And I think it was this movie, because of its R rating, I had to travel the more awkward bus transit to Walnut Hill Plaza Cinemas in East Woonsocket rather than my favorite Lincoln Mall Cinemas since back in those days Lincoln Mall Cinemas were pretty corporate and strictly enforced the R rating, while Walnut Hill was a mom-and-pop outfit and it was well known they were lax on those rules, probably if you paid the adult rate.
Being at a time when it was the height of my friendship with John N., I may well have attended with him.
We'll just go ahead and say yes, I did attend the premiere showing of Alien as an underage patron, yet probably charged adult price, at my local movie theater in the summer of 1979.
It is 2024. I am 60 years old. I can say that I clearly remember seeing the movie Alien: Romulus last night during a soft opening preview showing at my local AMC Lakeshore Mall theater. Also an R-rated film, but far from underage, I bought my ticket at the senior rate.
But enough of my wistful reminiscence of these two distant milestones in the timeline of my life, how was the new movie?
To sum it up in a single phrase: Not bad.
From beginning to end, you could tell that the director really had a hard-on to make this a true homage to the first film. There were Easter eggs, throwbacks, lighting, camera angles, props, sound effects, visual effects, setting, you name it galore to make it feel like as if it was a sequel to the original movie done by Ridley Scott when he should have done it back in say like 1981 or so. Now in the timeline of the Alien series, I guess that is the placement of this film, that is, sometime after the destruction of the Nostromo, the mining ship from the original film, but before the events of the actual 1986 sequel Aliens which takes place 57 years after Alien. So that kind of explains the look and feel of it being more similar to the first film since I guess it's less technologically advanced than the others, I think we're supposed to forget Prometheus and Covenant.
The effort is there in trying to build tension, again similar to the first movie in which they're dealing with not only a vicious and ruthless alien species but also a nefarious corporate AI infrastructure set out to complete its "mission" at all costs including the expendability of any humans.
And the music is certainly rousing and filled with appropriate crescendos and heart thumping beats.
But did it live up to the hype?
I'm pretty sure 15-year-old me jumped in my seat more than a few times watching the first film. Maybe I even dared to grab John's arm in fright? Did he grab mine back as well? Ooh la la...
Last night I was sitting next to a total stranger. Aside from the fact that we were sitting in 21st century movie theater reclining seats with cushy armrests that were nowhere near close enough together to have snuggle time, there were no scary enough jump scares to speak of for her to be worried about me grabbing her arm one iota.
And I guess that's my biggest detraction. It just wasn't scary enough. Nor awesome enough. Nor new enough. Nor alien enough.
You get one shot in life to be the first. You get one shot in life to be the most awed. You get one shot in life to be the most shocked. You get one shot in life to be the most inspired.
And you get one shot to be two teen boys in love, holding hands together in a dark theater, screaming at the scary alien creature on the movie screen, with not another care in the world.