Alien: Romulus
Occasionally, when I'm scrolling through reels on Facebook, there's an account that only posts nostalgia bait. They do the 90s a lot, and one thing they always show is video stores. I can't begin to tell you how much I miss video stores. I lived just a couple blocks from Family Video growing up, and I used to love walking around that store, seeing if any movie would catch my fancy. I spent so much time and money in that store. A friend of mine, Pam, eventually got a job at my Family Video (yes, it was mine. I claimed it), and one day while I was checking out, she looked at my account and got wide-eyed and started laughing when she saw how much money I personally spent there through the years. I say this every year, but a big part of my childhood died when the last one closed its doors.
Alien: Romulus (2024)
Let me start this review by saying the IMDB trivia section for this movie may be the longest I've ever seen. I just finished it, and it took forever to scroll back to the top. I check out that section every time I watch a movie, and my goodness, this one may have taken me the longest to get through.
I like the Alien series and will see every movie they put out there. I think Alien is great, Aliens is even better, but they get progressively worse as they go along. I thought Prometheus was trash, but my goodness, Covenant was so much worse; like, it was aggressively bad. As for Romulus... I'm happy to say it completely reverses that trend.
We meet Rain and her bff Andy, who happens to be a synth, in a world that isn't too keen on his kind. We learn that she's part of a terraforming mission on a distant planet, but her time is up. She's reached her quota and is just waiting for the OK to leave from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Unfortunately for her, WYC declines her request. Not only that, they add about six more years to her stay and transfer her from the fields to the much more dangerous mines. No, there's no Balrog hiding in there; that we know of... but there's a high number of lung disease deaths, something that her parents added to the statistics.
Shortly after that, she meets up with her other bffs who have a plan to commandeer a derelict spacecraft orbiting the planet. There's a cryochamber in there, so the plan is to take the ship, navigate it to the planet and sleep for the nine-year journey, while Andy watches over the pods. Unfortunately for them, this ship was owned by Weyland-Yutani, a company that can't take a hint, and had its entire crew murdered by the Xenomorph from the first movie before they were able to put enough bullets into it that it finally died. Because this is an Alien movie, a facehugger waltzes into the frame, officially kicking the movie into high gear.
This movie was such a nice change of pace since the utter disappointment of Prometheus and Covenant. I liked that the movie was mostly confined to the spaceship, and they weren't farting around on some alien planet, waiting for Backstabby The Robot, I mean, David to murder them all. Man, did I hate Dave.
One other thing I liked about the movie was that it didn't try to erase the stories that came before. There's a reference to or a plot point from each of the movies that came before, including the ones that take place after this one in the universe's timeline. It's nice because they're not shoehorned in and make sense within the plot, including the inclusion of one character that made me smile. I won't say who it is; it's much more fun to be surprised in this case.Â
Still, this movie did manage to create some very cool and excellent moments on its own. It has my favorite chest burster outside of the original, and that only holds the top spot because it was so unique for its time. In this movie, they introduce a handheld X-ray device early in the movie, and when one of the characters realizes something's going on, she uses it on her chest, and you can see the thing inside her. Not only that, you see its first attempt to break free and her bones shattering under her skin. It is so good and a new way to show something we've all seen a bunch of times before. Credit to this movie because it really shows the agony those characters go through.
The other is my favorite sequence in the entire movie, and one of the best in the entire series. Rain and Andy are trapped in a corridor, and a bunch of aliens are on their tail. Our heroes deactivate the gravity so she can have an easier time gunning them down and not have to worry about the acid blood breaching the hull; keep in mind, this is all while keeping a close eye on her dwindling ammo. Once they're all dead, Rain and Andy have to float down the hallway while avoiding the large gobs of acid floating around. It is such a good scene and incredibly tense. I'd say that scene alone makes the movie worth a watch.
I know I'm damning with faint praise, but this is the best Alien movie since Aliens by a wide margin. It is tense, has some great moments, and, outside of one guy who's just an annoying dickbag the entire time, it has multiple likeable characters with clear motivations and no scenes where you are watching, getting increasingly infuriated because the characters get hit with the idiot ball because the movie doesn't know how else to move the plot forward. I enjoyed the characters and their chemistry and wanted them to survive. Except for the asshole, though; screw that guy.
My biggest complaint, I guess, is the final boss. I don't want to get too into the weeds about it, but this is the reference to Resurrection, and if I'm honest, I was underwhelmed with the look of the thing. I'm finding it hard to put into words without spoiling, but for the hype of it, it really is an inferior version of the Xenomorph we all know and love. I'm not even talking about aesthetic reasons, like this thing is the next step in the alien's evolution, but the classic Xenomorph is scarier and seems better at being a monster than this at every level. We don't see much of what it's capable of, but as a killer, or perfect being, the classic baddie just seems a lot more efficient and effective. There's even a scene where the new baddie is using its tongue mouth to break open an astronaut's helmet, and it's taking a bunch of hits, only slightly cracking. Keep in mind, the Xenomorph was able to bust through the Predator's helmet with a single stab. The monster was pretty tall, so that was kinda cool, but it didn't do anything for me.
Word is that Ridley Scott wants to make another movie in the franchise but follow the storyline from Prometheus while including David. Ugh. Ridley Scott is an icon and his legacy can't be ignored... but... come on, man. Prometheus wasn't good, and the questions raised aren't interesting enough to explore. He seems to resent every movie in the series that he didn't do, and he seems to want to keep making these movies until people agree with him, kicking and screaming. Besides, Aliens is the best in the series.
The rating
This film had some sketch CGI in the original theatre cut that I hear they cleaned up.
Remember, Mr. Pat…they’re building a bridge to where the Xenomorph is indistinguishable from mankind. You should checkout the Alien Earth tv series if you haven’t already. It’s also…refreshing!