(sigh) I'll be honest, this week has kind of gotten away from me; but I maybe might go see
Alien: Romulus, despite the fact that
Alien: Covenant a few years back burned me like an acid facial. (The only positive thing I remember about
Covenant is that it continues a franchise tradition: namely, killing off characters off-screen between movies.)
Romulus is from the director of
the 2013 Evil Dead, and is supposed to be practical effects, or at least not all CGI? That raises my expectations a bit, and I was interested in seeing it in a full theatre, with a jumpy crowd, to goose things a bit more. I may or may not--my Oldest son and my dad both had COVID recently, so maybe now's not the time. Also, I realized I had three of the
Alien movies on Blu-Ray, because there used to be more promos for, like, buy this disc, and get a movie ticket to something. My Youngest pointed out, COVID might have killed that, though. He's just watched
Alien and
Aliens, and I think he enjoyed the copious behind-the-scenes footage in the latter as much as the films themselves. (
Aliens I did not have on Blu-Ray, but a relatively recent DVD, that was bought used from Blockbuster or somewhere; and had a
ton of deleted/unused scenes folded back in. I swear that movie gets longer every couple of years; like they were still filming for it.)
Anyway, since this is a blog about comics, right? From 1994,
Aliens: Stronghold #3, written by John Arcudi, pencils by Doug Mahnke, inks by Jimmy Palmiotti. As often the case around here, we're coming in at the middle, as Dr. Strunk and Phil are saved from facehuggers by the synthetic-xenomorph Jeri. Strunk seemed to doubt Jeri's good nature, but while other synthetics might have been reprogrammed by the scheming Dr. Nordling, Jeri was incapable of allowing a human to be harmed. For his part, Nordling double-crosses his buyers with poisoned cigars, although Jeri ends up with one of them, since seeing him smoking was always good for a laugh. Nordling also sics the golden mechlike synth Dean on Jeri, although Dean lets him up when it realizes Jeri wasn't a real alien. But the heroes weren't out of the woods yet...
Darn it, I think I spent a solid five minutes rifling through the longboxes of recently purchased stuff, looking for a random
Alien book; but I think I also had a beat-up copy of
Aliens: Sacrifice right handy, too. Eh, this one's more fun.
What I remember of Covenant was the one character that freaks out and blows up the dropship (at the end of a string of incompetence the 3 Stooges would find impressive), and the bit where the micro-Xenomorph hatches, Fassbender t-poses, and it mimics him.
ReplyDeleteAt that point, my eyes said, "screw it, we're gettin' hammered" and rolled out of my head in search of a bar.
Good call, or you could’ve gotten drunk before going.
DeleteI know my ex & I got high before going to see Rob Zombie’s version of Halloween. Definitely killed both of our buzzes.
They honestly made a synth Alien??? Wow. Seems like the type of thing that would’ve
ReplyDelete/should’ve been a plot point in other Alien stories, because I’m curious how the other Xenomorphs would respond to it.
That was kind of what Ripley was in Alien Resurrection. Or I guess she was more of a hybrid between a human and alien. While it does seem like something Weyland-Utani would try, they're usually so incompetent at actually containing any Xenomorphs there's no time for them to figure out how to make one of their own.
DeleteHey, Romulus was pretty good! It's not reinventing the wheel, as much as sampling DNA: here's something that worked in Prometheus, you remember this face from the original, and so on. (Somebody on BlueSky pointed out, there are things that could be done with the franchise; but they're kinda nah, let's just make Halloween in space some more.)
ReplyDelete