Alien: Romulus
In “Alien: Romulus,” we get an expansion of the world of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, as well as a film very much molded after what the franchise has nominally become over the years. As we watch the film, we see how it acts as a bridge into James Cameron’s “Aliens” while telling a self-contained story that doesn’t feel like it’s adding an untold chapter to Ripley’s narrative. I was more than a little relieved at that; these type of “in-between” stories are tricky in the era of IP spin-offs.
The fact that Ridley Scott has become the de facto steward of this franchise on the big screen is a fascinating development, after the first four films all had different filmmakers bringing their own sensibilities to the franchise. With that, he has added a remarkable level of mythos to the world of xenomorphs that goes beyond Ripley vs. the Queen or Ripley vs. Weyland-Yutani. As a producer here, he enlists Fede Alvarez, the director of 2013’s “Evil Dead” and “Don’t Breathe,” to bring the franchise back to one of primal terror, and the results get ridiculous at times, but as a horror film, it delivers the goods.
We begin the film by seeing an excavation mission of the blown-up Nostromos from the original film. Next, we follow Rain (Cailee Spaeny), who is a worker on a mining planet 65 light years from Earth. She is hoping that, after working the requisite amount of hours of Weyland-Yutani, she is able to punch her ticket to a further planet in the cosmos, for herself and her synthetic “brother,” Andy (David Jonsson). Weyland-Yutani always has a way of moving the goalposts, however, she must team up with a pair of brothers (Tyler, played by Archie Renaux, and Bjorn, played by Spike Fearn) and their respective significant others- Kay (Isabela Merced) and Navarro (Aileen Wu)- who have a plan to take some cryo chambers from a decommissioned ship above their planet, and go to the planet she wants. You’ll never guess which ship it is?
At this point in the franchise, if an “Alien” film doesn’t have a female character who ends up as the “final girl” against the alien, it’d be disappointing. As things begin to unfold in the decommissioned ship, things definitely move rapidly in that direction, not just because Rain and Andy are at the forefront of the action, but because no one else is keen to listen to reason. This is a familiar concept in this franchise- going back to the original- and while the character personalities certainly make it believable why these characters don’t listen, it’s an irritating holdover from the previous films that put this more in line with the thrillers Alvarez made before (and slasher films have been playing off of for decades) than the best films in this franchise. I do find myself often growing tired of this formula in many cases, especially in a film that is rooted in sci-fi concepts for genuine narrative ideas rather than just setting. Thankfully, Alvarez knows how to make this formula run, and as he dispatches the aliens against the humans, I was too enthralled to care about how stupid some of the characters were being.
Like with all of the other filmmakers in this franchise, Alvarez does bring a distinctive personality to this film as a director. His background is horror, and the major set pieces in this film deliver the goods in every way. He understands the importance of tension and release and when the aliens come into the picture, even though we know- instinctively- how things will go down. The way he and cinematographer Galo Olivares use light and shadow is exquisite for the suspense, and the sound design- along with Benjamin Wallfisch’s score- is terrific in maintaining a cohesive world along with the previous films. There’s one sequence that strains credibility for how absurd it gets, but Alvarez was a great choice for a new chapter of this series.
One of the things that I like in this film is how these characters reflect a reality in this world where the company rules over all, and class structure will always determine how people are treated. This isn’t to say I agree with it, but it’s an expansion on the ideas of how Weyland-Yutani views humanity as expendable we saw in the earlier films. This is particularly true of synthetics, and there’s going to be a lot of discussion of how Andy is played in this film. In concept, it’s a compelling arc, but I’m not sure if the execution of how Jonsson is directed in the role (and the role’s written by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues) is quite how the character should have been portrayed. There’s another significant synthetic role that will likely cause even more controversy, and while I was turned off by it at first, overall it works in making this film a genuine follow-up to “Alien,” and further delineating Weyland-Yutani’s bigger ambitions. While I don’t think everything in “Alien: Romulus” works, so much of it is well executed (and shows there’s steam left in the franchise) that I cannot get too bent out of shape about what doesn’t work.
