‘Alien: Romulus’ Review
Stars: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, Rosie Ede, Robert Bobroczkyi, Trevor Newlin | Written by Fede Alverez, Rodo Sayagues | Directed by Fede Alverez
Following the greatest horror film ever made is hard. When the sequel turns out to be the greatest action film of all time, you are really boxed into a corner. David Fincher did his best to make a brave, nihilistic film but had so much studio interference, he almost quit the industry. At the same time, I like Alien 3, but also wish that the film was never made. Buy me a coffee sometime, and I will explain why, dear reader. A huge problem is that once we have seen the space jockey, the eggs and of course the chest-burster, we can’t unsee them. What else can subsequent Alien films do and still have the same impact? What can we do, that is new and interesting, without doing something completely mad?
Ridley Scott was not the creator of Alien, and yet at some point, he co-opted it. How can you argue with one of the greatest filmmakers of all time? The man has made Alien, he has made Blade Runner. The man has made an incredible amount of money. Perhaps talent like his should be indulged, coddled even. What Ridley wants, Ridley gets. I would have agreed with this at the time too, mostly. His vision for later Alien films was ambitious, bold, visually stunning and (in my humble opinion) utterly the wrong decision. It led to fandom having a civil war, from which it has not recovered to this day. I would also add that fans, whether it is Ghostbusters, Star Wars, or Alien should be completely ignored. Hire talented, passionate people, and let them make their film. Film making via frothing internet chatroom is only going to end in disaster.
To be kind, Prometheus and Covenant had interesting themes, they were visually stunning, but as films, they did things that made no sense. I recently tried to rewatch Prometheus and had to switch it off, 20 minutes in, as the characters were doing things that were so utterly stupid, and unbelievable that I simply couldn’t go along with it. All those years ago, in a cinema in London, I fell asleep. I love Alien and yet I fell asleep.
In the original Alien the character Lambert does dumb things, but I have incredible sympathy for her. Why? Because she is terrified. I pity her. In Prometheus and Covenant I don’t believe the characters would exist, all I see are plot devices being moved around like puppets, silly-looking, over-designed, puppets. Strings all in a knot.
David was a good baddie. He was a great baddie, but he does not belong in an Alien film. Scott should have taken these ideas and done something else with them. As sad as I am to say, I think he wanted to tell another kind of story with his later Alien films, and I wish he had gracefully stepped aside, and left the Alien franchise to people still passionate about making these films, not shoehorning “big ideas” into something that works so perfectly, as a very concise thing, a perfect horror organism.
So how, in 2024, after so much good, and so much bad, and so much mad online ranting, can you move forward with this franchise? The “trick” is to just make a good, Alien film that feels like an Alien film. Alien: Romulus IS an Alien film, to its core. Specifically, Alien and not Aliens. This time it’s not war, it’s 6 kids, tapdancing on the side of a volcano, while an alien tries to murder them.
We kick off with some excellent world-building. We start off on a rock. A mining colony that never sees the sun, physically or metaphorically. We are a long way from Earth, and the place is grim. Why is the cast of this film so young? Because the life expectancy is incredibly low. This makes a lot of sense.
A group of friends (3 boys and 3 girls) realize that they have no hope for a brighter future, and as such, they hatch a plan to get off the rock they were born on. It is surely no spoilers to say they encounter Xenomorphs and face a desperate, rollercoaster ride to try to survive. We get beautiful views of a sun, a planetary ring, but most of the film happens in the dark corridors of a space station, which lets the franchise shine the brightest. The plot does enough to hook itself into the continuity, to explain where we are, in relation to the other films, and why we can expect a Xenomorph presence might be there, but it doesn’t go anywhere near the Gonzo, shark-jumping of Scott’s later films.
At times, we almost fall into fan service (the nodding desk toy, the word “purge,” the introduction of a character we simply didn’t need, a dash of Alien 4, in the final act. Honestly, I didn’t need this, but in fairness, most of this is just easter eggs, you will notice if you have watched Alien as many times as me.
Fede Alverez (co-)wrote and directed this film, and that single vision shows in a positive way, something that cannot be said of Scott’s later films. One of the huge problems with Prometheus and Covenant was the characters dumping exposition onto us, something that a young Scott would surely never have done. Like Mad Max, part of the skill of Alien is the “show don’t tell” approach to film making, the lack of script, and that is also true here. More important than the dialog, is the texture of sound. The sounds of the space station, the automated messages, the clanks, the scuttling of something sinister.
People are going to surely call characters “new Ripley” and possibly “new Hicks” I am not buying this. I believe in (most) of these new characters, and certainly the main ones. This is not old cloth, these are characters I believe in, can get behind, and feel something when they die horribly. The key series themes are here, and they are still interesting. The idea of individuality, identity, ties that bond, having agency over our own life. Parenthood, and of course the link between the aliens and both male and female genitalia.
On the negative side, I found the “new Lambert” character irritating. There are a couple of decisions the characters make, that were very stupid, and I found myself momentarily exasperated, but this was fleeting and cannot be compared to Scott’s later films. The main negatives to me are firstly we don’t need a CGI character back, that was a (forgivable) mistake that is not a dealbreaker. Furthermore, we don’t need androids in every film. We can have human characters also change their minds, and act differently, it doesn’t have to be androids every time.
The final act may also be divisive, but it had one important point. In space no one can hear you scream and there are no characters that should have plot armour in the Alien franchise. In most films there are lines you don’t cross, like hurting kids. Fede is doing donuts, over those lines, as he should. Calling the film Alien: Romulus and showing us a little bit of pretentious Roman myth is totally fine, the film never gets close to going the “full Scott” and disappearing into pretentious nonsense.
Alien: Romulus was right to go all the way back to its roots, to simply ignore the frankly terrible plot decisions of the last few films and just move on. I wish a returning character had never returned, but other than that, Fede Alverez has just made a very good Alien film. It’s not a great one, but perhaps, that is no bad thing. This is a good film, and it gives a good base for wherever the franchise wants to go next. It is not as good as the first film (by far the best point of reference) but that is OK! Fede has made a good film here, and that is enough. I left the cinema feeling satisfied. I had a horror ride through a space station infested with monsters, and that is what I signed up for.
As fans, let’s stop tying ourselves in knots and just enjoy this film on its own merits.
Alien Romulus is in cinemas now.
