Directed by:
Fede AlvarezCinematography:
Galo OlivaresComposer:
Benjamin WallfischCast:
Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, Robert BobroczkyiPlots(1)
While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. (20th Century Studios)
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Reviews (15)
It is necessary to make full use of resources obtained at great cost, even if the result is only some kind of bastardised mutant. This is true for Weyland-Yutani and its real-life equivalent, The Walt Disney Company. The most surprising aspect of Alien: Romulus is its anti-originality. This time around, the Disneyfication of the franchise doesn’t have the feel of a refresh with new characters (as was the case with Star Wars: The Force Awakens), nor does it work as cultish fan-service along the lines of the serial clones from Marvel. Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues wilfully turned out a CGI remix of the Alien franchise’s greatest hits, which lends itself to a game of bingo on the theme of “which cult scene, popular one-liner or iconic shot from the preceding films will be paraphrased in the next scene”. The charm (and uniqueness) of the original Alien tetralogy consists in the fact that it comprises diametrically different and stylishly and supremely distinctive films (I won’t even say anything bad about the fantastically crackpot fourth one. Alien: Romulus is only a derivative, or rather the film equivalent of an Alien-themed ride at Disneyworld – we passively pass by a series of well-known scenes that are impressively yet lifelessly rendered and something occasionally amuses or scares us, but we walk away completely unmoved at the end. Though Prometheus was silly nonsense and elicited exasperation and hatred, it is still better than this precisely crafted definition of the term “content” from the vocabulary of media corporations.
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In terms of plot, Alien: Romulus is more sophisticated than Prometheus and Covenant combined, but it’s not much more clever than Alien vs. Predator. Ridley Scott understood that if he wanted to appeal to a new generation of viewers and successfully continue his Alien campaign, he would have to pass the baton to an energetic craftsman, such as the one who gave an intense restart to the Evil Dead franchise for young viewers. The characters in Romulus are teenagers, a fact that is unacceptable for us lovers of the original, serious genre pillars of cinema. Fedez Alvarez blends together the previous Alien films' iconic moments, which will not surprise the connoisseurs, but will thrill young viewers who are unfamiliar with them. We can appreciate the effort to make an upgrade through innovations (the fine resurrection of Ian Holm), but without using them in a well-thought-out way in the plot, they are there only superficially for effect. The film almost ceased to hold my interest when the characters failed to close behind themselves the huge door to the room containing the facehuggers, in which they had previously increased the temperature so that they could safely pass through it. And there is more such sloppiness that negates the newly shown rules of the Alien world even for novices. And that’s a shame.
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A pop horror flick that appeals to Generation Z and won't offend the oldies. On the positive side, I'll take the superb and highly talented Cailee Spaeny and the fantastic last half hour, and on the negative side, the simple fact that the other teens are all interchangeable, I didn't find my way to them at all and didn't care if the monster made a sandwich out of them. Yes, it's nice to look at, it has the hallmark of the 70s technique Ridley Scott established in his masterpiece, the atmosphere is nicely depressing and claustrophobic, but for the first two-thirds the film painfully lacks in any kind of tension, because apart from Cailee I - as I've already written - hadn't built up any rapport with the characters and consequently didn't experience the threat of the facehuggers as such at all. Fortunately, there are enough references and allusions to previous episodes, and as a connoisseur I appreciate how "disjointed" it is in that respect: the first third is slowburn old Alien, the second the warlike Aliens, and the last one is a return to the first one, with Fede Álvarez literally quoting it. So yeah, I actually had a decent time, and since Álvarez unloaded a few scenes I hadn’t seen in this genre before, I give the film four spits of acid.
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I have another piece for my collection of Andy's slow-circuit films. You know what they should call the stepbrother Rain? Rain Man. The concept feels schizophrenic, just like an android whose control chip keeps switching back and forth. Set between the first and second installments, Fede Alvarez wanted to cover everything up to Covenant, but at the same time, he didn’t want to suppress his own talent. The result? A generic installment that just tortures the franchise further. Similarly, Benjamin Wallfisch's music, which borrows from Goldsmith and Horner, suddenly slams in something akin to a romantic ballad. Everything clashes horribly, and I don’t just mean the new Vasquez with an endless magazine, but rather the attempt to please everyone, including the corporate producers. This is partly explained by the fact that while the average age of the crew on the Nostromo was 39.7 years, here it’s 24.4. A junior with a PC game face and a body drenched in 33% cream, naturally, doesn’t fit into the statistics.
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Trip to famous waters, which I really didn't want to go on. I didn't believe in Fedem Alvarez that he would deal with the legend of these dimensions, I didn't believe in the genre setting of the announced pure-blood vampire, but when critics, viewers and revenues laughed at Scott's misunderstood Covenant years ago, there was probably no other way. But it works and the combination of modern editing with dirty and oily technique is aggressive and beautiful from the first minute. The aggressive creature is given enough space, the human crew makes mistakes that are understandable and can make clever and logical decisions at key moments. There is so much winking at the past that I was daydreaming, knowing that with a bit of exaggeration I was watching Alien 1.5. Not to mention that finally, after years of waiting, the lines drawn from the classic quadrilogy and the mythology of Prometheus are finally combined, which is a gift that I never expected to receive. Thanks to this enrichment, Romulus is truly not just a fun horror, not a side chapter that the series could do without. It's a reward for those who never completely gave up on Alien (and who can see beyond the first turn and don't mind that the script plays a bit subversively with them using iconic lines). I understand the arguments about the polarizing final chapter, without it I would be happier than I am with it now. On the other hand, I must applaud the courage that was not even held by the brave and genre visually disintegrated Resurrection almost thirty years ago. The fact that the result of such an experiment did not meet my expectations is my struggle. Everyone who sees the saga as a whole and not just as a space for eternal (and today really endlessly tiresome) argument about which of the first two parts is better should also try such a fight.
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Photo © 20th Century Studios
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