Almost Half a Good Movie

When reviewing Alien: Romulus, I tried very hard not to spoil anything too pivotal to the movie. I limited myself to revealing details that were only in the trailers or the first act of the film so that, should you decide to go see this movie for yourself (which any fan of the Aliens v PredatorOriginally two separate franchises, the Alien and Predator series came together first in a series of comics and video games before, finally, Fox Studios merged them together is the Alien v Predator film franchise. franchise is going to do regardless of what the reviews say) then you could do it without having your good (or bad) time spoiled. But there was a lot in the film that I felt needs to be discussed and, because of that, it’s time to take a deeper look, with spoilers, at everything Alien: Romulus gets right and so much of what it gets wrong.

The First Act is Fantastic

Fede Álvarez is a director that has proven they can take an existing property and work it to their specific vision and desires. You can see this in their reinvention of Evil Dead, taking the basic concepts of the demon-infused franchise to make something darker, scarier, and way more fucked up. I think that movie is fantastic and seeing his name attached to Alien: Romulus, I was hopeful about what the director could bring to this franchise that so desperately needs a solid shot of new ideas and energy after so many failed sequels.

The first act of the film shows all the promise I was hoping for. It takes elements that Álvarez has used before – people going into a place they don’t understand and they paying for it – and twists it to suit the Alien series. Our protagonists are morally questionable, but they have clear goals and easy to understand desires. They need to get out from under the thumb of their corporate overlords, Weyland-Yutani, and if that means stealing from that corporation to do it, well then that’s just the price the suits will pay for the freedom of our main characters. It’s easy to digest, gets you right into the film, and gets you on board with the mission.

The film does a good job of making us care about lead characters Rain and Andy, as played by Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson respectively. Andy is a malfunctioning, decommissioned android that Rain’s father reprogrammed years earlier, setting him as her protector and “brother”. She cares for him, loves him, and protects him as he slowly falls into ruin. The interplay between these two isn’t a relationship we’ve seen in the series before so (unlike other stuff we’ll touch upon in a bit) it doesn’t feel like a sad, tired retread. The movie makes sure you like the leads so that, whatever else happens, you at least want to see them succeed.

Once the characters get onto the ship, start exploring, and eventually find the aliens (that will spell their doom), there is so much tension built from their scenes. This whole section of the film is fantastic, in part because it doesn’t try to be anything else than a solid, “stupid people go where they shouldn’t, die,” kind of film. We can never be shocked by the aliens again; the first movie already played that card and now we know what to expect. What the film can do, though, is play up the fact that these idiots don’t know what’s coming but we do. We get plenty of lingering shots of cryo-frozen facehuggers just waiting to be woken up. We get to see the actions of the crew bring their own doom to them. We get to enjoy the delicious carnage when it finally happens. Álvarez plays this section of the film like a fiddle and I was gleefully laughing in my seat as the violence came to the fore. This whole first act was so enjoyable and I wish the film could have maintained this energy throughout.

And Then It All Falls Apart

Unfortunately, right after the first of the alien encounters happens, with a facehugger latching on to throwaway character Navarro (Aileen Wu) and impregnating her, the film comes to a screeching halt. Realizing they need a way to help their friend, maybe find some way to save her, they pick up a ruined android in the science lab (where they accidentally also awakened the aliens). Setting it up, plugging it in, they revive the android and reveal to us that it’s a version of Ian Holm’s back-stabbing, Weyland-Yutani-aligned character from the very first film. This one isn’t the exact same guy, this time named Rook (and voiced by Daniel Betts since Ian Holm died four years ago), but he is, for all intents and purposes, the same character and the film plays it that way.

The problem isn’t just that the film resurrects a dead man to play another version of his character, although that is icky enough and Disney really needs to quit it with this shit, but that once Rook comes online he forces everyone to stop and listen to his lecture about the aliens, their ecology, and how all of that ties into every other movie up to that point, even going so far as to namecheck Prometheus. That’s right, anyone coming into this film expecting an Alien sidestory that just has fun with the horror creatures on a new crew got lied to by the trailers. This is, deep down, Ridley Scott’s third Prometheus film and he suckered us all into watching it.

This whole decision tree is just baffling to me. What we had in the first act about scavengers playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes and it was great. But then the film has to be “about something more”, tying into the mythology and backstory of the whole series and the film feels like it has to strain to fit it all in. We didn’t need any of this, at all. It doesn’t add anything to the movie and, in fact, actively detracts from the whole production. The film doesn’t need any of this crap in it since all it does is drag the film’s pacing down as it lectures us over and over again about “how perfect these creatures are.” It’s awful.

Think about it this way: Alien: Romulus is, up to this point, an unconnected story that functionally acts as a new entry point for the series. If you’d never seen another film in the series before but, at the very least, knew what the aliens were, you can enjoy the whole first act on its own because it conveys all the information you need it a tight, cohesive way without ever having to turn to the camera to explain things to you. But then Ian Holm comes on and, because he’s tied to all the backstory this film really wants to be about, he has to stop the film, look at the camera, and give us a lesson about the aliens. By becoming something other than what the first act gave us, the film has to actively explain itself, over and over, so that everyone who hasn’t seen anything else in this series can get caught up. It’s the worst kind of storytelling you could come up with.

The Film Never Recovers

From this point forward the film fundamentally changes. It’s no longer the same movie we watched in the first act at all. A portion of the crew is quickly killed off and we’re left with Rain, Andy, and Rain’s ex, Tyler (Archie Renaux), tracking back to the ship across the alien infested space station so they can get to Tyler’s pregnant sister, Kay (Isabela Merced), who is now trapped on their wrecked ship. Unfortunately all the tension that was built in the earlier sections is lost and it’s replaced with a bunch of dumb action sequences that lack the thrills and the scares.

Part of the issue is that the film fails to invest in the characters any further at this point. With the aliens revealed, and the true plot explained to us (with powerpoint slides and numbered charts), the film no longer cares about the characters. Tyler is “captain guy that knows guns”, his sister is “pregnant, scared woman”, and both Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Navarro are dead so no one has to care about them anyway. Rain and Andy we like, sure, but we’re stuck watching them go through the motions of just another Alien film and it’s so much less fun than what we had before, especially when they clearly have plot armor and we can tell who on the crew will be the next to die. It’s that simple.

I’d actually argue that every twist in the film, from the mid-act explainer onwards, could be seen a mile away. Andy gets a new chip in his head to help him interact with the Weyland-Yutani interfaces but, of course, the chip also reprograms him and turns him into a loyal droid of the corporation. The characters act shocked by this but everyone in the audience around me knew it the second the chip went into his head. We all just knew. And every set up is like this, over and over, because by this point the script has given up on tension and pacing.

“Oh, don’t shoot the aliens as their acid blood could eat through the side of the ship.” So of course we then have to have that exact moment happen later because why else would it have been mentioned earlier in the act. Nevermind the fact that aliens have been killed on ships in other films of this franchise and it’s never caused catastrophic damage to the exterior hull. Also, ignore the fact that this space station is even bigger than any of those other ships. No, we have to worry because this time shooting the aliens is bad… right up until it isn’t. It’s so stupid.

But probably the dumbest moments happen in the last act of the film.

Oh, We’re Doing Alien: Resurrection Again?

Once Ian Holm shows up to tell us the real plot of the film, we get into a story where the heroes have to go save Kay but, also, they have to take genetic samples of the xenomorphs and bring them back to the colony the protagonists just left so the corporation can get them. That’s the only way Rook will let them leave. These samples have the base powers of the xenomorphs, based on the Prometheus Protocol, and if you inject a mammal with this DNA it gives them the healing powers of the aliens (a thing we’ve never seen before but, sure, whatever). Naturally there’s a catch, as we see, where the genetics of the aliens take over and it usually leads to a bad time for the injected animal.

So, of course, Kay gets mortally wounded and, out of fear for her baby, she injects herself with the alien serum. Rook tells her it’s fine and she just believes him. Yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds. So then, after she heals and is put into a cry-pod, the consequences of her actions immediately come to bear as the alien DNA attacks and changes her baby, morphing it into a half-human / half-alien hybrid and, well, if you’ve watched Alien: Resurrection then I think you know more or less what to expect from this point forward.

Now, let me say, this wasn’t a twist I was expecting, but that’s only because I thought all of us, collectively, agreed never to discuss Alien: Resurrection ever again. That’s a film that was enjoyably trashy fun for the first two acts and then completely fell apart in the last section when the human-alien hybrid was revealed. And yet, somehow, someone thought, “you know, this concept has legs. Maybe we can make it work this time.” They went for it and, no, they did not make it work this time. The creature looks terrible, it’s not scary, and it proves once again that we all need to stop trying to make human-alien hybrids a thing.

In the End…

I do not know the thought process behind Alien: Resurrection. I can only guess at who had fingers in what parts of the story, what was mandated by the studio suits and what Álvarez was allowed to do on his own. I’m betting that everything past the first act was mandated by the suits and they wanted grander storytelling for the series than a simple, “people go to ship, die,” film like Álvarez enjoys making. He seems deeply invested in the first act and then incredibly bored with the rest of it, which is fair as that was my reaction to seeing what he’d directed with this film.

End of the day the franchise needs to stop with all this overly complicated mythology building and storytelling. The films are at their best when it’s people on a ship, or a station, or a planet, being chased by aliens. If we could just get a film about that, and nothing else, then we might just have a sequel for this series worth actually watching. The best reference I can think of is Predator and Prey. The latter was a reinvention of the series that essentially took it back to its roots, giving us the closest interpretation of the ideas behind Predator while presenting new characters we could care about.

That’s what we need from Alien: a film that understands what worked in the first film (and we can also throw Aliens in there as well) and gives us a proper, distilled version of the best themes (without rehashing moments and lines verbatim from those movies). Alien: Romulus falls apart the second it tries to “something more,” leading to a film that disappoints more than it thrills.