During the promotional cycle for Alien: Romulus we kept hearing about how this movie is a stripped back Alien adventure, free of the excess and unnecessary elements that have plagued the most recent entries. Going into the theatre we couldn’t help but think that Disney had gone the route of Prey (2022) which sought to bring the ailing Predator franchise back to what made it special.
The official synopsis for Alien: Romulus even directly promises this approach:
“‘Alien: Romulus’ takes the phenomenally successful ‘Alien’ franchise back to its roots: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. The film stars Cailee Spaeny (‘Civil War’), David Jonsson (‘Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy’), Archie Renaux (‘Shadow and Bone’), Isabela Merced (‘The Last of Us’), Spike Fearn (‘Aftersun’), Aileen Wu. Fede Alvarez (‘Evil Dead,’ ‘Don’t Breathe’) directs from a screenplay he wrote with frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues (‘Don’t Breathe 2’) based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. ‘Alien: Romulus’ is produced by Ridley Scott,” the synopsis reads, in part.
We bring this up because the promise of “back to its roots” isn’t really delivered in the story or the overall plot, which we actually think is a good thing. We won’t spoil a single plot point of this movie but we will say that what happens in Alien: Romulus is more complex than you may have been lead to believe. Those fearing that this would just be a soft retelling of the original Alien movie from 1979 will be pleasantly surprised that this new entry takes a lot of swings and tries its own stuff without falling into the deep end of Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017).
Our opinion on that may be subjective and we can definitely see some people would would have preferred something as simple as the 1979 original, but we think what will be universally agreed upon is the tangibility of this movie. Also included heavily in the marketing is the physical sets, costumes and even Aliens that the filmmakers used. On the other side of the screen, this franchise has never felt more real. Every retro futuristic computer terminal has chunky buttons that you can imagine depressing, every large CRT screen is practically buzzing and the gore, goo and acid is all ripe to make your skin crawl.
The believability of the movie only falters in a few scenes, especially in the odd moments where it is clear that an entire person has been replaced by rubbery CGI. These moments are thankfully far apart so the movie can establish itself as believable.
That tangibility goes a long way towards selling the horror and uncomfortable nature of this world where the two most common causes of death seem to be dying in a Weyland-Yutani mine or being ripped apart by Aliens.
And yes we do mean plural here. All the marketing, trailers and everything else does reveal that we’re not going back to the threat of a single Xenomorph, but instead a decent number of them. This is offset somewhat by the fact that the characters are slightly more equipped than poor Ripley was. We can’t say exactly how without some spoilers, but we will say that the writing of the characters made them come across as relatively smart and able to easily avoid the “horror movie idiocy” that leads so many fictional characters to their deaths. In the one or two instances where a character did something dumb, it was easily forgivable and actually understandable in the context of the scene.
Despite this smart writing, most of the cast really felt flat here. Only the main character played by Spaeny got enough screen time to actually be of note, and the writing for her fell short of creating a character you’d actually care for. The standout of the cast was definitely Jonsson who not only seemed to be putting in the most amount of effort, but his character was also given the most interesting subplot.
With some niggles we really liked where this story went, what it tried to do and how it found its own path in the minefield of this franchise. Only some weak writing for the cast held it back from being outstanding and the nebulous feeling that the two hour runtime could have been optimised slightly better to give the characters, well, more character, which would have only dialled up the suspense further.
The audio here is rather sublime and a big part of adding to, and paying off, on the suspense. Now we will say that there is some cheeky and extremely cheap jump scares here, but the rest of the time it is more reserved and impactful.
The score and folly worked together so well to sell the near future, industrial hell of the company-controlled Weyland-Yutani environments and the alien weirdness of the Xenomorphs. Sections of the movie in space were also extra special where giant space hulks creaked and groaned to get around, instead of the stylish and silent space travel we see in less grungy sci-fi.
With such as believable world, beautiful spectacles to look upon and great audio to compliment it, we left the showing of Alien: Romulus with previous little to complain about, but that in itself is a bit of a problem. Because we have mostly seen everything this movie has to offer – both in previous movies from the franchise and countless others inspired by it – the sense of excitement and awe was taken down a few notches.
Alien: Romulus feels like a movie that is going to be the talk of the town for a few months, and then it will disappear, only to be brought up again in retrospectives or when a new Alien movie is on the horizon. It’s really unfair, because this movie is damned either way: if the source material is messed with too much it becomes something that Alien fans don’t want, and if it sticks too close to the originals, then why not just watch the originals? This is somewhat an issue for all franchise movies but it seems more palpable this time around. By treading the middle ground we get far less of the iconic moments and new hooks which people will talk about in the future.
We mentioned earlier this movie does take some of its own stabs at new material, so we will need to see if that can carry it and keep it in the public conscious. For now, Alien: Romulus gets a recommendation, especially because it will be more impactful in the theatre where that sense of a real, horrible world is better realised on the biggest screens. Alien fans should be satisfied, newcomers will get even more weirded out and those who have given up on the franchise may see why it’s so special again.
FINAL SCORE – 7 OUT OF 10
