Alien: Romulus
Halfway through Alien: Romulus, when I realized that I was not likely to care about the film’s characters, I began to dread the final hour, which I (correctly) guessed would be frenzied, loud, and unoriginal. The cast, composed of attractive, vapid young people, had the charisma of teenagers trapped in cabins in the woods. This was not a crew of fleshed-out, interesting adults on a spaceship.
The plot, in which our youngsters attempt to escape manual labor on a space outpost, is just a series of greatest hits from its inspiration, the original Alien movies. Here is a partial checklist: milky android blood, acidic alien blood, chest-bursting, face-hugging, humans stuck in xenomorph goo. We saw it all before in the original films. Every time there was a reprise of some special moment, I was reminded of how much better the first flicks are.
That leaves jump scares and special effects, which are impressive, but not impressive enough to compensate for a lazy script.
I would be remiss not to mention this film’s ties to the age of “woke.” The deaths are predictable (it’s not good to be a white male; you are either evil or early alien-meat). As for our heroine, unlike beloved Ripley, whose battle chops are explained in the first two movies, young Rain (Cailee Spaeny) has no apparent training nor skills. Yet she is more than a match for the nasty aliens. And did they really swap Ripley’s pet cat for Rain’s pet black man? Doesn’t seem very woke to me. Release: 2024 Grade: C-
Would I watch it again? No. There are much better films in this franchise.
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