Alien: Romulus is Alien Franchise Karaoke, for Better and Worse
Both nostalgic and hard as hell, the newest in the sci-fi horror franchise is a disappointingly mixed bag.
Alien: Romulus arrives at an odd time for the space slasher series. Helmed by up-and-coming horror director Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe, 2013’s Evil Dead), the film is the first produced by Disney after purchasing 20th Century Fox, the studio behind every Alien film since the 1979 original. Billed as a return-to-form after perceived creative misfires (that’s wrong) or financial failures (Alien: Covenant, the 2017 precursor, struggled to gross $240 million against $100 million budget), Romulus remixes myriad elements from the last 45 years of Alien. The result is gnarly-as-all-fuck karaoke that obsessively references elements of earlier, better films.
Alien has always been a franchise disinterested in continuity and fan service. Each new installment practically flips off the last movie’s story and vibe despite sharing obvious DNA: people die violently in space, psychosexual imagery literalizes female oppression, capitalist overlords are callously inhumane, androids grapple with free will, etc. (I’m also about to spoil every Alien movie, but what are you doing if you haven’t seen Alien? Go see Alien! That shit kicks ass!)
The precedent was set by the distinct difference between Ridley Scott’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens, written and directed by James Cameron; the former is slow and methodical with a singular Xenomorph, that perfect organism leaking steaming goo and a big mouth hiding a smaller mouth, violently kills its way through blue collar spacers only to be defeated by lone survivor Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the latter a succinctly designed spectacle machine bursting with brash bombast and drowning in hundreds of Xenomorphs. (Because the film is called AlienS, you see.) Fun!
With Weaver’s Ripley a fixture, successive Alien films never returned to the well to repeat their forebears, films frequently considered among the medium’s finest. Alien3, David Fincher’s 1992 directorial debut, is dark, brutal, and pissed the hell off, hating its audience almost as much as it hates itself. It also kills Ripley, revealed to carry an Xenomorph embryo, burning her alive in lava. While a clone of Ripley features in Alien Resurrection, the 1997 film is a tonal disaster mired with goofy supporting characters and misplaced hijinks – at one point, imprisoned Xenomorphs scheme to kill another Xenomorph so its acid blood provides an escape. (Weird, but I’m not having a bad time!)
The franchise laid dormant until 2012 when Scott returned for Prometheus. A prequel to Alien, the film has no Xenomorphs and explores humanity’s origin, ultimately revealing our species’ creators to be indifferent gods who want to destroy us. (Pretty rad nihilism, Ridley!) Michael Fassbender’s David, an android fixated on mastering life, figures prominently into Prometheus, his preoccupation driving much of the movie’s chaos and continuing into Covenant, also directed by Scott. David’s portion of Covenant is its most successful; Fassbender, who plays two androids in the film, mostly plays the flute or waxes philosophically while acting against himself. The two even kiss, and it’s simply illegal to hate a movie where Michael Fassbender swaps spit with himself.
Every new iteration of Alien does not care what its audience wants, producing its own Xenomorph. Admittedly, reception to every post-Aliens film (as in, the last 38 years of the franchise lol) has been mixed, with Prometheus a particularly popular internet punching bag. I firmly believe there’s never been a bad Alien movie, nor has any installment been uninteresting. They all propel the franchise’s rumination on the violence inherent in creation and birth, the depression of the human spirit, or craven capitalist cruelty, and I leave each film buzzing from some fun kills, depraved sci-fi imagery, and cynical musings on the human condition.
Which makes Romulus’s remixture unfortunate. Set between Alien and Aliens, the film follows a crew of young colonists searching for a better life and stumbling upon, you guessed it, lots of Xenomorphs. Romulus features callbacks to every Alien film, and, for the first time, we have an Alien film that cares about being an Alien film. (While I’m sure it’s to rebuild goodwill after some more divisive installments, it’s hard not to see this as mandated by Disney, a company pathologically obsessed with regurgitating to audiences That Thing They Liked One Time.)
Nostalgia dosing in Romulus ranges from something only for the real heads – lead Cailee Spaeny(*) wears shoes similar to Ripley’s – to thunderously obvious – David Jonsson, in an otherwise captivating performance, clunkily delivers Ripley’s most famous line divorced from all context. The vilest offender, however, is the CGI-assisted resurrection of Ian Holm, who died in 2020. In a move so needless it almost craters the film, Holm, who played an android in Alien, is revived as the face of another android with a different name. The effect is not particularly convincing, as the usual rubbery, video-game visage of previous attempts at this trick persists. All the more egregious is that it is for seemingly no purpose, with Holm’s face there simply to be something audiences recognize.
(*) It deeply amuses me that Spaeny, famously the world’s tiniest person, is in two IMAX releases this year. Small girl, big screen!
Romulus is also the thematically weakest of the Alien films. There is little there there, as the film focuses less on ideas and more on thrills and gore – though Romulus does not lack in either department. Several sequences rock, with the standout being a zero-gravity shootout causing a literal Xenomorph acid bloodbath. The film’s craft is also exquisite: The production design, led by Naaman Marshall, is remarkably tactile, creating a series of claustrophobic environs; cinematographer Galo Oliveras masterfully lights dim corridors to ensure movement is clear; Benjamin Wallfisch’s score is appropriately tense and electrifying. Gleefully sick violence abounds, particularly in the film’s climax; while it may be too out-there for some, I found the sequence, if derivative, so go-for-broke bugnuts I couldn’t help but delightedly rub my hands together.
Like a fun night at the karaoke bar with your pals, Alien: Romulus plays the hits. You leave largely satisfied, pleased with the evening you spent, though there is a lingering, evolving feeling the original artists did it better. Also, for the love of god, let a woman direct one of these things!