Anyone who knows me personally knows that I am a massive, MASSIVE Alien fan. I've seen all the films countless times, own loads of memorabilia, video games, comics, books and art collections. I even have a tattoo of big chap on my arm! So suffice to say I was really, REALLY looking forward to Alien: Romulus. I even had a countdown on my notice board to release date, and that wait was AGONISING! It's been over a decade since I last looked forward to a film this much, and today - I finally saw it. So, what did I think?
Usually I like to keep my reviews as spoiler free as possible, but it's hard to critically assess this film without talking about it in detail, so I have decided I will do a quick spoiler free summary... before going into a spoiler filled breakdown. You have been warned...
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Alien Romulus follows a group of young adults who live a pretty rough life on a mining colony called Jackson Star. They long to escape the dark and depressing colony and search for a better life, but the Wayland-Yutani corp keep extending their work contracts, making it impossible to leave. Rain and her synthetic brother Andy are the latest duo to be refused permission to leave, so join up with their friends to explore a space station that has recently entered the planet's orbit. Hoping that the station houses some cryo sleep pods that will allow them to travel to the next star system, the station proves to be full of dark secrets and deadly abominations. They quickly find themselves fighting for not only their freedom, but also their lives...
Where to even start with this. The first thing I want to say is how great everything looks. They built real sets, used miniatures for the ships and a lot of the creature work was done practically... and that makes a world of difference. Everything looks tangible, which goes a long way for a film like this (save for a few wonky bits of cgi) because the actors are reacting to things that are actually there. The performances were also pretty good by everyone involved, especially David Johnson - who played the android Andy to absolute perfection. The androids are an aspect that the Alien films always seem to get right, and this is no different.
The story is... ok. It makes sense and doesn't have any noticable issues or plot holes... despite being somewhat derivative. There are also a few cool scenes involving facehuggers (the facehuggers are an aspect that I feel are woefully underused in this IP, and it was nice to see them get a bit of lime light), and a zero gravity section near the end that was also pretty awesome.
Any negatives? The film does lean pretty heavily into paying homage to past films and ideas, which is fine... but when it starts directly using quotes from other films I personally find this a bit off putting. Its like the film is a 'greatest hits', without it's own identity. Ghostbusters Afterlife had the exact same problem, in its quest to appease long time fans it was filled with so many call backs and 'member berries' that it becomes distracting. I also absolutely DESPISED the final 15 minutes, for reasons I'll go into below...
Overall its a decent film which just about scratches that Alien itch us fans have had for a long time. It has some flaws, but makes up for it with some awesome set pieces and great performances. It's better than I feared it might be... but worse than I hoped it would be...
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. .
WARNING: SPOILERS!!!!
. .
.
Ok, so the film opens up with Weyland-Yutani recovering Big Chap from the wreckage of the Nostromo. This has divided opinions among fans, but personally I think this is pretty cool, and I wish we got to see more of this aspect. Alas, it is confined to a pre-title sequence before shifting to the colony. Oh well...
The colony itself looks great, I have to say. It look grimy, gritty and full of people who are basically slaves to Weyland-Yutani. Hearing about the terrible working conditions makes you feel sorry for Rain and Andy, and gives a good reason for them to want to get off world. At this point of the film, Andy's behaviour is almost child-like, and seeing him get bullied and pushed around by other colonists succeeds in getting under the audience's skin. We are then introduced to the rest of our crew - Tyler, Kay, Bjorn and Navarro. The thing is, throughout the film these guys are not developed anywhere near as much as Rain and Andy are... which told me they were all going to die. I was right....
So, we fly off to this space station that has suddenly appeared in orbit to steal some cryo sleep pods. Ok, fine. Weird how there are no warnings about what went down on the station, or the fact nobody else seems bothered about it. You'd think W-Y would be there like a shot to recover their precious bio-weapons - their bus must have broke down or something. While searching for fuel for the cryo pods, half the group get locked in this lab with frozen facehuggers, while the other half find a damaged synthetic.... and this is where the film has it's first slip-up. This synthetic is the same model as Ash, complete with a digital recreation of the late great Ian Holm. The thing is... it doesn't look right. Humans are pretty good at reading body language and stuff, so a fake human needs to have some pretty spectacular CGI to fool the human brain into believing it. But this looks like a poor internet deep fake, and it's REALLY JARRING, especially against the awesome practical effects of the rest of the film. I get why they did it (instant audience suspicion), and you do get used to it... but... eesh...
Ash... sorry, I mean Rook tells the group about what happened at the station - namely they recovered Big Chap and reverse engineered him, allowing them to create facehuggers at will. However, Big Chap broke free and killed everyone. I'm sat there thinking tbh I'd rather see that than the rest of this film, but whatever. Navarro gets facehugged, Andy gets an upgrade and the group gets seperated again. I have to say that Andy's upgrade that transforms him into a W-Y droid is a brilliant bit of acting - now he's cold, calculated and efficient. There is also this really awesome scene where Rain, Tyler and Andy are creeping through a corridor infested with facehuggers... but they don't attack as the room is at body temp, meaning they are masked by the heat. This is when Alien Romulus is at its best - when it does something new and interesting.
Navarro gives birth to a Xeno, that kills Bjorn (by spitting acid all over him - nice!) and then hunts Kay. We then get a bit more back story about what they engineered here (namely the black goo from Prometheus), that they were trying to use as a super serum to improve humanity. There's some action scenes in a hive, where they rescue a captured Kay, but can't shoot the aliens as the acid blood will melt through the hull and decompress the ship. Solution? Turn the gravity off! Cue Rain shredding through tons of aliens in zero-g, their blood spraying everywhere... and her using the kick from her gun firing to avoid it. That is awesome! What's not awesome is Andy saying "get away from her you b@#$". No no no no... whhhyyyy?????
The film ends with them escaping with an injured Kay, but unbeknown to them she has injected herself with the black goo and is now heavily pregnant with our final monster. Urgh. I was not a fan of this at all. The newborn completely killed Alien Resurrection for me, and this 'newborn 2.0' doesn't fare much better. Looking like a cross between the newborn and an engineer from Prometheus, it looks terrible. I really don't like the whole human/xeno crossover angle that the lore goes into sometimes, and not only does this final act hurt the film, but Rain beats it in the exact same way as 4 OTHER FILMS - by blowing it out into space!!! Can they not come up with ANY new way to kill these things?
I left the cinema feeling a bit underwhelmed. It has some good moments for sure, but it concernes itself far too much with borrowing from previous films, instead of focusing on what it did best - new stuff. Oh, and for an Alien film the adult aliens got barely any screen time. The wait for an Alien film that can stand up to the first two continues...
Usually I like to keep my reviews as spoiler free as possible, but it's hard to critically assess this film without talking about it in detail, so I have decided I will do a quick spoiler free summary... before going into a spoiler filled breakdown. You have been warned...
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Alien Romulus follows a group of young adults who live a pretty rough life on a mining colony called Jackson Star. They long to escape the dark and depressing colony and search for a better life, but the Wayland-Yutani corp keep extending their work contracts, making it impossible to leave. Rain and her synthetic brother Andy are the latest duo to be refused permission to leave, so join up with their friends to explore a space station that has recently entered the planet's orbit. Hoping that the station houses some cryo sleep pods that will allow them to travel to the next star system, the station proves to be full of dark secrets and deadly abominations. They quickly find themselves fighting for not only their freedom, but also their lives...
Where to even start with this. The first thing I want to say is how great everything looks. They built real sets, used miniatures for the ships and a lot of the creature work was done practically... and that makes a world of difference. Everything looks tangible, which goes a long way for a film like this (save for a few wonky bits of cgi) because the actors are reacting to things that are actually there. The performances were also pretty good by everyone involved, especially David Johnson - who played the android Andy to absolute perfection. The androids are an aspect that the Alien films always seem to get right, and this is no different.
The story is... ok. It makes sense and doesn't have any noticable issues or plot holes... despite being somewhat derivative. There are also a few cool scenes involving facehuggers (the facehuggers are an aspect that I feel are woefully underused in this IP, and it was nice to see them get a bit of lime light), and a zero gravity section near the end that was also pretty awesome.
Any negatives? The film does lean pretty heavily into paying homage to past films and ideas, which is fine... but when it starts directly using quotes from other films I personally find this a bit off putting. Its like the film is a 'greatest hits', without it's own identity. Ghostbusters Afterlife had the exact same problem, in its quest to appease long time fans it was filled with so many call backs and 'member berries' that it becomes distracting. I also absolutely DESPISED the final 15 minutes, for reasons I'll go into below...
Overall its a decent film which just about scratches that Alien itch us fans have had for a long time. It has some flaws, but makes up for it with some awesome set pieces and great performances. It's better than I feared it might be... but worse than I hoped it would be...
.
. .
WARNING: SPOILERS!!!!
. .
.
Ok, so the film opens up with Weyland-Yutani recovering Big Chap from the wreckage of the Nostromo. This has divided opinions among fans, but personally I think this is pretty cool, and I wish we got to see more of this aspect. Alas, it is confined to a pre-title sequence before shifting to the colony. Oh well...
The colony itself looks great, I have to say. It look grimy, gritty and full of people who are basically slaves to Weyland-Yutani. Hearing about the terrible working conditions makes you feel sorry for Rain and Andy, and gives a good reason for them to want to get off world. At this point of the film, Andy's behaviour is almost child-like, and seeing him get bullied and pushed around by other colonists succeeds in getting under the audience's skin. We are then introduced to the rest of our crew - Tyler, Kay, Bjorn and Navarro. The thing is, throughout the film these guys are not developed anywhere near as much as Rain and Andy are... which told me they were all going to die. I was right....
So, we fly off to this space station that has suddenly appeared in orbit to steal some cryo sleep pods. Ok, fine. Weird how there are no warnings about what went down on the station, or the fact nobody else seems bothered about it. You'd think W-Y would be there like a shot to recover their precious bio-weapons - their bus must have broke down or something. While searching for fuel for the cryo pods, half the group get locked in this lab with frozen facehuggers, while the other half find a damaged synthetic.... and this is where the film has it's first slip-up. This synthetic is the same model as Ash, complete with a digital recreation of the late great Ian Holm. The thing is... it doesn't look right. Humans are pretty good at reading body language and stuff, so a fake human needs to have some pretty spectacular CGI to fool the human brain into believing it. But this looks like a poor internet deep fake, and it's REALLY JARRING, especially against the awesome practical effects of the rest of the film. I get why they did it (instant audience suspicion), and you do get used to it... but... eesh...
Ash... sorry, I mean Rook tells the group about what happened at the station - namely they recovered Big Chap and reverse engineered him, allowing them to create facehuggers at will. However, Big Chap broke free and killed everyone. I'm sat there thinking tbh I'd rather see that than the rest of this film, but whatever. Navarro gets facehugged, Andy gets an upgrade and the group gets seperated again. I have to say that Andy's upgrade that transforms him into a W-Y droid is a brilliant bit of acting - now he's cold, calculated and efficient. There is also this really awesome scene where Rain, Tyler and Andy are creeping through a corridor infested with facehuggers... but they don't attack as the room is at body temp, meaning they are masked by the heat. This is when Alien Romulus is at its best - when it does something new and interesting.
Navarro gives birth to a Xeno, that kills Bjorn (by spitting acid all over him - nice!) and then hunts Kay. We then get a bit more back story about what they engineered here (namely the black goo from Prometheus), that they were trying to use as a super serum to improve humanity. There's some action scenes in a hive, where they rescue a captured Kay, but can't shoot the aliens as the acid blood will melt through the hull and decompress the ship. Solution? Turn the gravity off! Cue Rain shredding through tons of aliens in zero-g, their blood spraying everywhere... and her using the kick from her gun firing to avoid it. That is awesome! What's not awesome is Andy saying "get away from her you b@#$". No no no no... whhhyyyy?????
The film ends with them escaping with an injured Kay, but unbeknown to them she has injected herself with the black goo and is now heavily pregnant with our final monster. Urgh. I was not a fan of this at all. The newborn completely killed Alien Resurrection for me, and this 'newborn 2.0' doesn't fare much better. Looking like a cross between the newborn and an engineer from Prometheus, it looks terrible. I really don't like the whole human/xeno crossover angle that the lore goes into sometimes, and not only does this final act hurt the film, but Rain beats it in the exact same way as 4 OTHER FILMS - by blowing it out into space!!! Can they not come up with ANY new way to kill these things?
I left the cinema feeling a bit underwhelmed. It has some good moments for sure, but it concernes itself far too much with borrowing from previous films, instead of focusing on what it did best - new stuff. Oh, and for an Alien film the adult aliens got barely any screen time. The wait for an Alien film that can stand up to the first two continues...
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