Alien: Romulus

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.

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...

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.

A few hours after coming out of the theater and I'm not sure what to make of this. It was... okay, I guess?

It felt like Fedy Alvarez examined the production of each of the previous films, and every left-over idea from them was thrown finally to the screen, along with rehashing the core components of the franchise. You have pieces from Alien, Aliens, Resurrection, and Prometheus/Covenant. For a fan of the series, there are subtle and not-so-subtle easter eggs every few minutes, from sound effects to reused dialogue.

The plot is really simple, as it should be. A group of people exploring a space station. Been there, done that. However, I really liked the use of temperature and gravity in this film, those were something not seen much in this universe. And there were plenty of jump scares. I'm not usually a fan of those, but this time they worked well.

The two lead actors were pretty good, the rest rather forgettable. And not sure what to make of the beyond-the-grave role of one actor...

The world is great. Forget the sleek and clean world of Prometheus, this is back to the ugly 70s retro futuristic stuff. Simply lovely. Aesthetically pleasing, if you like this kind of look.

Finally, however, it does feel like there is really nowhere for this franchise to go in terms of story. I wouldn't call it artistically bankrupt, but it is close. While this film tied neatly together the "proper" Alien films and the new Prometheus sidestep, it is hard to think what more to make of this creature. Nearly all the mystery has been stripped from the Xenomorph. I do wonder, is there anything left to do with this creature? More stand-alone films?