The Alien/Predator/Aliens vs. Predator Thread

[TangledThorns]

LOL, ALIEN movies that I'd watch in order.

 

ALIENS

ALIEN

Prometheus

Covenant

ALIEN3

ALIEN Resurection

AVP

AVP: R

 

On a side note I'm watching ALIENS on MAX and its a perfect movie. I don't know how It could be any better. In some way its kinda bad for the franchise as it raised the bar so damn high that everything following it can be looked as crap. Darn you, James Cameron!!

 

Edited August 14 by TangledThorns

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Old_Nash_II said:

AVP 1 and 2 stay in "Schrödinger's cat"

Why would they advise someone to watch Alien 3 or Resurrection?  There are only two Alien movies.  Three if Romulus turns out well.

[Big s]

I doubt this will have any avp tie ins and probably won’t deal with Prometheus or covenant, so those could be scratched off easily. The sequels past two aren’t great, so those can probably go as well. And this might not have any connection to the originals, but they’re too good to remove from the list 

[Hikuro]

1 hour ago, Old_Nash_II said:

AVP 1 and 2 stay in "Schrödinger's cat"

agreed, its even been said that AVP and Requim have no baring on the ALIEN canon. Some fan had a glorified fit when a number of us explained why those two films in particular don't count, we sort of reached a compromise that it's the Predator universe, but the Alien universe is separate so there ya go. ALIEN they're weapons of technology, Predator they're prey used for breeding.

 

So RT has given it a score of 81% right now for pre-opening night, IGN has given it an 8/10.
Rolling stone says,

Quote

 What’s onscreen is neither a haunted house nor a roller coaster, but a standard theme-park ride based on a movie — an Alien-flavored attraction that doubles as an overly respectful homage.

I'm not to sure how that's pandering the film, but he rated it as suckage. 

Times in UK
 

Quote

It's taken a while — 45 years, four sequels and two spin-off films — but finally they've got it right. An Alien movie worthy of the mood, originality and template established by Ridley Scott in 1979.

 

I'm looing forward to it truthfully....what I want is one of those buckets though. The facehugger jar has got my attention cause I"d like to see if I can put some liquid in there and a mini printed facehugger of my own. Might not be a great idea but considering people are gonna slobber liquid bleeping butter on theirs, why not?

[Pontus]

I normally eschew the theater for my own living room where I can pause at will, the seating and floor isn't sticky, I can eat/drink whatever I want without losing a limb for it, and the sound and picture is so much better (especially when they don't turn off the side lights and/or dim the projection to save the lamp).  But I feel like, even if it's a crap movie, it will be best watched in the theater for the spectacle of the thing, so I ordered tickets.  I was going to go for a matinee to save some dough, but it just seems wrong to watch an Alien movie during the daylight hours.  Strangely, the 10pm Saturday showing only had 2 seats reserved.  Everything else into next week was already looking crowded around the middle seats at my local Imax. 

Apparently, there's some "4DX" theaters showing it.  I had no idea what that meant, so I looked it up.  Moving seats, water spray, wind, and even smells!  But I'm not sure I want all that for an Alien movie.  I certainly don't want the smell, lol.  Until there's full, matrix style movie immersion available, I think a 4k picture and good sound with maybe some furniture shaking is plenty good enough for me.

[CoryHolmes]

I have a soft spot in my heart for AvP:R.  Not because it's a GOOD movie, not at all, but because I dearly love the redband trailer for it.  It was my first R-rated trailer and I loved the slowly declining population count with every scene change 😁

 

Also I liked how it made the Wolf Predator smart and prepared to deal with the Aliens.  Of course, I stopped watching when the PredAlien came around; that killed what teensy little spark of fondness I had up 'til that point.

[rsvictor1976]

So who's getting the popcorn bucket from AMC tomorrow?

[Big s]

6 hours ago, Pontus said:

I certainly don't want the smell, lol. 

With all that sulfuric acid, it might help mask your farts. At least you won’t have to hold em in.

 

55 minutes ago, rsvictor1976 said:

So who's getting the popcorn bucket from AMC tomorrow?

looks like they replaced the alien head one. All the ladies are gonna be disappointed 

[Pontus]

8 hours ago, Big s said:

looks like they replaced the alien head one. All the ladies are gonna be disappointed 

No, each theater has their own exclusive cup/bucket combo.  The only one that looks halfway decent and the one previously shown here was from Cinemark.  Since there's none of those near me, I had to order it from a scalper.  Regal has a zeno head as well, but it's just solid black plastic with white painted teeth and looks cheap.  There's also a facehugger storage tank that glows.  AMC is the only one that has the facehugger bucket shown here, and at least at my local theater, they are already gone first thing this morning, so if you're hoping to get one when you actually WATCH the movie, there won't be any left.

Edited August 15 by Pontus

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, Hikuro said:

So RT has given it a score of 81% right now for pre-opening night, IGN has given it an 8/10.
Rolling stone says,

I'm not to sure how that's pandering the film, but he rated it as suckage. 

Times in UK

Sounds like the reviewers agree that Romulus is very much in the mold of the original, but just can't agree whether or not it's a good thing.

For what it's worth, that makes me a bit optimistic about the film's prospects.  I'm still worried it'll go too heavily towards the Aliens route and make the xenos unscary.

I'm gonna wait 'til next week to go see it myself, my local theater suuuuuuuuucks, but I'm cautiously optimistic for this one.

[Test_Pilot_2]

Snagged the Cinemark bucket a little bit ago... Working on getting the Regal light-up Facehugger bucket. This one is proving to be a challenge.

I'm catching a 10PM XD showing with my son later tonight. Hoping it's good.

Score!

Edited August 15 by Test_Pilot_2

[Raikkonen]

Spoiler

It does have some stunning space visuals and the lead actress has a promising career... but everything else... 😶 Nothing we haven't seen before...

[Hikuro]

I got the xeno popcorn head and a drink cup today from the local Cinemark....bought a set for a friend too. But we had to postpone going to the movie tomorrow night due to us having Managers training on Saturday morning. neither of us were to thrilled when it got mentioned to us last minute, so good thing I didn't buy tickets yet. 

[Seto Kaiba]

Has anyone seen anything corroborating the rumors that the story involves the original Big Chap?

I saw that while browsing and haven't been able to find a source.

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Has anyone seen anything corroborating the rumors that the story involves the original Big Chap?

I saw that while browsing and haven't been able to find a source.

I kinda doubt it after the boom!!💥 

[Negotiator]

big chap drifted out in space

[Test_Pilot_2]

Spoiler

If they're like tardigrades does that mean that the Queen from Aliens is still out there waiting to be picked up?

 

[Raikkonen]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Has anyone seen anything corroborating the rumors that the story involves the original Big Chap?

I saw that while browsing and haven't been able to find a source.

Spoiler

Confirmed.

Want more details? I saw it. 

Edited August 16 by Raikkonen

[Raikkonen]

6 hours ago, Negotiator said:

big chap drifted out in space

Spoiler

Not in hollywood space. 

Spoiler Review (LOTS OF SPOILERS)

Spoiler

Ok, so some of the establishing shots of space, especially the inevitable station crashing at the end, are great. The new android played his part well, and the lead actress as I mentioned in my earlier post, she's pretty good. The rest of the cast, very meh and forgettable... 

The film however brings nothing new. It really tries very hard to connect the themes of Prometheus, covenant and... yes the surface of resurrections too, to the original film. At one point when they enter the lab and the original android from Alien goes on a monologue (Yes, he's back, well half of him), I got a glimpse of resurrections premise with the whole plot of creating perfect humans. 

The finale... huge WTF, they took the endings of Alien 1 and Resurrections and rolled them together into a ball of clay. Yes, there's a hybrid human/engineer/xenomorph. 

I'm still wondering if 'Ridley' as producer tried to create the loop of life by saying the engineers come from humans + Xenomorphs when mixed with the black gooey stuff?

And... it's not scary. It's not terrifying. Felt no tension. Relays on music to create ambiance. And it's quite predictable. When something happens, you will go, oh, this is going to happen next... and golly, you're probably right... again.

That said, due to some of the visuals and pacing, younger and newer audiences who are unfamiliar with the originals, will likely love it. Hardcore fans consumers will love it as it's pure fan service.

And that's what it is. Pure fan service of the previous films. Memberberies crammed into a jar. Even the pulse rifle gets a tech debriefing for the nerds to wet themselves... 

 

Edited August 16 by Raikkonen

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, Big s said:

I kinda doubt it after the boom!!💥 

12 hours ago, Negotiator said:

big chap drifted out in space

Considering how many pieces of Alien media have shown the xenos are perfectly fine spacewalking without any kind of protective gear, I doubt that's enough to kill it.

Annoy it, sure.  Piss it off?  Probably.  Starve it?  If it's left to drift for long enough.  Kill it outright?  Not a chance.

Bumping into it's gotta be a one-in-a-trillion shot, but that's a hell of a destructive space speedbump to run into.  That probably means the two that Amanda Ripley ejected from the Torrens are floating around near KG348 (or may have fallen into the gas giant).

 

12 hours ago, Test_Pilot_2 said:

  Hide contents

If they're like tardigrades does that mean that the Queen from Aliens is still out there waiting to be picked up?

 

Considering she "disembarked" the Sulaco as it was leaving orbit of LV-426, Queenie probably made an unassisted return to the planet's surface after falling from orbit... which is to say, she probably fell out of the sky and went "splat" in a distinctly unsurvivable manner.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

tardigrades

The correct term is “Water Bear”. They don’t believe in science or practicality, so they should never be referred to by their scientific names 

[Raikkonen]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Considering how many pieces of Alien media have shown the xenos are perfectly fine spacewalking without any kind of protective gear, I doubt that's enough to kill it.

Annoy it, sure.  Piss it off?  Probably.  Starve it?  If it's left to drift for long enough.  Kill it outright?  Not a chance.

Bumping into it's gotta be a one-in-a-trillion shot, but that's a hell of a destructive space speedbump to run into.  That probably means the two that Amanda Ripley ejected from the Torrens are floating around near KG348 (or may have fallen into the gas giant).

Considering she "disembarked" the Sulaco as it was leaving orbit of LV-426, Queenie probably made an unassisted return to the planet's surface after falling from orbit... which is to say, she probably fell out of the sky and went "splat" in a distinctly unsurvivable manner.

Seeing where Romulus went... I'm expecting Ridley to bring in the multiverse next and resurrect just about every previous character... Idris, Hex, the cat, that guy from the prison, Fassbender... 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Seeing where Romulus went... I'm expecting Ridley to bring in the multiverse next and resurrect just about every previous character... Idris, Hex, the cat, that guy from the prison, Fassbender... 

Considering they were able to clone Ripley back to life using "genetic memory" from the xenos, I kinda suspect they don't even need to invoke "the multiverse" for that.😵‍💫

Maybe we'll find out that thanks to the black goop and the xenos everyone who's ever been got by one exists in a massive telepathic shared memory like the victims of the mold in Resident Evil 7 and 8.

I'll get to see this movie either later this weekend or next weekend, depending on how things shake out.  My hopes for horror are not high, but I'm trying to remain at least cautiously optimistic.

[Raikkonen]

Just now, Seto Kaiba said:

My hopes for horror are not high, but I'm trying to remain at least cautiously optimistic.

As I said in my review... if you want fan service then maybe... 

[Pontus]

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Considering they were able to clone Ripley back to life using "genetic memory" from the xenos

Was there some sort of additional content regarding this?  I thought they got DNA preserved in the molten lead she jumped into.  According to IMDB, "scientists on the outer space vessel USM Auriga create a clone of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) using DNA from blood samples taken before her death. The Alien queen's DNA was mixed in with Ripley's, and the clone grows up with an embryo already inside it."

Although I don't think this is any more plausible than "genetic memory" when they somehow manage to clone her with a queen embryo as a bonus.  But I have to say that I really loved the whole xeno-Ripley idea.  Considering how difficult to control xenos are, I would think the military would rather focus on creating super soldiers by infecting and removing embryos surgically than breeding dangerous xenos.  

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Raikkonen said:

Seeing where Romulus went... I'm expecting Ridley to bring in the multiverse next and resurrect just about every previous character... Idris, Hex, the cat, that guy from the prison, Fassbender... 

yeah, but after seeing where Resurrection went, they’d be some horrible single abomination with a tiny cat head

[Seto Kaiba]

15 minutes ago, Pontus said:

Was there some sort of additional content regarding this?

It's mentioned in Alien: Resurrection directly... though as with so many things in that film it's painfully dumb.

Ripley-8 is a clone and shouldn't have any of the original Ripley's memories.   But she does.  When the scientists on the Auriga notice this, they hypothesize that because her DNA ended up a jumble of Human and Xenomorph due to the cloning process that the clone inherited the xenomorph's genetic memory.  Apparently the gestating chestburster gets a bit more than just physical traits from its host.  So Ellen Ripley's memories were preserved in the xenomorph's genetic memory.  The blood she left on Fiorina 161 was tainted by the xenomorph's DNA, so the clones created from that blood sample inherited that genetic memory and thus part of Ellen Ripley's memories too.

It was the Resurrection's way of almost-but-not-quite bringing Ellen Ripley back from the dead for the sequel.  Ripley-8 can talk and act like Ellen Ripley and even remember events from Ellen Ripley's past despite technically being a totally separate person who never met the original because she has Ellen Ripley's memories via her xenomorph side.

 

So, in theory, you could do this with other people too and clone anyone who'd been facehugged back to life as long as you had a sample of their blood from during the gestation process.  The only problem is they might be a tiny bit sociopathic and have spicy blood thanks to the xenomorph DNA. 🤣

[Raikkonen]

58 minutes ago, Big s said:

yeah, but after seeing where Resurrection went, they’d be some horrible single abomination with a tiny cat head

Lets talk after you watch Romulus! 😁

[Pontus]

5 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Lets talk after you watch Romulus! 😁

[Raikkonen]

4 minutes ago, Pontus said:

You are aware of what the director Fede said some months ago?

Spoiler

Fede Alvarez confirms ‘ALIEN: ROMULUS’ is not a standalone film, but rather connects to the other films in the ‘ALIEN’ franchise

[Pontus]

23 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

You are aware of what the director Fede said some months ago?

  Reveal hidden contents

Fede Alvarez confirms ‘ALIEN: ROMULUS’ is not a standalone film, but rather connects to the other films in the ‘ALIEN’ franchise

Nope.  Not clicking it!  LOL.  I only posted that as a joke, (that probably only made me laugh) not an actual complaint.  IT Crowd, s2e3, Roy gets bent out of shape when his friend tells him there's a twist in the movie he's about to watch.  The funny part here is that you didn't really say anything but it sorta sounds like you were suggesting that there was going to be an abomination with a cat head.  Personally, I don't usually mind spoilers, but I am avoiding them for this since it's one of the very few movies that I'll go to the theater for.

Edited August 16 by Pontus

[Big s]

40 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Lets talk after you watch Romulus! 😁

Damn, now I’m imagining some dude with a busted mechanical arm and an odd human head in the stomach and a tiny cat head on top that makes frustrating decisions and occasionally knocks people off ledges

[Raikkonen]

21 minutes ago, Pontus said:

Personally, I don't usually mind spoilers, but I am avoiding them for this since it's one of the very few movies that I'll go to the theater for.

I get that. I'm also don't care about spoilers except for those few odd rare interests of mine. 

4 minutes ago, Big s said:

Damn, now I’m imagining some dude with a busted mechanical arm and an odd human head in the stomach and a tiny cat head on top that makes frustrating decisions and occasionally knocks people off ledges

Dude, I watched a Alien's film. Not a 70s student film. 🤣

[Test_Pilot_2]

2 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

Lets talk after you watch Romulus! 😁

Yeah, there's an epic wtf did I just watch moment for certain.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

You are aware of what the director Fede said some months ago?

  Hide contents

Fede Alvarez confirms ‘ALIEN: ROMULUS’ is not a standalone film, but rather connects to the other films in the ‘ALIEN’ franchise

In what way is that a spoiler?  It's a bloody interquel set between Alien and Aliens. 🤣

That it'd be connected to the others is basically a given because it's an interquel and the alien had to come from somewhere.  There's only two options at that point in time, and that's a tie-in to the first movie or the second.  It's not like the slobbery git showed up uninvented of its own accord in response to a WY lonely hearts advert in the space papers.

Never mind the franchise's obsession with each new chapter having to tie into the others somehow.  Even Alien: Isolation wasn't free of it and that was a video game about someone whose only film appearance was as an archival photo in Aliens.  That's just SOP for the franchise.