Rain Carradine believes she has worked her time on the mining planet Jackson’s Star, unfortunately for Rain lack of workers has meant longer working contracts for those surviving the harsh conditions. Along with her malfunctioning synthetic “brother” Andy, Rain joins ex-boyfriend Tyler’s crew in a plan to borrow a space ship, fly up to a derelict spacecraft, grab some needed cryostasis chambers from the spacecraft, which will allow the crew to survive the nine-year journey to the apparent paradise of the planet Yvaga. What could possibly go wrong, well for starters the derelict spacecraft is actually a Weyland-Yutani research station in a decaying orbit, and boy are there some surprises on board.  Seems a probe was sent to the site where the Nostromo was destroyed by Ellen Ripley, which managed to retrieve an organic object containing the original Xenomorph! Naturally Weyland-Yutani scientists then proceeded to somehow clone the alien, don’t ask, and the station is now home to about a thousand cloned facehuggers and even worse inhabitants. Naturally things got out of hand and the station’s human and synthetic staff were slaughtered during a Xeno rampage. Thankfully things have cooled down since, well until Tyler and his boarding party reactivate things, and suddenly we are knee deep in facehuggers. Who is going to survive and can Rain stop a Xenomorph outbreak.

Alien: Romulus was one of the most anticipated movies that I was looking forward to catching in 2024. The trailers were making the movie look great, we were promised a return to what made the franchise so beloved by fans, and some new takes on the tropes. Sounds like we could all expect to have a really good time with this one following previous franchise disappointments. Then the first reviews starting flowing out of social media, all of which initially had Romulus as the third best movie in the franchise, who in their right mind was going to claim it would dislodge one of the top two, and the best alien movie in decades. In the face of what amounted to a bandwagon thundering through the centre of town I started having my doubts as to just how good the movie was going to be. Tough love here, there’s a whole host of social media Reviewers who wouldn’t know their arses from their elbows when it comes to criticism of a movie. I’m not saying studio plants folks; I’m saying people who should find something else to do in order to garner followers. So how was the movie? Nowhere as good as some people are claiming, and yet nowhere near as bad as some haters are making it out to be. Monster movie in space folks, be constructive with your criticism rather than indulging in pseudo-intelligent musing that demonstrates your own short comings. Let’s break it down and swivel it all around.

If there is one thing director Alvarez is out to prove it’s that he is well versed in the Alien franchise. We get references to most of the movies in the franchise, I didn’t note any to Alien 3 strangely, but whatever, and also Alien Isolation the game. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on how you like your references in movies, for mine I can either take it or leave it as long as it doesn’t overly intrude on my watching pleasure. Which of course brings us to the infamous line, “Get away from her... you bitch” utter in this movie by Andy the android, sorry artificial person, in one of the less effective delivers ever in the history of cinema. It was jarring and as out of place as the choppers line in The Predator. Sorry Fede, you done messed up there. And in case you thought it was just me bitching about the line, there was a collective groan in the cinema session I attended. But got to say I was happy enough otherwise, there wasn’t anything truly clunky going down, and fans of the franchise would surely have been high fiving each other over the references.

One of the real strengths of the movie is the visuals which Alvarez uses to his advantage. What we see of Jackson’s Star is suitably grungy and industrial. The planet doesn’t see sunshine, and it is ably shown in the first act of the movie. I was digging what I was seeing and could well imagine any self-respecting young person wanting to exit stage left at their earliest possible convenience. The space craft are believable and are not sporting technology that would stretch viewer credibility. There’s no holodeck on display in Romulus, everything is purely functional which impressed me. Hey horror fan here, Sci-Fi is okay if it has a horror element, but otherwise not of interest overly to me. Alvarez’s team are at least rocking the aesthetics of the original Alien movie, you know that dated 1970s looking computer technology that was already being replaced in the 1980s in the real world. I’ve always dug the look to be honest, and I was pleased that the Director didn’t show technology that wouldn’t have exist at the time in the Alien universe. The only exception I would have here was with the pulse rifle which can hold 450 rounds rather than the 100 round magazines the colonial marines were issues with in Aliens. Minor grip to be sure, but seriously I wasn’t exactly nodding my head in approval over this detail, it gets worse folks.

Remember back when Ripley scuttled the towing vessel Nostromo in Alien with what appeared to be three separate nuclear explosions. Now assuming the ship wasn’t vaporised, physics would state the surviving debris from the ship would have disappeared into the depths of the universe due to the force of the explosion and a general lack of friction. That’s about the total of my science exploration in this review, but hey physics have no place in Alvarez’s head long rush to ensure the audience are engrossed in on screen antics rather than being given time to actually analysis what they are seeing. Always a good approach in monster movies folks. Anyways franchise fans can high five themselves with the depiction of the remains of the Nostromo, including the ship’s name being spelt out on a floating piece of debris, because you know, audiences have to be lead to water and face forced into drinking it rather than discovering things on their own.

I was going to discuss the characters in length and the associated acting chops on display but beside one actor the rest had zero to work with and not surprisingly managed to not change expression throughout their screen time. Alvarez simply goes with cardboard cut outs without spending much time in giving those cut outs motivations and character. Cailee Spaeny (Rain) becomes the final girl, yes used that hoary old title on purpose, and supports her artificial person. Archie Renaux (Tyler) is Rain’s ex, and that’s about all we need to know, read cannon fodder. Isabela Merced (Kay) is Tyler’s sister and is pregnant. Spike Fearn (Bjorn) hates androids due to his parents falling victim to them. And Aileen Wu (Navarro) is the pilot who smokes. Surprisingly the only character given a character arc is David Jonsson (Andy) who goes from programmed to support Rain, through Weyland Android, to back to supporting Rain, Jonsson nails it and would love to see him in the next movie, if we get one. So don’t go into Romulus expecting great story or characters, you aren’t going to get that.

Fede Alvarez does add another dimension to the alien life cycle, which I was kind of digging and saw as perfectly logical. Once the chestburster has dispensed with its first skin, we assume due to growth and change in characteristics, it now goes into a cocoon like structure to complete its growth spurt. Strangely the Weyland probe sent to investigate the Nostromo picks up a similar cocoon, which we find houses the Big Chap from the first movie. Somehow this single drone is used to generate about a million facehuggers, and this being an Alien movie they get loose and massacre the Romulus space station personnel. How you would clone facehuggers from a drone is never explained, because you know that would require logic, but we do get an alien hive but no alien queen. So I’m giving this lifecycle development a pass mark, while still wondering at the franchise’s seemingly inability to understand the science of cloning or science generally.

Which brings us to that final act and what can only be described as a major misstep in the movie. Remember back in the day when Alien Resurrection decided it would be a real good idea to have a human/alien hybrid in the mix, and remember how much the fans really didn’t like the idea, as in hated it with a vengeance? Well Romulus goes one better with a human/alien/engineer hybrid called the Offspring! Besides the thing growing to honking big size in about five seconds flat it looked terrible! I was taken completely out of the movie when this creature appeared, where was a Queen Alien when you needed her, and saw zero reasoning for this development. Fede Alvarez really screwed the pooch with this development, which elicited gales of laughter from some sections of the audience I sat through the movie with. Sorry Fede, stick to the Xenomorphs mate, you had our respect with them and then blew it in the final third in a movie that only Diaper Donald would give a standing ovation to.

The Director has the chops to make a good horror movie, he injects atmosphere and tension into Romulus and reminds the audience that this franchise is a horror one end of day. However, it’s when it comes to the Sci-Fi aspects that the movie completely derails in spectacular fashion. It’s in the name Fede, Science Bro not Fantasy. What you can get away with in a horror flick, everyone has parked their brains going into the genre, you cannot carry in a SciFi outing, where audiences are expecting some sort of realism in a speculative fashion. For starters when you shot something in a gravity free environment the force of the bullet is going to push blood away from the body, not have it simply floating in space. Did we forget about the acid blood when the gravity switched back on? It would have dropped and burnt through the hull of the space station. I already mentioned the debris from the vaporised Nostromo, it shouldn’t exist, and if it does then nowhere near where it is found by the Weyland-Yutani probe. Don’t get me started on the genetics on show in this movie, though the entire franchise seems to be confused on the subject of genetics and cloning. How exactly Weyland-Yutani managed to create facehuggers clones from the Big Chap remains a mystery, but hey they managed to clone a Ripley impregnated with an alien queen previously, so you know, somehow. Once again how long it takes a chestburster to mature or a drone to grow to full size is now dependant on plot requirements rather than anything close to the original movie. Boy did our gen z blue collar workers get lucky in this movie, when Navarro has her fatal chest bursting moment, she kicks some control in their space ship which simultaneously manages to undock the ship and kick the engines on, wow who needs a pilot, the ship smashes into something which speeds up the Romulus station’s decaying orbit, and wow the space ship manages to crash land in the station docking bay! The survivors should go get a lottery ticket immediately, their luck is rocking Bro. I could go on, but you get the point, there’s some major disbelief moments in this movie.

One more point and we’ll wrap it up. Did you really believe the twenty somethings in this movie were miners? I didn’t, models maybe, but all of them looked like a hard day’s work would kill them. And please Hollywood could we get a lead character that doesn’t look like they weigh in 60Ks soaking wet that looks about fourteen, give us someone who is believable!

So I guess I covered the good, the bad, and the stupid in this movie. While I had a lot of fun through the first two acts, the atmosphere and tension is working, any analysis of the movie shows the cracks and the reason why multiple script edits are a good thing. When the movie first dropped the bandwagon came smashing through the centre of town as people who are reviewing and really shouldn’t failed to pick up the issues and simply voted up a shiny movie with action rather than a good movie that covers its bases with logic and real characters. When the android, sorry artificial person, is the best character in the movie then you have some real problems. Could we get this franchise back in the hands of the adults, and out of the hands of Disney’s sheltered workshop! Not the worse movie in the franchise, far from it, but equally this isn’t the second coming of the first two movies. Mild recommendation, it at least has the horror and action elements rocking, but pretty middle of the road otherwise. Disney look at the extended universe, there are some very decent books and comics out there that might just give us that second coming, rather than further eroding the legacy.