'Alien: Romulus' is a fresh (and even more twisted) take on the cult classic
This science fiction horror movie maxes out science fiction and horror
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(This review contains spoilers).
The Alien franchise is back, this time with a young cast of rag-tag rebels out to steal technology from an abandoned ship so they can make the arduous journey to a better planet. Of course, a couple Xenomorphs are waiting for them. Alien: Romulus included subtle – and not so subtle – nods to its predecessors while also carving out space for the biggest, baddest Big Bad yet.
I ended up on an accidental Alien binge last week thanks to my brother, starting with Alien on Monday and Tuesday, Aliens on Thursday, Prometheus on Friday, and Alien: Covenant on Saturday in the lead up to Alien: Romulus Saturday evening. (Even with all that, we still missed Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Alien vs. Predator, and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Whew).
If you didn’t want to watch nine movies before Romulus, I’ll save you some time. I figured out all of the Alien movies pretty much follow the same recipe with different ingredients. We’re introduced to the crew, something goes wrong on the ship, a countdown begins, somebody does something stupid, the alien(s) goes MWRAAA, and then everyone dies except the female protagonist and maybe the robot.
It has all the classic makings of a good story – and a great horror sci-fi. Add in a huge special effects budget and characters the audience sympathizes with, and bam! Blood, guts, and alien babies. How can you look away? It’s no wonder the franchise has gone on this long.
Cailee Spaeny (star of Civil War and Priscilla) and Archie Renaux (one of my personal favorites from Shadow and Bone) steal the show in their performances as disenfranchised space colonizers looking for a better life. Though Rain and Tyler’s romantic tension or backstory is never developed in lieu of constant jump scares, the characters’ wants feel the most potent.
Their scrappy gang of wanna-be space pirates provides a unique framework for the devastation that follows. Every character and every concept in the movie felt purposeful, building off or leading up to one another, in an excellent use of Chekhov’s Gun.1
In typical Alien fashion, our strong female protagonist makes it to the end of the movie (barefoot and in her pajamas) when a newborn alien amalgamation emerges. It’s quite literally birthed from a human and resembles something between Slender Man, Venom, and the Xenomorphs. I was eating the movie up until this point (okay, maybe not a great analogy since we’re talking about monsters that go through people’s mouths), wowed by the flawlessly interconnected sci-fi and horror elements, but something about a half-human, half-alien baby was so ridiculous, it brought me back to reality.
Since the first movie, the franchise has explored motherhood and creation in the most grotesque ways it can think of. In Prometheus, a character who can’t get pregnant ends up needing an emergency C-section for an alien growing inside her. They’ve had a computer named Mother, and a robot obsessed with raising alien babies. Even though the newest alien hybrid felt like a bit of a stretch, I appreciated the movie’s commitment to the franchise’s themes.
Romulus also poses interesting questions about class and capitalism we’ve seen in the franchise before, bringing Weyland Corporation back as the ultimate unbeatable bad guy. The characters want to outsmart the system, since the system won’t help them, and yet, they ultimately can’t. Though another batch of Xenomorphs were killed, as long as the company has money, the chaos will repeat.
The film brought back social commentary on the evils of artificial intelligence while simultaneously using a deepfake of a deceased actor in order to revive his character, Princess Leila-esque. His addition felt unnecessary, but there is something there to say about fan service2. Romulus concludes with the idea that AI can be good, forcing us to move past the morality of it quickly.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie’s sci-fi elements and commitment to the Alien bit, though the horror aspect was a bit much for me at times. It employed incredible use of storytelling – besides the development of the character’s backstories – and ended with a classic nod to Ripley’s escape in movie no. 1. It was fresh and exciting while also nostalgic. Overall, a high rating from me.
Read my last review: 'Simones Biles: Rising' is an candid look at the toll of professional gymnastics
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Read the full Gen Z Dictionary here.
Chekhov’s Gun: a plot device where every element introduced to the story is purposeful and relevant later on
Fan service: appealing to the fans, often by bringing back beloved characters or locations