OKAY, THAT WASN’T FAIR
For this to be a fair, but spoiler-light review, I have to talk about how much work went into making this film, how much effort they put into building a backstory and the sheer unrelenting evil that was Weyland Yutani corporation. Alien: Romulus is not a barn burner. It won’t give you nightmares, unless you don’t like facehuggers. Personally, I find them one of the more disturbing part of the franchise, but that’s just me. It won’t keep you up at night, unless you are frightened by the threat of experimental genetic manipulation and body horror. Some of the props in this film were just chilling.
But Alien: Romulus is not a dog, either. The visuals are excellent, the recreation of the MU/TH/UR 9000 control center, the visual scale of the Romulus/Remus space station, the obsession with mythology by the Weyland Yutani corporation, their absolute effrontery as they send millions to their deaths in corporate facilities across the galaxy while using them as experimental lab rats whenever it suits them, the film absolutely captures the horrible aspects of the Alien franchise in a matter of minutes and I respect anyone who can world-build this damn fast and integrate their ideas into an existing intellectual property in such a way I am able to accept what I am seeing without blinking. It has a solid B-movie core based on physical designs coupled with cutting edge computer animated effects. It is a damn good-looking film.
IS ROMULUS A WORTHY ADDITION TO THE FRANCHISE?
But with all that said, you can’t be frightened if you have seen the earlier films. This film is a rebuild of three of the previous Alien films and its goal is to distill enough information about the franchise you don’t have to watch any of them if you didn’t want to. (See: anyone under 30.) To anyone new to the franchise, it should be right horrifying from beginning to end. Yet, this venerable franchise is 45 years old and what self-respecting twenty year old is going to watch a film from nearly five decades ago. They don’t have that kind of time.
Now they don’t have to. But if YOU, dear reader HAVE seen those films, you know when things are about to happen but you enjoy watching it anyway and hope for the writers to surprise you. They rarely do. Not because they don’t want to. But if you have seen the previous films, you can’t help but know what’s going to happen. This franchise has a signature and to be part of this franchise you must carry the DNA which has been its blessing and its curse. Writers seem almost unable to break away enough from its the franchise signature enough to make a movie which is different than the others in a meaningful way.
Was it entertaining? Yes. Was it predictable? Yes. But in a good way. You still had to place bets on who was going to die first. You placed bets on who was going to survive and they removed the question of who was going to be the android early in the film. The synthetic, Andy, was ably played by David Jonsson and was the only character I managed to care about. Jonsson had the hardest role in the film because he had to emote without emoting too much, he had to care without appearing to care and had to be at times menacing and sinister using only his posture, the placement of his head, the carriage of his body and pitch of his voice.
The star of Alien: Romulus and the woman this film centers around, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) delivers a solid performance, though it nothing to write home about, she has a couple of moments of brightness which make me believe she is going to be a breakout star one day, along with David Jonsson. The rest of the Expendables, (this is an Alien film, everyone is expendable) Tyler (Archie Renaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), Navarro (Aileen Wu) do their job well enough.
Their role was to die in stylish, grisly and horrific fashion as befitting all actors cast in an Alien film. To be fair to them, they made me feel their plight of being young people trapped on a world not of their own choosing, descendants of space pioneers being exploited by Weyland Yutani and being brave enough to take a risk to escape. I found myself rooting for them despite the fact I know this franchise was sure to take them all before it was over. One of the things I noticed was how young the franchise wanted them to be, hoping they might be able to capture another generation.
BUT, DID YOU LIKE ALIEN: ROMULUS?
When all is said and done, I did. The film’s overall pacing and direction were decent. There weren’t a significant number of plot holes or parts of the story which dragged. Everything felt necessary, but there were a couple of moments which seemed out of context or were probably lost on the cutting room floor. The film managed to capture the psychological real estate of the Alien franchise but with the narrative path so well-worn, it was hard not to pander to the previous stories and rather than hide it, the director chose to reflect those tiny sections of the film as callbacks to the first time we see the Xenomorphs or Humans doing whatever was being called back. Hicks and Ripley learning how to use a pulse-rifle, Newt being discovered in the nest. The CGI face of Ian Holm, the embodiment of the corporation in the first film being reprised, was the best and worst call-back of the film. Someone dropped the ball because I believe the CGI for his face could have been cleaner.
This B-Movie did its job: It entertained me. I was never thrilled, I was never surprised, but I was also never displeased. There was just enough happening I could follow the story and occasionally be horrified when it was appropriate. The film has several moments where the laws of physics were in question, but we are going to allow those moments to pass under the Rule of Cool. You’ll know it when you see it.
If this was meant to be the start of something new, they better get to it. We need a new way to see this franchise and the writers need to take some risks. They might want to hire a few of the writers for the Dark Horse Alien comic series which manages to a take the franchise in a number of different directions successfully. You can reprise a franchise, once, and if we are willing to pretend the nightmare of Prometheus didn’t happen, their next installation had better be amazing. I want to see them telling a new and better story than what came before, in the successful fashion of Aliens, which gave a new dimension to the film, Alien.
If this was meant to be a coda to the Alien franchise, it is a nice sendoff. If I were a betting man, this is the end of the line, because the director and the story demonstrated here that without taking risks, there just isn’t enough juice to justify the cost of making these films. I hope I am wrong.
Alien: Romulus was released Friday, August 16, 2024 in the United States. It was produced by Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss and Walter Hill. The production companies were Scott Free Productions and Brandywine Productions. It was directed and co-written by Fede Álvarez along with Rodo Sayagues. It is the seventh installment in the Alien franchise and serves as a standalone interquel set between the events of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986).
SUMMARY OF ALIEN: ROMULUS IN A SENTENCE
If you had a machine capable of distilling the essence of a franchise and could throw Alien, Aliens, and Alien 4 into a blender, producing a movie filled with beautiful actors, wonderfully-animated cinematography, with a splash of corporate dystopia and give us the CGI face of mad-science evil from the very first installment of the Alien franchise, you would have a passible B-movie; a film where the writers refused to stretch themselves, settling for plot-induced-stupidity to propel an aging IP into a new installment that is good enough for modern audiences with short attention spans, creating a pandering, call-back engine for older audiences, while lazily jump-scaring a new generation.
The Answer-Man rates this film a visually solid, but narratively tepid, 7 out of 10.
“No risks, no rewards.”
with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”
-30-
Thaddeus Howze is an award-winning writer, editor, podcaster and activist creating speculative fiction, scientific, political and cultural commentary from his office in Hayward, California.
Thaddeus’ speculative fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. He has published two books, ‘Hayward’s Reach’ (2011), a collection of short stories and ‘Broken Glass’ (2013) an urban fantasy novella starring his favorite paranormal investigator, Clifford Engram.
