Well same for me in regards to the movies! I don’t have an informed opinion of them. Just that what I have heard from those who have liked it doesn’t make it sound like it is appealing to me. Precisely for the complaints you believe are true of the show. It sounds like a sci fi horror video game. A few good jump scares maybe.
It is my finding the characters interesting that makes me like show.
Alien was pretty much that, a horror movie, but set on a space ship (except video games at the time were at the level of Pong). But it is a deeply atmospheric, well-written horror movie. It it legitimately one of the all time great SF movies, the kind of slow but absorbing movies that really aren’t made much in the past few decades. The work of a master film-maker. While Alien is basically a claustrophobic Bottle Episode Aliens is very tonally different, a legitimate big budget action movie. Think of the two as something like comparing Terminator to T2. And just like the Terminator movie series, the first two are absolutely iconic and all the rest are entirely skippable and arguably watching them retroactively makes the originals worse.
Even having only watched the first two episodes, I’m not sure how one comes to that conclusion.
Seems like a handful of folks in this thread have an irrational hate boner for the show and are projecting a bit. I’d suggest you make an effort to reset your notions about the show and give it a fresh watch through the very good ep 5.
To the world building aspect. The show opens with the text about the various competing artificial human technologies and the pursuit of immortality by these evil companies. The show fleshes out the idea that there are 5 companies that rule the world and that governments aren’t a thing any more. This is a big expansion from the original W-Y mythos and adds a lot of context for why they may act as they do. It also adds an important dystopian world which was never explicit in the early movies.
The entire Maginot mission puts the subsequent Nostromo mission into context without being crude Solo-esque fan service. It also makes Burke from Aliens less cartoonishly evil and clueless since this is clearly part of a pattern of behavior.
Morrow starting his relationship with grandma Yutani and being passed down to the granddaughter, along with Yutani holding the W-Y reigns instead of Weyland hint at some potentially interesting company history.
The council of the 5 trillionaires is a new structure that could add some cool politicking. The way Boy Kavier and Adam talk to Hermit in Ep 4 explains a lot about the relationship between the companies and their employees.
Now, you could maybe level the criticism that they haven’t really expanded the world around the Xenomorphs and their origins at all. But I personally think that’s a good thing. Ridley Scott already tried that badly and any origins this show creates would either contradict that, which would cause confusion and backlash, or absorb it and then be tainted by it. This show seems more interested in exploring Earth as it exists in this timeline than exploring the Xenomorphs. That strikes me as a rational and pragmatic choice.
I wouldn’t say that. Horror video games (and many non-horror games like Halo) basically copied Alien. It invented the concept. Making that fact a criticism is kind of wild.
Alien was basically a slasher film set in Space. We are fortunate the Sequel didn’t replicate the formula like most Slasher sequels did and instead was an action film. Three and Four retuned to its Slasher roots.
Sort of, but Halloween came out in 1978. It’s not like “Slasher” films were an established genre when Alien came out. Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out several years earlier, but that’s a much different vibe. It was pitched as “Jaws in Space” more than anything. Looking back, it definitely shares a lot of DNA with slasher movies but it’s not derivative, the Slasher films of the 80s are instead derivative of it.
For my purposes it isn’t a question of originality vs being derivative; it’s giving me as someone who hasn’t seen them the information that tells me if I’d likely enjoy it or not.
suggests I would. But slasher in space, which is the sense I otherwise get, not.
The show is neither. It is more about the characters and the dystopia satirizing short sighted idiocy of current corporations that dominate our world. Which many of us in all industries see. Pointy haired bosses.
If you liked Ep. 5 of the show you’d love Alien. The vibes are damn near identical (intentionally). The movie is better made and shot, but it’s nearly 50 years old.
People like to use the shorthand that it’s basically a slasher movie or whatever, but the OG movie is really its own thing. It’s been copied a bunch, but it’s an original.
While the core premise is a big scary monster killing a bunch of people trapped on a space ship, nothing about it feels like a Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare of Elm Street, Chucky, etc movie. There is no camp. There is no tongue in cheek, winking dialogue. The blood isn’t applied with a leaf blower. There’s no horny teenagers or bumbling local cops.
It regularly appears on the Top 100 films of all time for a reason.
As is the set.
I think after watching the latest episode he’s got the Alien experience already.
It has been on the order of 20 years since the last time I watched any if the original movies (from the first DVD set I bought of them in 2001) but I’m really motivated now to do another binge watch. Definitely watch Alien and Aliens, maybe watch Alien3 to see if I still hate it as .uch as I originally did, probably watch Alien Resurrection because it has Winona Ryder, probably still never watch any of the others.
I liked the comparison someone made of it beong Jawa in space. Except the shark is on the boat with you and you can’t get off.
It was … okay. I understood that it was a bit of fan service to do a mini Alien movie in the show. Did like that it gave more complexity to Morrow. More depth to the structure of the human society, its inequities, and its parody of corporate stupidity. Not crazy that Willie Wonka is shown to be even worse than we already knew; less interesting now. Confused at how this sabotaged ship was reliably aimed to crash on his turf.
I am much more interested in what is happening with Wendy and her new pet, and really the whole issue of putting emotionally very young minds in brains and bodies more developed than any previous adult human and facing circumstances that would have most mature human minds decompensating.
And trying to guess exactly how Willie Wonka dies, who will be his killer? It should be whoever is least obvious in these things, but which character is that? Pretty much everyone has or easily will have obvious motives.
Also, they are on an isolated island, yes?
Any bets on if at end of show aliens survive trapped on the island, with or without surviving synths or hybrids, setting up a Jurassic Park style sequel?
Given the timelines it would make very little sense. Someone would instantly go there and find the aliens.
Since when has that mattered? What matters is dollars, not sense …
The franchise property of the Alien universe is valuable but exploiting it has, as explained well by those with much more knowledge than I have, been of mixed returns at best. The makers of this show are IMHO not going to end it in a way that doesn’t leave follow up on it as the way to exploit its universe more. Aliens, hybrids, and synths, in some combination surviving this but hidden away somehow picking back up in some future after the movies time period? Seems like the obvious pitch to make to me.
Kill off all characters who know about it? Hide well enough? They can figure out something eye roll inducing but good enough.
But every night all the men would come around and lay their money down.
This is one of the underlying questions about the show and frankly the issue that caused a lot of apprehension from fans.
I have to believe that the show runner and studio came into this knowing this continuity issue existed. It’s not exactly hard to puzzle out. When they pitched the show they must have explained their vision for how they’d wrap things up such that it doesn’t retcon Alien or Aliens.
In other words, I don’t think there’s any other option, they will end the show with these aliens ultimately being either exterminated or secretly fully contained in a non W-Y facility. Aliens takes place 59 years in the future and W-Y is uncertain whether Xenomorphs exist LV426 on not. That falls apart if there are parts of Earth infested with them.
Side note: I’m constantly baffled that “secure containment” throughout the AU seems to always depend on relatively weak glass. Not some futuristic indestructible material. Not even thick strong acrylic. Not laminated glass like a windshield. Not bulletproof glass. Just basically beakers that can’t survive a tumble off a table. Let alone the power of a squirrel-sized baby Xeno.
Yes. It has to be that the location is isolated and not known by the general public and at least W-Y for at least 60 years. Could be much longer. No problem for synths and/or hybrids to be same characters co existing with a group of aliens. Maybe even having taken over Prodigy … after Boy’s unfortunate accident. Because “I don’t think there’s any other option, they will end the show with” out the property having somewhere to go with stories in its universe next.
IMHO of course.
This is a good way of looking at the franchise.
Scott’s two prequels, in my view, were not trying to get across any ‘rule by corporations is inherently misrule’ message. The point of making Weyland an asshole was to set up the synth David’s resentment of him—not to convey that corporations see humans as being disposable tools for use. (That latter message was certainly prominent in Alien and arguably important in Aliens.)
But by the time of the prequels, Scott apparently found anti-corporate sentiment uncongenial. The first prequel set up the “humans are too stupid to live” theme and the second hammered home the “AI will despise humans and actively seek to wipe them out” message.
I’m wondering if Hawley is inspired by this. He could be making Boy seem the villain (fulfilling the ‘corporations should not rule’ message) only to pull a switch and make Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant’s synth) the ultimate villain.
In the current political climate, it might seem dangerous to hit hard at corporate rule. Perhaps “AI versus humanity” seems less likely to draw the displeasure of the 0.01% than would an anti-corporate message—and more likely to win lucrative orders for new seasons.
I’m having some continued issues with the 65-year Maginot mission.
W-Y seems emphatic that the specimens all be brought home alive and intact. But the odds of these species all living for 65+ years in captivity under the care of a crew that seems to have little to no idea what their lifecycles and nutritional needs are is basically nil.
It appears that the crew is working in shifts with at least some staff awake most of the time, if for no other reason than to keep the critters alive. If so, that means that the crew is going to age. Let’s guess that there are 3 rotations, that means that these people are awake at sea for 22 years each. Several of the crew would have had to depart Earth as toddlers. I suppose you can hand wave relativity here, but we haven’t heard anything like that yet.
Grandma Yutani sent Morrow on the mission to help ensure it was a success. He’s not some random scrub. This seems to imply that the Maginot wasn’t just off on a fishing expedition. They must have had a high degree of confidence that they’d find these nasties. Were they scouring the galaxy planet by planet or were they send to a handful of targeted worlds where they had knowledge of the fauna?