Alien: Romulus Wants to Be All the Alien Movies at Once
The great horror and dark joy of Alien The film’s strength lies in its moments of discovery: an unsuspecting crew is plunged into a parasitic nightmare that reveals itself in abrupt, gruesome fashion. Of course, that shock has left some people feeling numb ever since. Ridley Scottthe original 1979 film; it has been repeated in seven other films, and is now in its eighth, Alien: Romulushits theaters on August 16. We expect some face-grabbing, skull-splitting scene, their chests exploding violently, the monster curling up slimily on top of our heroes. It’s a familiar motif. But when done right, these recurring beats are incredibly good—this series exists for a reason.
However, in the past 12 years, Alien Movies have become heavy with myths about the terrifying creation of life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe. Elegant creature features have given way to God and existential dilemmas. It’s increasingly unclear whether we’re drawn to grisly scares or dark nihilistic philosophies. Romulus found himself caught between those two modes, wanting efficiency and rhetorical meaning at the same time.
Fede AlvarezThe film is beautifully crafted and darkly compelling, a Alien the misery of people trapped in an impossible, certain-death situation. This time, the people involved are young people, the children of a system of indentured servitude managed with anti-capitalist aplomb by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation—the sinister entity that has loomed over most of the films in this scattered series. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her friends are trapped in a perpetually dark mining area, a bleak place where escape seems impossible. Their parents died while working, and they may suffer the same fate. Still, Rain dreams of a place somewhere in the sun, far away. When the opportunity to steal some hibernation pods and escape her prison presents itself, she thinks she must seize it.
The mission involves hijacking a Weyland-Yutani space station that’s drifting through space, supposedly abandoned. There are, of course, living things on board, which Rain and his crew encounter with horrifying results. In this opening sequence, Álvarez’s work is grimy in a dignified way, cleverly mimicking the rough textures of the first film, all dark corridors and groaning machinery. There’s also a welcome echo of Alien‘s elegy for the working class; these people are just trying to live a little better, and are punished very severely for it. But Romulus also pays more attention to action than its 45-year-old counterpart, requiring the use of CGI and grand spectacle that detracts from the cramped, realistic horror of the film’s first third.
Romulusplaced between Alien And AlienAt first it seems like a straight “sequel” to Alien—basically the same claustrophobic setting, done in a more modern style and aiming to expand the story into the future. Something like Awakening Forceclosely reflects the plot structure of Star Wars without overwriting it. But as Romulus rolling over, it brings together elements from 1986 Alien2012 Prometheusand 2017 Aliens: Covenantbecomes a mishmash of the entire series. Perhaps a little overdone, full of Easter eggs and callbacks—there are electric nudges like Harry Dean Stanton’s nudge in Alien; a vibration of Prometheus The soundtrack serves to evoke the film—while also attempting to create the film’s own language. Romulus‘s contribution to the emerging myth of DNA and the seed of life is certainly crude and scary, but is really just a less appealing reworking of Prometheus And Covenant.
What starts as a modest “there’s a monster in the room with us” horror gradually expands into something baroque. To compensate for that bloat, Romulus attempts to build the story in a personal narrative way: Rain’s deep concern for her “brother”, Andy (David Jonsson), a slightly flawed robot with faulty wiring that makes him a rather subtle stand-in for the neurologically different people in our real world. Benjamin Wallfisch‘s dark, dissonant, sentimental soundtrack is most prominent when Rain and Andy share an emotionally wrenching moment, an oddly sentimental note in a film that’s otherwise cruel to its characters. I suppose you could attribute such concern for family and identity to the softer sensibilities of millennials. (Andy’s storyline also requires the virtual resurrection of a beloved dead actor, a practice I’d like the industry to abandon altogether.)
Still, the film succeeds in its most basic function. A gravity device introduced early on is put to satisfying use two acts later. The horror and desolation of the roaring enormity of outer space is well-crafted. The actors—the cast also includes Archie Renaux, Isabela MercedAnd Spike Fearn—all of which record the harrowing horror of encountering such a ruthless, supernatural, acid-blood-trapped enemy. Without someone like Álvarez to care for and direct, Romulus could certainly be much worse.
One wonders, though, how many more times we can see this sequence of events play out. We’ve seen it in space, we’ve seen it on mysterious planets, we’ve even seen it on Earth. (The latter provides context for Alien vs Predator movies, which I perhaps unfairly included as part of the same series.) As stylish as any future trip might be—and Romulus Certainly—there will likely be an increasing belief that embellishment is the only viable path to originality. It is perhaps ironic that there is so much argument about Romulus and its siblings, that the search for a higher form through dangerous experimentation leads to destruction. Those lessons seem hard to remember. When experimentation doesn’t work—Weyland-Yutani and Hollywood continue to calculate—it’s best to simply try again at a later date, with newer and more dangerous methods.
