Alien: Romulus is a mostly kick-butt addition to the franchise, but it’s hampered by some oddball choices that distract from the horror.
PLOT: Seeking to escape their grim fate as indentured workers for Weyland-Yutani on a lifeless rock, a group of young colonists scavenge an abandoned space station, only to discover a terrifying secret that threatens to pick them off one by one – or worse.
REVIEW: As far as this critic is concerned, there are two perfect Alien movies: the first and the badass James Cameron sequel. I tend to flip-flop between which one I prefer (it usually depends on the one I saw most recently), but both films are among the most perfectly conceived and executed blockbusters of all time—the sequels, though- well, are a mixed bag at best. There have been interesting ones (Alien 3), terrible ones (Alien: Resurrection and the AVP movies) and frustrating ones (the Ridley Scott prequels), but until now, there have been no outstanding ones. As such, the fact that director Fede Alvarez was able to make a slam-bang Alien sequel that trumps every other film in the franchise, save the first two, is cause for celebration. Yet, it does suffer from the fact that its director was perhaps hampered in his effort to make a lean and mean Alien movie with an ill-advised directive to connect the film to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. This leaves the film feeling like it’s 75% kick-ass, and 25% space bio-engineering nonsense.
However, the good outweighs the bad by a large margin. One thing Alvarez does that none of the other films have so far is it effectively conveys how hopeless life in the future Alien world has become (something which the upcoming TV series may elaborate on). Our young crew is shown to be comprised of orphans whose parents expired due to terrible working conditions and have left their offspring little more than indentured servants. Our heroine, Cailee Spaeny’s Rain, is one such victim of the heartless “company,” with only her malfunctioning synthetic brother, David Jonsson’s Andy, left to keep her company.
In the movie, she falls in with a crew of scavengers led by an old flame, Archie Renaux’s Tyler, who wants to provide a better life for his younger sister, Isabela Merced’s Kay. He thinks he’s stumbled upon a can’t-lose scheme where they can salvage life pods from a derelict station, but he needs Andy’s tech to get the job done, leading to an alliance with Rain. Of course, it doesn’t take long for them to arrive at the space station and find themselves at the mercy of face huggers and xenomorphs.
This action is brutal, with Fede Alvarez making it one of the gorier Alien movies. You’ve never seen a chestburster depicted in such an agonizing, painful way. The cast is terrific, with Spaeny’s Rain far from the Ripley clone you might expect. She’s just a kid out of her element but rises to the occasion without becoming a superhero or losing her vulnerability. Likewise, Renaux’s Tyler, who could have been depicted as a slimy crook, has pure intentions and also sports a heroic streak, making him a believable partner for Rain. Poor Isabela Merced also makes a huge impression, with her being put through the physical wringer more than anyone else in the film, with many of the movie’s most significant scare moments involving her.
But, of the cast, the one who nearly walks away with the movie is David Jonsson as Andy. Initially simple and sweet, he gets an upgrade on the space station and has to wrestle with two battling sets of programming, with him kind of a cross between Ian Holm’s cold-blooded Ash and Lance Henriksen’s kindly Bishop. It’s a heck of a performance, and he and Spaeny deliver what should go down as iconic franchise performances that also work as their own.
The movie also benefits from superb cinematography by Galo Olivares, which is very much in the vein of the original Alien. Benjamin Wallfisch’s score is the best in the series since James Horner’s take on Aliens.
Alas, with Alien: Romulus being packed with so much awesomeness, it’s a drag when clunkier elements that seem lifted from another movie get worked in. There’s one additional character that hasn’t been revealed in the ads or early footage, who’s a callback to the earlier films, but the CGI depicting this character is poorly realized. That’s a shame, as the FX work is impeccable otherwise, and part of me wonders whether it was an eleventh-hour addition. As soon as you see the character introduced, you’ll immediately know what I’m referring to, and I bet this will be the one element of the movie it will get attacked for.
There’s also far more continuity with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant than expected, with it feeling like producer Ridley Scott still has a lot of say over how the franchise proceeds (for better or worse). It feels like a distraction from an otherwise excellent Alien movie, and the downside is that towards the end, the xenomorphs we all love watching feel secondary in favour of another threat which seems lifted out of one of the prequels.
These added-on elements make Alien: Romulus more of a mixed bag than you’d think, but I hesitate to put any of the blame on Fede Alvarez. When he’s allowed to do his own thing, which seems to be the case for about three-quarters of the movie, it’s one of the best Alien movies ever. But, when he’s shoehorned in a bunch of tacked-on mythology, it starts to suffer. At any rate, it’s probably still the third-best movie of the franchise, and hopefully, it will lead to more films set in this world by Alvarez, who seems like a natural successor to Ridley Scott and James Cameron as far as this series goes.
