Alien is considered one of the classics of the sci-fi/horror genre and its sequel Aliens is a well-made companion movie. How good? Even Paul Reiser’s own mother was glad that his character, Carter Burke, got what was coming to him. A third Alien movie was inevitable.
Unfortunately, that was Alien 3, which almost caused David Fincher to walk away from making movies entirely. The movie was dirty, ugly and looked like someone trying to make a Blade Runner meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre style movie. I feel like I need a Silkwood-like shower after I watch it. And then again, they killed off everyone but Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, which made the ending to Aliens one big fuck-you.
Maybe it should’ve all ended with Ripley sacrificing herself so the greedy corporations couldn’t get their hands on the xenomorph growing inside her. But unfortunately, they made Alien: Resurrection, which under the writing of that asshole Joss Whedon is more like fan fiction even though Jean-Pierre Jeunet managed to give it a nice look. Yet Whedon blamed Jeunet for its failure with critics.
And even though Whedon has shown his true colors in the last 10 years, he still has a legion of devout fans who hang on to his every word and worship him. I mean it’s downright cultish the same way they look at Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan. The movie at least ended with some type of closure as the Ellen Ripley clone lands on Earth.
But noooooooooooooo!
We had to have two Alien vs. Predator movies. The first one wasn’t too bad, but that second one was horrible. Then there was Prometheus, which I’m sure a lot of people saw it hoping for some answers but it was a big of a mess with the exception of that C-section scene. And in true fashion, the Noomi Rapace character has to die before the events in the movie Alien: Covenant because fuck you, that’s why.
And of course, because it made a lot of money and the critics liked it, we got Alien: Romulus, which is basically another retread of elements from the previous movies. I mean, now, Disney owns the franchise and what worked for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens can work for the Alien franchise. The fifth episode of this eight-episode show is a fucking fan fiction remake of the 1979 Alien. And a very horrible one at that.
That episode has also divided people online between being the best and the worst of the series. You know something is bad when the scariest thing on a show is a sheep. Timothy Olyphant sinks into the role of Kirsch as a synthetic scientist, but he’s creepy performance is used so sparingly.
Since Weaver said no more to the franchise, the filmmakers haven’t tried in the least to make the franchise look any different. Rapace was replaced in Covenant by Katherine Wasterston, who was replaced in Romulus by Cailee Spaeny. What do all four actresses have in common? They’re all brunettes.
So, why break traditions and here the main character is Wendy (Sydney Chandler), also a brunette. Wendy is a hybrid whose consciousness has been placed into the body of a synthetic. This is actually something that has been ongoing for years, which might explain a few things about Cane in the first Alien movie.
But this series is all over the place and that’s the problem. The characters seem way too one-dimensional and there’s so many of them that they just get confusing. Alex Lawther, who was wonderful in the horror anthology Ghost Stories, seems wasted here. And it doesn’t help that he looks like Samuel Blenkin as Boy Kavelier, a CEO of the evil Prodigy Corporation.
It also doesn’t help that numerous scenes are dark and poorly lit so if you’re watching this in high-def, you don’t shit at all. But it doesn’t really matter because there’s not much action at all. The special effects and production design is excellent but just like OnlyFans, you can only see the same tits and ass before you start to lose interest.
The series is created by Noah Hawley who had a hit transitioning Fargo into an anthology. But the franchise has been tweaked so much over the last 40 years, it’s hard to care what direction it’s being taken into. This is set about couple years before the events of the first Alien, which means it’s set after the events of Prometheus and Covenant. Romulus, itself was set between the first Alien and Aliens.
This create a huge continuity error with the technology seen in Alien and the technology here. I’ve had some friends theorize they used simple technology on the ships in Alien and this series so the crew on them would be able to fix them better. But I’m wondering why they would send people into space on outdated technology. It’s 2025 already and just about anyone could use PhotoShop and AI to make pictures and videos.
When I was in high school, we cropped photos the old-fashioned way for our journalism classes. That was 30 years ago. Now, anyone can crop a photo on their phone and adjust it perfectly. Even the Kodiak digital cameras I used in 2001-2002 at my first professional newspaper job seem grossly outdated compared to what people can use on their smart phones.
I hate to be a stickler for details but they’ve created the process of switching people’s consciousness into synthetic bodies but they’re using Commodore computers on spaceships that are going many light-years into outer space.
I can’t even tell you what the premise of the series is supposed to be because people just randomly appear on screen, say several lines of dialogue and there’s about a couple of minutes of action before the credits roll with some hard rock song playing over the end credits. Whether or not there is going to be a second season isn’t known at this time, but the final episode is one big let down.
Considering it’s received almost universal acclaim from critics means it probably will get renewed. Yet the problem now is there’s such an unprecedented bias against shows that are on the major networks, the premium cable and streaming shows are the ones people are fawning over. Alien: Earth may have made a good two-hour movie, but there isn’t enough material to fill a short eight-episode season.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 