Movies

Alien: Romulus, starring Cailee Spaeny and directed by Fede Alvarez
Trailer: 20th Century Studios

Alien: Romulus
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Rated R
Burst 16 August 2024
#ALIENROMULUS

In a spotty series that’s been running for 45 years now, Alien finally has another fun, worthy sequel.

Big Maybe

It’s a movie universe that at times has struggled mightily to justify its existence. In 1979, Ridley Scott made a haunted house masterpiece with dazzling, intricately detailed sets and a fascinating titular beast that – true to its era – was kept shrouded in the shadows until audiences were ripe for the big reveal.

But other chapters fell into unfathomable disappointment. Why are scientists and engineers behaving with the slim intelligence of horny teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake? Aliens battling predators? It’s not all that far removed from a shameless cash grab like Freddy slicing and dicing with Jason.

Well, finally, there’s Alien: Romulus. At times, it plays a little too close to the original Alien’s narrative roadmap, but it also manages to build on the mythology. And, for safety’s sake, it’s also a decidedly younger team this time. That’s not to say they do a whole lot of forehead-smacking stuff, but the placemats have been set to allow for some stupid human tricks that – fortunately – at least make sense for this group of desperate youths.

Let It Rain

Romulus is the kind of movie that is fun to watch just to spot all the (alien) Easter eggs and fantastic, minute details. There’s a drinking bird toy. The pixilated, data-filled computer screens. Those computer sound effects. Musical cues from Alien, Aliens and Prometheus. Cheesecake and beefcake photos on a bathroom wall (kickin’ it old school). One of the lead characters even sports a pair of Reeboks. (In the Alien universe, that is significant pop culture.) And, of course, the intimidation factor from knowing in space no one can hear you scream.

Oh. And there is a Doozy – "Doozy" with a capital "D" – tie-in to the original Alien. Steering away from spoiler territory, it includes a creepy (but highly effective) use of CGI that blurs the lines between de-aging and deep faking. Cue that classic, eerie Jerry Goldsmith score for some extra nerdy squeals of movie nirvana.

In some respects, Alien: Romulus serves as a direct sequel to both Alien and Prometheus, but that’s by way of some thematic elements and conversational references. Otherwise, it’s something of a fresh start that succeeds in large part because of its two central characters, Rain (Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla) and Andy (David Jonsson, Industry).

Spaeny is just getting started, but she’s already demonstrated an impressive range, taking on a young, impressionable Priscilla Presley and also a journalist embedded in a new American civil war. Here, she could easily stand toe-to-toe (in those Reeboks) with Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley as she shows off her guns (and artillery) while dispatching quite a few Xenomorphs.

As for Jonsson, he’s this movie’s primary synthetic, one of the milk-bleeding, MUTHUR-fluent androids who can be a hard read when it comes to their motivations. But there’s a twist. Initially, he’s a unit on the skids who speaks with a slight stutter (and a penchant for cracking wordplay jokes). But, after rebooting with a science officer’s chip, he turns into a sharp partner looking to help his human colleagues. As long as it’s in the company’s best interests, of course.

The Company You Keep

Ah. The company. Weyland-Yutani.

In corporate speak, think of it this way. Rain and her rag-tag group of friends are remote workers trapped in dead-end jobs. Remote? How about 65 light years from Earth. Dead-end jobs? Well, Rain’s parents died of Lyme disease from the same mines consuming Rain’s life. Trapped? While Rain was up for a transfer off that grim mining site, her request was denied, only to be told her quota’s been upped to the brutal extension of another six years working in an environment with no natural sunlight.

Faced with that bleak future, bring on the face-huggers and the Xenomorphs. And, hopefully, a lucky, lucky star.

Considering what made the original Alien so special was its uniqueness and the shock value from a couple nifty twists (the fate of Ash and the chest-bursting alien birth are indelibly etched into cinematic history), it’s fairly remarkable the series has endured for decades. Those elements of shock are now commonplace, a part of the narrative fabric of this movie universe to the point they are a given and even openly appear in the trailers. But, in fairness, Romulus presents them with some significant technical upgrades and an eye-covering sense of realism.

In that respect, Romulus revisits the past and brings it into the future, brandishing enough smarts to have fun with the known while establishing some new intrigue in unknown territory. It’s almost slavishly loyal to all those remarkable set details and design sensibilities Scott, Moebius and H.R. Giger established back in 1979, but it is absolutely enjoyably slavish.

Risky Business

The series has explored seemingly every possible avenue of interest Weyland-Yutani might have in preserving the Xenomorphs and perpetuating – even propagating – their existence. And, with Prometheus and Covenant in the rear-view mirror, the series seems to have gotten over its obsession with explaining the back stories of the deadly beasts and the space navigator from Alien.

Now, in addition to the expected Alien tropes, there’s a clock ticking away, adding an extra element of pressure. Raine and her friends steal a Weyland-Yutani ship in hopes of raiding an abandoned station. Their heist is an expected 30-minute mission in which they grab enough fuel cells to propel their ship to something resembling civilization. But the station they’re raiding is on a collision course with the debris rings circling the planet. They’ve got 36 hours to complete that 30-minute mission. Plenty of time? Sure. Under normal circumstances.

But an Alien movie is never, ever about normal circumstance.

Fede Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues (who also teamed on Don’t Breathe and the 2013 Evil Dead remake) leverage some of today’s real-world anxieties to bring a new angst to the fun house. There’s the specter of artificial intelligence and its potential to lack compassion while making life-altering decisions. In itself, that’s not particularly new to the series, but it’s the current AI-obsessed environment of the real world that further informs the threat.

And the creative duo also slap a harsh reality check on humanity’s ability to colonize distant planets. Maybe Earthlings aren’t suited for that, maybe we’ll mess up all the other planets the way Earth got polluted. But – hey – the company thinks there are big possibilities in harvesting Xenomorphs to help the cause. Maybe a sort of Xenomorphic xeriscaping.

That’s some twisted logic.

Twisted and – happily – unnervingly enjoyable.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

In Pursuit of the New Bohemia:  Truth • Beauty • Freedom • Love
"Serving the PRM and Its Territories Worldwide Since 3 July 2000"
Site Contents Copyright © MM - MMXXIV, Matthew Anderson, Unless Otherwise Noted
Privacy policy