Alien: Romulus (2024)
a review by Evan Landon
Upon starting the Villainous Cinema movie hour and podcast when 100.1 fm WERK was on 94.7 Gainesville a decade ago, I had essentially given up my life as a musician and resign to begin the next part of my life, mainly writing and discussing films. It is a little sad, somewhat disappointing for some, but I have accepted that those days are over and I have accomplished what I needed to do as a musician years before.
I only bring that up because one of the first movies covered was Don't Breathe which was Fede Álvarez second outting as a fimmaker after 2013's Evil Dead reboot. Was it a reboot or a remake? I don't think that matters. Either way, Don't Breathe & Don't Breathe 2 truly are his only two completely original films and I did not care for them. His Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 2022 left a lot to be desired, as he only wrote the story, but produced that one too. However, he appears to be a very competent and passionate director that you can sense in almost every single scene he shoots when he wants to be.
What is a pleasntly welcome change in course direction for the franchise is how this movie has been hailed as a ressurgence of the series. Of course, the film almost entirely stars Gen Z actors which gives it a whole new audience that can make up for the ones who saw the original 1979 Alien film and have either passed away or passed on the entire series after a few lackluster entries. Sure, there are always going to be detractors for anything, but the reception for Alien: Romulus has been mostly positive.
In this installment, we open with the Weyland-Yutani corporation cleaning up the remnants of USCSS Nostromo in search of the xenomorph that they had been unknowingly sent there to bring back in the first film, as the setting in this one is between the Alien and Aliens films. Well, a group of twenty-somethings, including an orphan named “Rain” and her slow-witted android, “Andy”, decide to grab some cryo-pods from a corporate space station in orbit to escape the industrial hellhole planet they inhabit before the sation crashes into the rings surrounding the planet (which looks cool as fuck btw). As you would expect, a whole catalog of horrifically stupid decisions are made and chaos ensues with plenty of plot devices and call backs to pacify even the most opinionated of fans. Most of them, anyway.
For myself, it has been a long time since 2012's Prometheus that I did enjoy, even though it is not looked on as so much apart of the Alien franchise and more of a Ridley Scott wankfest. Some people actually consider it more favorably when it is imagined as it's own stand-alone picture and that is alright too, I suppose. Álvarez wrote and directed Alien: Romulus, so his devotion to the other films is on full display here, as Easter eggs for each one can be found throughout it's run time that serves as both fan service and padding. That is where I think it kind of falls apart for me storywise towards the third act, but I won't spoil what happens here because it is so new. The third act just seemed excessive and superfluous to the entire story leading up to that point.
Some of the glaring plotholes are forgivable for me, pesronally, as I have gone on record saying I do not mind batshit insane story points because those are the kind of movies I watch on the regular. This one seemed like Álvarez was trying to do a little too much fan service for my taste. It is still one of the bestest entries in a somewhat dying franchise because producers Ridley Scott and Walter Hill decided there needed to be another to keep this thing on life support, so this is the product of such an endeavor by talented, yet misguided moviemakers.
Needless to say, Alien: Romulus has yet to be finished at the box office, but as of today it sits at $118.7 million against a modest budget for a film like this of $80 million, so it is already a moderate success and should pull in another $50-80 million worldwide before it is all said and done, but those are merely projections, so we will have to wait and see if that is the case.
Despite all of those shortcomings, the first two acts are pretty bad ass, even if it has astonishingly extrenuous use of a super-imposed Ian Holm on an Ash look-alike for some reason that I am still struggling to understand. Just make a new android and give another actor a chance to shine like they did with Andy. I don't know. That would have made a lot more sense to me.
3.5 Out Of 5