Category: Alien Franchise

Private Vasquez, then and now.

I'm pretty sure I've written about this before, but let's recap.

I loved Alien. I saw it on opening night in 1979 (for those of you who might be new here, yes I'm old) and drove home constantly looking in my rear view mirror for anything that might be lurking in bed of my truck.

I loved Aliens even more. I got home and turned on every light in my apartment. Probably one of my favorite films of all time. Everything about it was exceptional.

I was disappointed with Alien3 only because they'd killed off Newt and Hicks. And to be honest, the whole setting gave me the "icks."

By the time Alien Resurrection came around, I was pretty much done with the franchise, but went to see it on opening night nonetheless. At this point I don't even remember the storyline; that's how much of an impression it left on me.

Nevertheless, fifteen years after Resurrection, I confess to quite a bit of excitement when Prometheus was announced—especially since Ridley Scott was directing. Initially I gave it an almost-glowing review, but in the intervening years and upon several subsequent viewings, my opinion of the film has soured considerably—mostly because of the outright stupidity exhibited by the majority of the characters.

And then three years later, along came Alien: Covenant. I was expecting so much from that film, and I should've known better. I wanted answers. What happened to Shaw and David? Did they find Paradise? No. We got yet another murderously psychotic android, a mention of Shaw's grusome death in passing, and a whole lot more stupid exhibited by the characters in the story. I walked out of the theater swearing off the franchise completely.

So now we have Alien: Romulus (with apologies to Star Trek for stealing the planet's name, apparently) yet another prequel to the original 1979 film. My ears perked up when I first head of this being in the works a couple years ago, but I quickly reminded myself how awful the latest crop of films had been and let the whole thing slide by the wayside.

Well, the film finally came out and while the reviews have generally been positive (minus the too-obvious callbacks—to the point of actual dialog being lifted—to the first two films, not surprisingly I have no desire whatsoever to waste money seeing it in a theater. I'll wait until it's streaming—and free—before I put any effort into seeing it.

To be honest, I've generally lost interest in going to movies. Ben and I used to go a lot, and prior to meeting Ben, I had a movie buddy who I'd see almost every new release with. But even prior to COVID, Ben and I were going less simply because it was becoming more and more difficult finding films we both wanted to see. The last two films I saw in a theater were Dune and Dune II, and neither one was a particularly enjoyable experience. With Dune it was because we were still in the throes of the COVID lockdown with all that entailed and Ben didn't really want to go. With Dune II, I was so disappointed disgusted with how Villeneuve butchered the remainder of the novel I left the theater shaking my head, vowing never to return.

I understand there's an Alien series coming out (aka Alien: Earth) on Netflix or one of the other streaming services. Will I bother? Hard to say. At this point I'm suffering from Alien burnout from too many poorly-executed installments of the story and honesly—how many more times can a chest-burster produce any sort of surprise or excitement?