Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Alien: Romulus (2024).
It’s been a long time since an Alien movie was received with open arms and rapturous applause by audiences — 38 years, to be exact. Since James Cameron’s Aliens, which reimagined Ridley Scott’s original, immaculately directed creature feature as a shoot-’em-up action blockbuster, the franchise has released a number of divisive, uneven follow-up installments. While defenders of David Fincher’s Alien 3 and Scott’s Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, have emerged over the years, there seemed to be an agreement heading into this summer’s Alien: Romulus that the franchise was in need of a rejuvenation of some kind.
On paper, Alien: Romulus seemed like it had the potential to be exactly that. Not only is it a back-to-basics thriller that returns the franchise to its single-setting, body horror origins, but it’s also co-written and directed by a filmmaker who had previously never worked in the franchise before in Don’t Breathe director Fede Álvarez. But is Alien: Romulus really the return to form that its series has long needed? The answer, it turns out, is more complicated than anyone may have thought.
Romulus gives fans of the franchise what they want
In some ways, Alien: Romulus is exactly the film that the Alien franchise has been in need of in recent years. It’s a bare-bones thriller that doesn’t try to overcomplicate its series’ mythology in the same manner as Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and it also isn’t nearly as dependent on digital effects as those movies. Several of Alien: Covenant‘s CGI moments, in particular, haven’t aged particularly well over the past seven years, but it’s hard to imagine the same being said about any of Alien: Romulus‘ biggest moments. Álvarez has been outspoken about how many of the film’s sets and creatures — whether it be its opening mining colony, hungry facehuggers, or full-grown Xenomorphs — he and his team went out of their way to create practically, and their efforts to do so have paid off. All of Alien: Romulus‘ set pieces and body horror sequences are genuinely terrifying, and that’s in no small part due to how real and tangible the characters and locations depicted throughout the film feel.
There is a beauty to the simplicity of Alien: Romulus‘ story, which is set between the events of 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens, that allows both the technical artistry on display throughout it and its two stars to truly shine. Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson give two of the best performances in the Alien franchise’s history as Rain, a young woman desperate to get out of the inescapable work contract that is destined to kill her, and Andy, the android who has emerged as Rain’s surrogate brother and — in certain instances — protector. At times, Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues weaken Romulus‘ simple framework by inserting clunky exposition dumps in order to unsuccessfully add more nuance to its characters — see the backstory about Bjorn’s (Spike Fearn) mother. For the most part, though, Alien: Romulus moves at a simple, steady pace that allows for its tension to gradually ramp up until it reaches edge-of-your-seat levels in its fourth act.
Too much fan service can be a bad thing
Alien: Romulus, in other words, does almost everything right, but the key word there is “almost.” Rather than having complete faith in the strength of its standalone story, the film feels the need to pack in references to other Alien movies that greatly lessen its individual power. Andy’s clunky reuse of Sigourney Weaver’s most iconic line from Aliens is bad enough, but nothing Romulus does is worse than bringing Alien actor Ian Holm “back to life” using digital effects — and not even so that he can play the villainous Ash again, but another sinister android named Rook. Romulus, notably, isn’t the first franchise film to do something like this: 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story also did it with the late Peter Cushing, and 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife egregiously did it with Harold Ramis.
The morality of this growing Hollywood trend remains in constant debate. Aside from how ethically questionable of a creative decision it is, though, the film’s CGI recreation of Holm is uncanny and unconvincing. It stands out from everything else in Romulus because it immediately looks bad and fake in a film that otherwise looks incredibly real. Rook’s inclusion mars the movie’s visual palette and — even more bafflingly — seems to stand in such direct opposition to Romulus‘ practical effects-driven approach that his appearances are disorienting and distracting. For the film’s defenders, its digital recreation of Holm is an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise effective, entertaining thriller. For its biggest critics, however, it just serves as more evidence of the shallow soullessness lurking beneath Romulus‘ surface.
A flawed, but still worthy sequel
Alien: Romulus‘ best homages to its franchise predecessors are the ones that aren’t remarked upon or relentlessly put in the spotlight by the film itself. Its queasy, operatic remix of Alien Resurrection‘s infamous climax works, in particular, like gangbusters, and it pushes Romulus to such a suffocatingly scary, demented pitch that it makes everything that’s preceded it look like child’s play in comparison. The film also creates a bridge between it, Resurrection, and 2012’s Prometheus in its climactic sequence that is as surprising as it is satisfying. Unfortunately, Alien: Romulus doesn’t manage to pull off this kind of franchise unification nearly as well throughout its first 90 minutes as it does its final 20.
What does that make Alien: Romulus? Neither a complete failure, nor a rousing, franchise-reaffirming success. It’s an entertaining, impeccably well-directed legacy sequel that — like so many other modern franchise blockbusters — just can’t help shooting itself in the foot from time to time. Its flaws are all totally avoidable, which only makes them all the more frustrating and also speaks to just how misguided so many of the trends are that currently plague contemporary franchise filmmaking. Romulus, consequently, seems destined to experience the same cycle of divisive initial release and later reclamation that has happened to Alien 3, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant — even if it is more straightforwardly entertaining than all of those films.
Alien: Romulus is now playing in theaters.
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