I'll note is that the Xenomorphs in this film gestate super quickly So someone gets a facehigger on them Like 10 minutes later the chest burstery is coming out It used to take what 24 hours 12 hours

but in this one it's 20 minutes I think even in other films where it's taken some like a ridiculously quick type this one makes this one this one is so much quicker you know we're in this we're in 2024 now we don't have time

for that we don't have time to build tension we just have to crack on and get get this out there around this time a 45 minute counter starts for the space and to crash into the planet and during that 45 minutes the chess buster grows to full

mature xenomorph status but interestingly it does this and I was talking about this with my friend Nick afterwards it does this by cocooning itself which I don't believe has ever been in the films before but it creates this kind of

cocoon which talking about subtle filmmaking looks exactly like a space vagina complete with acid coming out of the clitoris it's a very vaginal thing where the alien the xenomorph ultimately emerges from it

in its kind of full form which we haven't seen before and it teases it before the character comes across kind of like the shed skin of the chest person that happened to the alien so in the original the cocoon isn't yeah in the original

I think it was implied that the chestburster just grows into a xenomorph it just grows up sheds its skin as it's growing across when when Brett picks up the chest buster skin but the cocooning is new so I looked at the alien

wiki for this the xenopedia and it does say that in some cases they turn into a cocoon but the citation for that is a comic aliens versus predator extinction maybe it's a novel but it's not a film

so this is new for the film as far as I'm concerned the idea that there is this cocooning stage in between the two and we also learn that I mean the Prometheus virus was never clear on what it did

I don't think it was clear in the film and does different things depending on yeah exactly yeah but in this it's not even the mcuffin goo because they're not worked towards it

it's more just the yeah DSX goo yeah all purpose goo that does whatever the script needs it to do but in this it turns your fetus into a half engineer half alien creature

which comes out of an egg Which comes out of an egg. You're birthed the egg. That's the curious. That's another aspect of this. Yes, it does, but you don't burst that creature. You're birthed the egg that the creature comes out of. Yeah.

You birthed the egg and then the half engineer half thing comes out of it. And the egg is full of acid. Yeah. And you thought it was an engineer, right? Before I said engineering this podcast. Yeah, yeah, no. I remember distinctly when I was watching the film. It's like, yes, it has the same, it has the same sort of like gait and gangliness of the...

It has the same face as an engineer. The hybrid from resurrection, but the face and kind of like, you know, the dark eyes and the very white skin, it has the face of an engineer. Good. It definitely does. Yeah. You know, I came out and discussed it.

I've also found sense I've got Fedia Alvarez's on record, I think, about talking about the offspring, saying that's what he was going for. Okay, because I'm on the xenopedia right now, and it calls the offspring a xenomorph human hybrid, which it doesn't mention engineer anywhere in this article. maybe there's some dispute from the Prometheus thing and the whole kind of like sharing DNA between

it like it all kind of makes it it sort of makes sense you know well yeah which I think if you think about the way that you know all these different creatures of you know neomorphs and deacons and various other things that have popped up particularly in Alien Covenant and Prometheus

and you know the the runner creature in Alien 3 or something like the it sort of makes sense is really all that's really required at this point particularly when you're dealing with this Prometheus Black Goobre where basically does whatever you need it to. According to the story, right? Yes.

But yes, that's what we learn. I think we might have already known this, but xenomorphs survive in the vacuum of space. And in this case, the original xenomorph was able to cocoon itself to some extent after it was blasted into the kind of wreckage of the Nostromo. So we... Are we getting an alien remiss in a few years? Yeah, yeah.

We can only hope that... digitally resurrected Brett who they're going to digitally resurrect though? They've kind of run out of Android, I think. Well, my point is they haven't went out of Androids because Renona Ryder's right there.

Well, yeah, but Winona Ryder's not dead. No. Can't digitally resurrect someone who's not dead. They can't do Disney's favourite. Honestly, it's not lost of me that this is... Is this the first one that's been produced under Disney?

Yes. Yeah. They've done this off the back of, like, do Disney just do this in all their projects now? Disney have so many scanned human life forms that they have to put in... Skywalker, with a talk and, like, you know, it's like so many of these things now. Yeah, it's something that just happens now. But yes, that was Alien Romulus. We did it.

We once again reached the end of the Alien franchise for now. So thank you for joining us. you can listen to all the previous episodes of the Xenapod on this same feed where you found this or by going to take one cinema.net what is next for the Xenapod? Do we want to come back for Alien Earth when that comes out? I think potentially.

Yeah. I mean I think because it's still meant to be a series, right? It's meant to be a series, a TV series. We need a bit of thoughts as to how we do that, right? Because obviously that's the first... Yeah, we could do shorter episodes about episodes or do the whole thing in one big chunk, we'll figure something out.

Intriguingly, I heard today that Alien Earth is set before any of it, before Prometheus, before Alien. I don't understand how that works, but... Because I said, the one strong thing through all of these films is the original creatures. Yes. Right, and part of what makes Alien's icon.

So you go before... If you go before, yeah, you'd either have to discard. That works. how it works. But the source I read this from spelled resurrection wrong, so I'm taking it with a big chunky grain of salt. Yeah, that would. But for the Xenopod, if do stay on this feed, don't delete it from your podcast app, because next we're going to visit another well-known science fiction franchise in Unnamed Jurassic Park Project. Yeah, we all come up with a snappy name for it yeah but we will and that'll be in the same feed we'll use the take one social media

channels to push that and let you know when it's out we don't know when it'll be out yet but keeping out for it fairly soon i think we want to get out before a new Jurassic project next year yeah so i think there's another um i forget i'm pretty sure it's got i'm pretty sure it's got a working title at least now but there is going to be another Jurassic park slash Jurassic World film coming out next year and I think we'd probably like to go through the existing films in the franchise before then so hopefully you know hopefully the first episodes of that will start appearing before the end of the year but you know the idea will be we've got another long-running series it has different ideas popping up and kind of reflects different things here and there

about when the films are made I think it said I think basically the reason we've ended up with this is we kind of feel it says it exists in a similar space it fits in the same kind of model. Yeah, where you can start looking at the films, like you can look at them individually and what filmmakers brought to them individually, but there is an interesting thing to look at how that series develops and plays with kind of

its own existence as the films go on and all the rest of it. Yes. It's also similar in that after the first one, it is all downhill from there. That true. That too. Yeah. So, keep your eye out for Untitled Jurassic World Project and we'll be back

then. Until then, Keep an eye on us at Blue Sky at the xenopod.biscay.combe.com. I think we're still nominally on Twitter at the Xenapod. But I'd say keep an eye on for us at Take One Cinema on Blue Sky and Twitter. I'm at Simon X-I-X. Jimmy's at... At Jim GR on pretty much every platform. So yeah, keeping an eye for us and we'll be back.

We will return. Game over, man. It's game over. Oh! So, you know Oh Oh Oh

No No No No No No No No

Oh Oh You know, Oh, You know, Oh, Thank you.