Full Review: Alien: Romulus
Xenomorphs are always cool, but Fede Alvarez puts that coolness to the test in his sloppy entry to the franchise
Much like any modern film franchise, we come to Alien movies to hang out with its lead antagonist; in this case, our good friend, the alien. It’s a great alien! It molts, has a huge head, keeps a tiny mouth within their main mouth, and appears to be sopping wet at all times. What a guy, one of my best pals. Alien is, in addition to being one of the preeminent horror franchises, a show-stopping exhibition of incredible character and production design. Unlike the Jason Voorheeses and Michael Myerses of the horror world, Alien’s Xenomorph is a creation not meant to be a perversion of the human that means to find terror through the being’s similarities to normalcy that are twisted into incarnations of evil, but is rather meant to be endemic of destruction and death itself. The xenomorph is the horror world’s angel of death, a completely (within its world) natural phenomenon with no ulterior motives nor psychology for analysis; it is a pure killing machine which will only be activated should you be unfortunate enough to cross its path.
Part of what has made the Alien franchise such an enduring property over its 45-year history—in addition to the incredible HR Giger designs—is how its anti-capitalist messaging is perfectly nested within an almost folkloric natural horror film. One of Alien’s separators from its fellow franchises is that its villain isn’t doing anything wrong. There is no wanton murder for the sake of murder or as a manifestation of religious punishment of society’s sinners—there is only a creature seeking its own continuation via completely natural means. It is humanity inserting itself where it doesn’t belong and suffering the consequences. Beyond that, it is a series of corporate proxies being fed through a meatgrinder with the vague hope that enough drones survive to fulfill their company’s R&D missions, which, insultingly, are not even aims on which the company is relying. People are dying for tertiary revenue streams, at best.
None of this is true, however, for director Fede Alvarez’s newest installation into the franchise, Alien: Romulus. To discuss this film, it necessitates it being a bit spoilery, so be warned; but also, this is an Alien movie, so its form should be pretty expected. He hits all of the beats one would feel unsatisfied without seeing in an Alien flick: facehuggers, chest-bursters, pregnancy allegories, ever-dripping acid—this movie’s got it all. But what Alvarez seems to have no feel for is what makes Alien great beyond the titular creature, and as a result, Romulus is a scattershot of ill-devised metaphor and limitingly poor choices.
I want to preface what will not be a very impressed review by saying that, if you’re like me and just want to spend a day hanging out with the alien, go see it! In my view, there are no irredeemably bad Alien movies because the power of the xenomorph’s design is so intoxicating that it manages to prevent any of these films from entering the gutter, regardless of how desperately a few of the entries have tried to worm their way in. I will say, though, Alien: Romulus is uniquely poor, in some ways that are entirely unpalatable.
On the Weyland-Yutani controlled mining planet, Jackson’s Star, the young Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her synthetic companion Andy (David Jonsson), having been denied the request to transfer away from the sunless world after completing a requisite quantity of work hours. They meet up with their roguish friend group who have devised a plan to use their ship to briefly dock onto the nearby decommissioned ship—called the Renaissance—that is floating just above them in order to steal the cryosleep chambers on board so that the whole group can escape the brackish puddle of their existence. What might be lurking aboard the adrift spacecraft? Well, who’s to say.
After successfully docking on the Renaissance, the rag-tag crew are met with another challenge: the cryostasis pods don’t have enough fuel to last the entirety of their trip. Fortunately, thanks to a handy device showing how hot or cold certain areas are (a device which exists only for this purpose, never to be seen again), they assume that there is more fuel further into the ship. While searching, they find the science lab, which has an annex containing their needed fuel—and scores of frozen facehuggers dutifully displayed on the wall. Also in the lab is the shredded remains of the crew’s science officer, another synthetic missing his lower half. This science officer is brought back to life by the group so that he can explain what happened to the ship and what the parasitic facehuggers are. When he’s powered on, it is shown that he is the same model as Ash from the first Alien movie, being played by an AI recreation of the actor Ian Holm, who passed away in 2020.
To say that this choice is distasteful would be, I think, an understatement. Now, I’m sure that Alvarez would excuse this resurrection by saying that he got the family’s approval, as though that’s worth a damn. Have we not seen so many family estates of passed celebrities grave rob their only meal ticket into oblivion? Familial approval be damned, it was a pointless insertion of a memorable character for no reason other than fan recognition and borrowed significance. The inclusion of Holm, playing a character that was not in Alien and bears no significance to this film, speaks to how horribly little Alvarez seems to have considered any subtextual read of this film, and displays it with this choice in perhaps the most insulting way I’ve seen put to screen. Holm’s character Rook is not Ash, not damaged in the same way, does not need to be the exact same make as Ash, has none of Ash’s knowledge, nor any relation that would suggest that his presence makes the events of Romulus more closely tied to the franchise at large (which is disparate enough in nature that this would be a pointless effort regardless) nor is it meaningful in heightening the tension or substance of the film. It is a rebuke of nature, a complete defiance of the human experience as it is encapsulated within its finality ending in death. Ellen Ripley is a woman out of time, removing her from her natural time and transforming her into an appliance to be utilized for corporate interest, robbing her of her own personhood. To exhume Holm is pathetic, cruel, and an illiterate understanding of the text of this film.
Rook tells of how the original xenomorph which was excised from Ripley’s escape pod in the first film became an object that was highly searched for by Weyland-Yutani in their quest to utilize its biological advantages for better weapons and genetic capabilities. Its genomic essence has been distilled into a very promising black goo that needed to be transported to the nearest colony to complete their mission, however the original xenomorph was not as dead as they thought (explained only through a lacking need for food, but what about the extreme cold of space? OR THE LACK OF OXYGEN, THESE CREATURES CLEARLY BREATH) and it proceeded to tear through the crew, leaving it in the abandoned, drifting state in which our team finds it. Needing Rook’s chip installed in order to bypass the security system, Andy now adopts Rook’s cold, British persona; including the change of his prime directive towards that which most greatly benefits the company.
The anti-corporate sentiment in this film is very in-line with the rest of the franchise, but whereas it arises as more of an abstraction in the first installment until a late-film explanation, this film frontloads the exposition for each character’s unique backstory for why they hate Weyland-Yutani and the reasons the company betrays their better interests in favor of their own. It’s a very clumsy way of handling something so self-evident, to even bother stating it is reductive. It’s one aspect of this film that I thought was a very poor change, as this may be the first film in which the core non-corporate stooge crew puts themselves into the alien’s way and wreak their own havoc. In previous iterations, the group being ripped to shreds was put in harm’s way by the carelessness of corporate indifference; all unwitting victims of some profit-mongering machinery that they can never see, but hurts them nonetheless. Romulus, oddly, punishes its characters for taking their destiny in their own hands and showing the ambition to not be slaves to the company.
The group itself is not exactly an endearing bunch beyond Rain and Andy. The rest are xenomorph fodder, and scarcely much beyond that. Nowhere to be found is the pleasant blue-collar idiosyncrasies of Harry Dean Stanton or Yaphet Kotto, which is a hallmark of the other slasher franchises which are Alien’s contemporaries, but generally speaking, this franchise has done a pretty solid job at amassing a roster of our great character actors. Pete Postlethwaite was in Alien3! Additionally, this would seem to be the first film to use younger people as the main cast, a far cry from the grizzled old hands found in earlier installments or the foolhardy careerists of the later entries. It again serves to the idea of these people’s involvement (active or passive) in the affairs of an evil company. They are both the human cost and the proxy for corporate interest, but these kids exist outside of all of that in a far worse way, because they’re innocents.
As for the action itself, Alvarez’s set pieces are a sight to behold and by far the strongest part of the film. Gorgeously shot withered future-tech is always a winner and Romulus knows it, leaning heavily into the battered and aged look of technology that hasn’t been updated nor well-kept as this ship tumbles its way through the cosmos. Alvarez also concocts some delightfully yucky biological constructs, which add some sorely needed visual flare into what is an otherwise lifeless feature. One of the oddities of the film’s production design, however, lies within its very name. Throughout the Renaissance, there are references and plaques dedicated to the founder of Rome, Romulus, and his brother Remus, a victim of patricide in the old story. To make a long story short, the fable goes that Romulus and Remus were abandoned for dead as infants, being saved by some Roman gods via the graciousness of the wilderness, most famously seen through the boys’ suckling at the teat of a wolf. The remainder of the story seems hardly applicable here, but then again, none of this is particularly meaningful to this film. Much like the Ian Holm inclusion, it would appear that Alvarez is simply borrowing some importance from elsewhere, unable to drum up his own significance to his story. What does the story of Romulus and Remus have to do with this film? Nothing, truly. The ship is bifurcated into two halves, named Romulus and Remus, but the split seems to only connect in that there are two sides and in the story there are two brothers. Beyond the number two, there isn’t much connective tissue between the two.
I know I’m harping on many small details, but the minor details or unexplained phenomena within the Alien franchise is what makes it great. Its lore building is often suggestive rather than expository, constructing itself on its own terms (or Ridley Scotts’ more typically), and the imagery which it uses—such as the Promethean myth—cleanly ties into the film’s messaging via shared themes, notably the idea that god is involved in the business and growth of man. Romulus killed his brother because Romulus wanted to build Rome on one hill and Remus waned to build it on another. They argued over a sign from the gods and settled their argument with violence. The gods saved them both, only to then condemn one of them when they were on the cusp of greatness. Hardly much to bind the rhythms of the myth to Alvarez’s poorly considered horror-romp.
As for the action of the film, it’s perfectly fine I suppose. It does not reinvent the wheel, but that was clearly not amongst Alvarez’s ambitions. Alien: Romulus is structured as a series of vignettes, much like the way in which one might navigate the areas of a videogame. There are some books whose existence serves the sole purpose of adaptation into film (Ben Mezrich’s entire career is this notion, nowadays); Alien: Romulus feels like a movie that was made solely as a source-material for adaptation into a videogame. It’s the type of vertical integration that would make the Weyland-Yutani higher-ups gurgle grunts of approval.
The videogame as a format for filmmaking isn’t one that I find compelling due to its inherent siloing of storylines. Videogames—unlike, ya know, life—is incapable of operating at staggered paces. Progress involving multiple characters must be linear, because that is how videogames progress. Each challenge, then, is sequential by nature so that they can be confronted in order. There are scores of facehuggers swarming the hallways that disappear once their area is locked off, the way that areas on a map are largely irrelevant once you’ve navigated your character beyond them. However, it’s a spaceship…so there are vents in every room and hallway in order to provide oxygen to the ship. So really, the threat of the facehugger swarm should be omnipresent as they work their way through the ship, which wouldn’t be too much of a stretch seeing as we saw them shatter a door early in the film. Likewise, while we might think that there are no xenomorphs on board (as Rook said they had killed the one terrorizing them and there were no signs of their presence), we later find out that there are scores of them which only appear about halfway through. Almost as though our characters had unlocked a new level which required the difficulty to scale with their character’s improvements. This difficulty-level idea also shows itself in the multiple ticking clocks which the film uses, a common device in videogames which want you to complete an objective with the additional tension of a doom beyond the immediate threat at hand. At one point, there are as many as three separate ticking clocks which must be accounted for by the surviving team members. It’s uninspired and threadbare as an idea, but that seems to be the leading motif of the film. There is a moment in zero-gravity in which Rain must float her way through a series of obstacles, aided by her firearm that was so preposterous, I was stunned that it was used cinematically rather than in some derivative Alien videogame knockoff.
Spaeny has been incredibly front-and-center this year, following up her lead as Priscilla in Sophia Coppola’s film Priscilla with a role in Alex Garland’s Civil War and a lead performance here. So far, the early showings from Spaeny have been very promising, showing her very capable as an actress of subtle emotions and great physicality, leading this film more than capably. The same can be said for her co-star, Jonsson, who likewise navigates the kindly, but still robotic movements of his synthetic character with just the right balance of sentimentality and stiffness. Spaeny is no Ripley, which is an excellent choice on her part, and Jonsson has found a new take on the typically ruthless being beholden to Weyland-Yutani’s goals.
The general pacing of an Alien movie is fairly traditional, with the main cast being picked off one-by-one until there’s only one or two remaining to brave a last stand. Alien, however, loves a kooky ending; some sensational bit of late-movie extremity that ratchets up whatever originating driver of tension had been previously. This end bit in Romulus may be one of the more audacious swings in the franchise’s canon, but I also think it may be the best portion of the film. Finally, in the waning minutes of the film, it seems as though Alvarez has his own idea that he’s willing to go all-out on without compromise.
It’s a shame to have another Alien movie that just feels like a company treading water, trying to keep one of their most profitable IPs in the public consciousness while they work to figure out how to make the next one better than the one they’re about to put out. Romulus can be fun at times, but I honestly wish it had less to it. The core ideas of the franchise are embedded well enough into the general construction of the film that you really don’t need to emphasize the deeper meanings for them to cut through. For example, there’s no way to make an Alien film that does not have some degree of commentary on the nature of pregnancy already, so maybe incorporating a literal pregnancy into the film is just a touch on-the-nose. Also, because the crews being disposed of by the Lovecraftian horrors in the cosmos are already there by the negligence and malice of a company, giving each character a backstory that’s just about as strong as saying ‘Weyland-Yutani ate my dad’ is a bit unnecessary. I don’t need a horror movie to have a strong thematic point to be enjoyable and it only becomes frustrating when they try to make one only to half-ass it and make the final product worse. Alien is already transgressive in its own way and doesn’t really need to be gussied up with popular political positions presented at an intro level. It can just be ‘oops, an alien’ for 100 minutes and be perfectly enjoyable on its own. I was expecting more out of Alvarez, and I’m decently disappointed in his version of this universe, but nothing can fully temper my love for my good friend, the alien. If you’re looking to hang out with a team of xenomorphs, then Romulus will deliver. But if you scratch at the surface, you may not like what you find underneath.
'What a guy,'
Actually, it's a she, as per Aliens.