Alien: Romulus Review: In Space, Everyone Can Hear Your Mashup

Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic

I have long thought that fans of the Alien franchise are either bigger fans of Alien or Aliens, and which one you are says something about what kind of fan you are, either a bigger fan of horror or a bigger fan of action. Both are five-star movies, but I definitely prefer Alien over Aliens if I am forced to choose. With Alien: Romulus, director Fede Alvarez refuses to make that choice, instead choosing to try and honor the entire franchise while hopefully bringing something new.

Alien: Romulus is set twenty years after the events aboard the Nostromo in Alien, which makes it a film between Ridley Scott’s 1979 film and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel. Picking up on the themes of corporate exploitation of human employees, this film is set in and around a mining colony where there is no daylight. Rain (Cailee Spaeny), an orphaned miner, seeks to get off the hopeless planet and return to her home planet, deciding to go along with a group of friends who are planning to steal cryochambers from a derelict Weyland-Yutani vessel suddenly orbiting their planet and make the nine-year journey to Rain’s home. 

In reality, they need her synthetic, an android named Andy (David Jonsson), because he can help them access the Weyland-Yutani vessel without attracting attention. Andy is Rain’s surrogate brother, programmed by her late father to protect her. It turns out the vessel is actually a scientific research facility where things went horribly wrong, which is tied to the events of the first Alien film and the fate of the Nostromo. Soon, they’re encountering face huggers and xenomorphs and fighting for their survival after unleashing hell on themselves. 

Androids and their relationships with the main characters in these movies have always been interesting, sometimes fraught, and sometimes supportive. Rain and Andy’s relationship is unique as he is like a brother to her and also her connection to her father. Andy changes while on the space station, which throws uncertainty into their relationship and casts doubt on whether his motivation is to protect her or not.

Alvarez crafts a tight story here, as the space station is slowly losing orbit, giving Rain and her friends a limited time to complete their mission. The ticking clock element to the story does add some heightened tension to the story, and the obstacles of the face huggers (of which there are so, so many) and needing to elude them and the xenomorphs makes some scenes feel like a video game level that needs to be navigated with stealth.

I also loved the film’s embrace of the retrofuturism of Alien, embracing the 70s-era design of what space exploration would look like in the 22nd century. The ships, the controls, the technology all look like they came out of that era rather than the high-tech aesthetic of, say, Prometheus. There are also some gorgeous depictions of space. Gorgeous sci-fi visuals paired with a retro-futuristic feel are very pleasing.

There has always been a subtext of sexual assault or sexual violation with the Alien franchise, from Dan O’Bannon’s original script to H.R. Geiger’s design of the xenomorph and the way the face huggers implant the xenomorphs into their hosts. Alvarez understands this and takes it up a notch, showing in gruesome detail at one point a face hugger trying to latch onto a potential victim. In another scene, two characters encounter a (to my knowledge) never-before-seen step in the xenomorph’s life cycle that looks like childbirth, which is sure to make some people squirm.  

Midway through, this film started to lose me. The time crunch element of the story lends tension, but it also fast-tracks everything, including the gestation of the xenomorph. Compared to how long it took for Kane’s iconic chest-burster scene to occur in Alien after his encounter with a face hugger or how long it took in Alien 3, in this one, it occurs in record time, as does the maturation of the xenomorph. 

What bothered me most, though, was the overreliance on the franchise's legacy to tell the story. It starts off slow, with small visual Easter eggs or nods to moments in previous films in the franchise. Then, a version of a previous character is brought back using CGI, which just felt more than a little cheap and wholly unnecessary. 

From there, things began to really spiral. The film became increasingly less of a movie in the franchise and more of a knock-off of iconic moments in other movies. Story beats, plot points, and character dialogue from Alien, Aliens, Prometheus, and more are remixed and mashed up here. I winced at the reference to the Marines when someone was handed a gun. I outright groaned when a character uttered Ripley’s iconic line from Aliens. Based on everything else, I'm shocked there wasn't a cat prominently involved.

Alvarez goes beyond referencing the previous entries in the franchise or merely placing some fun easter eggs in there for fans to enjoy; he bashes the viewer over the head with them and makes them front and center. Much like how sexual violence was subtext in the original film and plainly text this time, so are the franchise references this film makes. It becomes increasingly derivative, leading to an ending that could rival Alien: Resurrection in the long run.

I had high hopes for this film, easily one of my most anticipated summer movies. It starts promising but cheapens itself by becoming too referential to the previous Alien films. We get it—you’ve seen the other movies. You need to add something, not just re-mix everything that has come before.

Alien: Romulus isn’t an ode to what came before it; it’s an appropriation of everything that came before it.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars