Alien: Romulus

A group of young disaffected workers on a Weyland-Yutani mining Colony hatch a plan to go scavenge cryo-pods from what appears to be an abandoned ship orbiting their world with a view to heading away from their dead-end existence to a new system. However, once at the ship they find it is actually a Weyland-Yutani research facility and, although there are no humans left aboard, it is far from empty....

I am a huge fan of the Alien Films and had watched the approach of this 7th Film with a mixture of both curiosity and trepidation. After all, Alien Films are not released very regularly and the 'Fanbase' has now polarised into two camps - one that simply wants to watch 'more of the same' Alien (Xenomorph on scary spaceship picking off victims etc) or those who want a bigger exploration of the 'Alien Universe' (Prometheus, Covenant).

Despite the endorsements of both Ridley Scott & James Cameron (now both in hock to the 'Mouse-house' Disney) I suspected that this Film would be a 'mash up' of sorts between 'Alien' & 'Aliens' - just with a younger Cast. Unfortunately, Disney have shown that they are creatively bankrupt and are more than happy to simply produce a 'copy & paste' rehash of what we have seen before... Alien: Romulus has a couple of good set pieces and a couple of decent acting performances BUT it just cannot disguise the fact that it is a patchwork of nods & call backs to virtually every Alien Film made! Whole chunks of dialogue and lines are spouted verbatim from 'Alien' and 'Aliens', which was just an unnecessary distraction. The 'Rook/Ash' inclusion was also overdone. The net result for me was a Film that looked and sounded like a Lazy reboot of several Alien Films but with NO original ideas. The practical effects were well done BUT the impact was diminished by the overly familiar tropes - and dialogue.

The 'Finale' was blatant 'remix' of the creature from 'Alien Resurrection' with a bit of 'Prometheus' Engineer thrown in!

Cailee Spaeny makes an endearing if reluctant hero as Rain, while David Jonsson's 'artificial person' Andy struggles with his 'directives'. Unfortunately neither of these two can match Weaver's original Ripley or Fassbender's deeply unnerving 'David' from the other Films.

So, Alien: Romulus (for me) simply didn't do anything to expand the Alien Universe or indeed even go for a more original take. Instead I found myself watching a 2 hour 'replay' of 'Alien Greatest Hits' which appeared to have been designed for 'Fanboys' and video-game youngsters. In some parts I even felt it bordered on parody!

As for this being the 'Best' Alien Film since Cameron's 'Aliens' in 1986 - forget it!

At least Alien 3, 'Prometheus' and even 'Covenant' tried to be different.

'Alien: Romulus' has successfully rehashed all the old Alien tropes for a new audience but, in the process, has now painted the Franchise into a corner.

The 'haunted spaceship' has now been done to death - unless Scott himself has anything further to say, Alien is going nowhere...

A few hours after coming out of the theater and I'm not sure what to make of this. It was... okay, I guess?

It felt like Fedy Alvarez examined the production of each of the previous films, and every left-over idea from them was thrown finally to the screen, along with rehashing the core components of the franchise. You have pieces from Alien, Aliens, Resurrection, and Prometheus/Covenant. For a fan of the series, there are subtle and not-so-subtle easter eggs every few minutes, from sound effects to reused dialogue.

The plot is really simple, as it should be. A group of people exploring a space station. Been there, done that. However, I really liked the use of temperature and gravity in this film, those were something not seen much in this universe. And there were plenty of jump scares. I'm not usually a fan of those, but this time they worked well.

The two lead actors were pretty good, the rest rather forgettable. And not sure what to make of the beyond-the-grave role of one actor...

The world is great. Forget the sleek and clean world of Prometheus, this is back to the ugly 70s retro futuristic stuff. Simply lovely. Aesthetically pleasing, if you like this kind of look.

Finally, however, it does feel like there is really nowhere for this franchise to go in terms of story. I wouldn't call it artistically bankrupt, but it is close. While this film tied neatly together the "proper" Alien films and the new Prometheus sidestep, it is hard to think what more to make of this creature. Nearly all the mystery has been stripped from the Xenomorph. I do wonder, is there anything left to do with this creature? More stand-alone films?

At this point in 2024, there are more bad alien movies than good ones. So, something that pays homage to the originals really piqued my interest.

Visually, it's vintage "Alien/s" albeit with modern polish. It looks great, spectacular even, especially the space scenes. The opening scene was perfect.

The main problem with the movie is that there is zero tension, no sense of dread, and it's not scary, except for the last few scenes, which I enjoyed.

The movie tries to force tension and intensity with another plot device on top of the alien-the equivalent of a bomb timer countdown. It doesn't work as it trumps the alien threat, they become inconvenient road blocks.

The facehuggers have been reduced to annoying pests-something you can just bat away.

The aliens are cannon fodder, and the cast just seems to bump into them. I didn't get the sense that they were being hunted. E.g The sentry cannon scene from Aliens, this movie references. But you don't see the aliens dieing in Aliens, you do here which makes them look weak. On a side note this scene also reminded me of the Starwars prison corridor "boring conversation anyway".

Many scenes played out like a QuickTime event in a video game, with characters over-explaining and then narrating their actions: "I'm going to press X to do this." It's as if the audience needs to be told what they're watching and why they should feel scared or tense because there is no tension in the scene, despite an alien being present.

I have concerns about adding more law etc into the franchise. I don't need to know how the alien works, it's not scary if you know everything about a monster. That's the point of a monster. They use this new found law to get past some aliens, again it was like a scene from a video game.

It really nails the alien aesthetic, its a high paced movie with video game level writing and characters. Somewhat fun but ultimately disposable.

Let me just say that I have been with this franchise since day one. I can remember seeing the original in the cinema before I was a teenager. I have seen and enjoyed all the films many times over and appreciated the less popular ones in the series. Seeing Romulus was a disappointment. Its dark visuals, particularly the opening sequence, had me confused at times. The relevance of the opener became obvious later on. And the dialogue was muffled in spots, and I missed chunks trying to figure out what was said, thus missing the follow up. The story was uninspiring and the Xenomorphs were identical to previous incarnations (for the most part) and close ups of the mouth parts no longer cause fear or dread, just boredom. This is one in the franchise that I may not watch again.

Sure to be a crowdpleaser and produced to perfection this greatest hits album catering to generation Z, doesn't really tread new ground. Don't you dare to be original like 'Prometheus' or bold, like 'Alien: Covenant'. Just give the audience familiarity and play it somewhat safe.

In a world where most new movies coming out from Hollywood are either reboots, remakes or sequels and where new ideas being greenlit are things of the past (unless it can be made on a small budget), we are being flooded with try-to-check-all-boxes movies with several screenwriters and focusgroups attached.

Consider me worried.