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The Original 'Walking with Dinosaurs' (and the two subsequent Series 'Walking with Beasts' & 'Walking with Monsters') were ground-breaking insomuch that they presented 'Prehistory' in a Wildlife Documentary-style. The 30 minute Episodes allowed the viewer to remain in the time period concerned and thus forced the makers to write a cohesive (and informative) Narration script to explain to viewers the important scientific facts of the animals and Periods themselves.

Fast forward to 2025 - and we have the long anticipated 'follow-up' to this classic Series. BUT, oh my goodness, what on earth have the makers decided to do? Well, they have decided to 'discard' the original concept and replace it with something that simply does NOT work. The idea that you can flit backwards and forwards from Mesozoic to modern dig-sites completely destroys any proper narrative and is a serious distraction. In addition, the script seems to have been written with an audience of 10 year olds in mind! All the wonderful 'cliche's' are in there - I was even anticipating the next line (successfully) on several occasions! The 'Science' seems to have taken 'second place' to telling a 'Story', so the Narration gives hardly any scientific insight, leaving that to the 'Dig-site' portions of the Episode. Even worse, the CGI itself was absolutely SECOND RATE. I have seen a lot of Dinosaur CGI and this was distractingly BAD & added to the dreadful Narration, just made it an effort to watch.

It appears the 'Makers' thought it needed a 'modern reboot' touch and in this they have seriously compromised the Series.

In conclusion, the entire 'concept' for this Series is totally WRONG, the jumping around is distracting, the Narration is simplistic tripe, the CGI creatures themselves are second-rate, the 'stories' all seem to be rehashed from elsewhere and both the sound-effects - and music - are plain and uninspired.

I will re-watch the old Series now. I doubt I can even be bothered to watch any of these new Episodes again as they are simply awful in every respect...

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...