rsr-14

After seeing this movie, I'm fully convinced there are only 2 Alien movies - the first from the 1970s, and its sequel.

Romulus simply seems dumb, not sure how this movie ever got accepted for the story.

Good things first - effects are fine, I did appreciate the main character Rain and her android Andy.

Remaining characters felt like young and uneducated, very simple language too, constantly saying the f-word, it gets tiresome in minutes. In the first Alien movie you also had uneducated personnel seemingly like truck drivers, but they behaved much more realistic and convincingly, and they were older, not like the Romulus-teenagers. Surely no Oscar goes to Romulus for the extremely bad acting.

Maybe easier if I just mention the questions I had when watching this movie.

1. People are more or less grounded on the planet by the Weyland corporation. How do some young, poor and dumb teenage-ish persons get access to an expensive spaceship and are able to fly it off-planet? Is Weyland really allowing grounded persons to fly wherever they want? Does not make much sense.

2. In the first Alien movie we see that from face-hugging to chest-bursting that takes about 1 day - or 24 hours. Why did it take 5 minutes in Romulus?

3. In the original Alien movie, it took days for the alien the reach full size - sure it grew fast, and it shed its skin several time. The alien ate to grow. In Romulus the alien grows full size in a few minutes - and it does not eat to grow. So it now grows using air like a balloon?

Same for the monster at the end - grows to a gigantic size in minutes without really eating anything. Simply stupid - the director could easily have built in some time pauses in the movie to show time has passed like a few days. The Alien growth rate is totally unrealistic in Romulus.

4. Reusing old one-liners like "You have my sympathies" among other sentences just felt dumb and out of place. Do reuse old stuff - try to make new great stuff instead.

5. The movie felt like designed by some dude making video games - like the flying through acid, having to pull four levers etc. Romulus may indeed have worked better as a game than a movie.

6. Worst thing about this movie was constantly rushing things - alien grows to full size in minutes, most of the movie happens in 40 minutes. This rush destroys the movie, breaks rules from previous movies - and turns Romulus into an implausible mess of a story. Also it kind consists of parts we've seen before. First facehugger - then chest-bursting (first Alien movie), then finding massively built Alien architecture on the station (like on planet LV426 in Aliens) - and you also get more or less the same guns like in Aliens from 1986. Of course you get another elevator ride like in Aliens too. Romulus feels like a dumb rushed copycat filled with bad acting and a story you only may find logical and plausible after drinking a bottle of wine or two, lol.

My rating 3/10 - close to the worst movie in the franchise - but could so easily have been one of the best, sadly.