Alien: Romulus is the closest the 45 year old franchise has come to the greatness of the original two films.
Helmed by modern horror legend Fede Álvarez, known for his prior films Don’t Breathe and the Evil Dead remake. Fede brings his splattered filled style to the Alien franchise which leads to a thrilling, if sickening, watch.
Romulus follows a rag-tag group of adults that break into a space station, looking for a way to escape the lives they currently live. However, the group soon realise that there’s something else on board and all hell breaks loose.
It’s a very familiar film for fans of the Alien franchise. You’ve got your unlikely protaganist and scheming synethic human companion. What makes Romulus stand out is Fede’s reinvention of old ideas, and ability to bring back what makes the Xenomorph scary.
“I can’t lie to you about your chances”
Image credit: 20th Century Studios
Romulus takes place within the expansive continuity of the Alien franchise, tucking itself neatly between the original Alien and its action packed sequel, Aliens. The films placement between the first two films is very important to the story, which makes for some fun callbacks and hints to what comes in Aliens. However, the film does lean on the early film too much in some areas.
From the opening scene of the film, Fede tells the audience that Romulus is going to feel familiar. The camera remains still as a large ship floats forward. We see the inside of the ship, activated by the MOTHER AI programme. It’s almost one-to-one to the opening of Alien, but the scene keeps going, ending in an exciting surprise for fans and a title card. Getting right into the horror is Romulus‘ plan but there’s still twenty minutes until the alien rears its ugly head.
As much as Romulus focuses primarily on entertaining the audience, it also expands on the world building of the evil Weyland Yutani corporation. The short time spent exploring life under Weyland Yutani are some of the films most interesting moments, as it’s something new and never seen before.
Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson steal every scene they are in as Rain and Andy respectively. Spaeny especially is able to make Rain her own character and not another copy paste of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley. Jonsson’s performance as nervous synthetic humanoid Andy is great, especially seeing how his performance evolves as the events of Romulus worsen.
Sadly, the rest of the cast aren’t as memorable. Most of them have one or two character traits and are just there to bulk out how many people die. It’s not a performance as there’s some real talent with Aileen Wu(The Last of Us Part 2) as Navarro, and Spike Fearn(After Sun) as Bjorn.
As previously mentioned, a majority of the small cast are there to die, and die they do, in the goriest and grossest ways the franchise has ever seen. The gore and shock are all Fede’s influence, these moments are disturbing but highly entertaining, as he has found ways to subvert the ways the Xenomoprh kills its victims.
“This place gives me the creeps”
Featured image credit: 20th Century Studios
Romulus is built off of the foundations of the previous films, including Ridley Scott’s prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. But, a majority of its DNA comes from the first two films. Romulus is practically split into two halves, the first is a call back to the first two films, and the back half of the film is focused more on Fede’s vision of Alien.
The film also combines the horror of Alien, and the action set piece of Aliens to great effect. The slow moments of horror are incredibly tense and often end in brutal ways, and the moments of action are some of the most exciting parts of Romulus.
Fede’s vision of Alien extends to Romulus’ effects, a majority of which are practical, just like the original film. The Facehuggers used in the film are practical, shown in a behind-the-scenes video on Fede’s Instagram, they are remote control operated.
Not every effect is practical, but the use of CGI is largely jaw dropping to look at. There’s only one instance of CGI that looks uncanny and it has unfortunately caused a lot of controversy around Romulus. Without going into detail on where the CGI is used, Fede has spoken to The Hollywood Reporter about it, stating that “We did it all with a lot of respect and always with the authorization of his family.” He also spoke about the idea coming from Ridley Scott himself.
Romulus’ ending has also caused some controversy, as it is very dark and goes in a direction many fans were not expecting. However, how it ties into the wider story of Alien is very interesting and begs the audience to ask questions. The dark nature of the ending isn’t new to the Alien franchise, but how gross it is has put many off of enjoying what it sets up for future films.
The score for Romulus is another highlight, drawing musical queues from Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic Alien score. However, Benjamin Wallfisch’s score modernises and adds new depth to old tracks, whilst bringing in his own unique style.
“Whatever comes, we’ll face it together”
Image credit: 20th Century Studios
Alien: Romulus is a thrilling watch that will hopefully bring some much needed life back into the Alien franchise. Whilst Ridley Scott is only attached as a producer, and Alien is his franchise, there’s no one better than Fede Álvarez to take over and lead the franchise
It remains unclear if Romulus will get a sequel, but with the way it ends, chances are we could be seeing more Alien on the big screen pretty soon.
Romulus isn’t the last Alien related media we’ll see, director Noah Hawley(Fargo) has been working on a TV show entitled, Alien: Earth, that’s got many fans, like myself, excited to hear more. Alien: Earth will be released sometimes in 2025.
There’s not a better time to be a fan of Alien. Romulus has set a new standard, hears hoping the next films will be able to follow in its footsteps.
Featured image credit: 20th Century Studios
Fourth year Film and Journalism student
Deputy editor
Contact - deputyeditor@brignews.com
I saw it with a couple of friends last week. The consensus between the three of use was that it rates 7 out of 10 stars. I think my friends found it scarier than I did. Visually it was a bit confusing at times, and a lot of the early dialogue was difficult to understand. But it was worth the matinee ticket price.