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It's like shooting free throws, I swear to god. Have fun being buttblasted all day.
Alien: Romulus 08/16/24
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Add the number of dollars by which Deadpool 3 outperfomed Dune 2. Then show the numbers adjusting for how much faster Deadpool 3 reached that number.
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Yes, those aligned, but it's more of a needless social commentary veiled in the backstory & mining colony societal attitudes, if anything. The character Andy is basically an outmoded "house negro" synthetic & caretaker/sibling substitute for the lead, Rain Carradine.
We have been served so much corporate devised girlboss agenda/lgbtq messaging in the last few years that no matter what, the female protag will be rejected by many people. In a way, men have been conditioned to spurn this because girlbosses have overshadowed men, conventional masculinity has been muted and/or deemed toxic... Nevermind just being white and male either designates you the bad guy, or ascribed weak & pathetic in terms of a movie's plot. Ellen Ripley was well written, carefully developed and the ensemble cast dynamics complimented her well. She was not a contemporary girlboss, but rose to the challenge, survived horrific circumstances beyond comprehension, and became one of the greatest heroes in any American movie to date. Whereas Rain's continual sheer luck/happenstance, personal motivations, defying the onslaught of monsters, etc. struck me as being the probable end result of incessant focus groups, studio exec script meddling, & Disney's long term goaltending.
Let's be honest, this movie looked very impressive(aside from jarring CGI on a different synth's face, lol) but some demographics are willfully blind if those audiences cannot see the same check boxes that modern mainstream films have. Hopefully the next spinoff not only focuses on those check boxes but the core themes & story itself. That is what is blatantly missing in modern media. Color of skin, sexual preference, and gender have been put front & center with the story usually taking a back seat. Deliver something with uncompromised storytelling and this trend might start correcting itself.
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Thanks for the detailed response.
Unfortunately, a decade of productions with racial politics and modern feminism are still coming down the pipe and who's to say it if will ever run clean again. And there are still a lot of bad faith actors in positions of power at many of these studios. It's going to be a while, if ever, before these disingenuous movements are eliminated. It requires a top down evisceration.
Unfortunately, a decade of productions with racial politics and modern feminism are still coming down the pipe and who's to say it if will ever run clean again. And there are still a lot of bad faith actors in positions of power at many of these studios. It's going to be a while, if ever, before these disingenuous movements are eliminated. It requires a top down evisceration.
prof
A Great Place to Store Your Dildo Collection
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I don't know, man. I think you're short-changing Rain's characterization.
Spoiler:
At the end of the day, there's only one Ellen Ripley, and as long as they keep making Alien movies, the lead will be compared to her, so it's a losing proposition. But I still liked what they did with Rain, and the overall performance of the actress who portrayed her. She was flawed, but tough; smart, but her judgment was clouded by human emotions, and she was loyal. In my opinion, she was a more fleshed-out protagonist than what most big Hollywood action flicks give us nowadays.
Anyway, it wasn't some great movie on the level of Alien, but I still enjoyed it. I thought it was more entertaining than the last two in the series anyway. And everything you said about the overall atmosphere of the movie is right on. The sets, sound design, effects, cinematography, were all transformative. So even if you're not into the characters, I think most science-fiction movie lovers will find a lot to like here.
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The thing people always overlook when they talk about Ripley is that in the original Alien, first time viewers have zero idea she's the main character until maybe halfway or more through that movie. People forget that in hindsight. It's like the entire cast was treated as supporting characters, all about equal, and the movie makes it seem like maybe the captain is the one who will step up and be a hero. Then when he suddenly gets killed in the middle, that's when Ripley steps up.
People now think Ripley, Ripley, Ripley, but that's mostly because Cameron turned her into a super badass in the sequel. But the original movie wasn't like that, and that's why it's so easy to go along and empathize with her character. Because she starts out normal, just another crew member, and we watch her become great out of necessity. She didn't start out as some mary sue author insert perfect at everything whatever whatever, the way writers today can't seem to stop themselves from writing.
People now think Ripley, Ripley, Ripley, but that's mostly because Cameron turned her into a super badass in the sequel. But the original movie wasn't like that, and that's why it's so easy to go along and empathize with her character. Because she starts out normal, just another crew member, and we watch her become great out of necessity. She didn't start out as some mary sue author insert perfect at everything whatever whatever, the way writers today can't seem to stop themselves from writing.
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I was trying to explain the difference between causation and correlation to my republican father, who thinks that Biden ruined Trumps economy and made the gas prices high. I told him the only good Alien movie has Yapphet Koto in it. But that doesn’t mean Yapphet Koto was the reason that one movie was good and the rest were bad.
But maybe it was?
But maybe it was?
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This is one of the most outrageous lies I've ever told in my life.
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It certainly helped.
prof
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Alien fits more into the horror genre than the action genre like Aliens. So the 'final girl" dynamic is a more appropriate descriptor of Ripley than the "girlboss" protagonist she takes on in Aliens. The new one shares a similar dynamic to the first movie in that aspect.
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Aliens is a good action movie. Which is like, so fucking what. There are a million good action movies.
Alien is a legitimately good horror movie. Not just a movie that's good by horror movie standards, but an actual good movie movie that just happens to be horror. That's a billion times more rare.
I will say this as well. I've rewatched both within the last four or five months, and Alien has aged better than Aliens. A LOT better. In every single way. The dialogue holds up better, the acting holds up better, the cinematography holds up better, even the practical effects hold up better. And practical effects are the main thing Aliens has going for it, if we're being honest.
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I just can’t get over Aliens setup.
The whole “Return to” thing feels lazy and too convenient.
Once they get there the movie is fine but why the fuck go back? Oh because conveniently Ripley was in cryosleep for decades so she now has nothing left to lose?
I dunno. It’s cool when they shoot the Aliens, I guess. I’m inclined to agree with STK.
The whole “Return to” thing feels lazy and too convenient.
Once they get there the movie is fine but why the fuck go back? Oh because conveniently Ripley was in cryosleep for decades so she now has nothing left to lose?
I dunno. It’s cool when they shoot the Aliens, I guess. I’m inclined to agree with STK.
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The fact that Prometheus is above a 0% proves that we should just give up on society right now.
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This is the only part of your comment I care about.
RE: Alien: Romulus
It was fine. Hardly perfect but the best film in the series since Aliens.
Too many 'memberberries in the third act for my taste. Some truly awful callbacks that are written purely as fanservice which break immersion completely.
For the first two thirds of the film, we truly get a different look at this universe where these things are happening. It's an entirely new kind of story. And some of the new elements are additions to the lore that I feel are natural fits. Whoever wrote the film is clearly a fan of the franchise. However, the third act is overkill. It tries too hard to tie together every film in the series (excepting the AvP flicks) and it results in an overload of sorts: normies are probably going to be bewildered by so much being shoehorned in when up until that point, we were having ourselves a nice little time.
I didn't see anything about racial politics or girlbossing going on in this movie. Sometimes we have PTSD about these things and we tend to see phantoms where there aren't any. I've become pretty good at spotting the activism in these productions and I didn't see any 'wokeness' here. Women are usually the protagonists of horror movies. This is no different.
Andy was the best character.
I'd give it a 7/10. It's a story with wonderful first and second acts, reasonably steeped in the universe's lore, that gets hobbled with too many nostalgic visuals in the third act. Fantastic effects. Nice acting and good casting. A pace that could have used some tightening up. There is a ridiculous sequence in the third act involving acid that is amongst the stupidest things I've ever seen in a movie.
At one point, however, and this is a problem with every film after the first one, the creatures are no longer scary. They just become obstacles to overcome. In the first film, the thing was unstoppable and implacable. The creature has to be more than something that crouches in the shadows and hisses while its teeth glint in the darkness. This is why I appreciated what Scott tried to do with Alien: Covenant. You can't just keep telling haunted house stories in space. If you don't at least try to broaden the horizons of these movies, they just end up being the same thing over and over and over. That is why I also appreciate Aliens. It is a different film from the first one because it has to be. I still like the original the best, however.
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She's going back because she has to. Because the creature stole her motherhood from her. Because, as Burke said, she has to face her fears or she will have nightmares for the rest of her life.
There is an essential theme at play in the story about human nature and reclaiming what was taken from you. Yes, it's convenient. It could have been anywhere that the creatures infested things.
But that being the case, it serves the theme better for it to be the exact same planet since that ship is still there filled with eggs. That is where her life was taken away from her. So that is where she has to go to get it back.
These may be shallow storytelling elements to some but they connect with broad ranges of people on an almost unspoken level. This is what Cameron is better at than any director working today. It's why his movies have mass appeal. Are they familiar stories? Sure. But that's why they connect with so many people.
RE: memberberries
Nostalgia bait.
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Free on Hulu if you have that. Can rent it on Amazon Prime, I believe. And it's on Max as well. The extended edition is the better version of the film in my opinion.
If by 'Ash's subplot' you mean how he was a company plant....sort of. Bishop, the android played by Lance Henrikson, was a good boi in Aliens. Burke, played by Paul Reiser, was the one working against the group in the company's interests in that film.
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