Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez, 2024)

Alien: Romulus is the ‘aggressively fine’ new entry in the Alien franchise. The Fede Alvarez movie works hard to deliver the goods, but mimicking the first movie isn’t enough to make lightning strike twice.

That’s not to say I hated it. I actually enjoyed the first 90 minutes, but then in the last half hour it both outstays its welcome and made it pretty clear that it wasn’t going anywhere new or original.

I could be ‘signing off’ here - if you catch my drift - but that would give short shrift to the dedication that Alvarez, his crew and his talented bunch of (mostly) young actors bring to this, ultimately, three star movie.

I’m not usually Mr. Cranky but the problem with the Alien series is that the first movie, directed by Ridley Scott, was so great, that there is no real point in trying to emulate it. 

You have a space ship, a motley crew, an alien on board, and Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, and that’s it.

Having said that, James Cameron did a great job with Aliens in trying to expand its universe, but since then every filmmaker has struggled with the fact that Alien(s) basically is a near-perfect two-and-done double bill.

David Fincher’s Alien3 wasn’t nearly as bad as people said it was at the time, and it’s still actually a pretty good movie, and I’ll happily admit that I have a soft spot for Alien: Resurrection - Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s sense of style coupled with the pairing of Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder can almost make me forget the story isn’t that memorable.

But I didn’t really care for Ridley Scott’s well made but empty prequel Prometheus and I barely made it through Alien: Covenant, so I wouldn’t have mind if they had just left it at that. (I’m also just ignoring Alien vs Predator etc.)

Still, I went in with an open mind, and certainly for the first hour, I just enjoyed the ride. 

Most of the movie takes place inside a derelict space station called Romulus, where another band of misfits has come together in the hope of traveling to another planetary system. 

They include Rain Carradine, who is played by Cailee Spaeny, who was great in and as Priscilla, and who is more or less the lead here, in what by default is the Sigourney Weaver role, even though she is a very different type and fortunately doesn’t come across as a wannabe Ripley. 

She is, however, a tough cookie when she needs to be. Rain has a brother called Andy (David Jonsson), who isn’t really her brother cause he is a synthetic, but she sees him as one because he tells her the dad jokes her father programmed him with, as well as other more useful stuff. 

They are part of a friend group which also includes Kay (Isabela Merced), Tyler (Archie Renaux), Navarro (Aileen Wu) and Björn (Spike Fearn), who have escaped their jobs working for a company that doesn’t love them back. And now the only thing they want is to go to a place where they can quite literally ‘see the sun’. 

However, to get the Romulus to fly, they first have to search the deep ends of the space station to get it going. And this is, as you will have guessed yourselves, where the ‘shit’ starts to hit the ‘fan’.

A lot of scenes take place in the dark, but director Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) and his cinematographer Galo Olivares have lit the architectonic creations well, so that at all times it’s pretty clear what’s going on. (I must admit the press screening was in IMAX and for this movie that seemed to be the right choice).

It’s not just metal and steel, Alvarez also gets to show off his chops for monster horror in this science fiction space adventure, and in that regard the movie is quite good and effective, combining action and scares. I just love it when a character suddenly yells ‘run!’ and everyone simply starts running and the Alien gives chase.

Thematically, the movie covers a lot of ground, from racism and AI to the future of humanity, while I think there was a dig at people like Elon Musk who pretend to care about humanity as long as they don’t have to care about individual humans.

Still, one might ask the question how much the Alien franchise itself actually cares about individual characters, seeing how many have come and gone in the process.

On the one hand, the dear departed Ian Holm is brought back to life thanks to the wonders of modern technology, even if his name is not Ash this time but Rook.

On the other, there are no prizes for guessing who is meant to be be this episode’s Final Girl, the only relevant question remaining if and how many others there will be left to accompany her on her next adventure.

That is, of course, assuming there actually will be a direct sequel to Alien: Romulus, something I’m not quite sure the world needs.

There will be a prequel series on Disney+ in 2025, proving Alien is unkillable anyway.

Note: Alien: Romulus is released this week.