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Alien: Romulus * Pretty good overall. * Really great lead (Cailee Spaeny). * Noticeably lower budget than you'd expect. * Okay to meh to "bro..." special effects. * COMICALLY TERRIBLE creature design ruins the finish. https://i.nostr.build/orsfviKAruFksQQ9.jpg The writer/director, Fede Alvarez, earnestly cares about his young characters and their development. Everything about the human side of his storytelling is pretty well done. He manages the small ensemble well, but Rain and her brother Andy deservingly take center stage, leaving a lot less time to develop the others. Alvarez falls flat with his new facehugger behaviors. Too much cgi just sitting out in the open not being interesting or occasionally inching toward silly. The digital Ian Holm is shockingly bad. I think my RTX 4070 will be able to do better AI video renders pretty soon. https://i.nostr.build/80eYKWsRxmwfM81t.png I watched it on Disney+; if that was the "improved" version... good lord. The final creature design is just indescribably bad and, worse, once again shot way too much right out in the open. OBSCURE YOUR F'N SCARY CREATURES, DIRECTORS!!!! Especially if you have an unforgivably bad/stupid creature design. If you're too young to have seen / known about Alien: Resurrection (holy f that was 1997!! 👀) , it actually makes for a really interesting compare and contrast here. https://i.nostr.build/JkLilDq1vSmdWdVr.webp More stylized (deeply Frenchy infused -- for both better and worse -- by Jean-Pierre Jeunet), more confident, much more personality and flair throughout the ensemble (Joss Whedon is the master of creating characters and witty dialog). Darius Khondji is a MASTER cinematographer. Resurrection is more comic book and brash vs Romulus' more rooted "real people" tone. Also suffers from bad creature design at the end, though Romulus' is so terrible that Resurrection's seems more reasonable in retrospect. Romulus: more real people, more real moments. It's a pretty good human emotional drama wrapped within a good enough "Alien" movie. Resurrection: Fails overall because Jeunet is just too Frenchy and, like Paul Verhoeven, I suspect it goes big and dumb because that's what he thinks of Americans. But he's such a good f'n filmmaker. Resurrection's impressive strengths and embarrassing weaknesses make it the more interesting film to study by far.