They can be killed, but not defeated. They can lay dormant for years—decades, even—but they’re always there, lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce. We know this, though we always seem to forget. Call it hubris, call it naïveté, call it perverse curiosity, but one thing is inevitable: franchises will never die, the legacy sequel is always coming.
And so here we are, celebrating the newest film in the Alien franchise. From its humble beginnings as an attempt to cash in on the Star Wars hype, Alien has persisted at a surprisingly restrained rate ever since, releasing only seven films over the last 45 years (nine, if you include AVP and its sequel, which I will not be doing). Directed by Fede Álvarez, Alien: Romulus is, by all accounts, a commercial success as it’s raked in over $280 million at the box office and all but assured another wave of Alien films.
But is it good? Well, to answer that question we need to strap this bad boy to the operating table and do a full dissection, exploring not only the anatomy of Romulus, but of the entire franchise, figuring out what makes this perfect organism tick. From the opening title card to the sense of gloom that permeates each film, we’ll investigate how the new title stacks up against its predecessors.
THE TITLE CARD
I want to avoid overly romanticizing the original 1979 Alien film. That said, this is a stance from which I will not budge: Its title sequence is the best in the history of science fiction. For nearly 90 seconds, with a background of nothing but deep space, the letters spelling out the film’s single-word title appear slowly, line-by-line and letter-by-letter, while the Jerry Goldsmith score begins to bare its teeth and we zoom in on the space ship the film will call home. It’s patient, ominous, and trusts the audience innately, introducing a mood that’ll subsist through the film. There’s always been a flash-bang quality to sci-fi cinema, but Alien isn’t interested in that. It’s far more concerned with the emptiness, the silence, and the isolation that space presents, and how well that can tie into the threatening nature of classic horror storytelling.
This title sequence, like so much of Alien, casts a long shadow on all subsequent installments. You either ignore director Ridley Scott’s template—often to the film’s detriment—or you attempt to reiterate its iconography. Though Alien: Romulus hews toward the latter, it does so with so little conviction that it actually ends up far worse off than if they’d chosen the former. Álvarez’s title sequence—a hasty retread of the original—betrays one of the root problems that infects this film. Ostensibly aiming for something between fealty and nostalgia, Romulus forces itself to conform to Scott's most indelible images without ever really considering the reasons for their existence. Romulus is much less concerned with the kind of tempered, slow-boiling storytelling of the original. Which, to be clear, is not a problem on its own, but trying to graft aspects of Alien onto his updated version (like the title sequence) only puts the differences in starker contrast.
THE VISIONARY DIRECTOR
No other franchise in cinema history is as director-driven as Alien. That doesn’t necessarily mean every movie is well-directed, but the intent is always there. This started with Scott who, despite only directing one very unrelated feature film prior to Alien, had been pegged as one of the more exciting young minds in cinema by way of his British advertising work. In many ways, the same goes for Aliens director James Cameron, who was equally untested back in the mid-’80s when he first pitched his own vision for the Alien universe. Quite obviously, the right choice was once again made in trusting this man with the franchise in 1986, even if the story of his pitch meeting might be apocryphal.
While the franchise’s next few installments don’t quite hit the mark in the same way, their aims are just as fascinating. For 1992’s Alien 3, they once again turned to a hotshot, unproven commercial director, this time David Fincher. For my money, Fincher is one of the great filmmakers of the last 30 years. The only problem is that 3 is pretty securely his worst film, a notion he’d very clearly agree with as he’s all but disowned the movie, blaming meddling producers among other factors for the film’s relative failure. That’s not to say the film doesn’t have its redeeming qualities. Even this Frankenstein of a picture is mostly interesting to look at, and toys with ideas not unwelcome in the Alien universe. The same can be said for Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s take on the famed xenomorph, 1997’s Alien: Resurrection. His film, which attempts to reverse the seemingly definitive ending of its predecessor, is often a mess of tone and knotty plotting, but when called upon for arresting, sensational imagery, Jeunet mostly delivers.
In a strange way, Álvarez may be one of the more tested of the directors to take on the Alien mantle, especially when you consider his experience within the franchise machine. Of course, this also belies a central issue with how directors earn their stripes in modern Hollywood. Álvarez’s short career has included, to this point, one re-imagining, one reboot, and one legacy sequel—such is the journey of the modern movie maker. His interpretations of Evil Dead, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, and Alien have been largely a mixed bag, but what he has shown is an ability to inject at least a little bit of personal style into the IP behemoths. Perhaps it’s telling that his best film, the high-concept horror feature Don’t Breathe, remains the lone original in his filmography.
The good news is how much of that movie’s DNA exists within the best moments of Romulus. The most accomplished Alien films have always embraced the haunted-house tension established by Scott in the original, his extraterrestrial antagonist everywhere and nowhere, our heroes trapped in this last place in the universe they want to be. The spatial geography Álvarez establishes within Romulus, which tracks five humans and one android as they search for a way off a Weyland-Yutani mining colony, is a key to the film’s most successful moments. So, too, are Álvarez’s horror chops, which lead him to embrace some truly nasty scenes, refusing to look away as a whole host of facehuggers and chestbursters do what they do best.
THE ENTRANCE
To call a movie “Alien,” and then proceed to not show said alien ’til nearly an hour into your movie, requires a level of confidence hard to imagine in today’s cinematic landscape. Scott’s patience and attention to mood are, as much as the creature design, the reason for the xenomorph’s incredible staying power. Of course, because of its instantly iconic status, Alien is really the last movie in the franchise that can get away with such restraint. By the time moviegoers filled their seats for Aliens, they knew what they wanted and they wanted it right away. Still, one of the most impressive tricks Cameron pulls in his sequel is to misdirect the audience as much as possible, providing us fake chestbursters, xenomorph embryos, and post-battle carnage all before we get to see a proper xenomorph in action. By the time we get to a film like 2012’s Prometheus, the first of two lore-expanded prequels with Scott back in the captain’s chair, the audience is lightyears ahead of the characters, knowing full well the telltale signs of alien life and acutely aware of just how screwed those who walk into their trap truly are.
To his credit, Álvarez is equally aware and doesn’t play overly coy about his introduction. From the moment his protagonist is pitched the idea of raiding an abandoned spacecraft for parts, we know full well this is a bad idea that will lead to certain slaughter. The something’s-not-right-here of it all doesn’t take long to unfold, and soon we’re introduced to a room full of rapidly thawing facehuggers in one of the movie’s best sequences.
THE GOO
One of the defining characteristics of the Alien franchise is its willingness to get gnarly. Though Alien was an attempt to draft off of the success of Star Wars, nothing in that franchise comes close to being as nasty and terrifying as the original facehugger, an oozing, pulsating reptilian bug slithering its way down John Hurt’s mouth and into moviegoers hearts. This is, if anything, one of the more consistent aspects that runs throughout the Alien universe. I’m talking, gunk, sludge, muck, crud, bodily fluids of all kinds, several birthing sequences and, of course, acid-blood.
Even Alien 3 and Resurrections, the most maligned of the franchise installments, understand the assignment in regard to goo. In fact, this might just be those films’ most redeeming qualities. Say what you will about Fincher’s film, but if there’s one thing he gets right, it’s the noxious filth that defines the xenomorph in its many forms. Tongues drip, acid flows, and one very good four-legged boy is ripped apart from the inside, all within the confines of his rusty space prison. As for Resurrections, Jeunet may hold most of the film’s gnarliest bits for its finale, but if there’s one thing that makes his film work, it’s his willingness to explore the inner workings of human-xenomorph hybrids and their unholy birthing mechanics.
It’s here where Romulus started to worry me a bit. The first hour or so of Álvarez’s latest was, in my view, far too tame, too dry, too neat and straight-edged. Was this a new Hollywood sheen being placed on a traditionally nasty franchise? Then the births started—both human and alien—mirroring not only the aforementioned Resurrection sequence, but also one of Prometheus’s most indelible, proving Álvarez’s willingness to sicken, to nauseate, to repulse. Well done.
THE CHARACTER ACTORS
The character actor is a difficult thing to define. Largely, you know one when you see one, and you see them in spades within the Alien universe: Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, Lance Hendrickson, Paul Reiser, Jenette Goldstein, Charles D. Dutton, Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya, Danny McBride. All names you might know, but faces you certainly would, playing frothy complementary roles almost always ending in a scene-stealing death. These are actors with personality, wear-and-tear, ticks, and some goddamn character.
Even when Scott’s prequel films embrace the color provided by the doomed grunts, there’s just too much shine on most of the faces and in their performances (Idris Elba and Amy Seimetz are not character actors, sorry!). Romulus only furthers that issue. I’ll admit that the idea of a character actor is easier to identify after the fact, but almost the entirety of the Romulus ancillary cast looks more poised to star in their own Netflix series than to play a fifth-billing role in a low-budget horror flick. Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu are as pleasant to look at as they are anonymous, sapping some of the frantic energy present in the best of the Alien franchise.
THE GLOOM
The world of Alien is dark, both literally and figuratively. Putting aside the perfect killing machine that is the xenomorph, the franchise shows again and again the effects of the human race exporting their worst facets—capitalism, military industrialism, colonialism—to the entire universe. Weyland-Yutani is a stand-in for, well, I imagine you could fill in the blank with any number of mega-corporations, but the point is usually fairly straightforward: they will always value profit over human life. That’s not to say that corporations are the only evil here. Individuals acting out of pure self-interest can do plenty of harm as well, often in service (direct or otherwise) of their wealthy overlords. Then there’s synthetic humans (androids, robots, etc.), actors with less humanity in both the positive and negative sense. Overall, there’s very little genuine good in the world of Alien outside of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and her few stand-ins. “Some individuals might be good, sometimes” seems to be as rosy and humanistic an outlook as Scott, Cameron, Fincher, or Jeunet could muster.
Romulus isn’t much sunnier. The only reason Cailee Spaeny’s Rain and her crew are desperate enough to board the ghost ship in the first place is because they’re trapped on their Jackson’s Star colony as indentured servants, mining their lives away for Weyland-Yutani. Once there, Álvarez frames much of the film’s moral dilemma around David Jonsson's impressive turn as Andy, an android at first devoted to Rain but who, after an update, becomes a committed company man. It's a movie that once again cashes in on the genius established by Scott in the original film. By having “the company” foster, aid, and abet the xenomorph, you create a two-pronged force of equally invincible evil for our heroes to rail against. You think acid blood is scary? Wait until you hear about profit-hungry colonialism!
Is Alien: Romulus a nuanced examination of such weighty subject matter? Not exactly, but the DNA is there. And really, that’s true of pretty much every aspect of Romulus, for better or worse. Álvarez both knows how to make an Alien movie and can’t come close to transcending the fact that he’s making the seventh such film. Grading it on a scale that includes two of the most indelible sci-fi films of all time might not seem fair, but that’s sort of the job, and Romulus lands almost smack dab in the middle. A company grunt through and through. FL
