Alien: Romulus

Nothing special, a lot of the really positive reviews are overhyped.

The characters for the most part are totally flaccid and devoid of any real character, apart from Andy. I honestly didn't have any emotional attachment to the majority of the characters and most of them were just annoying and thick.

The movie was tawdry at times, seeming to take an age to get going and relying far to heavily on Alien franchise cliches to add any real colour to the plot and script.

The special effects were good enough and the design on the original xenomorph was excellent, although the face huggers look worse in this film than they did in Alien and Aliens for some reason.

Don't ger over excited by the current hype surrounding Romulus, it isn't a terrible film but it isn't a great one either. As a huge fan of the originals, i came away disappointed.

I wasn't pleased to see fumbling and stumbling that rivals the levels of "Alien Covenant" here, where characters do the silliest mistakes in order to get killed. It drains the suspense when in order for characters to die, they must commit the most idiotic displays of decision making cursing the screen. The movie is well-made and the CGI looks good, and if not for the starting parts of the movie (1/3), its quite well paced and balanced between the stuff that's high in action and the bits that are slower. The start felt a bit slow and uninteresting though, there was little to none to imply that this was a movie about Xenomorph or anything related to the franchise.

What I felt was missing was the "Alien" factor, that immersion and suspense felt in the better ones in the franchise, the scale and dread of the Xenomorph, its sophistication and unforgiving ways of being. I can forgive this a little bit because the movie points out its intelligence in a few parts of the movie in alright ways, which was a nice touch to give the lifeform some depth.

Main problem I had with the movie though were the irrational and juvenile choices made and said by the characters. When the whole bunch of characters are dumb and childish except for a few, it drains the fun and suspense out of the movie, replacing them with disappointment and frustration, because this one had such potential to be good, or even great. The movie wasn't bad by any means in my opinion, but having such lackluster characters definitely makes it significantly worse.

For the fans of the franchise, I can still recommend this movie if you haven't yet seen it, it has solid visuals and if you can forgive the idiot characters, decent suspense. For anyone else I cannot recommend it though, as I feel that would warrant a rating better than what I got for this film.

6/10.

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.

Positives first - Good action, great practical special effects, and nice visuals.

Director Fede Alvarez and his production team have captured the gloomy atmosphere of Alien, and the thrilling action of Aliens almost perfectly. The action was thrilling with some scary moments.

The use of practical effects and realistic miniatures was so refreshing to see in this age of CGI overkill. Seeing a fully realised Xenomorph in the flesh blew me away, and the Space scenes were beautiful. This camera work, visual presentation, and use of quality albeit limited CGI when necessary was excellent.

Negatives - Average acting, nostalgia bait story, copy & pasted dialogue from better Alien movies, and the inclusion of lore elements from the inferior prequels which I wish did not exist in official canon. Plus the reveal of the villain was an "oh, get out of here " moment, I will say no more.

Apart from the great lead actress Spaeny playing up her role, the other cast of actors/characters was just okay. I thought the nostalgia bait story was boring, eye-rolling, and almost 4th wall breaking, it ruined the immersion for me. I'm getting bored of sequels/prequels heavily relying on lazy "remember-berries" to get a kick out of the casual audience while making the Alien fans embarrassed almost angry. To be honest it's just lazy script writing, and disrespectful to the other Alien movies that did it first!. Unnecessary.

Also the overuse of copy & pasted dialogue from the better Sigourney Weaver Alien movies was very cringe. 20th Century Studios should've called it Alien: Remember because of the over-reliance on oh you remember this bit from.. Lastly, trying to inject all the controversial and franchise damaging Prometheus nonsense into the film was frustrating, I hated all that origin of the Space Jockey and creation of the Xenomorph rubbish. And don't get me started on the villain, I don't want to spoil anything, but it was laughably lazy.

I think setting the movie between the first 2 films was a mistake because you have to make your movie fit into the established continuity of the franchise with all the tie ins and plot beats required to make it fit. They should've done a sequel set years after Alien: Resurrection, and setup the start of a brand new Alien saga long after Weavers adventures (and with better writers onboard).

This had the potential to be right up there with Aliens, but due to disappointing characters, a lacklustre "remember-berry" story, and poor script, it was a let down. Alien: Romulus, an above average Alien greatest hits movie, 4th best film in the franchise.

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...