Alien: Romulus

A crew of indentured corporate colonists attempt to loot a derelict space station, and end up coming face to face with one of the most terrifying life-forms in the universe.

In 2142, twenty years after the first Alien movie, a probe owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation recovers an alien from the wreckage of the USCSS Nostromo, the same ship that Ellen Ripley and her cat Jonesy abandoned at the end of the first film.

Months later, just as she was about to finally be clear of her contract, right when she was about to be free from the yoke of corporate servitude, indentured colonist Rain Carradine discovers that Weyland-Yutani has extended her work contract from 12,000 hours to 24,000. This means that she is now stuck there in Jackson’s Star, a rundown shithole of a corporate-controlled colony, on the perpetually dark planet LV-410, for another year and a half at least. This also means that she is now stuck working down in the mines for another year and a half at least, in the kind of dangerous working conditions that more likely than not will kill her long before this new year and a half are up.

This is the last straw for Rain.

It's also a glimpse into the exact future that shitheads like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg want, one that Trump is more than willing to create, and one that the overwhelming majority of White America, across all demographics, continues to vote in support of, but hey... at least there's no immigrants trying to have a better life, right? At least there isn't a transgender middle schooler somewhere trying to play volleyball with her friends, right?

Anyway...

Desperate for a way out, Rain signs herself and her “adopted brother” Andy–a malfunctioning android reprogrammed by her now deceased father–up to join a risky longshot of a heist.

The plan is to steal one of the colony's small haulers, which is basically a space ship/dumptruck, and use it to fly up to a seemingly abandoned Weyland-Yutani space station hanging in a degrading orbit in the upper atmosphere above LV-410. Once there, they plan to steal the station’s cryostasis equipment before the station burns up in the atmosphere. If they pull it off, no one will even know that anything was stolen from the station, and haulers go missing all the time, so they will be free to make the jump to Yvaga III. Yvaga III is a distant and supposedly idyllic planet, one that, most importantly, is not controlled by Weyland-Yutani. And once they get there... they'll simply live free of corporate tyranny.

But first, if they want to survive the nine-year journey across space, they need that cryostasis equipment.

Complicating matters, the heist is headed up by Rain's ex-boyfriend Tyler, who is not happy with the way things ended between them. The rest of the group is made up of Tyler’s younger sister Kay, who is pregnant with Bjorn’s baby, their dickhead cousin, who is also part of the group, as is Bjorn's adopted sister Navarro, who will be their pilot.

The crew doesn't need Rain. In fact, some of them don't even like her, but they do need Andy, even though they don't really like him either. But Andy is an android, so he can communicate with the station’s AI. Without him, they won't be able to dock with the station. But Andy's programming is glitchy, and he's sometimes slow to process things, and while he wants to go, he won't go without Rain, because he loves her and depends on her. Rain, meanwhile, knows the others don't give a shit about Andy. She knows they're using him, and that they'll discard him at the first opportunity if she doesn't go too. So while she knows they're using her too, and that she can't trust any of them, not to mention the fact that it's clear that none of them are qualified to pull off a job like this...

Rain agrees.

In the end, she just isn't willing to continue her life here on Jackson's Star as an endentured slave to the Weyland-Yutani corporation.

But after that very promising opening, things quickly go downhill…

Because (Spoiler...) the space station is home to Weyland-Yutani‘s Research and Development group, or at least (Spoiler...) it was. But then they tried to experiment on the alien they found in the wreckage of Ripley’s ship, and (Spoiler...) it got loose and killed everyone.

Now guess what happens to the heist crew…

Especially once the idiots start fucking with shit they shouldn’t fuck with, and not reading anything, or checking on anything, and generally just blundering around in a very dangerous situation, which means things happen the way they usually do in the Alien franchise: The androids prove to be untrustworthy, the facehuggers face-fuck, the aliens swarm, and the humans die stupid. In a nutshell, everything goes to hell pretty quickly, some of it due to the aliens, but mostly it's due to the dumb assholes on the heist crew.

Alien: Romulus is basically Fuck Around, Find Out: The Movie.

Once the dying starts, it isn’t long until our Final Girl (who played Priscilla in the movie Priscilla) is the last lady standing, and she TCBs in the usual Alien movie way. And then in the end, when it's all said and done, as per tradition, she floats off into space in a cyropod, headed for an unknown future. Fingers crossed we never hear from her again.

But we probably will, because Hollywood has never met a franchise they weren't willing to beat to death in the street.

...Except for Deep Rising, which is a god damn shame.

Anyway, I did not like this film. In fact, I hate that this film has such a good core idea, and a good set-up too, but then it’s executed in the most boring, uninspiring, and terrible way possible. That sucks.

Alien: Romulus sucks.

Chronologically taking place a decade or two after Alien, and a decade or two before its sequel Aliens, the best thing you can say about Alien: Romulus is that it can be easily forgotten as far as the franchise is concerned. Otherwise, this film is mostly a good illustration of the lesson that James Cameron understood without being told, but lesser filmmakers apparently have to waste millions of dollars in order to figure out.

James Cameron understood he couldn’t beat the original Alien movie at its own game, so love it or hate it, he did something completely different with the sequel. Alien: Romulus, on the other hand, is a soulless studio-mandated reboot of the Alien franchise for younger audiences. That mandate? Re-do Alien. Kinda. Only the greatest hits. And NO surprises. Also throw in some of the famous moments and lines from Aliens. In fact, go ahead and cherry pick some of the good stuff from pretty much every Alien movie. Even Alien 3.

Alien: Romulus is basically Homage: the Movie

The most obvious example would be the appearance of the damaged android science officer Rook. Rook is a Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2 android, just like the android Ash from the first Alien film, which was played by Ian Holm, a model that has always been a bit twitchy. The part that makes it weird is that Ian Holm died in 2020, so his CGI zombie was brought back to life for this film, which is always kind of creepy, but it's moreso when you realize that it's not necessary to the story at all, and they're only re-doing it because this same shit pretty much happened in the first Alien film too.

Also, the M41A pulse rifle from the movie Aliens makes an appearance, and just like in the movie Aliens, the heist crew can’t fire them inside of the station. The reasons why they can’t fire them are not the same as the reasons in Aliens, but it’s close enough. And even worse, because of those reasons, you can't help but notice the fact that there would be no situation where anyone would be able to use these guns on the station, which then leads you to the question: Why are they even part of the inventory in the first place? It’s like a dynamite factory having a roomful of flares “just in case.” It’s so dumb. And of course, this only highlights that they’re only including these distinct weapons for the direct homage. That’s it. They're not even subtle about it.

Now, some people will go, “but this time the guns have aim assist!” But true nerds will know that this is a deep-cut fanfic callback too, as aim assistance was listed in the Colonial Marine Technical Manual as part of the M56 Smartguns carried by Vasquez and Drake in Aliens. Also, and this can't be stated enough... the aim assist has no function in the story, so why is it even mentioned?

Alien: Romulus is basically Fan-fic: The Movie.

There’s callbacks to the robot sentry gun sequence, to Bishop being torn in half, and to the automated warning to reach minimum safe distance. There’s a woman with a shaved head. There’s the final recorded message before getting into a cryo-pod. There’s a sudden violent decompression into space. There’s an alien leaning in close and menacing Ripley… I mean, Rain.

They say the “artificial person” line, and the “busy little creatures” line, and of course, “get away from her, you bitch.” It’s like the Scary Movie franchise, but not funny at all. So… it’s like the Scary Movie franchise. And while it definitely sticks to the Alien franchise aesthetic, it also very much has a Firefly/Expanse kind of feel to it, which means that it has an Alien: Resurrection feel to it.

On and on and on.

But still, I do love the idea. A lot.

That the film is basically a heist movie involving a bunch of corporate indentured servants who have to choose between a short life in the colony mines, or a longshot at freedom on a distant planet, and all under a ticking clock as the space station is about to crash into an asteroid belt… that’s awesome. That's a great framework for your story. I really wish the film had been worthy of the idea, but it wasn’t.

I’ve bitched before about how I hate the fact that people misuse the term “Xenomorph” when it comes to this franchise, which is just a generic placeholder term for “unknown alien“ and not the actual name of this alien species. So I really loved that this film uses Weyland-Yutani's official designation: XX121 Xenomorph, which has appeared in some of the guidebooks and comics.

XX121, people! Start using it, god damn it!

Also, the film does have some good visuals, like when Navarro uses the portable X-ray on herself, only to discover that there's an alien gestating within her. Or course, this is ruined by the fact that, much like the M-41 pulse rifle, it has no other reason to appear in the film except for this one specific moment. It looked cool, but it had absolutely no other purpose in the story, which is some incredibly hacky bullshit.

Oh, and there was this crazy shit too…

I love how ridiculous and alien it looks, but again... This has been done in Alien: Resurrection. And the creature dies in the basic same way that all of the Final Boss Aliens do in the Alien movie franchise.

This whole film is nothing but half-assed Greatest Hits retreads.

In the end, Alien: Romulus is a cheap copy of cheaper fan fiction. It’s bad, it’s boring, it’s uneventful, it’s uninspired. It's a shit movie, people. There are better versions of this film in this franchise that you should be watching instead. Much better films. After watching this film, I’d say that maybe it’s time to put the whole Aliens franchise into cryosleep, but I happen to be enjoying the Aliens vs Avengers comicbook by Hickman and Ribic, so maybe there’s still some life left in the old gal, but either way, one thing's for certain, none of that life can be found here.

This is an empty and uninspired garbage hole of a film. Don’t bother watching it. Forget it exists, because it's a complete waste of your time.