Alien: Romulus

This may be a stupid point to argue, but why do those aliens grow so crazy fast?

I accept, that not every species has to grow similarly. But how can a baby alien grow into an adult in the space of 15 minutes in the film?

They are not fed, and yet, they can grow large bodies within minutes? It just bothers me. How hard would it be to give them, say, a day to reach adulthood. But minutes?

It makes - and this is gonna sound stupid - the alien species unbelievable.

I love the way they reproduce: A queen lays eggs, face-huggers infest people and then aliens burst from their chests... classic. But can we give them a little time to grow? They are not inflatable rubber dolls! I'm done. Watch the movie. It's decent.

At this point in 2024, there are more bad alien movies than good ones. So, something that pays homage to the originals really piqued my interest.

Visually, it's vintage "Alien/s" albeit with modern polish. It looks great, spectacular even, especially the space scenes. The opening scene was perfect.

The main problem with the movie is that there is zero tension, no sense of dread, and it's not scary, except for the last few scenes, which I enjoyed.

The movie tries to force tension and intensity with another plot device on top of the alien-the equivalent of a bomb timer countdown. It doesn't work as it trumps the alien threat, they become inconvenient road blocks.

The facehuggers have been reduced to annoying pests-something you can just bat away.

The aliens are cannon fodder, and the cast just seems to bump into them. I didn't get the sense that they were being hunted. E.g The sentry cannon scene from Aliens, this movie references. But you don't see the aliens dieing in Aliens, you do here which makes them look weak. On a side note this scene also reminded me of the Starwars prison corridor "boring conversation anyway".

Many scenes played out like a QuickTime event in a video game, with characters over-explaining and then narrating their actions: "I'm going to press X to do this." It's as if the audience needs to be told what they're watching and why they should feel scared or tense because there is no tension in the scene, despite an alien being present.

I have concerns about adding more law etc into the franchise. I don't need to know how the alien works, it's not scary if you know everything about a monster. That's the point of a monster. They use this new found law to get past some aliens, again it was like a scene from a video game.

It really nails the alien aesthetic, its a high paced movie with video game level writing and characters. Somewhat fun but ultimately disposable.

Let me just say that I have been with this franchise since day one. I can remember seeing the original in the cinema before I was a teenager. I have seen and enjoyed all the films many times over and appreciated the less popular ones in the series. Seeing Romulus was a disappointment. Its dark visuals, particularly the opening sequence, had me confused at times. The relevance of the opener became obvious later on. And the dialogue was muffled in spots, and I missed chunks trying to figure out what was said, thus missing the follow up. The story was uninspiring and the Xenomorphs were identical to previous incarnations (for the most part) and close ups of the mouth parts no longer cause fear or dread, just boredom. This is one in the franchise that I may not watch again.

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.

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.