đź‘˝ So, is it back?
I like the Alien franchise a lot and tend to talk about it more than I probably should. But if I narrow it down, my focus is mostly on Alien and Aliens — two of the best sci-fi movies ever made. Then we had the weirdness of Alien³ and Alien Resurrection, which had some cool action but also a ton of questionable decisions. Prometheus started as something separate but eventually merged into the Alien universe; and while I think it has its merits (especially the visuals and large-scale sci-fi world-building), there are plenty of head-scratching and plain dumb moments. And Covenant? Oh I don’t even want to talk about that one, it exists.
It all felt like the franchise had lost its way. Then came the announcement of a new Alien movie—this time from a different director, Fede Alvarez, and under the Disney umbrella. I tend to get overly hyped only to be crushed later, so I skipped the theater release and only watch it, in digital release, this past weekend. Twice.
And yes, it’s back. I really enjoyed it. While it has flaws, it gets so much right that I can honestly say I’ll rewatch it later alongside Alien and Aliens—the only two movies in the franchise I rewatch regularly. So, if you want my TL;DR opinion: Go watch it. It’s good. But I have a lot I want to talk about. Instead of spoiling things on social media, I’ll just dump my thoughts here.
🎥 The Mood
Alien Romulus takes place in 2142, twenty years after the events of Alien — roughly 37 years before Ripley is rescued in Aliens. In the intro, Weyland-Yutani recovers a cocoon from the wreckage of the Nostromo. That setup, paired with the futuristic-but-retro-looking tech, immediately set the tone. The lighting, sound, and atmosphere hit all the right notes. It was clear the filmmakers understood which vibes to channel from the original films and how to execute them.
🎥 The Plot and Crew
As I mentioned, the movie is set 20 years after Alien. It begins on Jackson’s Star Colony, where Rain lives with her synthetic brother, Andy. Early on, we learn Rain’s parents died working in the mines, and Andy was programmed to help and protect her.
They work for Weyland-Yutani, and Rain has met her 12000 hours contract, but the corporation arbitrarily extends Rain’s contract by doubling the hours, forcing them to stay on Jackson for several more years.
A group of friends, who had the same thing happening to them, convinces Rain to join their team. The group includes Tyler, his sister Kay, their cousin Bjorn, and Navarro.
Their plan? Flee the planet to Yvaga, by traveling to a derelict station in orbit to steal sleeping pods for the nine-year cryosleep journey to the distant, and Weyland-Yutani free planet.
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
The derelict station is of course the place where they took the xenomorph cocoon they found on the Nostromo in the introduction sequence, where - spoilers - all hell broke loose.
The main reason they went to Rain is Andy, since he’s a Weyland-Yutani android, he has credentials to speak MOTHER, the Operative System MU/TU/UR, unlock the spaceship and give them access to what they need.
Soon they find the pods they were looking for, but they lack the necessary power, only having energy for three years, which is not enough.
So they search deeper into the station, and find a room which is locked, and inside, a room full of facehuggers, frozen, hibernating, powered by the batteries, so when they remove them, a lockdown starts to prevent the spread, and the facehuggers start to wake up.
This scene has 3 very important things in my opinion, first of all they accidentally release all the facehuggers; second we see Bjorn fending off facehuggers a couple times with success, saving Tyler in the process, which shows he’s a fighter, a survivor and willing to help.
But also, once they find themselves locked into that room, they have to put a new chip on Andy hoping the credentials get updated and allows to unlock the room.
They successfully do that, but in the process his prime directive of protecting Rain gets replaced with protecting Weyland-Yutani interests first. This makes Andy less sympathetic towards what the crew needs, only helping if it suits the company, even if there’s still many traits of his former self there, probably the most well written character in this movie.
When they finally leave the room there’s an incredible facehugger hallway chase scene.
Sadly Navarro is the first victim via facehugger, they power up Rook, a semi destroyed Android that looks like Ash from the first movie in order to get more information.
In this process it’s clear that Navarro is probably done for, so when Andy tries to prevent Navarro from returning to the ship, Bjorn flees with her, stealing the ship, splitting the team in two.
But Navarro time is ending, so we get one of the coolest chestburster scenes in the franchise, with an X-ray.
And this causes the ship to crash on an hangar on the other side of the station.
Bjorn later dies trying to kill the xenomorph that hatched from Navarro, while still in it’s coccoon, leaving Kay alone. She tries and escape the hangar, but is trapped with the now full grown xenomorph.
Andy proves he’s not joking around anymore by refusing opening a door to her.
By arguing that would also allow the xenomorph to pass we get a terrifying scene because the Xenomorph really seems to be taking it’s time hoping the door would open, adding more to the tension, but eventually grabbing Kay regardless.
I’m not going through the whole movie, there’s a few more parts of the later sections I’ll discuss below on each character, these were just a few of the things that I wanted to just talk about, and just got a bit carried away, the final act section is a bit weaker, the whole baby-hybrid thing, but still better than most stuff we’ve got in recent years.
The Xenomorph is well done and scary, the practical effects help.
The facehuggers are the “main enemy” for half of the movie, and it works, they have one scene with Andy, Rain and Tyler that reminded me of The Walking Dead, they had to move slowly not to be detected!
Eventually we learn that the derelict station was attempting to synthesize the “black goo” to create strong humans.
Which is a theme Prometheus/Covenant was exploring, Rook even referring to the black goo as “Prometheus fire” , this is the main mission Rook has and it passes down to Andy, to save a sample and bring it to Weiland.
Now I just want to talk a bit about each character before wrapping up.
Andy / N-D-255
First of all I want to talk about Andy, played by David Jonsson, he steals this movie with his performance, not only the character is well written, convincing, and makes sense within this world, the acting is just excellent. The duality of good and evil in the Android has been explored before, Prometheus and Covenant especially trying doing “something” with the Android David, but honestly I think if failed.
And this is where Andy shines in my opinion.
At the beginning we learn that Andy has been reprogrammed to help Rain, it’s prime directive to do anything to protect her. We also see that this model glitches often, which I wonder if a callback to Bishop in Aliens mentioning older models were often “twitchy”.
But later on, in order to open a door they install a new program on Andy, and it’s just amazing to see the transformation, his prime directive is now to serve the company, but it’s done in such a good way, and they never went for the clichĂ© “it’s now a full evil robot and wants to kill them” angle.
Instead we see it in subtle things, Andy is more confident, always on track to protect the company mission, and still remembers everything, and learned the small things that were done to him, like a comment to Rain about being left behind. This shows more humanity from the character even though being an Android, he doesn’t feel some things were right, but also doesn’t bother him.
The one thing that didn’t quite clicked for me was one line towards the end when Andy kills a xenomorph while protecting Rain and says “Get away from her”, followed by “You bitch”. This is a direct reference to Ripley in Aliens, but the “You bitch” felt out of place, and out of character, until I rewatched the movie; and noticed that in the beginning of the movie Bjorn says to Andy “That’s how it’s done, bitch.” So it made more sense to me now, Andy heard it, stayed passive, and unleashed it at a later time, suiting the whole scene better and even making it a better tiny arc overall. I probably missed tons of things during my first viewing.
I wasn’t going into this movie looking forward to the Android, but this was one of the best parts of the movie. If we get a sequel I hope they explore it a bit more.
Human crew
When it comes to the human crew they worked well, definitely the smartest crew in last few Alien movies (looking at you Prometheus and Covenant).
Rain
Rain is “the Ellen Ripley” of this movie, that’s what people will probably be comparing her to, which might sound a bit unfair; but the movie dangerously, yet successfully, do a lot of inspired angles/scenes with her so it’s bound to happen.
Luckily it works, her motivation is simple yet effective, escape Weiland and go to Yvaga, her protective nature comes into play with both Andy and later Kay.
It never felt forced in my opinion and kept the character plot moving forward and making her more decisive as the movie developed.
She literally goes face to face with xenomorphs, a callback to AlienÂł famous shot.
The idea of making a shooting scene in zero gravity where the acid is floating all around is so good, combined with the elevator shaft part, it was a great action sequence, they could have ended the movie there.
Bjorn
I think he’s a bit of Hudson, and starts out only as a jerk towards Andy. But he did a good job, fends off several facehugers, saves Tyler, does what he thinks is in the best interest to save Navarro, because he doesn’t trust androids, so he thinks Andy wants to kill her. He later tries to kill a xenomorph in a cocoon but dies in the process.
He had a big mouth but would not back off in face of danger, so I was a bit sad he didn’t lasted longer.
Tyler
I guess I can say is the Hicks on this movie, from the more protective characteristics to teaching Rain how to use the guns, mostly callbacks to Aliens, but for me that was fine, I don’t think his character stand out much, even if he had a lot of screen time; but once they found the pods he was mostly in a supportive role, but he didn’t felt out of place or anything like that. Sometimes that’s required for the other characters to move along.
Navarro
She’s the ship pilot, I immediately got Vasques vibes, and sadly she dies way too soon, but on the other hand, we got thet classic facehugger and chestburster scenes, but even better, with an the X-ray, and who ever thought of that is a G-E-N-I-US. A chestburster scene made even more terrifying than it already is, on a confined space, on a moving spaceship. Worth it.
Kay
Kay is revealed to be pregnant, and unfortunately ends up the victim of a very graphic birth scene, giving birth to a hybrid baby a bit like Prometheus but still somewhat different, I guess giving more information on the whole goo-engineers-xenomorphs thing.
As I mentioned before there is a really great scene in the ship hangar where she gets locked in a room with a xenomorph, it lands on some stairs above her, to a scary and chilling effect, and later the horror of being locked with the xenomorph because of Andy’s refusal to open the door.
Rook
There’s another Android in the movie which is the same model as Ash in original Alien, sadly Ian Holm passed away in 2020, so even if they would had to CGI de-age him, this meant it wasn’t even the original actor. The CGI isn’t great in some scenes, but we could’t just have him constantly in dark environments to mask of stuff since he does show up quite a few times until the end. We only see it in a destroyed state from the waist up (another callback), I don’t think it would have mattered much, we know it’s an Android, it didn’t had to look real, but CGI was a bit of uncanny valley. But for the role itself it was Ash again, doing everything for the company, twisting words and manipulation to get what he wants. The movie would have worked without the resemblance, but this way it does a nice connection and the movie feels even more that it actually belongs.
🎥 Conclusion
Still here? Thanks for sticking with me through this brain dump! Writing this post helped me get all my thoughts out, and I even managed to give my blog a bit more attention (which I keep saying I’ll do but rarely follow through).
Watching the movie a second time helped me appreciate it more. Scenes that initially felt a bit disjointed made more sense. Honestly, I think this movie needs a Director’s Cut. From what Ridley Scott mentioned in interviews, Fede Alvarez had to cut a lot of material by Scott’s suggestion to make the movie shorter and to the point quicker. The upcoming Blu-ray release includes an “X-Ray Edition,” so maybe that’s an extended cut. I’ll definitely be doing a third viewing if that’s the case.
I’m now looking forward to the next movie (whatever it ends up being) and the Alien: Earth TV show coming out next year. The title already hints at being set on Earth, and I wonder if it ties into the ending of Alien Resurrection’s Special Edition, where they land on Earth. Time will tell.
⌚️ Before I go
Before I go, I just want to share some screengrabs of watches, cool looking watches have always been a thing in Alien and Aliens, and I was really happy to see that whenever possible the director would make sure they could be seen :)
Yeah sorry it’s the actual end now.