*Spoilers for the film
With one of the biggest shockers in 2024, we actually have a good Alien film. We haven’t been blessed with one since James Cameron’s Aliens way back in 1986. Serving as a midway point between Alien and Aliens, the plot circles around a group of mine workers that are trying to leave their planet and make way for a better future. When a vessel ship is found above their planet, it gives them the idea to steal the ships cryopods, store it back on their ship, and set sail to a distant planet. The movie serves, for better and for worse, as a collage of all the Alien films that you will either enjoy or be annoyed by.
The movie is visually stunning. Other than Dune Part 2, this is easily the best-looking film of 2024 so far. Any shots containing the vastness of outer space is done expertly and compacts the brutality of the horrors inside the space station. Production was also great all around as everything felt lived in and real. The opening sets a promising start as we get some well produced tracking shots as our main characters are walking around a decaying planet. It’s a feeling that you only get in the opening, but it’s one that’s done well to the point where I wished we explored more of that planet instead. All the creatures looked amazing with a welcoming number of
practical effects rather than simply CGI. They went back with the Xenomorph where a lot of the shots are with electronics and suits.
Now here is what’s going to make or break a lot of people’s enjoyment of the film; the callbacks. There’s a lot of callbacks from the original films that worked only a handful of times. The ones that did work were more visual references. For example, there’s a few scenes that were a shot- to-shot retread of some of the original films and while not exactly original, they were still effective and were done with enough respect. The direct callbacks, however, were done in poor taste and felt like cheap nostalgia bait. For example, there’s a CGI version of Ian Holmes (the actor who played Ash in the first Alien film) and he looked horrendous. It was completely unnecessary as there was no reason for the android to be Ian Holmes as he is not even the same character (in this one, he goes by Rook), and it served nothing to the actual story. He was only there for fans of the original film to be hyped about and to spout out bad exposition dumps. Other callbacks like Andy (David Jonsson) saying the iconic line from Aliens felt out of place and cringey. Why would an android say, “stay away from her you bitch!”? Why would Rook say lines that Ash said in the original even though they are completely different characters? It never felt sincere and was always distracting.
The film can also suffer from the same writing and character issues that every Alien film has. To start off, a lot of the characters needed to be fleshed out more. The main two, Andy and Rain (Cailee Spaeny) were great. They have an interesting sibling dynamic and both actors play their part well (especially David Jonsson who was the MVP of the film). The other 4 characters were simply ok. We do not get enough time to emotionally connect with them, but their acting was good enough that we don’t want any of them to die. The writing was the main problem where they kept on making decisions that were simply idiotic. Bjorn (Spike Fearn) being a victim of this as his death was unintentionally hilarious. In real life, people who are terrified will not make the smartest decisions in the moment, but they also won’t stand 2 feet from an alien organism and
just watch as it cuts them up. Dumb character moments like that are sprinkled throughout the film, but never to the point of it being a constant distraction like in Prometheus or Alien: Covenant.
For a movie that was marketed as a horror film, there was a surprising amount of great action sequences throughout the film. It never felt redundant, and each one was unique and interesting. I was afraid that the action would take away from the horror aspect, but they mixed the opposing tones well. It was fun to watch but was still gripping my chair with fear. Very akin to Aliens, but still had the scary atmosphere of Alien which made for an intense experience.
Most of the discussions about the film will be for the final act which I can already tell is going to be divisive among moviegoers. You’re either going to love what they do or find it dumb. Personally, I thought it was great. I appreciate Fede Alvarez for taking a leap with the new alien and how it’s design as a sort of crossbreed between a Xenomorph and a human baby. It’s not exactly original (Alien: Resurrections), but it expands the lore of the universe without making the creature less scary. The problem with making prequels about the Alien world is that the more you explain, the less threatening the Xenomorphs are. Giving us two prequel films detailing about the origins of the creatures were never needed and took some of the fear away from them. In Romulus, we get more information about the creatures, but it ironically made us fear them more. The Xenomorph coming out of the wall was both terrifying and informative about how they evolve. Sometimes less is more, but the film gave us answers while keeping the intimidating factor of the Xenomorphs.
Alien: Romulus is an amalgamation of all the weaknesses and strengths that the Alien series has; great visuals, amazing creature designs, strong main characters, and a fun final act. But, at the same time, weak surrounding characters, some bad writing, and narrative choices that you could’ve easily written out. When ranking Romulus among its predecessors, it’s comfortably the 3rd best of the series. This does reiterate something that many fans of the series, including myself,
have been saying; the films need to evolve. Almost every film passed Aliens follows the same exact structure. Stop me if you heard this before; Crew goes to a planet/ship, they find an alien creature, gets killed one by one, there’s a sort of countdown sequence where they’ll die if they don’t leave the ship/planet in time, they just barely make it, turns out an alien is still on their ship, they blast it off to space, then roll credits. Romulus is a solid movie, but it heavily relies on the franchises greatest hits so much that it leaves nothing of actual substance. Besides the first 10- 15 minutes, it’s hard to think about what the film does that makes it any different from its predecessors. Some might see it as a good thing as a lot of those tropes are well beloved in the series, but one would hope we would go beyond the scope of a film that came out over 3 decades ago. 3/5.
