Yeah, lazily reusing quotes and references to prior movies is getting really out of hand. Good to see the author made the distinction between good and bad uses as well, as there are some examples where the reference is both plot relevant and well executed.

Terminator 2 uses "I'll be back" for comedic effect, and it is well timed. But the one that is the best example of using a callback to directly benefit the movie as a whole was "Come with me if you want to live". In The Terminator Kyle Reese said the line to Sarah Conner. In T2 the T-800 (Arnold) said it to Sarah Conner to let her know he was on her side.

The entire point of fanservice was to give small nods to people who are really familiar with a franchise, but we've reached a point where studios are so creatively bankrupt that the entire move is just fanservice because they literally don't want to bother making anything original.

Matrix 4 is a prime example. A total wankfest of "Remember this? Remember this? Remember this?". What were they thinking?

Another non-superhero example was Kingsman 2, when they brought a popular character back to life just to exist in the movie again. A lot of recent sequels feel like they're just digging out parts of the previous movies and just doing them again. I'll see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice when it hits digital but I also am extremely suspicious it's going to just be "Beetlejuice 1 again".

Oh, well, that's put me off Alien: Romulus a bit, to be honest. I kind of hate these call-backs, especially when there's no sophistication to them (I can forgive the "I've got a bad feeling ..." in Rogue One, but am utterly bored of hearing it in other Star Wars output).

The ominous side to all this, is that when films become entirely about referencing themselves, they stop being about anything else. Sci-fi works best when there's an analogy for something that exists in our lives, and offers an opinion on that matter. For example, Lucas has argued that the Ewoks in RotJ represented the Viet Cong, which is a bit clumsy, but it's better than the sequels, that only seek to represent earlier iterations of Star Wars.

That shit ruined what would otherwise have been decent pulp in Romulus. Like it's just embarrassing these fucking studios can't help themselves.

I'm just not interested in any franchise because of this. LOTR is suffering from it a lot at the moment as every man and his dog is trying to cash in on the IP. That's with tv shows and games too, it extends beyond just films for these franchises.

Fan service used to be a wink and a nod, which was fun, now it's an entire industry, which is so not fun.

The snake doesn't eat it's own tail, it cuts it off, sells, it and grows the same fucking tail again, then sells it again, ad infinitum.

Movies that have no utility except to make money from fan bases who can't say no, and Television so bloated with callback and fluff, stuffed into season shortened to 6 -8 episodes, the object of the story is lost.

People complained when they tried to take the series in a direction of giving more context, depth, and worldbuilding to the aliens and engineers. So now they've gone back to just giving us yet another familiar movie from the same template of people running away from aliens, with same old tropes and callbacks.

‘Get away from her, you bitch.’ Great line. Actually, it’s iconic. But when it’s uttered towards the end of Alien: Romulus, you won’t believe your ears.

That was the straw that broke this camel's back. Up to that point I was prepared to let the glaringly recycled elements slide as they were doing a lot of things right that I'd wanted to see for a long time (ordinary people trying to live their lives in a pretty dystopian system before you add xenomorphs to the mix). When they, clangingly, dropped that line in I had to admit that this was either just bad fan fiction or it had been spat out by an AI trained on the first four films. What could have been the third best Alien film is now relegated, in my mind anyway, to the pile of all the other stuff.

Meanwhile, I really liked Deadpool and Wolverine - I think that, using the Void, gave them a chance to reflect on the nature of franchises and second chances in a fun way. They were able to have their metafictional cake, feed it to you and you can forget how it may not be that good for your health in the long-run. They did the same thing in Spider-Man: No Way Home and, while I enjoyed it and it was a blast watching in the cinema as everyone was into it, I did feel a but dirty and used afterwards because my buttons had been some mercilessly pressed. I prefer Far From Home out of the Tom Holland films and I suspect, with some distance, I'll end up preferring Deadpool 2 (another data point in my theory that, outside the MCU, the second superhero movie is always the best).

It was the worst part of a great film

Haha, as someone who consumes a lot of Anime I completely agree but I also was kinda taken aback at first when this was not about the fanservice I have to try to avoid constantly 😸

Say what you like about the various merits (or lack thereof) of anything after Aliens....

Well, I know I'm not going to take anything this person has to say seriously after they suggest that there are no merits to the Alien franchise.