Episode 201: "Alien: Romulus" (2024) with Corey from @podcastingafterdark

Alien Month ends with the latest installment of the series, "Alien: Romulus". Returning to Ready 2 Retro is our buddy Corey from @podcastingafterdark as he and Max share what they loved about "Romulus", what they felt was missing and of course, they're going to talk about that polarizing last act!

This is an episode for all Alien fans old and new! 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come. Turn your devices
to the maximum volume, sit back, relax, and let's get
Ready to Retra.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hey, everybody, welcome to episode too oh one of the
Ready to Retro podcast. Just real quickly, if you haven't yet,
go listen to episode two hundred. Chelsea, Chris and I
all are back together and we talk about the podcast.
We talk about the future, the past and all the

(01:07):
good stuff. But we are in the middle of Alien
month here on Ready to Retro. And honestly, I'm not
just saying this, This isn't hyperbole. I'm with the biggest
alien fan that I know, so he had to come
on here. I'm talking about Corey Stevens and Corey from
podcasting After Dark. Corey, thank you so much for being

(01:30):
back on Ready to Retro.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Oh dude, I had to come for this one, my friend.
And congratulations on two hundred episodes. That is a massive,
massive milestone. And since we are recording this before you
record that episode, I gotta say it was great. I
loved it. It was a fantastic episode. Everyone should go back
and listen.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
Fantastic. Thank you, sir, thank you, thank you. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, Corey like I said in the beginning, you're on here,
we're talking but specifically alien Romulus.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
So I already texted you on the side.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I was like, hey, are you doing a review of
Romulus on your podcast? And surprisingly you said no, So
I wanted to jump on that opportunity. So from the
get go, we just got to tell people there are
spoilers in this review.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, it's hard to talk about this movie, or more so,
like my experience with this movie without sort of diving
into some pretty massive spoilers. I mean there's a few
of them. One comes sort of midway through the movie
and that's fine, but there's a big one at the end,
and if you haven't seen it at this point, I
think it's already out on streaming by the time this drops.

(02:43):
I think the Blu ray and the four K will
drop probably about a month.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Later in December.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
But uh, yeah, it's hard to talk about this movie
without talking about the big spoiler at the end.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, the way that we usually review movies or TV
shows or whatever it is here, I'm ready to retro.
I don't have to say spoilers alert because you know,
it's been decades since that thing came out. Movie though, Yeah,
so when we do talk about a current movie, we
just do spoilers.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
It's hard to.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Articulate into just emulate your feelings and your passion for
something by being boggled down by Oh but I can't
say that or this is giving away too much, So spoilers.
All right, So Corey, for those who do not know,
tell us your well, first, talk about your podcast, and

(03:34):
the second just your love for alien How that started
all that good stuff?

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Sure? Yeah, podcasting after Dark, Me and Zach and sometimes
Diallo and a bunch of other people are always talking
about cult movies from the seventies and the eighties and
you know, not less et more the thing, that kind
of stuff. We also have a spinoff show called TV
Obscura and everything. It's we have a good time over there.
But well, you know, you can find the links in it.

(04:00):
Everything can find us on all the socials and whatnot.
But let's talk about my love for Aliens. Yeah, and
the entire you know, Waal and Utainey universe. I'm you know,
I've probably mentioned it here before on the show in
the past, but for new listeners, I'll start out with
my personal motto. I even had this printed on a

(04:20):
shirt until Disney sent me a cease and desist and
it is, uh, Star Wars is life, but Aliens is
my favorite movie. I actually went to Rancho Obi Wan
up in San Francisco, the world's largest Star Wars you know,
memorabilia place, and I wore my shirt there and the guy,
the guy runs it, Steve Sansweet, You looked at me

(04:41):
and he's like, what does that say? And I told him.
He's like, he's like, I'll accept that, okay, but a
lot it does? It does. I've loved Aliens ever since
my father took me to see the movie. I don't
think it was opening weekend, but it was the summer
that it came out in eighty six, so I was
eight years old. Scared me but also thrilled me at

(05:05):
the same time, and ever since then. I mean I
took me a couple of years after that to watch Alien,
but I watched it eventually and loved it. I you know,
hit or miss with Alien three, Alien Resurrection whatever. I mean,
you know, I'll still watch it once every five years,
hoping to like it a little bit more, but yeah,
not so much. And then the prequels, Prometheus and Covenants

(05:29):
I love the look of them. I think they're gorgeous films,
but I do not like them as a part of
like Alien, Cannon and Lore. Okay, And so just so
everyone knows where I come from, I read all the
Dark Horse comics back in the day. I'll like, exclusively.
What I used to read was the Aliens, the Predator
and the Terminator comics that they had in the nineties.

(05:50):
So for me, the canon, my canon is Alien Aliens,
then the dark Horse comics. But I still enjoy Alien three.
So yeah, that's where I'm gonna be coming from in
this review. And I think you'all need to understand that
because the gripes that I'm gonna have with it are
gonna be because of movies that I don't like and
in disconnection to them.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Right, And just to let our listeners know that, like,
Corey's knowledge of this universe is vast. I mean, he
knows the models and the names of all the weapons
and all the machineries and the spacecrafts all that. So
if you're like, well, what does this guy know me,

(06:35):
I'm a casual fan of this series, Okay, okay, but Corey,
he's die hard all right, Like and.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
It's funny that you say that, because because you know,
back when we were in like high school and stuff,
it's like you could be the diehard fan. But nowadays,
with the Internet, it's like there's always somebody who knows
more than you, you know.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
What I mean. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Back in high school or middle school, you were like
the cool guy in your small group, right, and now
it's like I would see like these guys on TikTok
or Instagram with like collections.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
I just learned about this Adam Sandler guy who has
the biggest Adam Sandler collection, And I'm like, I'm a
big Adam Sandler fan, but I don't got no collection
like that, you know, or the Titanic. Are you familiar
with the Titanic guy? No, he wants to have I think,
like a million.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
Copies of Titanic on VHS.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
That's like when he's going on so he has like
this whole basement of just vhs, like it's the double
Ones of Titanic.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's yeah, yeah, it's the double pack.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
No, I remember I worked at the video store, so
I remember. All right, but Max, what's your favorite Alien
or movie in the franchise? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (07:47):
So I'll say, like I should have gone through the
series before I watch Romulus.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
To be honest, it felt like Romulus just like snuck
up on me, just like, oh, yeah, it's coming out,
I gotta watch it. So I think I don't know,
I'm kind of side tangent, but I think like I
would have enjoyed a little bit more of it came
out now like September October. I just felt like there
was just like in the summer, there was just so

(08:15):
many movies out and I was trying to watch it.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
But I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
But I love the first movie like that is That's
one of like my favorite horror movies. I'll call it
a horror movie. I'm more verse with that one than
Aliens and things like that. I've seen every movie at
least once, but I've seen the first two multiple times. Okay,

(08:43):
I think I saw Prometheus maybe twice. I remember seeing
Prometheus in the theater. I think I saw Covenant in
the theater, and then the other ones I was too
young to see in the theaters.

Speaker 4 (08:53):
But and I don't have a cool dad.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
So well, we know our boy Dean of a Return
and Revenge Resurrection and talking back, he'll loves Alien it's
his favorite movie. Yeah, and a great job on the
Child's Play three episode.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
Thank you. Yeah, love that movie shout out.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
I know you do.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
I know you do so much so that I love
Child's Play three.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
So much so that you broke Alex's mine.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
Yeah, I think I convinced them that it is a
good movie.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
You know what, by the end of your episode, you
convinced me it was a good movie as well. And
I got to go in and talk about Curse of Chucky,
which I've never so I haven't seen past number three,
and now I got to watch part six.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
Well, I would turgy to watch all of them. It
will make it. It won't make sense out of orders.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
So yeah, I mean I want to, but unfortunately I'm
recording tomorrow, So there you go.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
All right, Well, there's a child's actually a child's play.
If we had Chucky in the alien universe, that would
be some wild stuff.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
That would be some wild Like if a chest Burson
came out of him, it would be a doll. It'd
be a toy dude.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
That'd be wild.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
That would be wild. I kind of like it, I
kind of I don't hate it. I don't hate it.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
So yeah, so it's funny because I'm around all these
guys who just love Alien and.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
I like it too.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
So, uh, to go back to your original question, Yeah,
so I watched it, but again it was like it
was like casually, like it wasn't something that I think
I owned on DVD, but I didn't own the VHS's,
Like I wasn't watching as a kid. It was just
whatever was exposed to me was from my parents, and
my parents weren't real cinophiles, so a lot of the

(10:37):
stuff I was watching was kids stuff because that's what
they would give to me. The things like that my
parents would watch that I would watch as like Wayne's World,
Melrose Place in like the Whole nine Yards.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
Like stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
No, I I get that, Like I have that same
discussion you know, with Zach and everything on podcasts after Dark. Right,
It's like, you know a lot of times I wonder,
I'm like, why didn't I see that as a kid
growing up, And you look back and you realize you're
just watching what your parents liked. So if your parents
were into something like my dad didn't watch a lot
of comedies growing up, mostly like the Chevy Chase stuff

(11:14):
and maybe some John Candy stuff, stuff like that, like
Great Outdoors and stuff. I watched like those with my dad,
but he was mostly like an action thriller kind of guy.
He wasn't really into horror. I did horror with like
my buddies, but I watched a lot of action and
thrillers with my dad. And you know, it lends itself
to having fun moments like seeing aliens in the theater,

(11:38):
it also lends itself to very awkward moments like seeing
what was this single white female in the theater with
your father when you're like thirteen years old, fourteen, you know,
at that weird awkward age and you're you're into what's
happening on the screen, but your dad's sitting next to you,
and you're painfully aware that your dad is right next
to you. So you know, there's good and bad both

(12:00):
sides of that totally.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
I have two memories, as you were talking about that
for me, and I'm a little younger, so this might
date myself in a younger aspect, but I remember watching
gangs in New York with my dad, and there's the
same where there's a bunch of topless ladies and you know,
Daniel day Lewis is in the bar and stuff, and
I'm like, you know, middle school, I'm like thirteen fourteen,

(12:22):
I'm like, should I look?

Speaker 4 (12:23):
Do I need to look? My dad's right here? Is
he looking?

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Like?

Speaker 4 (12:26):
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (12:27):
And then the other one was I was like, my
birthday is in April, so a lot of my friends
turned seventeen before me and things like that, so they
all saw Borat. I couldn't see it. I had to
go watch it with my dad because I wasn't seventeen yet.
And I just remember my dad turning to me, what
did you take me to?

Speaker 4 (12:47):
Like, especially on the quote unquote wrestling scene if you
know you.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Know, oh, I know how Like that's literally what popped
in my head and you're sending me the story. I'm like, oh,
you had to watch that with your father?

Speaker 4 (12:57):
Huh oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
My dad looks at me, look at him, and we
just both put our hands in our faces like out
of embarrassment and just like shock and yeah, it was
a Bondie moment.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Well it even happens recently. Did you did you see
Furiosa at all? Uh? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (13:14):
I did. I watched it on HBO.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yeah, Okay, do you remember Pretordian Jack, you know, the
the not mad Max guy. Well, I showed it to
my mom, which is one of the cool things of
being here. My mom actually watches pretty cool movies. She
watched Fall Guy with me and whatnot. So we watched
Furiosa and I've discovered she had a bit of a crush.

Speaker 5 (13:32):
On Jack and even when he dies spoil or She's like, no,
not by Jack, And I'm like, it's like, Okay, I
don't really need to know what your type is, you
know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
I mean, hey, there's uglier guys looking guy.

Speaker 4 (13:48):
Parents have a lot of We're gonna have a lot
of fun here on Ready to Retch her.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we're gonna get a little deeper with Romulus.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
All right, we are back here on Ready to Rest.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
We were with Corey from podcasting After Dark and we
are gonna be reviewing Alien Romulus. So from the get go, Corey,
when you heard that there was going to be a
new Alien movie, as big of a fan as you are,
what was going through your mind at that time?

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Oh now, let's add to the fact that it was
being directed by FEddi Alvarez, who I love, I love
don't Breathe. I very much enjoyed his version of Evil Dead.
You know, it's not like my favorite, but I still
had a good time with it. So I was like, oh, yes,
this is I am fully, fully on board for Romulus.

(14:52):
I was super excited. I don't usually at this point,
I don't really watch trailers anymore. I try to stay
away from that stuff because me too. I mean, first off,
I'm forty six. I know what I'm gonna see and
what I'm not gonna see. If I'm already gonna see it,
then I don't want to see any trailers for it
because I don't want anything, you know, ruined. So yeah,
I was. I was super, super excited for it to

(15:15):
come out. And then anytime I did seal a trailer
or any kind you know, came across my face. It's
hard to you know, completely ignore this stuff on social media.
I was like, this looks amazing, looks this looks fantastic.
So yeah, my hype for it was very high, but
at the same time as high as as any of
my head can be at the age of forty six.

(15:36):
Now I've I've been let down so many times that
you know.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Right, I think it's you know, especially the summer, we
had a franchise like Beetlejuice and I Alien, but there's
like all these franchises that's like, we're back in the
theaters actually watching this. We were talking about this a
few weeks ago with Chelsea and Nick Collan, and both
of them are huge Beetle Juice fans, and they're just

(16:02):
I can't believe we're watching this and it's almost like
the same thing. It's twenty twenty four and it's like
we're getting a new Alien movie.

Speaker 4 (16:08):
This is a trip.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's pretty awesome. And I'm also like
I'm getting a little burnt out on some franchises too,
like Fast and Furious, and I'm having a hard time
getting excited for Marvel stuff. Although Wolverine and Daredevil are
Deadpool kind of made my love for comic book movies
sort of come back. My Star Wars love doesn't really
take a hit. I'll watch anything Star Wars because, like

(16:31):
I mentioned earlier, when I was talking about reading all
the Aliens and Dark Horse comics, I was also reading
all the Star Wars comics at the same time, so
I was used to being like, well this one was okay,
there's always another one, and then the next one's good,
you know that sort of thing. So you know, like,
but I feel like it's been so long since we've
had a proper I mean, I guess Covenant was tried
to be a more proper entry into the Alien franchise,

(16:55):
But this one feels like they put Alien front and center.
Like it felt like Alien Covenant. They tacked on the
alien in the title to kind of get people to
go in. This feels like it was concepted to be
an Alien movie from the get go.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, because really, Alien Covenant is a sequel to Prometheus, right,
I mean that's what it is.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yes, it's sequel to Prometheus. You know, Ridley Scott clearly
has his clutches on this franchise, which I don't quite understand. Yes,
he directed Alien, but Dan O'Bannon wrote it like I
don't and I know he's passed, he's gone, but like,
I don't understand why, you know, he gets so much,
why Ridley Scott gets so much, you know, control over

(17:42):
how this franchise goes. But I mean that's a that's
a bigger discussion. Let's let's keep it to Romulus, you know.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah for sure. Well you mentioned Star Wars, and the
way that I see this movie in particular is kind
of like Rogue One. Yes, Rogue One is in the
universe of Star Wars. We know the story, but it
comes to life in a different way. It stands alone
and it's great. And I would say like Romulus is

(18:09):
the same thing. We know the environment, you know, we
don't really know the stories, but every alien movie you
kind of know what's gonna happen and you know what
holds up. It honors the past movies but doesn't try
to take the future and just like go crazy like
Prometheus did, and that's why a lot of people, you know,

(18:30):
disliked that movie.

Speaker 4 (18:31):
So yeah, I just thought that was interesting. Like I
feel like Rogue.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
One Romulus similar in how they were made and kind
of presented themselves into really established worlds.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, and kind of similar vibes. They're both gritty, They're
both trying to take this ultra realistic approach to things,
you know, and and not that like other movies in
the Aliens franchise were fantastical or anything, But I feel
like this one really tried to keep it grounded so
much so that you know, like, like I one thing

(19:03):
I really enjoyed about it was the fact that there
was this discussion in the movie by a character they
technically brought back, not the same character, but the actor.
They technically brought it back, and they addressed the fact
that the reason that there's so much like like you know,
health issues on all these planets that they're colonizing is

(19:23):
this humans were technically never meant to leave Earth. And
I think that that's a more current kind of discussion
that we're having because we're finding out with these long
durations astronauts in space that like their kidneys are like
like shriveling up in everything, and I'm starting to believe that,
like I don't know if we're actually ever going to

(19:45):
be able to get off this planet. But that wasn't
a conversation that was happening back in the late seventies
and the eighties. It was like, Okay, go to hyper
sleep land on this planet, and if you can breathe,
it's fine, you will be fine. But I think we're
gonna find find out I'm going off on a tangel,
but I think we're gonna find out that the human
race is much more attached to this biosphere than we

(20:06):
ever sort of thought we were. And but going back
to Anlin Romulus and also sort of Rogue one, that's
the sort of realism that I enjoyed that was brought
to this to Romulus was they sort of addressed that
and that's kind of a modern way of thinking, you know.
And the addressed they addressed in the fact that like
we need we're going to need some kind of genetic

(20:27):
help to colonize the galaxy if we want to do that,
and that genetic help is going to come by way
of the black goo.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Right and that sense of immortality right right, because that's
that's the whole essence of why the company wants the
go or wants the specimen of the xenomorphs is because
they want to extract whatever it is in them to
live longer.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
So anyways, Yeah, so Corey.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
For those who haven't seen the movie yet or need
a refresher, can you give a short plot summary of
Alien Romulus.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yes, So we are on a whalen utany colonized world,
which is really cool because we get to see what
Hadley's hope maybe would have been if the Xenomorphs on
LV four two six had not wiped it out. So
we see a colony that's moved, that's progressed, you know,
sort of past things so people can actually breathe on
the world and everything, but it's in disarray, it's in ruin.

(21:29):
There seems to be a very strong social class of
people who are sort of forced to work in the
mines versus the upper class. We follow a group of
teenagers who discover they're like the only people that know
that there's a derelict, a whalen utane space station in
orbit around the planet. They're on their idea and it's

(21:51):
a simple idea, and I love this concept. It's almost
comes off as a heist movie. They want to take
their ship go to it. All their doing. All they're
doing is retrieving the oxygen canisters for there to put
in their hyper sleep chambers so that they can go
further than what their ship will allow them to do,

(22:14):
for them to get to another planet, a planet maybe
they're hoping, well, they'll have more of their freedom there.
But this Darrylic spaceship, unfortunately was a whalen utany science
lab that had picked up Haines's son from Alien, the
Xeno more from Alien and have experimented on him and

(22:37):
chaos ensues, definitely.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
And this group of teenagers, young people, they're basically space pirates,
and that's what's cool, Like they're extracting, they're doing this.
You know, it's totally illegal. They're not supposed to be
doing this, and uh, that's what I like about it.
They're just kind of young and dumb, but they're they're
optimistic and they see an opportunity and they just go

(23:03):
after it.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
And they have an Android of the run who was
the best actor in the entire movie.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Absolutely, which is a great segue to our cast. So
without further ado, it's Chelsea's cool cast.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Chelsea's cool cast.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Cool cast.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
First and foremost, we have Kayleie Spainey and she is
having one heck of a year. She just was coming
off the heels of Priscilla in that movie Priscilla, and
she was in Civil War.

Speaker 4 (23:39):
Did you see that yet, Corey? Did you see Civil War?

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Not yet? I want to. I love I love Alex
Garland stuff. And I was totally wanted to see in
the theater. I missed it. Been wanting to watch it life,
you know, But no, it's it's high on my watch list.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
I would say she's probably the standout in that movie,
probably her or Nick Offerman. Like it was cool seeing
Kirson Dunce and Wagner Moore is great, but uh oh,
and of course Jesse Plemmons, he stills a show. But
after Jesse Plemons, it really is speiny and she is
just she's like the new thing.

Speaker 4 (24:17):
I think.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
You see her in that, and you see it in Romulus,
like it's gonna be like I think, like ten or
fifteen years from now and be like, oh, yeah, she's
in an alien movie.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Like she's she is it. I'm calling it. You can
mark it down. She's gonna be the gen Z representation
of Hollywood moving forward.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
And she's fantastic and Alien Romulus absolutely fantastic. So is
David Johnson. And he plays Andy the Android. Honestly, I
had never seen him in anything before, and I'm looking
through his filmography now and I literally don't recognize anything,
but I couldn't take my eyes off of him. I

(24:59):
adored him. He plays this, I mean, the things he
goes through as an android. I felt for him. And
the thing is he was like so human about it too,
you know, right, But he was also they weren't trying
to hide the fact that he's an android, like everyone
knows it. So that's really cool. But man, David Johnson,
I'm also calling it like you are with her, I'm
calling it with him. We're going to see a lot

(25:19):
more of him in the future. Granted we've seen him
in the past. It's just I think he was doing
UK stuff.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, he is a British actor, so he like this
is his coming out party basically, whereas we've known Spainy
and different things, like same thing. When I was watching
this movie, I was like, who is this guy? And
because you said it exactly, he has this mix of
being synthetic, pun intended and human at the same time.

Speaker 4 (25:48):
And to balance that, right to balance because at this
point we've seen a lot of androids in this franchise
and each one has had their own look and feel.
But honestly, like we.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Want to root for David Johnson's character Andy. We are like, Andy,
don't die, Andy, we don't want to see your white
milk like spewing everywhere. We are rooting for Andy to
make it by the end of the movie.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, and it's they got an interesting dynamic with Rain,
who's Kaylee spain Spainey. Her name's Rain in the movie,
and Andy. They almost they're brothers and sisters. But even
though he's you know, there's a reason for you. You know,
you'll find out and pretty early on these aren't the
secrets that they're trying that the movie's trying to hide
from you. But I do very much enjoy Rain's love

(26:37):
for Andy. But then you got some like people like
Tyler and Bjorn who are kind of like dicks to Andy,
you know, because they don't really care. More so Bjorn,
but we'll get to him in a second. But uh,
Tyler Archie Renault. I think honestly, I could not pick
him out of a crowd. To me, he's generic brunette dude,

(27:00):
you know, like like I wouldn't even be able to
like pick him out on the crowd the street. But
he was in Morbius. I never saw that.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
I haven't seen it. Yeah, I'm a big Spider Man guy.
I stay away from that, and the stayway from Madam Webb.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
I saw Madame Webro and it was horrific, and it
because it was so boring. It was the worst thing
a superhero movie could do was be boring. Yeah, and
it felt like it literally felt like an early nineties
superhero where you don't see them in costume or anything.
Like you only see them in costume at the very
end for like five seconds. And I'm like, guys, we're

(27:34):
this is twenty twenty three. When this came out. I
was like, we're way past that, Like you know what
I mean. If they're not in the costume seventy five
percent of this movie, I don't care.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
Yeah, yeah, we don't need a giant origin.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
No, it's horrible.

Speaker 4 (27:47):
No, no, thank you.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Next we have Isabella merced and are you familiar with
her work, because I do. She was in Tora and
the Lost City of Goals. She played Door they Explore.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
Have you seen that movie?

Speaker 2 (27:59):
No, dude, it's actually pretty funny. I enjoyed it. I
watched it with some kids. I was, you know, visiting
some friends of ours and they have kids and we
were watching it. You know, I was like, whatever, try
the Explorer. But it's actually pretty funny. I enjoyed it
a lot. And she plays story with the Explorer.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
Maybe I'll see it one day. She was in the
Second Cigar a Cicario movie, which I enjoyed. I didn't
love as much as the first Cacaria.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Yeah, to be honest, I didn't even know there was
the second one. I told.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
I mean it was still good, like I still seen it.
First one's a classic. I love Cacario.

Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
And then she's also in a pretty good comedy family movie,
Instant Family with Mark Wohlberg, like very contemporary. Uh talks
about just the the family nucleus in you know, the
twenty first century. So she's in it, so is Roseburn.
So it's it's actually like a pretty solid comedy that

(29:00):
gets you to the fields kind of like click, you
know how like clicks a funny movie. And then yeah,
talks about family aspects. That's kind of what Instant Family is. Okay,
so we're.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
Gonna should we wait for k and and that whole thing?
Let's wait?

Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, yeah, well let's yeah. I'm just trying to keep
it is is you.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Know, everybody like when you talk about this movie, it's
always about the end.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
So we're trying to keep it sort of in order,
you know what I mean. But uh, I think the
last one, well, I guess there's two more people we
should probably really talk about Bjorn h who of course
he's like he's like the dick to be a dick
kind of guy. He wasn't my favorite and he was
like he I think he played like a random vandal
in like the Batman. He hasn't been in much that

(29:45):
I've I've seen. Yeah, he's Spike fern Is the actor.
And basically Bjorn doesn't like Andy because his mother was
killed in a mind shaft working there and the synthetic
decided to close it off to save other lives.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
Unfortunately, her life wasn't spirit.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
So you know, right, rightfully, So maybe understandably Bjorn has
his just hatred for synthetics and it makes for tension
with this.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, and I guess last playing Navarro Eileen Wu I
actually really liked her. She's not in it for very long,
but I very much enjoy her. I think I think
she's another one we're gonna see, uh go go far
these days.

Speaker 4 (30:40):
Yeah, and what's fantastic is she's on the cover.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, it's pretty much y's her. Yeah, that's her on
the poster. That's her, yeah, sir.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Yeah, And from my memory, is she the first human?

Speaker 3 (30:54):
No?

Speaker 2 (30:55):
I guess Resurrection has humans on the cover, but like
rarely do the these movies have humans on the cover.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Yeah, I know you're right, because Aliens just is the egg.
Aliens is just the words Alien three. I think it's
just the words Resurrection. I think has Ripley on the cover.
But can you call her human inn in that movie?

Speaker 4 (31:15):
Right, yeah, well also in it and.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
She's not human. If she's on the cover, she's not
human though, so either.

Speaker 4 (31:22):
Right, Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
So but yeah, so I guess she is the first Yeah, yeah,
because Prometheus, it's uh.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
It's the it's not human. It was a lot of
times it's the it's that face, that giant stone face
is on the cover. Then Alien Covenant had to lean
into it. So they just have the xenomorph like on
that shuttle. That's the cover. There's a good point. Good point.
So she's she's the first human. But granted she is
you know, sucking face with a face tiger.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
Right, you can't tell it's her. But technically, yeah, technically
the first human. Should we mention.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
The is he no more from this or I guess
we'll wait for the end to talk about this actor.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Yeah, let's let's get to that. Yeah, yeah, let's get
let's get to let's get to the two spoiler sort
of things, the character that they resurrect or the actor
that they resurrect and and and the final sort of actor.
Let's keep him to discuss later, the last bit of
like spoiler free you know, discussion. I just want to
say I loved this movie until I didn't like, right,

(32:31):
you know what I mean. Like, it's just I loved
it up until it takes a turn and it leans
into something that I don't approve of, and that's when
it The sad thing is it completely loses me at
that point.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, I agree, I agree. What I do like about
this movie is the continuation of world building. There's a
lot of fan service. For some people, it's too much.
For others. It's like the attention to detail, especially with
all the songs and the buttons that are on this
spacecraft and things like that. Like they did their homework.

(33:06):
And actually I think Freddie Elbers he reached out to
the original people who worked on the first movie.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Of nineteen seventy nine Alien and he picked a brain.
I guess James Cameron was also part of the process.
He looked over the script and not to get his blessings.
But maybe I mean, you know, he's like, hey, if
I have access to James Cameron, might as well. She's
created some of the best sequels of all time. This

(33:36):
is a sequel in certain aspects, so might as well
pick his brain, right.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, No, man, they nailed the look of it, dude,
And you know, talk about fan service, Like. I love
the fact that we got to see a colonized world,
you know, I mean even in the background, it's the
same you know, atmospheric processor that you see in Aliens,
like that, the iconography is all there, but instead of
being desolate, there's actually people you know around. You know,

(34:01):
there's vendors, there's they're doing stuff and everything like that.
So it's really nice to see all that. It really
I felt like it really fits with the other movies.
Now we have to understand this movie takes place within
those fifty seven years between Alien and Aliens when Ripley
was asleep. I think maybe somebody knows exactly how many

(34:22):
years after Alien this is, I'm not sure, but it
takes place in between that. And you know, as someone
who plays like I mean, I play it pretty much
all the Alien video games that come out right now,
I'm playing one that's called Dark Descent, where he basically
could control a squad of colonial marines. It's kind of
like Xcom. But it's so funny because it's so far

(34:42):
in the future, and you know, they don't they have
it's all the tech is still that nineteen seventy nine
you know, tech and everything. And I like the fact that,
like we as an audience, we have to suspend our
disbelief and just be like, Okay, this is a future
built off of almost an alternate reality at this point,
you know, but they into it. They don't try like
in Prometheus, they don't try to be like make the

(35:05):
tech even better. All the tech here feels like it
fits right next to anything you see in Alien and Aliens.
You know you got Mother mu slash thh slash. You
know what I mean, right like you got you got
them the control everything. It's it feels like it fits
exactly like it should.

Speaker 4 (35:24):
Like in that universe. Absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Romulus takes place in twenty one forty two. The first
movie takes place in twenty one twenty two, which makes
it twenty years after the first movie, and then Aliens
takes place in twenty one seventy nine, so that would
be roughly about thirty seven years between Aliens twenty years

(35:50):
of alien And I think you mentioned it really well,
and I wanted to talk about that.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
One of my.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Biggest grapes of the prequel of Star Wars is just
how advance it looks in comparison to the original trilogy, right, Like,
it's like, it's obvious that you go from practical effects
in the seventies to just cig guardian and like, and
it's supposed to be before, Like it just doesn't fit.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
This one does. And it actually I like it.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
I like how it's like pretty seamless, and who knows,
maybe fifty years from now would people even tell the difference.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it looks like it was. It's
you know, it's all the little things, the way that
people's hair looks and all that kind of stuff. But
I liked how treacherous, you know, it seemed like them
taking off on their ship and going through the atmosphere
like that even seemed like a dangerous task, like it's
not so easy to just fly in and out of

(36:51):
the atmosphere of a planet, you know. And I liked that.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Right, all right, well we're gonna take a quick break
and when we come back, we're gonna get more into Romulus,
what we like, what we did, and we can finally
talk about the ending. And because I know we have
so much to talk about, we'll be right back. All right,

(37:17):
we are back here on Ready to retro. We are
with Corey from podcasting After Dark. We're talking Romulus, alien Romulus.
So we're not we're not giving to like a history
course of you know, remiss a Romulus. No, we're talking
about alien Romulus. That just came out, so a few
facts real quickly. So it is one hundred and nineteen minutes,

(37:39):
which I think is great. It was a good amount
of time. It didn't feel too short, didn't feel too long.
It had a budget of eighty million dollars, which is
actually quite a lot for I mean, for all intense purposes.

Speaker 4 (37:52):
This is a horror movie.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yes it is alien, which is why it has an
eighty million dollar budget. But that's a pretty big budget,
especially you know, for Alvarez who's not used to having
that much money the box office.

Speaker 4 (38:09):
And I guess it's still in theaters. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
I think it might be officially out, so right now
we are just about three hundred and fifty million dollars
in the box office, so this was a huge hit
in the summer. What's interesting is back when Disney acquired
twentieth Century Fox, there was properties like this one where

(38:33):
people didn't know what would be the future, because how
can Disney create an alien movie?

Speaker 4 (38:40):
Right?

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Are we gonna see Alien at Disneyland? Probably not, although
Chelsea was telling me in Orlando back in the nineties
that Alien was part of their like movie thing back
in Disney World.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Oh yeah, at Universal. Yeah, the movie Ride. Yeah, I
went to that one. I was a kid, and I
was so excited to do that. It was Alien. It
wasn't Aliens back then, but.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
Yeah, it was that at a Universal or was that at
it was?

Speaker 3 (39:08):
It was at Universal because they also had the Big
Ad at the Big Ad at Outside and everything awesome.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
So at CinemaCon April twenty nineteen, twentieth Century Fox announced
their plans to produce future alien films. So a little
thing happened after twenty nineteen, the pandemic, so that kind
of stopped a lot of momentum that this movie originally had.
And then it was announced in March twenty twenty two

(39:37):
that Alvarez would be the future director, and he pitched
something that they liked, so then Speinney joined and Or
around that same time, and then filming took place from
March to July of twenty twenty three, so just over
a year and a half. What was crazy is that

(39:59):
this will intended to be a exclusive Hulu release, kind
of like Prey a few years ago.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yeah, which in Prey is fantastic, it's a great movie.
I bought the four K, but that movie should have
came out in the theater.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Absolutely. I think they were still suffering from the same thing.
It was like right after the pandemic, so it was
like in this in between stage. But yeah, I'm sure
twentieth Century Fox Disney is so happy that they put
out into theaters because three hundred and fifty million is
a lot. So we've talked a lot about it. But

(40:39):
there was an emphasis on practical effects in this movie,
to not just be a rehash, but to bring something alive,
something that wasn't just a cig you know, blobfest, but
to have something tangible, real, And what I appreciate about

(40:59):
this one is it goes back to its roots as
being a scary movie.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's it's definitely
more of a horror movie. It's more like Alien than
it is like Aliens totally. And I love the practical effects.
The Xeno morphs look great. They're all practical. The face
huggers were even I think for the most part practical.
I'm sure they did some cgi things here and there,

(41:25):
but they really prided themselves on the fact that the
face huggers were real and really on set and not
gonna lie. Seeing a swarm of face huggers was awesome.
That was absolutely amazing. We're getting to the spoilers now,
we're just scared. We're gonna go back and forth with
what we like and what we don't like. So my

(41:45):
question was right out of the movie, where were the
Where did the eggs come from? And then I'd read
online that they were I guess organically three D printed
from the the I guess the genome or something, And
I'm like, well, I didn't pick up on that when
I saw the movie, but when I when I left
the theater, I was like, well, where did all the

(42:06):
where did all the queens come? So, guys and gals,
the movie starts with a whale and Utaine ex expedition
back to the Nostromo and they they actually find Cane's
Sun the xenomorph from Alien, and they bring them back
and they basically do experiments on They do what like
they wanted to do an Aliens, you know what I mean,

(42:27):
like the things that they wanted to do, which was
like experiment on them. And I was like, okay, cool,
So but how did they extract the face hugger from
that xenomorph without a queen?

Speaker 4 (42:40):
True?

Speaker 3 (42:41):
So there's no queen in this movie.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
No, So what.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
You're saying is what you found is that they did
some three D printing, that these that these.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
Are organically three D printed. That's what I read online.
I don't know if I missed that piece of dialogue
somewhere in the movie, because I sadly I only got
to see this once. Max and I are recording this
literally a week before this thing drops on streaming. Otherwise
I would have rewatched it.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
But you would think we would have planned this better,
but we.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Well, no, it's their fault. We're not dropping it on
streaming early. Sure, but yeah, so so Max, if you
didn't know that, and and I still don't technically believe it.
Where do you think the eggs or the face Huckers
came from?

Speaker 2 (43:22):
That's a good question, Like maybe there's another movie there,
like they can go even like two or three years
before this. Not sure, But as far as the lore goes,
we know that there needs to be a queen or something.

Speaker 4 (43:36):
So I don't know. I don't know. It's kind of
a plot hole, to be honest.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Unless the original ending was supposed to be a queen
and they jettisoned that right for what they went with.
But we'll get there. We'll get there, guys and gals.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, so let's talk about the things that we like.
So you liked that aspect. Was there anything else would
you think of the main character?

Speaker 4 (43:58):
Rain?

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Oh? Yeah, I very much enjoyed her. I understood her
motivation and everything like that. I very much enjoyed seeing that,
you know, them take you know, finding the original alien
and stuff like that. I love the look of it.
But yeah, the characters is what you're really gonna hone
in on. And I loved her dynamic between her and Andy.

(44:21):
And one thing I didn't see coming was when he
gets that upgrade, you know, he gets a new chip,
put in sort of like a third of the way
through the film, and it kind of changes his programming
a little bit. I thought that added a very interesting
dynamic and a switch up in everything.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
What I didn't realize the trailers, but also in the movie.
It wasn't until I watched a video on YouTube after,
but when his eyes roll back in his head like
he's the Undertaker and he's.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
Got the whale and Utaney symbol.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
On the I realized that that it had the symbols.
That's really So those are the little things about this
movie where it's just it's brilliant.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
Yeah, no, no, this this movie is great. It is
up until a certain point, you know it is. And
I saw that too because you saw it in the
trailers that kind of rolls his I back, But in
the movie, yeah, the little the Whalen Taney cymbals come up.
And I love these little nods of him being an android,
you know, and they do they do a good job
with it. There's like these concepts of evolution with him

(45:24):
and stuff like that, and him sort of you know,
fighting his programming. I mean, this is the this is
cool stuff. Yeah, and I know that, like Ridley Scott
wants to talk about AI and things like that in
Prometheus and and and Alien Covenant and everything, and but
at the same time, by doing so, to me, he
ruins the lore of aliens because then you know, the

(45:46):
AI just makes the alien and I'm like, oh, f you.
But here, I thought they did a great job about
of talking about artificial intelligence and and what it means
to be human but still keeping it sent or still
keeping the movie grounded in this horror film, like, so
they were still able to have a competent conversation about AI,

(46:09):
but still you know, have awesome scary set pieces all around.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Absolutely, and just the fact that Andy, like what I
love is the moment he like, I guess reboots and
he becomes this kind of nefarious and we could talk
about that later. So he puts a different chip in
and then he kind of the old Andy gets a race,

(46:35):
but he grabs one of the face hugger's tail because
that's the only way that you could defeat it, and
he's just like he's a.

Speaker 4 (46:43):
Total badass at that point.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, yeah, I love like when he's the old Andy
before the upgrade. He's twitching a lot because it's a
little not if you're paying attention to. It's everywhere. It's
a not to Bishop when he said the old Androids
used to.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
Twitch, Oh they always were a bit twitchy.

Speaker 4 (47:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
There's a little things like that where you're just like,
all right, this property was in the hands of someone
who loved this series.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
Oh and so I mean and yes, Fetti Alvarez has
come out and said like he loves the entire series,
which means he loves Prometheus and you know Covenant as well.
He loves the entire series as a whole. So this
movie is like, it's what he wanted it to actually
incorporate everything from all the movies and to sort of

(47:31):
make it one cohesive. This is almost the strongest bridge
we have between the Ridley Scott prequels and the main
series itself totally because we have the black Goo in
this So we find the black Goo about halfway through
the movie, at the same time that we find a
sort of a resurrected Ian Holme. You know, he played

(47:55):
the android in Alien obviously, the one that goes crazy,
but here he's not playing the same character. He's playing Rook,
which is a different you know, it's a different Android,
but it's the same model. I was confused, Like when
you're first watching it, it like at first you're like,
oh my gosh, there he is.

Speaker 4 (48:16):
There.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
He is like you know, Ian Holmes back, and like
my mind was like, okay, is this the same synthetic?

Speaker 4 (48:23):
But then he said rook.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
So it took me like a few minutes to like,
I don't know, just like be there with them. It
just felt like it was like I was just I
couldn't believe it, right. I was like, Ian Holme has
been dead for like what six eight years?

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Yeah, it's a while.

Speaker 4 (48:38):
It's been a while, and I don't know.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
I think like when he was introducing himself as Rooke,
I think I missed that. But then I was catching
up in the dialogue and I was like, okay, but yeah,
let's talk about that. It was super controversial when it
first came out that Ian holmes likeness was in this movie.
How did you feel about it?

Speaker 3 (49:03):
I mean, at this point, it's that whole remapped face thing.
You know, we've seen it in Mandalorian and stuff like that,
so you know, I kind of expect it in certain ways.
I'm not so shocked by it anymore. I liked that
because as a kid. I always assumed that like most
of the androids looked a Bishop, and at one point
most of the androids looked like Ash. But there was

(49:24):
maybe different models and stuff like that, but for the
most part, they all look the same. And then yeah,
I don't know, Prometheus, like I didn't kind of add
this idea maybe they're all looking a little bit different.
But I liked sort of going back to the fact that, yeah,
you're going to create one model and you're just gonna
mass produce it, you know. And he has kind of
like Ash's mannerisms where he's like, I can't lie to you.

(49:47):
You know your odds are you know, you know, I
can't lie to you, but you have my sympathy, you know,
type of thing, And that was I mean, that was great.
Didn't he said that? And yeah, he said too, which
is also you know that to call back to Ash,
you know, I can't lie to you about your you know,
your chances, but you have my sympathy type of things.
So yeah, it's it's it's I that wasn't. I didn't

(50:09):
have a problem with that. It was but it was
around that time that we discover the black Goo and
it's about halfway through the movie and you know me
who does not like Covenant or Prometheus. I was immediately
in the back of my head, I go, uh oh,
like oh no, I was like okay. But then they
don't really kind of address it for a while, and
I'm like, okay, okay, maybe that was just uh, you know,

(50:32):
maybe that was just a little drop, a little well
not a little fan service, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Right, But yeah, it was kind of crazy, just the
banter and the chat online there was most people were
against Ian home and I guess if the family is
okay with it, which in this situation they were, I
guess the his family and Ian Holmes estate like approved it. Yeah,

(50:59):
but like this this is gonna have a weird precedent.
I think this is true, but I heard it might
have been a rumor that James Earl Jones gave his
permission to Disney to have his voice like ai'ed for
any future Darth Vader appearances.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Yeah. So the controversy right now is that Peter Cushing
might not have given his consent to being brought back
in Rogue one, and that's a little bit of an
interesting we don't know what's going on currently with that
right now. But yes, before James Earl Jones passed, he
did actually sign the paperwork, and I think he was

(51:39):
one of the first like living people who was like, yes,
you can do this as long as it's for Darth Vader,
you know, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
No, it's gonna be wild.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
And it's interesting because this is what the whole Hollywood
strike was about, was AI.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
But then it's it's kind of this.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Great line that they're flirting with because it's like, I
gave you permission, but it's still AI. You're still not
allowing another actor to possibly do an impersonation of Darth
Vader's voice. So yeah, it's gonna be just the beginning
of this.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
But you Holmes, it's Bilbo. That's ash to see him,
like back.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
I was just like a fifth element. I was not
expected that, yeah, fifth element. Like he's in so many
awesome things like growing up and you know, he's been
gone for a while, so it was like quite shocking
to me, to be honest.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
Yeah, yeah, he's I guess it hasn't been that long.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
It was twenty twenty, but still, I mean that's he's
he's been He passed away after this movie was in production.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
Yeah, so yeah, yeah. And that's the thing I think
that's the difference between James Earl Jones is he's like
the first living actor person who's like signed, signed, properly
signed the dotted line. And it's not like his family
who did it. Yeah, but like around this time too,
I think, you know, we should talk about Navarro Aileen Wu.

(53:04):
She gets chest bursted awesomely because she happens to have
I don't know what it's for, but you know how
like when you take a flashlight and you put it
up to the palm of your hand, you can kind
of see through your hand. Well, she's got like a
Mega Howard flashlight thingy, and when she starts having these convulsions,
she puts it to her own back, so the light

(53:26):
shines through and we actually get to see the little
alien guy in there. And this was the best chest
burster I've ever seen. And I was as.

Speaker 4 (53:40):
Yeah, it was aliens version of an ultrasound.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
Yeah, yes, it was, yes, so yeah it was.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
It was gruesome and probably this is the most violent
gruesome one.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
I mean, yeah, so because I mean, yeah, well, I
don't know, Bjorn has a pretty pretty awesome death too,
and so does with Tyler this is okay. This is
kind of a traditional uh you know, teeth through the
head the forehead thingy. We'll get to Bjorn's in his second.
I would still say Navarro's is still the best death
in the movie though, Oh totally.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
And it's the one where it's like setting the tone.
All right, this crew is screwed. Yeah, right, like they're screwed,
which it's all they're screwed.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
They're double screwed because she's the the pilot of their
ship to begin with.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
Oh yeah, and they're heading to like a ring of
one of the planets. Yeah, so they're like, dude done.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
I know. There's it's like one of those movies where
there's so many things like sort of you know, like
sort of honing in in everything. No, so that I
mean in the fact that like her chest bursts in
the arms of Dora the Explorer, you know, like like
that was cool and then you know we're for just
you know, kills right now. Like Bijorne's death was pretty

(54:57):
awesome too.

Speaker 4 (54:58):
I like that one.

Speaker 3 (54:59):
He too, I did too. So we finally get to
see sort of the gestation period between the chest burster
and when they turn into like a full I guess
these guys were sort of drones. They weren't really warriors.
Warriors or in Aliens, those are considered warriors. The one
in Alien is considered a drone, So I think these

(55:21):
guys were technically more drone esque. But we get to
see this cocoon thing which we never seen before. So
I do like the fact that the movie adds to
the lore. It adds to the to the gestation period
type of it adds to the lore of the of
the Xenomorph's life cycle essentially.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Right, because in the first one we see Brett pick
up the skin, right, yes, so you're like, oh, you know,
some kind of metamorphous thing happen. Now we get to
see that process and it was pretty sexual. As you know,
we were talking about a couple episodes ago.

Speaker 4 (55:56):
Just the the whole.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Face Huggers is a very it's very phallic, thank you,
it's it's it is a phallic Yeah, and this one
as well. Yeah, I don't want to get too gross,
but see pictures of it, you know what I'm.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Well, I mean, and I mean hr Giger, you know,
like it was all it was all penises for for him,
So you know, yeah, but this is more of the
woman's uh yeah, yes, yeah, yes it was yes. So
so the designers definitely kept the theme of emulating sexual organs,
you know, for the aliens and everything. And I like, uh,

(56:32):
you know, Bjorn's kind of examining it and the tail
kind of strikes him, you know a little bit, and
the fact that he like zaps the thing to cause
it to bleed a little bit, and then he falls
on like this power line as the acid like sort
of drips on him, and you know, we all know
what's gonna happen because the acid dripping on him. Yeah,
but I love the fact that like he doesn't technically

(56:53):
kill him, even though you know, you know he would
die from those wounds as it's like burning into his chest.
But the fact that the acid goes through him and
then hits the power lines behind him, and that's kind
of what kills him.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Right, everything he gets it brutal, like yes, having a
face hugger just like pop out of you, you know,
like that sucks. This one's like kind of a slow
death and a lot of pain on different aspects.

Speaker 4 (57:20):
And different avenues of pain.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Man, you got your face melting again, electro cuity, You
just got stung, you got like assaulted.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
It's it's it's all types of message it is.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
And of course, I mean he's the he's the asshole character.
So you're like, sure, that's fine, I don't mind that
that happens to him, and and he does. I mean
in theory he gets it sort of the most brutally.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
Can we talk about my favorite scene talking about the
acid is the anti gravity?

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Well, see we need to get there first. So so yeah,
so we're gonna do plumb I'm saying. So the fact
that like, you know, we we see the rain and Tyler,
you know, he gives her this like a precursor to
a pulse rifle, which is really cool. It has some
auto locking capabilities. So you can see how the technology
was put into the smart gun, you know. And people

(58:14):
are like, why wasn't in the pulse rifle. It's because
you're not gonna give grunts, like you're running the mill
grunts like that much technology you save that, like any
kind of technology is gonna be expensive. So like your
average grunt is just gonna get a generic pulse rifle
and you gotta hope that they can hit their shot,
you know what I mean. But the smart guns have
that tracking technology that this pulse rifle has, so watching

(58:38):
her gun down like a whole swarm of aliens and
they turned off the gravity, so like all these poor
aliens are sort of floating and stuff, and she blows
them all away and then the acid is still there floating.
That was so cool. That was awesome. My only thing
was was, like, I just wish it didn't go through
all the xenomorphs. In sort of one fell swoop they

(59:00):
kind of get rid of all the xenomorphs in the movie,
and sort of one moment.

Speaker 4 (59:05):
Right, it was kind of a convenient plot device and certain.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
Right to sort of level the playing field and set
the stage for the final boss fight. But the idea
that she has to kind of push off and fly
through zero you know, zero gravity. Obviously there's still air
and everything, but it's zero gravity and she has to
maneuver through an impossible obstacle course of acid floating in

(59:30):
the air. That was awesome. Man. My only wish is
that we had somebody, one more expendable person to do
that so we could see what would happen. Yeah if
she messed up.

Speaker 4 (59:42):
Yeah, No, I love this scene. This was like the
scene where I was like, my mouth was open. I
was like, this is awesome.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Like the fact that the bloods is floating everywhere. It's
kind of like you know the Death Star, you know,
when it blows up, it would blow up and like
it would shattered pieces and it would float in the air.
So it's a little more practical, it's a little more realistic.
I'm just expecting when this movie is finally able to

(01:00:10):
be streamed or someone's able to cut it. I can
just see Rain just being like in you know, in
mid air with all of the acid and then the background.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
It's done. Gonna do that for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
I think I should do it. It's my idea, so
I should do it first.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
But no, But I mean it's a it's a great
set piece. And this movie has some fantastic set pieces,
like the time where they have to kind of would
they lower their temperature in the room or something, or
so they can hide from the face huggers as they're
walking through it. You know, this movie has it's almost
like it's almost like a video game where you're sort
of going from stage to stage, set piece, you know,
to set piece. I I liked that about about the film,

(01:00:57):
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Anything else we want to mention before we get to
the things that we didn't like.

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
Yeah yeah, I like yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Yeah, No. I mean, like eighty five ninety percent of
this movie I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the character relationships,
I love the tech, love the way it looked, loved
the actors. I think it did a great job of
what it was trying to portray. It was. It was

(01:01:28):
damn near perfect, you know, damn near perfect up until
it wasn't.

Speaker 4 (01:01:35):
Let's talk about it, Corey.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Okay. So in the last like ten to fifteen minutes
of the film, Dora the Explorer, we find out that
she's pregnant. Halfway through the movie, she gets taken by
a xenomorph but kind of survives. That was a cool scene.
And then in order to sort of help her survive
and the baby to survive, they kind of I don't

(01:01:58):
remember if she injects it or however, but they take
they use the black Kuu or she uses the blackgo
on herself to kind of try to survive in everything.
So what is that gonna do. Well, it's gonna force
the baby to become mutated and turn into a pseudo,
a mixture between an engineer, which I guess is saying

(01:02:18):
that engineers are us. Anyways, you know they've just been
black good and I get that, I understand it. And
Fetti Alvarez loves Prometheus and Covenant. I've heard tell that
they didn't want him to the studios didn't actually want
him to include this, this aspect of it. And he
was like, no, we're going to and they're like okay.
And I made three one hundred million dollars, so who

(01:02:38):
am I to say? But anyways, so this is this
the Offspring. The offspring comes out and he is a
tall basketball player and Max, Uh do you do you
know who this or this act? You know, actor is
once basketball player and now actor.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Well he is from Romania and his name is Robert.
I'm gonna but you this, but uh, Brochitsky, That's why
I give it you, buddy, That's why I didn't say it. Yeah,
So what was wild is I remember seeing video of
this guy. He was like seven foot seven. I think
he played in a high school ball but he just

(01:03:17):
looked so awkward on the basketball court.

Speaker 4 (01:03:19):
Uh, it looked like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
He couldn't like move his neck. There has to be
some kind of deformity or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Yeah. Massive. I mean he's kind of like crooked, like
his spine is kind of crooked. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
So his basketball career didn't go anywhere, so he got
this role as the offspring.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I love the offspring
by the way.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
So yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
I mean, for me, this was the point where I
was like no, because the moment it was like what
the first ten to fifteen minutes they mentioned that the
character was pregnant, and I was like, well, that's the
plot that that's gonna come back.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Yeah, it's Chekhov's gun. You gotta you gotta show what's
gonna come back later, and yes, yep, it's gonna come back.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
So when they said k is pregnant, and especially in
a horror movie, which this is, You're like, okay, that's
gonna be there's a reason why the writers put this
character is pregnant, and for this it was to create
this you know, alien thing.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
But I was like, man, I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Need it because it almost felt like this was the
fourth act. I was totally fine with the elevator shaft
and you know, we were just talking about the anti
gravity scene like that was cool.

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):
I was like on a high.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
And then it was like, oh, well, what is this,
Like it's still going and I know I said that
it was a good length. It was a good length.
It was just these last ten minutes. I was like,
what the heck? And then yeah, I the fact it
was an engineer with.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Like with a tail and the tongue, you know, mouth
tongue thing, you know, So it was a mixture and
and it was and so he's yeah, he's like this
half human, half engineer, half alien. Hybrid's nimorph hybrid. He's
got like even the he's got a tail, but he
looks like an engineer. But he's also got the tongue
with the teeth, you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
Yeah, the silver teeth. It reminded me of Jaws from
James Bond. Like that's what he looked like. You know.
I was like, what is going on?

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Man?

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
This guy?

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
You know, it looks like the filling when you were
kids in the nineties, all the you know, metal teeth.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
And then he like so so, you know, Key gives
birth to him, but she survives that aspect of it,
and then he sort of like feeds on her. And
I'm like and I'm like, I know that I'm supposed
to care, but at this point I'm checked out. So
and now you know, Rain has to fight this this thing.
There's there's the there's literally he's got a little bit

(01:05:55):
of kind of looks like the alien from Alien Resurrection,
the half human alien and Resurrections, got little bit of
elements of that. And it's just and the way she
kills it was just so big budget cinematic, right, and
it just didn't It didn't work for me. So for me,
this movie was like damn near perfect up until the end,

(01:06:17):
and for me it was like a fucking wet fart
at the end. I'm just like, God, damn it, you know,
And and it sucks because that's what I'm left with, right, So, Like,
I don't even know how to rate this movie, do
you do? I rate it like an eight because I
loved eighty percent of it, But I don't know because
I like that what it did at the end knocks
out so much enjoyment that I have from it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Yeah, I just felt like it wasn't needed, Like you
had a great movie. And I'm sure they showed this
to test audience and I'm sure it was mixed, but
I guess, you know, Fetti, he went with his vision.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
And he God bless him. Yeah, you know, you know
so after thirty three hundred million, so what the hell
do I know?

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Yeah, But for me, I'm in the same boat. I
was like, I love this movie, and then I was like,
it took me out. It just took me out. And
I'm not even again, I'm not a huge fan, so
I'm not offended when I see things like that. It
just to me it didn't fit. And I was like,
why did he look like the architect? Like it was
just too much, like make him look like a xenomorph.

(01:07:22):
But I guess that kind of gets into resurrection and
then I don't know, it was just like I didn't
need it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
I think, because there's a whole point, you know, when
when Tyler couldn't open the door, k was on the
other side and she gets kind of sucked off into
the darkness clearly somehow a little bit impaled or something,
you know what I mean. I would have just left
it like that, never see her again, and then have

(01:07:50):
rain fall into where the queen is right right, because
how else do you get the all the face huggers
and guys and gals. They have like a thousand face hugs,
so like, where do they come from? So so to
me it seems like there it could have easily been
in the script like cut at some point and being like,
here's a queen, you know, and maybe they're like, oh,

(01:08:12):
but we've already seen that before. And I understand that
mentality as a filmmaker trying to give us something new.
I totally totally understand that. But at the same time,
and I'd rather have a queen than some kind of offspring.

Speaker 4 (01:08:27):
Yeah, yeah, just and I know some people loved it, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Same people probably like Covenant and Prometheus, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
So, to be honest, I don't remember how the movie ends. Vaguely.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
I think she goes back into the sleeping pod and
she narrates it kind of like Ridley, right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
Yeah, her and Andy are gonna go to you know.
I mean, it's kind of happy ending. Her and Andy
have I think they have enough air. Maybe they do.
I think it's kind of like sort of left out
in the open if they have enough to get to
where they want to go. The space station crashes into
the rings of the planet. That was really cool, you know.
I like that, And and so that's how you know,

(01:09:11):
you kind of lose all the knowledge, I guess on
that space station because you got to figure in aliens,
Whale and Utani wants to get their hands on the
Xenomorph because they don't have any knowledge of it. You
think at one point they had knowledge of it, but
then they lost it. So you know, Romulus has to
crash like it has to be destroyed. Now you know

(01:09:32):
why they never sent a team of marines there to
extract the data. I don't know, but whatever, that's what
we're left with prequels. Prequels are hard guys and gals
to sort of, you know, force in. But you know,
the Indian was fine, that was that was all fine
to me. It's just it's just that climax, man, that
climax just you said it already. It took you out

(01:09:52):
of it. It took me out of it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
Yeah, I was. I was there and then quickly I wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
I was one hundred percent all the way.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
Especially since I saw it coming.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
And I think that's what sucked is because I was like,
I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying In the back of my mind,
I was like, but she's still pregnant, she's still alive.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
We didn't see her, yeah, And I was.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Like and then when they did it, I was like,
a man, here we go. I already saw this coming.
I like, I feel like I'm not one of those
people who looks for oh, this is how they're gonna
do this, or like there's just some people who are
like that. That's fine if that's you me. I just
sit down and I want to watch the movie. Do
I see certain things? So I'm like, yeah, you know,
some of the things are obvious. There's like I'm like, okay,

(01:10:34):
that's that's a ghost, like obviously that's a ghost, or
you know, that's the killer or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:10:38):
But in this aspect, it just.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
It it was striking in a different way with striking
because it was like, oh, that thing's ugly, but not
ugly and like a menacing way, like ugly is like
what are we doing?

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
It's just it's you know, and man, like I'm old
enough to remember when like the the you know, the
the space Jockey is what they called it, the crash
Grelic ship you know on LV four two six. They
just refer to him as the space Jockey, And in
my head that's infinitely more awesome if you think about
alien from this term is just a space truckers. They

(01:11:16):
found another crashed space truck that was carrying cargo, another
space trucker, and they find its cargo is bad. I
don't we don't know where it came from. We don't
know what how you got that cargo. It doesn't matter.
It's just one group of truckers found another trucker crashed
and they got you know, and it's just like I
don't want to know. I don't want to know that

(01:11:37):
that a rogue android built the Xenomorph. No, I don't
want that, you know what I.

Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
Mean, that's not what you're asking for.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
That's not what I'm asking for, you know. And so
like you know, and but also coming from my point
of view of of you know, reading a bunch of
Aliens comics, of if you've never read the old dark
Horse Aliens comics or Terminator or Predator or anything like that,
or the Star Wars ones. Even it wasn't like Marvel.
They didn't have like it wasn't like Spider Man like

(01:12:08):
issue like you know, one hundred and two, Like they
didn't keep going. It was just mini series, mini series,
mini series. It was exciting if the mini series were
actually somehow connected, but for the most part they weren't.
So like, I'm used to absorbing these these stories and
being like, Okay, that one was cool, great, next one
not great, But I'll read the next one because it's

(01:12:30):
totally different.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
Here, I'm like, I'm not like turned off to the
franchise or anything, because I'm like, Okay, I didn't like
aspects of this, but you know what, with the same
you know philosophy, the next one could be fine. And
I felt like Pray pray the Predator movie and actually Predator, uh, Predators,
which I love Predators because they both felt like a
dark Horse comic come to life, and this also feels

(01:12:55):
like a dark Horse comic come to life. That I
would have hated the fourth issue when and when, you know,
I would have said this was cool up until the
fourth issue when the Offspring comes out, and then I
would have been like, Okay, well, I'm moving on. But
the problem is, I don't know when the next you know,
alien movies coming out. I knew that the next Alien
comic would be out next month, and then we'd be

(01:13:17):
going in a whole different direction, right, and I'm fully
on board, but now I don't know when the next
Alien movie's coming out and if they're gonna keep leaning
into the whole Prometheus saying, so that kind of fills
me with a little bit of existential dread.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
Yeah, as of right now, I guess I read an
interview that Freddie Elvres says that there are some ideas,
but he said, just like the first Alien, there was
what seven years in between Ridley Scott's to James Cameron.
He said, we can take some time on it, so

(01:13:49):
it's not gonna be a quick turnaround. In talking about
this movie, I really wanted to discuss the line where
and he says a famous line of really get away
from her.

Speaker 3 (01:14:04):
Oh you bitch, I killed me too.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
It did, because that is like a sacred line, not
just to this franchise, but I think into cinema history
like that is such, like that's a great quote I
should have had.

Speaker 4 (01:14:18):
You know, they have ranks of like greatest quotes ever.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
Maybe I can bring it up as you talk, but yeah,
I'm like, that's a sacred line in cinema history.

Speaker 4 (01:14:27):
Andy should not be saying that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
No, or Andy should have been like get away from
her you biological zenomorph you know something, and like give
it to us for a second, but then give it,
you know, your own spin. I hated that I but
you know I would have let that slide, you know,
because that came before The Offspring. So I was like, Okay,
this movie was still damn near perfect in my opinion.

(01:14:50):
But a lot of people have discussed that quote. I
hated that quote. I love obviously Aliens, but yeah, that
quote did that quote is is go?

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
I mean? And yes, you have to kind of like
keep it to like where it is. There's some things
where you don't go and say, you know, next time
someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes.
You can't say that again, like Ghostbusters said that that's it.
There's no other time to say that. You know. I
do have to throw out And this is a testament
of how awesome Aliens is. My nephew, he's right now,

(01:15:24):
he's nine, but to him, Uncle Cory, coolest guy in
the entire world. And I'll wear that mantle proudly. And
so even before he turned eight, he knew that Aliens
is my favorite movie.

Speaker 4 (01:15:35):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
He couldn't wait to see it. We spent New Year's
Eve together and he stayed up till midnight when he
was at seven years old, and he's like, next year,
I'm going to be eight, can I watch Aliens? Like
he literally asked me that on January first at twelve
oh one am. And I said, yeah, buddy, as soon
as you turn eight, we can watch Aliens. I showed

(01:15:56):
him Aliens. It is now his favorite movie. That's awesome.
He's showing it to his other friends, so and so
they're have and they're and they're kind of scared of it,
you know, they're hiding under the covers, but they're watching
it together. That's how I was eight or nine years
old when I was watching horror movies with my buddies,
and like you under the covers and everything like that.
So I love that that's happening. He adores Aliens. He

(01:16:18):
loves Aliens. He thinks it's the greatest thing ever made.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
And it's just like that's what elkles are for.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
That's what uncles are for, you know. And I also
try I tried showing him Predator when he was nine,
scare the crap out of him. He only made it
about halfway through the movie. I have officially now traumatized him.
It was the hanging skinned bodies at the beginning day. Yeah,
I got him. He didn't see that coming. But I
was like, Okay, sorry about that, little guy. I'm glad
that he was open with me that he didn't want

(01:16:47):
to watch it anymore. But and I asked him, I
was like, but Alien's okay. He's like, He's like, but
Aliens is on a different planet. This was Earth. And
I'm like, oh, okay, okay, I get it. I understand that.
But anyways, going back to sort of how iconic Aliens is,
I use my nephew as an example that it's not
just like iconic for people who saw in the theater.

(01:17:07):
It's not iconic for people who grew up in the nineties.
It's a freaking amazing movie. At any age that you
see it, will Romulus be that way? I don't know,
you know what I mean, Like, I don't know, like
when you think about Aliens, you know, like James Cameron
didn't have anybody sort of have some kind of iconic

(01:17:31):
line from Alien in it. But now we're so now
we revere these things. Like James Cameron didn't revere Alien,
you know, he made his sequel and he you know
and everything. I'm sure he loved Alien, but he didn't
revere it. Now we have people like FEddi Alvarez and
people our Age making movies that revere the franchise, and
I think sometimes that's not necessarily a good thing. It's

(01:17:55):
a great thing. Like with Navarro's death, it's a bad
thing when you get you know, stay away from her,
you bitch, you know, like type of thing like that's
that's that's where it's. I don't like the fan service.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
Yeah no, that was like excessive and didn't care for it.
And I actually looked it up Corey American Film Institute
a k A five not the Emo band, but American
Film Institute. Believe it or not, that line get away
from her, you bitch is not in any of the

(01:18:29):
top one hundred, which I think.

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
I'm surprised. Honestly, I thought for sure it'd be up there.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
Is I'll be back like number one or something.

Speaker 4 (01:18:38):
I think also La Vista Baby number one is frankly,
my dear, I don't give a damn.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
Of course, ah yeah, yeah yeahs.

Speaker 4 (01:18:45):
And number two I'm gonna make an off. I'm gonna
make it an offer.

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
You can't you can't refuse. I'm sure we're gonna need
a bigger boat is somewhere on there.

Speaker 4 (01:18:53):
Yeah, I'm sure it is.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Yeah, I may the force be with you, you know,
but of course not aliens, which I again, I'm I'm surprise.

Speaker 4 (01:19:01):
I'm surprised because it to me, it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
A just cinematic you know, when you look at movies
and different montages of films and things, it's like that
one's always there, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
I know, I know, and I love how I claim
that Alien is my favorite movie of all time. And
I boughtched the quote, but you got it right, So
I said, stay away from.

Speaker 4 (01:19:22):
You, bitch from Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
All right, well we are gonna take our last break,
and when we come back, we're gonna give our final
thoughts and our rating of Alien Romulus. All right, we
were back here on Ready to Retro. We just went
in depth with Alien Romulus. We gave you a great
review with our buddy Corey from podcasting After Dark. So Corey,

(01:19:47):
I'll let you go first, give us our final thoughts
and the rating the rating that we do here on
Ready to Retros. We take a noun or a line
or something. We talked about and we put it out
of ten. So for an example, if we were reviewing
Home alone, we'd give it ten out of ten.

Speaker 4 (01:20:09):
Buzz your girlfriend Wolf? All right?

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
All right, so Corey. Final thoughts and rating on Alien Ramos.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
Yeah, final thoughts. I mean, I think I sum it
up when I say I love this movie, loved it,
loved it until I didn't. But that's my own personal
hang up on Prometheus and Covenant. People love that movie,
those you know, people love both of those movies. And
that's fine, And I'm never I'm never gonna sit here
and do one of those battles about you're right and

(01:20:38):
I'm wrong or YadA YadA YadA. I just or vice versa.
I'm right, you're wrong. Like everyone's got their opinion, and
I got no beef with that whatsoever. I think they're
gorgeous films. I think they're fun films. I just don't
have them as part of my cannon, and this movie
very much makes them cannon. I think there's a lot

(01:20:58):
to like about this movie. I am excited to rewatch it.
I am very excited to rewatch it. I want to
rewatch it. Maybe I'll maybe I'll be less shocked by
the offspring, and I can actually sort of, you know,
enjoy it versus sitting there, you know, kind of shrugging
and shaking my fist at the clouds, you know what
I mean. So I'm very much looking forward to that.

(01:21:19):
I'm very much looking forward to I'm sure, like all
of them, I revisit them frequently. I revisit Alien Resurrection
once every five to six to seven years to hope
that I like it, and I'm like, Nope, still don't
like it. But it's still a part of the universe.
I can still go back and rewatch it. And so
you know, I think there's a place for Alien Romulus.

(01:21:41):
And if it's the and if it's the fact that
like it brought in three hundred million dollars and it
can fund more alien projects. I mean, Max, we didn't
even talk about the alien TV show that's coming to Hula,
That's true. I mean, I mean, like like first Off
that also takes that takes place on Earth and there's
Alien and I'm like, what the hell is going on?

(01:22:02):
You know what I mean. It's just like it's it's
like come on, and but I'll watch it. I'll watch
it because I think it's the I think it's the
Fargo showrunner is doing it, so like, I'll watch it,
but I'm just I'm not excited for it. But that's
my own personal hang up. I think it's a well
crafted movie. I think Alien Romulus is a well crafted movie.
I think it's a well acted movie. And I actually

(01:22:25):
do think it's a well thought out movie. We just
don't like two aspects of the franchise or as he does,
and I can't. I can't take that away from him.
Fetti Alvarez wanted to make this movie incorporate everything. I
can't take that away from him. He did it, and
I got to applaud him for that, and it made
three hundred million dollars. So, Max, if I say I
like the movie eighty five percent of it is, does

(01:22:47):
that mean I like it eight eight point five out
of ten? Like? What does that mean?

Speaker 4 (01:22:50):
You know what? I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
However you want? But that would be my thought process. Yeah,
around there.

Speaker 3 (01:22:56):
But the problem is that that last percent was so
egregious to me that I'm gonna have to give this one.
I'm still gonna have to dock it just a smidge.
And you know what, I didn't I ultimately didn't feel
like they did enough with the xenom Morphs. They kind
of wiped them all out in that one hallway. So
you know what, I'm gonna give it right now, I'm

(01:23:18):
gonna give it seven whalien utanty contacts out of ten.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
Well, for me, I liked it. There was things I
really loved. I loved the atmosphere. I love that it
went back to an enclosed the environment where Prometheus they
were out in the world and there was like, you know,
different creatures, like there was like birds, I think at
one point, trees, mountains, whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:23:44):
This was back on a ship.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
This was back to the feeling chustrophobic things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:23:50):
So that was awesome. I really loved that aspect.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
And I again heard an interview with Alvarez and he
said he wanted to do like a creature feature with
those last ten minutes, like he loved those growing up.
And I'm like, okay, boy, you already have this Zenomore,
So did you, like, why did you have to create
another Frankenstein type monster? You know, you just you already

(01:24:17):
have the monsters. So overall, I think the acting was great.
I love the fact that there were just pretty much
no names I mean at the moment, I mean, Spainy's
gonna be a well known person. I want to see
David Johnson like. I actually like these characters, which reminded
me of the crew of like Alien and Aliens You

(01:24:38):
are like no when they lost which in Ailien Covenant,
I thought that that setup was great having couples, but
I just didn't care at the end of the day.

Speaker 4 (01:24:47):
They didn't make me care enough.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
So overall, yeah, Solid, I'm with you, and it's funny.
We never talked about this prior, so the fact that
we came out feeling the same way just shows that
we're friends.

Speaker 3 (01:25:02):
I guess, friends to the end, buddy.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
Yeah, so I will give Romulus a seven point five
Rebok Alien Romulus shoes because that was kind of cool.
It was kind of silly, but I kind of liked it,
you know, and I guess they sold them. They're on
eBay right now. Oh wow, Oh yeah, the Alien stompers.

Speaker 3 (01:25:26):
So yeah, well they had to keep the whole what
Ripley was wearing Rebox you know, and everything, so Rebox
has kind of become the unofficial I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
Yeah, they got some.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
Cool Power Ranger shoes. They got cool uh I think
Ninja Turtle Shoes they're the geek shoe company out there, so.

Speaker 3 (01:25:44):
Yeah, yeah, good for them. No, I mean, and I mean,
you know, I I think we're we're pretty obviously we're
pretty simpatico on on on this. I honestly would love
to hear from somebody who loved this movie and that
also loves you know, Covenant and Prometheus. And I'm not
I never asked game, but until like, oh, change my mind.
Oh you didn't, You're an idiot. I'm not going to

(01:26:05):
listen to you. No, I I respect everybody's opinion. Man,
if you came on here telling me you loved Prometheus
and loved Covenant, I'd be cool that. I mean, it's awesome,
like you know, who cares what you love? It's just
it didn't. It didn't. Some things just didn't work for me.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
I would say probably as of right now, Anli and
Romulus would make my top ten movies of this year.

Speaker 3 (01:26:25):
Oh yeah, this year probably, Yeah, I would say, yeah,
probably again. I have to give it another I have
to give it another viewing. I hope I like it
more on another viewing. I mean I liked Furiosa more
on a second viewing, so like, you know, I think
that like, yeah, okay, I would wholeheartedly say see it again.
But yeah, I mean, I'm open for it. I'm open

(01:26:48):
to having my heart change. But I've seen Prometheus, you know,
at least like five or six times. I mean, I'm
a fan of the series. I try to give every movie,
even the ones I don't like, I try to keep
giving them a chance, you know what I mean. I
used to go back and I used to reread even
the comics I didn't like. I would still reread them
multiple times, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:27:08):
So awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
Well, thank you so much, Corey for being on Ready
to Red shro yet again. It's been a while since
you've been on, but I'm glad it was for this.
I'm glad we were able to share our thoughts about
the Alien franchise as well of just Alien Romulus. Can
you tell our listeners all about podcasting after Dark and
any other projects that you're involved with right now?

Speaker 4 (01:27:33):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
Yeah, man, podcast after Dark is pretty much my baby.
That's where I'm at fully so, like I said earlier,
it's a cult movie podcast. We also do interviews. We've
interviewed a couple of people from Aliens we've interviewed the
Heavy Machine Gunners, the Smart Gunners. We've interviewed Mark Ralston
and Jeanette Goldstein, and we've interviewed Poncho from Predator, which

(01:27:58):
is our sort of our newest one. That was really
I met him comic Yes, awesome, I know he was.
Richard Chaves was at Comic Con. I'm so glad you
got to meet him. He's the nicest freaking dude in
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:28:11):
It was his agent who was like, hey, like he's
how's it going.

Speaker 3 (01:28:17):
Yeah, I know, an agent, I know, I know he's
got to do those things. But Richard schav is super
nice guy. Yeah. We but we dive into basically cult
movies from the seventies, eighties, and nineties, you know, weird
stuff that you've probably a lot of people haven't heard of,
you know. We also have TV Obscura and we also
have a Patreon page where we basically we have a

(01:28:40):
tier called the au Tour Deforced tier and Zach and I,
my co host from podcasting After Dark, we went through
every single movie and TV show that John Carpenter did.
It took us about two and a half years. We
went through in order. We went through every single one,
and you know, in order every month, and right now
we are onto Don Coscarelli. We are tomorrow going to

(01:29:04):
be recording our review of Phantasm four, so and then
once we're done with him, we'll move on to another
horror tour down the road. So yeah, I mean, you know,
it's it's all fun and I'm glad. You know, we're
friends with Ready to Retro and everything, and it's a
fun little community that we sort of like, you know,
built on Instagram and everything, the little podcast community and whatnot.

(01:29:27):
So I'm happy to have you a part of it.
There's a there's a watch list on podcast after Dark
that Max did, so you can go back and listen
to that one. I'm just putting it out there. Unto
the world. I've been trying to I've been trying to
do a nineties TV Obscura episode, and I want to
have Max on there and some of the guys from
Blasphemo or past Throwback tri of You, Takedown and everything. Life.

(01:29:50):
Every time I'm like Max, every time, I'm like, all right,
I'm gonna plan it this month. Boom life. Yeah, like
massive horrible life stuff happens and I'm like, Okay, I
just got to maintain right now. So but I hear you,
but I hear you, I know, I know, but I
appreciate our friendship man, and I love the show. I've
been a listener a little bit behind right now because

(01:30:11):
of life again, but I'm a listener to the show
and I've always been a fan of Ready to Red show.
You guys are freaking awesome and I love you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:30:17):
Appreciate it, and we love podcasting after Dark and everything
that Corey has done. He also has an awesome uh
Seinfeld podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
And Adam and I h Cartwright a Seinfeld podcast. We
burned through all of Seinfeld. We went through all of
Curb on our Patreon page, and essentially it's done. Adam
and I might have a new project coming next year,
but I'll I can't. I can't really tell you that
because we have we haven't even started recording.

Speaker 4 (01:30:47):
Right, So yeah, so there's a tease, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:30:49):
There's a teas. Yeah, something might be coming.

Speaker 4 (01:30:51):
Well, we'll see you next weekend. As always, We're Ready
to Retro. Are you?

Speaker 2 (01:30:57):
Thank you for listening to episode two oh one of
the Ready to Retro podcast. A big thank you and
shout out goes to recording from Podcasting after Dark. For
joining us this week, be sure to check out Podcasting
after Dark wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 (01:31:10):
If you are new here on Ready to Retro, you
can listen to our whole library.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
Of episodes that covers a variety of topics about the eighties, nineties,
and early two thousands. Follow us on Instagram or TikTok
at Ready to Retro. If you liked this episode, let
us know and give us a review on Apple Podcasts
or wherever you are listening to this episode. You can
also send us an email at Ready to Retro at
gmail dot com. Also, don't forget to describe to our

(01:31:36):
YouTube channel. The link is a description of this video.
Also check out Ready to Retro for all things related
to this podcast. Ready to Retro as an official speaker podcast.
Our intro music was created by Aaron Carino. Our outros
on that you are listening to right now is called
The Walls Are Closing In on the new spooky ep
by our buddy mk Con. It's called Book of Nightmares

(01:31:56):
and it's available wherever you stream music. We'll see you
next week with Carlos and Nostalgic Latino as we talk
about Nickelodeon and the splat Con meetup that happened just
a few weeks ago.

Speaker 4 (01:32:07):
We'll see you then.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
We're ready to retro, are you Hey, everybody. I'm Corey

(01:32:48):
and I'm Zach and we're the hosts of Podcasting after Dark,
a cast dedicated to late night horror and sci fi
of the eighties and nineties, often found on HBO and Cinemax.
You know the movies your parents didn't want you watching
as a kid. You can find us every other week
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, and Stitcher. This is what
you want, This is what you get.