Alien Romulus Edit Ideas. (Spoilers)

After seeing the film at the weekend and liking some but not much of it I thought it would be a good idea to post possible ways of rescuing this dumpster fire

Obviously remove all vocal callbacks to the other films (Expecially THAT one).

Add more damage to Rook so he looks less obviously like a wonky digitally enhanced puppet of Ian Holm. Ash was meant to be an infiltration unit so making Rook look exactly the same makes zero sense. Considering the purpose of the Romulus lab maybe replacing him with a very damaged (think Bishop in Alien 3) version of a David.
Make Rook deactivate once Andy has his chip.
That might mean moving some scenes around but make the changes to Andy more threatening by having his internal conflict the problem.

Cut the scene where Rain duplicates Rey’s bartering scene from The Force Awakens. Yes it reminds us of how scummy The Company is but after watching the first film we already know this. It’s enough to know the kids will probably die like their parents if the don’t leave.

Have the chestbuster that comes out of Navarro die of exhaustion. It’s had seconds to gestate. Not sure what to do with the wall vagina. I suppose it could be a different alien. This is a thread so new suggestions are welcome.

These are my first thoughts. It’s such a shame they didn’t film the back story instead. The research team finding the original Alien had so much potential.

Reduce the instances of Andy spasming on the floor, seemed to happen every ten minutes, and by the end you’re going “not again?!” (whenever the plot needed him out of action).

The facehuggers were similarly overused - it would be pretty easy to cut the ones that attack towards the end in zero G.

Reduce the dialogue and presence of the antagonistic chav character, I’m English and even I needed subtitles to know what that plonker was saying.

“Get away from her you… bitch” is this the clunkiest and lamest line of fan service in the history of Hollywood? Terrible. Someone no doubt fought for this to be in the film, they should be ashamed! A fan edit that just cut this line and nothing else would be worthwhile!

Oh yes… THAT line is up there with Spock yelling “KHAN!!!” in Star Trek Into Darkness for utter uncontrollable cringe.

‘Get away from her you… bitch’ is the only change needed. The rest of the film was perfect.

Artan42 said:

‘Get away from her you… bitch’ is the only change needed. The rest of the film was perfect.

An interesting perspective I regret I don’t share.

Bingowings said:

Artan42 said:

‘Get away from her you… bitch’ is the only change needed. The rest of the film was perfect.

An interesting perspective I regret I don’t share.

It’s after only Alien and Alien 3 (the AC) for basically everything. Sure, it doesn’t really add anything interesting to the lore like Prom and Cov did but it’s pacing, tension, small scale plot, set peices, and relationships between the characters is better than Aliens or Resurection.

I’d put it just above AvP2 which is a shame as there are some great sequences like the zero G acid avoidance dance. I just didn’t give a damn about the characters. I spent the whole time wanting to see the backstory instead. Everytime the film returned to Rook I was lifted out of the story. Because it made no sense him looking like Ash. Unlike Tarkin in Rogue One which looked just as bad but at least we know Tarkin would have been in that part of the story. It’s just another example of a film lacking the courage to stand on its own feet. There have been lots if Rogue One edits that take out all those unneeded elements. And the film works so much better without them.

Looks like the movie has just hit digital today, so the tinkering should begin in earnest.

My big question is this: Considering the plotting, the way the plotting works, and the way the movie ends up working out - instead of trying to fix the bad mishmash of CGI/AI elements used to digitally resurrect Ian Holm (for basically zero reason), is there a way to simply eliminate the character entirely?

Can you pull Rook out of the movie entirely, remove all the exposition he dumps, and simply have Rain take his chip, put it in Andy, have Andy start acting spooky/weird, and still have the movie make sense as an Alien movie? I think you can. I think you’ll lose one or two jumpscares (starting with Rook grabbing Rain) and some of the explanation as to what exactly is happening in the title sequence, but I think a lot of that explanation is pretty unnecessary anyway, and the lack of it being spelled out might actually help the tension.

I do think ultimately folks are gonna have to wait until the physical release to see what the deleted scenes/scene extensions are, but until then: I’m most curious to see if there’s a way to just pull Rook out of the movie entirely, because so far as I can tell, in terms of what the story is actually doing - he’s completely unnecessary.

Everything else I think you can kinda leave mostly alone (although I think if you simply remove “you bitch” and the smile from Andy’s rescue of Rain, THAT scene is salvaged) - maybe cut the log (why is she leaving a log, it’s a stolen ship) but otherwise I think the biggest offense is Rook, not just aesthetically but in terms of story.

There was definitely tinkering when they got the elevator down I call reshoot scene there, which seems to say something was changed there,

The whole Engineer hybrid ending was clearly tacked on, It could have easily ended without that and would have been far better to leave that to the imagination for the impregnated girl.

I just got a DVD of Don’t Breathe by fede Alverez so I will be watching that soon. I think he is quite a talented director but you know what these big budget tentpoles are like these days. I can imagine the once great Ridley Scott who is on a bad run currently interfering and is as much so confirmed. Not saying Scott ruined it but he no doubt steered the outcome in his diminished eptitude.

It started out well and I have to say I don’t mind the idea of Rooke but it should have been a puppet or animatronic they obviously must have scanned Ian holm at some point probably LOTR for CGI character stunts and effects like when he became a bit gollum lunging for the ring. A puppet would have been much beter in keeping with previous iterations.

I wonder if there is an alternate ending… Imagine they were all just on the escape craft and they scanned the pregnant girl and the image of the scan was the last shot with tense build up music and everyone looking scared film ends cut to black. that is how it should have ended.

Ah yes that line Andy says oh dear oh dear cringefest I groaned fairly hard on that. Needs to go.

“These are my first thoughts. It’s such a shame they didn’t film the back story instead. The research team finding the original Alien had so much potential.” Prequeal for the prequeal lol. A mix of the 2 would have perhaps advantaged the film.

Once I heard one of the characters call another character a bitch early on the film, the line “get away from her you bitch” didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would (I already knew about it before seeing the film).

Broom Kid said:

My big question is this: Considering the plotting, the way the plotting works, and the way the movie ends up working out - instead of trying to fix the bad mishmash of CGI/AI elements used to digitally resurrect Ian Holm (for basically zero reason), is there a way to simply eliminate the character entirely?

I figured I might as well see if I could answer this question myself, and it turns out the answer was, so far as I could tell… yes! You can!

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Alien-Romulus-Alternate-Cut-A-Rook-Free-Alien-Experience-/id/123857#1614107

Don’t Breathe was much better probably why he got this gig.

I’d recommend that over the Alien Romulus hype.