Alien Romulus is rated at 81%, which means it is the third-highest-scored Alien movie ever. Viewers argue if it is better than this or Prometheus but I am leaning on Romulus since Fede Álvarez can’t be Ridley Scott for that film at least.
The film Alien: Romulus ditched its fancy over-the-top effects and goes back to its roots, where Aliens were locating people in a space station and killing them one by one. The difference this time, however, is that the group of teens is out there running away from a bad life on a mining planet. They plan to escape from the space station using cryo pods and make a nine-year journey to a better planet, however run into some “trouble” as expected through what is being serviced there.
The actresses took on such roles stunningly, the Rain’s Cailee Spaeny and the Andy’s David Jonsson’s performance in the lead roles were absolutely great. It is easy to feel how Spaeny’s career is on the rise in Hollywood after the Civil War only to head into the Emmy winning series Beef next season. By the end, she is a determined survivor rather than a reluctant escapee, which is a fascinating arc.
Returning to David Jonsson, who is unquestionably the highlight of Romulus, he plays a Synthetic whom Rain considers to be a sibling. He is traumatized and requires guidance from Rain, but he is also in a position to assist in anything that serves her purpose as it is his core objective. Nonetheless, Jonsson does have to transform his portrayal completely, one that I won’t reveal here, but that’s when you go, “oh, this guy is good.”
The film does take a while to wind up, but the ‘stalking’ part is quite good, as is the revealing of some things which are connected with the other films subsequently. And the end of this film, a lot of people who watched it have been talking about it, including Isabela Merced saying there’s this sequence that’s so nasty that people on set had to look the other way while shooting it. That is… quite reasonable and is not an exaggeration. You will know precisely which scene that is and it starts off a more or less straight jacket finale to the film which is one of the finest in the franchise.
One of the weaknesses of Alien: Romulus is that, sometimes, it tried to copy the first parts too much, with the lines and partly the dialogue. Even the plot is very reminiscent of the first movie which, okay, it is okay to go back to the beginning like it’s your first movie. There are some parts that feel very identical, especially Rain’s character transition into Ripley towards the end of the film. Yeah, fine.
But when the film begins to have characters repeating quotes from Alien and Aliens, that’s when it all goes over the top. It…doesn’t make sense in the context of the film, because such points are clearly meant to be known by the audience. Not so much winks as two hands raised in the air, going ‘look at what we are looking at, e.g. do you remember this?’ It’s like how if in Gladiator 2, Maximus’ son, after finishing the fight, began to shout ‘Do you not enjoy yourself??’ What a ridiculous premise, and it shifts the relationship to the other movies into an inappropriate meta meter.
It’s an excellent film, otherwise. You can argue as much as you want about it in the great order of all Alien movies, yet it is surely somewhere on a very high position, thanks to fantastic acting and great practical effects combined with cg done by Alvarez. Even though I haven’t given a single hoot about an Alien movie for the last ten years, this was definitely worth going to the theaters for.
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