Here in the future, we live in a moviemaking age of sequels, remakes, reboots, “re-imaginings,” and in the case of ALIEN: ROMULUS, “interquels.” An interquel means this is a film set between two films in the franchise. ALIEN: ROMULUS is set some time between the events of ALIEN (1979) and ALIENS (1986), but made much later. ALIEN was written by the great Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett and directed by Ridley Scott. ALIENS was written and directed by James Cameron. ALIEN: ROMULUS was co-written (with Rodo Sayagues) and directed by Fede Álvarez, the Uruguayan filmmaker who brought us an EVIL DEAD remake and the more original DON’T BREATHE. Álvarez is hardly untalented, but he’s still got a very long way to go if he aims to be mentioned alongside genre-film titans like Ridley Scott and James Cameron. ALIEN: ROMULUS ain’t it.
The problem is bigger than Fede Álvarez and ALIEN: ROMULUS. Aspiring filmmakers today have an uphill battle launching original concepts. It’s never exactly easy to break in, but Álvarez would have had a lot more trouble launching a career had he started out making DON’T BREATHE instead of getting in on an EVIL DEAD remake. I’m not about to rant that “all remakes are bad,” since THE THING smothers that argument in its crib (and I’ll always advocate for THE BLOB ’88, just as a chaser), but the fact is that for any number of very well-documented reasons, the mainstream film industry is more risk-averse than ever, and that insidious notion, “IP,” has almost entirely subjugated genre films today. At the moment of this writing, the top ten highest-grossing films of the year are all sequels or prequels. Betting on pre-existing and long-beloved intellectual property is the safest, surest bet, and you’ll do even bigger business if you can get your IP battling. You want to get Godzilla fighting Kong. You want Deadpool fighting Wolverine. Eventually they’ll team up, but hey, just imagine if those four guys tag-teamed against each other… (You can’t see me, but my eyes just widened and turned into dollar signs like Uncle Scrooge’s do whenever he sees gold.)
And then there’s the issue of fandom and the internet. IP is big business, sure, but it comes with bigger expectations, and you’ve got to pacify an ever-more-vocal fanbase. It’s no longer enough to deliver sequels to a film that fans love. You’ve got to actively congratulate those fans while they are watching a sequel for having seen the original film. You’ve got to bring back the original actors, by any means necessary, even if just for meaningless cameos. You’ve got to have “Easter eggs” and echoed dialogue. You’ve got to service the fans. Add to that the reality that every generation of filmmakers grew up loving and studying those films that came before. The filmmakers are fans themselves, but where filmmakers like Spielberg and Lucas and De Palma and Dante and Tarantino and the Wachowskis managed to take their influences and alchemize them into something that felt new, the latest generation aims to have their films actively inhabit the films that inspired them.
While I can go easy on Fede Álvarez for, no doubt, having enormous pressure on him from both the studio and the fanbase when he took on an ALIEN sequel, and I can give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming he genuinely loves the franchise, I have to get tough on him by pointing out that, in this franchise more than most, doing sequels used to mean doing something different than whichever movie came before it. If ALIEN was something like an eerie haunted-house film, ALIENS was a thunderous cavalry film, and whatever issues you want to take with the rest, you can’t say they’re the same-old: ALIEN 3 is essentially a prison escape film, and ALIEN: RESURRECTION has a wild cast and elements of a disaster movie, while PROMETHEUS and COVENANT are headier, existential, and more adventurous returns to the franchise he established by Ridley Scott himself.
ALIEN: ROMULUS is only unique to the series in that it’s not unique. It’s a mash-up of ALIEN and ALIENS. If you liked those movies, you may well like this one. But if you, like me, come to the ALIEN series hoping for innovation, get ready for disappointment. In the interest of being nice, I can say that ALIEN: ROMULUS does a fair amount of world-building and atmosphere-generating effectively, but being honest, I can say that it brings nothing new. And being mean, I can say that I haven’t hated a movie (one that I was dying to like!) this much since EVIL DEAD RISE*.
ALIEN: ROMULUS starts off with so much promise. We meet Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) and her brother Andy (David Jonsson) on a mining colony, trying to escape the work that led to their parents’ early deaths. We don’t get to see much of the colonies in most of the ALIEN films, so I was really intrigued by starting here. One memorable aspect of ALIEN (1979) was how it was populated by blue-collar workers. STAR WARS had matinee-ready faces like Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams. ALIEN had Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto (who literally starred in a movie called BLUE COLLAR the year before). And ALIENS (1986) is, of course, about Space Marines attempting to ride to the rescue of a colony on another planet, but by the time we see any of the workers, it’s too late to know much about them.
Just a few days before I saw ALIEN: ROMULUS, I happened to tune in to see this CBS Sunday Morning story on coal miners in West Virginia that goes deep on how cataclysmically destructive the work is on the people who do it. While I knew about the impact of mining on miners, I wasn’t aware that companies remain this callous about their dedicated employees. The best science-fiction is about the world we live in, and here, I thought, was an amazing chance for a big-budget genre movie to bring light on real-world issues. Not only that, but dropping Xenomorphs into mines could be a terrifying prospect for claustrophobia-inducing horror of the likes we haven’t seen since THE DESCENT.
So anyway, Rain and Andy flee the colony for space as quickly as possible.
Rain’s former flame Tyler (Archie Renaux), his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), Tyler’s cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Bjorn’s sister Navarro (Aileen Wu), have a plan to steal cryo-chambers from an abandoned spaceship in order to make the trip to a distant planet, where none of them will ever have to go near a mine again. It’s not much of a spoiler for me to reveal that Andy is an android, since that is revealed very early in the film, and it’s central to the truly wonderful performance by David Jonsson, easily the highlight of the film. The group needs Andy’s unique capabilities to access the technology of the spaceship, although Bjorn hates androids, for what turns out to be a pretty solid reason, and takes out a lot of his aggression on poor Andy, who was programmed by Rain’s father to watch after her, and also to make a near-endless cascade of dad jokes. This could easily be cloying, but Jonsson makes it achingly sweet.
It’ll surprise nobody who is reading this far into an ALIEN: ROMULUS review that there are Facehuggers aboard the Romulus. It’ll surely surprise nobody who saw the trailers, since those broadcast at least one character’s death directly. (The goddamned posters even do it! See above!) While I’m not about to waste space railing against trailers that reveal too much, I am going to direct you to the trailer for ALIEN from 1979, which reveals very little yet intrigues and unsettles, even if you’ve already seen the movie, along with delivering one of the great promo taglines of all time.
In ALIEN: ROMULUS, once the Facehuggers appear, we know almost exactly where everything is going to go. Facehuggers evolve into full-sized Xenomorphs, with acid for blood. There’s going to be a winnowing of the cast until just one remains alive. Predictability is not a word with which you could saddle ALIEN or ALIENS or, I would argue, ALIEN 3 or ALIEN: RESURRECTION or PROMETHEUS or COVENANT. (I am not getting into the ALIEN VS. PREDATORS or we could be trapped inside this review all day.)
Sure, there are some differences between ROMULUS and its predecessors. There is the aforementioned warmth of Andy, whereas Ash and Bishop are famously less cuddly. There is some fun with anti-gravity devices, although one set-piece put me in mind of a similar scene in 1971’s WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. (“Burp, Charlie!”) There is the matter of Kay (Isabela Merced), who Rain quickly recognizes is pregnant, but speaking only for myself, and maybe I’ve seen a few too many horror films made by male directors looking to be shocking, but the very instant Kay’s pregnancy is revealed in the movie, I could have told you exactly where it was going to go. (It took so goddamn long to get there that I had ample time to hope I was wrong.)
I’m a little fucking steamed that in the year 2024, after incredible body-horror films from visionary filmmakers like Julia Ducournau and Coralie Fargeat, that this remains the state of things at the huge-budget level, but maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. I will say that it feels like a huge waste of Isabela Merced, a young star who is incredibly sympathetic in an incredibly underwritten role.
And it brings me to another complaint, although in fairness this could easily be me frustrated that ALIEN: ROMULUS is the movie it is, rather than the one I wanted it to be. But I’d like defenders of this movie to look at the positive reviews, which I admit I’ve only skimmed. Those who admire ALIEN: ROMULUS seem to be of the opinion that Cailee Spaeny as Rain is a solid stand-in for the legendary Sigourney Weaver as Ripley. This is not to take anything away from Cailee Spaeny, who delivers a fine performance, but unlike Ripley in ALIEN, Rain is positioned entirely from the start as the film’s point-of-view character. She’s the hero.
Now look again at ALIEN. In 1979, “the legendary Sigourney Weaver” was a virtual nobody, having had only a small role in ANNIE HALL before Ridley Scott cast her. In 1979, if you sat down in the theater to watch ALIEN, you would not be looking at the movie through Ripley’s point of view. If anyone, you’d probably latch onto Dallas. While Tom Skerritt wasn’t exactly a marquee star in 1979, he might have been a familiar face to moviegoers from films like M*A*S*H, FUZZ, BIG BAD MAMA, UP IN SMOKE, and (don’t laugh) ICE CASTLES. It’s fair to assume that gender stereotypes, prejudices, and assumptions were such 45 years ago that audiences would have expected Tom Skerritt as Dallas to be the main character of ALIEN. He is top-billed, after all. And Ripley isn’t precisely the most lovable character in ALIEN; she’s only the most sensible and the most resourceful. In other words, ALIEN surprised us by gifting us with Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. But it was hardly a given, in 1979.
In ALIEN: ROMULUS, Rain is the character who gets the most screen time. She is the first character introduced, alongside Andy. As lovable as Andy is, Rain is the one whose struggles and decisions we’re most invested in. There is little doubt that Rain is intended to serve as “the new Ripley,” and there’s little surprise when that suspicion is confirmed.
But what if they went another way? Technically, Kay is the one with the most to lose. And maybe this is presumptuous of me, but it seems like Uruguayan Fede Álvarez might consider that it’s time for America to have “a new Ripley” who isn’t a white girl, and that he could have surprised us by letting Isabela Merced, who is of Peruvian descent, become that “new Ripley.” That might have felt massively overdue, and hugely welcome. Or else, considering our current dystopia and the way AI is encroaching on everything, Andy the android could have been the last “man” standing. While the character isn’t exactly human, at least he isn’t another white girl. (None of this is meant to malign white girls, by the way – lots of you are great!) I have to trust that my message is clear: Not only is representation necessary in these times, but it is just plain more interesting storytelling, a divergence from the same-old. Again, one can never fully know the behind-the-scenes of it all. Maybe Álvarez attempted to give us something new and got outvoted, but whatever the case, somebody somewhere let us down. Also, not for nothing, but Sir Ridley and Jim Cameron would’ve won those fights.
ALIEN: ROMULUS has received some criticism for its use of modern technology to “resurrect” an actor who previously appeared in one of the ALIEN films and who is no longer alive in the real world. I would like to touch on this in my review, since this debate is most likely only beginning, but I would also like to admit that I’m not entirely sure where I stand yet. Without revealing which actor it is (since that information is easily found elsewhere), I will at least say that the role played by this actor is larger than I could have expected. Were it a brief cameo, I am not sure it would be so troubling. Ridley Scott himself once “resurrected” an actor by having the late, great Oliver Reed, who died during the filming of GLADIATOR (2000), perform his character’s last line in the movie by using previously-filmed footage. But that’s a different case. This actor used in ROMULUS performs a major role; essentially the film’s “villain.” The only information provided publicly is that this actor’s loved ones, who are still alive, provided their blessing for his image to be used, and even said that he would have loved to have been in the film. I have no reason to doubt that, but I also feel strongly that if this actor’s likeness and voice were used to perform a sizable role in the film, that his family should have been compensated accordingly. F you, pay them. I love movies, but people are more important than movies.
One’s moral mileage may vary with ALIEN: ROMULUS depending on one where stands on this very real question. Can an actor’s look and sound be used by filmmakers as another special effect? Certainly, the value of a great actor, and this person was one of those, is the creative choices they make in building and performing a character, and no technology can replicate that. But as long as their family claims to be satisfied (and as long as the family gets paid), is it okay? Or is it an abomination? I will leave that question to you.
For me, ALIEN: ROMULUS would be a lesser sort of abomination regardless. Aside from the moral question of it, what I hate is the fan service. There is much to appreciate about ALIEN: ROMULUS. The work by cinematographer Galo Olivares is gorgeous. Álvarez remains gifted with crafting moments of suspense. Some (but not all…) of the alien effects are intriguing and excellently disgusting. The performances, especially by David Jonsson, who really does unique things with the now-standard franchise character of the one android on board (who suddenly isn’t the only), are terrific. In truth, I was digging the movie for well over an hour, up until one moment, and I can tell you what it is without going into the spoiler: It’s when Kay injects herself. You’ll know it when you see it. Why? WHY? The other characters know what will happen if she uses it, but she doesn’t. Hey, forget the future, forget space: If you were walking down the street, and if you saw a syringe just lying around, would you pick it up and stick it into yourself? No matter how much pain you were in? I don’t think so. It’s an entirely insane moment, unmotivated by logic or character, and it only happens so the filmmakers can go on to show all the awful things that are about to result.
To watch ALIEN or ALIENS is to put oneself in the wicked hands of master filmmakers, who can make you care one moment and terrify you the next. Watching ALIEN: ROMULUS, especially in its final half hour, felt like having to tolerate a fan film: “Wouldn’t it be cool if we showed this monster?” (Let alone that the final-act creature essentially represents something that was done already in ALIEN: RESURRECTION.)
Worse are the callbacks. Is this revulsion that I feel for new movies quoting earlier movies simply a matter of taste? Am I getting old? Am I a spoilsport? Plenty of horror fans loved EVIL DEAD RISES, a movie that expects me to giggle over the sight of a box for “Henrietta’s Pizza,” or to thrill when a character’s badass third-act one-liner is a direct quote of something I already heard Bruce Campbell say, in a movie I’ve seen a hundred times. In the end, ALIEN: ROMULUS is the same breed. If you like one, maybe you’ll like the other. I don’t. I don’t like it.
I don’t like to hear the score by Benjamin Wallfisch echoing earlier scores from Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, to name just two. I don’t need to see camera set-ups from earlier movies replicated by admittedly talented copycats. It’s cute when PULP FICTION quotes a random through-the-windshield shot from PSYCHO, for a moment recasting Bruce Willis as Janet Leigh.
This ain’t cute. Seeing an iconic shot of a Xenomorph menacing a woman grabbed directly from ALIEN 3 only makes me think about how ALIEN 3 is underrated and how I wish I were watching that again instead of this movie for the first time. And more than anything, I hated hearing Andy mimic that famous line said by Ripley in ALIENS. In this movie, it’s meant to be a hero moment. But hearing Andy swear indicates he picked up the habit from Bjorn, a character who hated Andy and didn’t use the term affectionately. It’s hateful. And more than that, Andy the character and David Jonnson the actor both deserved better. They deserved their own memorable line. It disgusts me to see a movie borrow another movie’s creativity and deprive a wonderful actor and the character he plays of a well-deserved iconic moment, just to satisfy the worst fans’ demands and the jollies of the least-interesting people in the audience. There was too much talent here to expend on callow mimicry. They might as well have had Deadpool walk out and take a watery dump all over the scene.
My hunch is that those who hooted and hollered when Andy said that line won’t be re-watching ALIEN: ROMULUS in six months, or six years. I expect it will be something like how I came out of ATTACK OF THE CLONES deluding myself that it was awesome to see Yoda jumping around and doing backflips, and how I came to reflect on why that younger me was a little too easily impressed. But maybe this kind of karaoke cinema is where we’re headed. ALIEN: ROMULUS opened huge. People rushed to social media and to Letterboxd to rank it just under the first two ALIEN movies in their estimation. Maybe they’ll come to regret it. Maybe they won’t. For me, the joy of movies is seeing new sights I never could have imagined on my own, being encouraged to think for myself and to dream my own dreams. I want to see something different every time.
Again, it could be a matter of taste. Maybe in these terribly uncertain times, people want to retreat to the past, to revel in nostalgia for films they weren’t old enough (or even born in time) to see on initial release. For me, when a new movie works so hard to make me think of a movie I’ve already seen, it takes me right out of the illusion, out of my investment in the story that movie is telling. And then, if anything, I’d rather go home and rewatch the old one and revel in its glories than to even think about seeing that new movie ever again.
*Ridley Scott signed off on ALIEN: ROMULUS, just as Sam Raimi did with EVIL DEAD RISE, so feel absolutely free to disregard my opinions as you see fit. I’m just going to be happy as long as Walter Hill (in the case of the former) and Bruce Campbell (in the case of the latter) received their paychecks.
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Tags: 20th Century Studios, Aileen Wu, alien, Aliens, Archie Renaux, Benjamin Wallfisch, Brandywine Productions, Cailee Spaeny, Dan O'Bannon, Daniel Betts, David Giler, David Jonsson, Fede Alvarez, Galo Olivares, Harry Dean Stanton, Horror, Ian Holm, Isabela Merced, Jake Roberts, John Hurt, Ridley Scott, Rodo Sayagues, Ronald Shusett, Sci-Fi, Scott Free Productions, Sequels, sigourney weaver, Space, Spike Fearn, The Future, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, walter hill, Yaphet Kotto
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