Alien: Romulus

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.

Alien: Romulus delivers a gritty experience reminiscent of the original film, with impressive world-building and familiar tech that longtime fans of the franchise will appreciate. The movie captures the essence of the Alien universe, offering a standalone story that fits well within the established timeline and cleverly nods to Prometheus.

However, the film's reliance on callbacks to previous entries in the franchise detracts from its originality. While some references are clever, others are forced and cringeworthy.

The introduction of the main character Rain, played by Cailee Spaeny, feels uninspired. We've seen this before - another Ripley. It's actually David Jonsson's character, Andy, who ends up being the most interesting by a long shot. If there is one franchise that would benefit from exploring new characters rather than rehashing old ones, this is it.

Despite these negatives, Romulus is technically impressive. It's beautifully shot, the effects are good, it has some genuine scares, and manages to deliver solid thrills and action scenes that are sure to please. I just wish it were brave enough to carve out its own identity.

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.

The movie had good direction, set, design, etc. Seeing the movie was a good experience in the cinema. But the story was unoriginal and full of fan service. All the material was borrowed from other Alien movies. It was as if someone watched the entire Alien series and noted all the good and memorable parts, and then made a movie. The CGI of a certain character was also horrible, and looked as if someone did on their phone. The iconic Ripley line from one character was cringeworthy. I liked "Prey" and I admire the story for the fact that they did something original. I liked Fede's "Don't Breathe" and went to see it without any prior knowledge about the movie. I wish they had done something original with Romulus, and I feel very disappointed with the lack of originality of the movie. I'll give it 6/10.

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.