Conscripted by the industrial complex of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, there are few choices for those simply working to get by and so when Rain and Andy, who initially appear to be a brother and sister, are cheated out of their contract-end, they look to a different strategy. Cautiously, the accept a get-rich-quick scheme of some associates. They all intend to head to Yvaga, a terra-formed mining colony with better prospects, but to get there they’ll need cryonic stasis chambers to survive the long journey. The gang’s erstwhile leader Tyler has heard of a wreck in the decaying orbit of a nearby planet that might have them as salvage. It’s a job that will require some skill and nerve, but should result in an easy fix for their situation.
Getting to the wreck of the space-station is easy, but it soon becomes clear that the catastrophic damage it received may have come from within. Because it turns out that the previous occupants found what they were looking for in deep space, the remnant of an early encounter. But that remnant wasn’t dead, it was merely dormant… and now it has multiplied and seeks a way out…
*specific spoilers ahead*
In space… no-one can hear you scream ‘Hey, this seems familiar…’
The much-touted and reason for some frankly awesome tie-in popcorn buckets, finally arrives! Romulus slots into the franchise between Alien and Aliens and manages to fairly neatly pick up some errant plot-points from the ending of that original entry – though with threads you probably hadn’t considered were left hanging. The problem here is that for all the earnest delivery, decent effects and valiant efforts, there’s very little original fare in any of the film’s subsequent nearly two hours of running time. As has been said elsewhere, it’s a bullet-list of greatest hits of the franchise to date, with ideas, scenes and dialogue gathered together from all the entries thus far and given a moody, bloody remix… and therefore it’s not entirely clear whether any of the newest film’s genuine strengths are its own or simply the reflected glory of what’s already been done well and better. Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead) does a decent job in the director’s chair but seems honour-bound to echo what has gone before to the sheer extent that, when you leave the cinema, you’ll be hard-pressed to remember anything you liked that didn’t seem like a reverential variation on a theme…
The innate idea of Alien: Romulus made fans wary when originally announced. On the surface, it seemed a bean-counter, demographic clickbait-splicing of the original film and a Scream-like ensemble of much young characters who would slowly (or quickly) be dispatched by the titular monster… It sounds like an opportunistic recipe for abject inferiority and, frankly, the kind of thing a studio executive would come up with without lifting their eyes from a profit-projection flowchart. Equally, for a film that relies on franchise legacy and an audience that grew-up with the xenomorphs, skewing younger could lead to disengagement before we start. So, yes, even if the new ‘crew’ are a bunch of archetypes, it’s good news that the cast actually do better than you might think. Spaeny is solid enough and does everything needed – a young Ripley in every intended respect. It’s not just the Alien legacy that’s infused in the DNA of Romulus. Cailee Spaeny is visually (and somewhat-character-wise) a doppelgänger for Ellie, the lead character in the original The Last of Us game. No, there’s no father-daughter bond trope running here, but – like Ellie – Spaney’s Rain goes from sullen and reactive to dynamic and proactive, weathered by life but initially ill-prepared for the challenges ahead. She’s also exchanging bad ‘dad jokes’ with the cyborg/brother substitute Andy (David Jonsson), another Ellie trait. It’s the sort of combination/showcase that might have won her the lead in the highly successful HBO adaptation of the game if it had yet to begin. (For the record, Bella Ramsey does a sterling job in The Last of Us, for which she deserves her many nods and awards, but looks less like the original ingenue incarnation). Jonsson’s Andy has enough nuance that it’s interesting the actor switch between the child-like version of the character (whose core-programming is to keep Rain safe) and the strictly pragmatic and ‘upgraded’ version that is in the thrall of the Company. Archie Renaux is set up as the main male lead, Tyler, but as in all Alien movies he can’t get in the way of the heroine, except as a shield and he’s fine but eventually surplus to requirements. Isabela Merced previously essayed the title role of Dora the Explorer but here is the pregnant Kay (and who you know is likely to play a more important role later in the film because of her physical condition). Spike Fearn is the motormouth and self-absorbed Bjorn – one of the characters that you (and the script) quickly decide needs to meet a grizzly fate and Aileen Wu as Navarro is the Kane substitute, the first crew-member to fully experience what’s ahead.
a bullet-list of greatest hits of the franchise to date, with ideas, scenes and dialogue gathered together from all the entries thus far and given a moody, bloody remix… and therefore it’s not entirely clear whether any of the newest film’s genuine strengths are its own or simply the reflected glory of what’s already been done well and better…
Knowing that Romulus was around the corner, I recently watched Alien and it’s remarkable how well it still holds up and how it slowly but effectively cranks up the tension. Yet in 2024, speed and momentum are key. The newest pacing seems streamlined for an ADD audience. With Romulus, things happen far more quickly… because. The way the original’s story was told, John Hurt’s Kane had a fairly long incubation period for his unknown xenomorph ‘passenger’, but here it all goes much faster, the key beats of the in-universe story reduced to minutes apart instead of hours and hours instead of days. Even when less ‘busy’, it makes Aliens seem positively sedate in its set-up. There’s even a key line of dialogue in Romulus that references the xenomorph’s being able to control that incubation period to any desired effect. It’s a nonsense but useful plot-device and works into the idea that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation has specific ideas on how the alien ‘qualities’ could be infused with humans for deep-space exploration. Like Aliens, one is never enough and there’s the danger of multiple adversaries. There’s an army of scuttling facehuggers that arrive from all sides like spiders-from-Mars and later in the movie a range of xenomorphs chase our beloved survivors through zero-gravity. But there’s never quite that sense of creeping, growing danger – after the introduction and arrival at the hulk of a de rigueur space-wreck it’s often a case of extremes: run don’t walk, all or nothing, do or die. Ridley’s Alien kept the enemy in the shadows, but familiarity means that there’s only so much tension you can build before delivering and the xenomorphs mostly become cannon-fodder rather than boogeymen.
There are various references to the Nostromo and a brief glimpse at an image of John Hurt’s Kane ID tag that fly by early in the story. But what start as easter-eggs and cameos eventually become a crutch on which the film leans and pivots, even when it does so with moments of flair. The surprise appearance of Ian Holm, the veteran actor who played Ash in the 1979 original, initially appears to be a competent but still uncanny-valleyed nod to the cyborg. However, this slightly askew version and the fact that Holm himself passed away in 2020, means the result creates added unease and the character ‘Rook’ (essentially another unit from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation conveyer-belt) eventually ends up being far more present and potent a force than you’d expect. The visual effects and performance-capture from Daniel Betts needed to recapture the once-again badly-damaged-physically (but still malevolently manipulative) artificial presence, ironically work better as the film progresses and there are moments via computer-screens where you’d be hard-pushed not to consider these were moments from the 1979 cutting-room floor re-inserted.
Despite some additions to the mythology of exactly what Weyland-Yutani are trying to do with their discoveries, the speed-factor ensures that we rush through proceedings without having to think too hard. Characters make obligatory stupid decisions (I understood Ripley’s maternal drive to go back to try and save Newt, despite the odds, in Aliens – especially with the motivations that the director’s cut gave, but Rain going back down into the belly of the beast for Andy – largely out of love and guilt – seems even less sensible here given his sacrifice to get her out and presumed fate). The climax of the film is, unfortunately, an ill-judged throwback to the bizarre human/alien hybrid of Alien: Resurrection, a gestalt mix-and-match of human and xenomorph that, as ever, dilutes the ‘purity’ of Giger’s original design and always looks artificial and wonky and far less a ‘boss-queen/king’ level obstacle than it should – perhaps only notable for the fact the humanoid facial features deliberately seem to echo the ‘Engineer’ like look introduced in Ridley’s Scott’s Prometheus and Covenant. The very end is yet another ‘lift’ with Rain signing off a la Ripley, going into hyper-sleep and unsure of where she’ll end up – that destination will likely depend on (so-far impressive) box-office revenue.
All in all, Alien: Romulus delivers rather basic, satisfactory shenanigans rather than any high drama. Okay, it is far better than the utter car-crash that it could have been but falls far short of anything classic – feeling like an overdue and retroactive course-correction but also a basic place-holder with all the familiar, production department scenery. Some purists will hate it, others will be fine. I enjoyed it far more than the ponderous Covenant and Prometheus (despite their ambition and scale) and it does nothing to hinder the prospect and allure of more acid-blood trips down the line, but ultimately feels like a decent time-killer rather than essential time-piece.
We can now tuck into that branded popcorn dispenser and await Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth series to see what comes next/before…
- Story7
- Acting8
- Direction8
- Production Design / VFX8
