'Alien: Romulus' Is a Great Sci-Fi Slasher That Remixes Other 'Alien' Movies
A few thoughts on the latest 'Alien' film.
Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus is a blast.
I’ll admit to being pretty skeptical when stepping into my local IMAX theater to catch the latest entry in the Alien franchise. The last two Alien movies, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, were ambitious as hell but I didn’t find them terribly enjoyable and they certainly didn’t connect in a big way with audiences.
That said, I’ve always been a big fan of Álvarez. With his Evil Dead (2013), he showed he could take a classic horror film, make it even gnarlier, and bring the franchise into the 21st century. His Don’t Breathe (2016) was a brilliant thriller that used a single location to great effect. So I was hoping that Alien: Romulus would deliver on some solid horror thrills. Beyond that, I didn’t really have any expectations.
Indeed, Romulus brings the Alien franchise back to its roots: There’s a scary thing on a spaceship and it’s slowly killing everyone on board. In Romulus, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) works on a remote, sunless, and miserable Weyland Yutani mining colony with her brother Andy (David Jonsson), an android programmed by Rain’s father to help her through life. An opportunity arises for Rain to leave the planet but it involves going to an abandoned space station with some local acquaintances. There, they plan to collect some cryo-pods, use them to escape the local star system, and be free of their punishing existence. As you might expect, complications arise when they figure out why the space station was abandoned in the first place.
Romulus excels at repeatedly placing its characters in interesting setups where they face mortal danger and have to achieve a tangible goal to survive. Álvarez understands that getting a group of characters from point A to point B can be a thrilling affair if the setup and the stakes are correct. Romulus loads up these situations consecutively and relentlessly, to the point where watching the film will probably wreck your nerves.
It’s also a movie that lives in the shadow of other Alien films. Every element of the production design and art direction feels like a love letter to the films that have come before and there are copious references to their subplots and themes. As a result, some might think this film is nothing more than a derivative remix. I definitely did not love all the Alien references, several of which will definitely rip you out of the film in favor of (occasionally nonsensical) fan service.
But as someone who enjoyed this movie on a visceral level, I was just pleased to be able to go on a well-constructed ride, regardless of the Alien baggage this movie brings with it. I also think this is one of the most spectacular looking movies of the year, seamlessly blending practical and visual effects to create one of the most convincing Alien settings ever.
Does Alien: Romulus add a lot of interesting mythology to the franchise? Nope. Is it trying to say something significant about the nature of creation and the human condition? Not that I can tell. Are there references to the other Alien films cringeworthy and arguably morally reprehensible? Occasionally! But is it a gory, beautiful, slasher thrill-ride from beginning to end? Absolutely.
I loved it.
My Updated Alien Movie Rankings:
Aliens
Alien
Alien: Romulus
Alien: Resurrection
Prometheus
Alien: Covenant
Alien 3
Other Stuff I’ve Been Watching
Cuckoo is a movie that defies easy categorization. It’s ostensibly the story of a teenage girl named Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) who takes up residence with her family at a hotel in the Bavarian Alps. But strange and bizarre things start happening almost immediately, raising a bunch of intriguing questions. Like why do guests keep randomly vomiting in public? Why do some people keep experiencing déjà vu? And why is it so hard to leave this place? Perhaps the hotel’s overseer, Herr König (Dan Stevens), may hold some of the answers.
Cuckoo is a bold and original film with some solid craft to back it up. It constantly shifts modes and genres, keeping the viewer guessing about what’s going on and how it might resolve. But while I appreciated its ambition and enjoyed the experience of watching the film, I ultimately didn’t find all its disparate ingredients coalesced in a way that was truly satisfying.
That said, Schafer and Stevens are both doing incredible work. Schafer is sympathetic as a girl who’s desperately trying to survive in unspeakable circumstances and Stevens is chewing scenery like it’s going out of style. These performances and a handful of big swings make Cuckoo worth checking out for any horror fans out there.
I also had a chance to check out Borderlands, which is currently one of the worst reviewed and worst performing movies this year. I was expecting Borderlands to be an outright catastrophe; instead, it was merely very bad. In the film, Cate Blanchett plays Lilith, a bounty hunter who is So Over It. Through a fortuitous set of circumstances, she joins up with a crew of misfits whose mission is to find and open up a vault on a post-apocalyptic planet called Pandora (not that one). Why is everyone trying to get into this vault and what treasures does it hold? If you’re asking this question, you’ve already put more thought into the plot than the movie does.
There are many problems with Borderlands but I’d say two of the most prominent ones are the chemistry and the plot. Borderlands wants to be a Guardians of the Galaxy-style romp where you see these characters bond and grow closer through shared adventures. But there’s very little chemistry between them — Kevin Hart is playing an action hero straight man in this for some reason? — and a lot of the comic relief comes from Jack Black playing a mobile robot named Claptrap, which drew way more groans than laughs from my audience.
As for the plot, it’s nonsense. The movie shows heavy signs of being tampered with, such as a clunky introductory voiceover and an ending that feels like it comes out of nowhere. Notably, Tim Miller had to take over reshoots for the film and it’s been a mystery who his co-screenwriter even was. All of that shows in a movie that, at its best, is a generic mishmash of other, much better adventure films. That’s a low ceiling for a $100MM+ budgeted film that is based off of one of the most popular video game franchises of all time.
In the past, I’ve seen what happens when a movie picks up a toxic stench. The press and movie-going public smell blood in the water and a dogpile commences (example: 2012’s John Carter). Frequently, though, the movie isn’t quite as terrible as it’s all cracked up to be. In my humble opinion, this is another example of this phenomenon: a movie that’s pretty bad, but not an atrocity. That said, if this is the price we have to pay to see Cate Blanchett having fun and kicking ass, it’s probably a bit too high.
I saw Alien Romulus in imax and was blown away. I loved it from start to finish. My only complaint is an extended and unnecessary reference to previous Alien films. But overall Romulus is one of my favorite new films this year.
Spoilers follow:
Romulus makes Prometheus a more interesting film. Romulus at least explains the origin of the engineers in Prometheus to me. The final creatures' face strikingly resembles the faces of the engineers from Prometheus and Alien Covenant. A creature that is born from a pregnant woman who injected herself with the concoction created by the scientists on the space station from the Aliens black goo. Which leads me to think the engineers once resembled humans and have since integrated themselves with Alien DNA to create a 'better' version of themselves as the Rook character was trying to accomplish with humans.
Although, if this is true, it does make Alien Covenant less interesting. It would mean that David didn't create the Aliens, merely altered them. Which lessens the cool idea from Covenant that people created synthetics, then a synthetic created the monsters that have been terrorizing humans.
Haven’t seen many movies lately - excited
To see this one after reading your take!