By George & Josh Bate
Few franchises have hit both the extraordinary highs and disappointing lows of Alien. Ridley Scott’s first film achieved iconic status with its blend of horror and sci-fi, and influenced generations of filmmakers to come. The second film, meanwhile, set a new standard for sequels, while establishing one of the industry’s most renowned filmmakers in James Cameron. A range of sequels, prequels, and crossover films ranging from unintentionally funny to absurd to mediocre to pretty good meant the series has repeatedly failed to reach the heights of the first two films, even with the return of Ridley Scott in recent years attempting to replicate the magic of his original. With plans to further expand the prequel films of the franchise scrapped, in comes Fede Álvarez, the director of the well-crafted thriller Don’t Breathe and the blood-soaked remake of Evil Dead. Despite admirable attempts to inject an energy and intensity into the franchise with Alien: Romulus, Álvarez stumbles with a film desperately crying out for a shred of ingenuity that never quite arrives.
Set between the events of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), Alien: Romulus follows Rain Carradine (played by Civil War’s Cailee Spaeny). Desperate to flee the desolate mining colony on which they live, Rain and her android (whom she considers to be like a little brother) team up with a team of friends to salvage parts from a derelict space station. Hoping to find parts that will allow them to travel far away from their horrible home world, the team soon finds themselves face-to-face with the formidable threat of Xenomorphs.
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, while aesthetically beautiful and philosophically ambitious, erred in feeling too similar to Scott’s original film. Indeed, a problem running throughout this franchise is that every film after Aliens has either been a poor reimagining of the first two films or a misguided attempt at adding a new spin on the franchise. Alien: Romulus unfortunately falls into the former category. The ragtag team at the heart of the film quickly find themselves aboard a dark spaceship trapped with dangerous aliens, which means Romulus treads all-too familiar ground for the franchise. This lack of ingenuity or novelty to this bare bones premise means the setting is so intertwined with previous franchise installments that it could be easily interchangeable with so many previous installments. There’s a new cast of characters, but even they are representative of what came before (i.e., Cailee Spaeny’s hero is a clear attempt at creating a new Ripley, but unfortunately lacks Sigourney Weaver’s charm, heart, and formidability).
The ultimate consequence of the inherent lack of originality in Romulus is that the narrative that unfolds is frustratingly dull. Audiences will likely feel as if they’ve seen the movie before, and for good reason, such is the overlap between Romulus and the first Alien film. Very little about Álvarez’s film is attention-grabbing, even down to the drab and dreary shadow-soaked visuals. Some sequences are well crafted, in particular a scene in which the surviving humans battle against Xenomorphs in zero-gravity, but, collectively, the movie seldom engages with the intensity the filmmakers were clearly aiming to achieve. Nonetheless, Romulus is a competently made film, as all of Álvarez’s previous works have been. In many ways, though, his Alien film mirrors another recent project in his filmography – The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Much like Romulus, that film lacked an identity of its own, struggling to move away from and beyond the previous David Fincher film.
Alien: Romulus is similarly crying out for something unique to the proceedings. That comes (sort of) in the final act, with a shift in threat that definitely elevates the film to another level and somewhat salvages the movie above the mundanity that came before it. To dive deeper into why the proceedings improve in the final act would be to disclose spoilers, although it should be noted that the ‘twist’ the film takes, while predictable, is one that finally delivers an ounce of novelty to the movie.
The mundanity and lack of innovation come as a surprise given the film’s strong opening. Unlike other Alien movies, Alien: Romulus opens on the humans’ home-world, a Blade Runner-esque mining colony. The world is appropriatley depressing, shrouded in a darkness that adds fuel to the main characters’ motivations to escape the planet and forge a life elsewhere. It’s not long though until the movie pivots away from the mining colony onto a spaceship setting again. From there, the story is familiar, and the characters are alarmingly disinteresting, particularly Spaeny’s hero. There isn’t anything wrong with her performance (in fact, Spaeny does an excellent job with the material she is provided). Unfortunatley, the character is devoid of the richness of the franchise’s stellar characters, such as the aforementioned Weaver, Ian Holm’s Ash, and Michael Fassbender’s David.
Once the film transitions away from the mining colony into space, further frustrations arise with unnecessarily convoluted exposition and scene-setting. It’s not long before there are multiple space stations and ships involved, all of which have interiors that look confusingly similar. The presence of the Xenomorphs requires a few narrative leaps as well. Admittedly, not everything needs to nor should be spelt out for the audience, but Romulus fails to consistently convey where all of its characters are located across aesthetically indistinguishable ships and how the aliens came to be present there. Another viewing of the original Alien is definitely recommended in order to fully appreciate the film’s plot.
A saving grace of the movie is the character Andy. Played by David Jonsson, Andy is an android, who Spaeny’s character considers to be a little brother. The big sister / little brother bond between Spaeny’s Rain and Jonsson’s Andy is the closest the film gets to achieving a degree of emotional investment, and this is in large part due to the strength and endearing nature of Jonsson’s performance. Some things occur to his character in the film that unfortunately take away from the focus on this big sister / little brother emotional arc, but, nonetheless, Jonsson is a standout performer and further evidence that the android characters in the Alien franchise are often more interesting than the human characters.
VERDICT: 5/10
Despite a solid beginning, Alien: Romulus proves to be a disappointing installment in the famous sci-fi/horror franchise. Lacking the ingenuity of Alien, the charm of Aliens, and the philosophical heft of Prometheus and Covenant, Romulus retreads familiar territory with persistent mundanity and largely poor emotional investment. Attempts to use nostalgia to tap into themes and characters from the original film feel artificial (in more ways than one), while convoluted exposition and pervasive darkness in every scene make the film difficult to follow. On the positive side of things, David Jonsson as the android Andy standouts with a versatile performance ranging from endearing and empathic to troubling and ominous, and a final act twist injects much-needed suspense and ingenuity, With Alien: Romulus, director Fede Álvarez crafts a film that borrows too heavily from better movies that came before it, at the expense of the novelty and raw intensity this franchise desperately requires.