More Competent Than Inspired

(082924) Alien Romulus is a slick, energetic, and competent entry in the Alien series. The film takes place between the first two films and it even contains an android identical to Ash from the first film. Viewers may think of this film as Alien one and a half.
The film is always watch able but it is also frequently predictable. I could tell in the first half hour exactly which characters would survive and which would die. In contrast, in the Walking Dead show and comics which were brilliant for a long time anyone could die at any minute.

Alien: Romulus was produced by the director of the original Alien film and Prometheus, Ridley Scott, who was presumably too busy with Gladiator 2 to direct this himself. Supposedly Scott and James Cameron who did Aliens loved this film, but I still would have preferred it if either one got another shot at any film, rather than a newcomer. The first two films were creating a mythology whereas this one is mostly following a formula and trying to recapture old great moments.

The film was directed by Fede Alvarez and also made the 2013 re-imagining of Evil Dead. Although it was scary and had a great ending, it lacked the quirky humor of the Raimi directed Evil Dead films. Like his Evil Dead film, Alien: Romulus is packed with shocking scenes of carnage and the occasional dollop of creative gore. Alvarez seems to love nothing more than depicting people getting eviscerated in all sorts of ways onscreen. In this film Fangoria magazine fans will be happy to hear that we get to see an alien impale a person with his tongue, another spits acid on a human burning many of his body parts , and there are also two grotesque mock child births that result in body counts. I think one would have probably been enough.

While this is not the worst entry in the series (that distinction belongs to Alien vs Predator: Requiem), we have seen a lot of this material and these ideas before, and sometimes the territory has been covered better in other films. Alien: Requiem never comes close to the brilliance of the first two films in the series (Alien from 79 and Aliens from 86) although there are a few interesting new twists in here. Prometheus was more intellectually engaging and I also had more fun seeing Alien 4 even though that films was flawed.

No one here has an ounce of the charisma or any of the stage presence of Sigourney Weaver who is one of the best action stars in the history of cinema or for that matter no one here is even as interesting to watch as Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace in Prometheus.

For the most part most of the actors are fine even if none of the performances screams out “potential Oscar nominee.” Most of the cast is made up of second tier actors that made their names in fantasy, sci fi films or other genre films. Cailee Spaeny (from Pacific Rim Rising) and David Jonsson (from Rye Lane) give mostly sympathetic, believable performances and you may end up caring more about this synthetic man than the biological humans in this film. Isabella Boner (from Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Transformers: The Last Knight) plays a nice but not especially intelligent young woman who makes lots of bad choices.

The film often feels recycled, but it does differ from the other Alien films in several significant ways. In a Stranger Things like twist this is the only film in the series which features an almost all teen cast (except for the androids) fighting the monsters and the film could have been called Aliens vs Teens. This makes you question how a hand full of clever but untrained teens can present a challenge to nearly indestructible beings that decimated a whole army in Alien 3, and like that film the color choices make some scenes here seem murky and undefined.

To make it more of an equal fight the Aliens rely on the help of one “good” android who tries to preserve their lives, and the teens also have access to some experimental weapons that can destroy the aliens which gives them a little bit of a fighting chance. Even though the teens are supposed to be smart they make all the same stupid mistakes as the humans in the other films.

Like the film Prometheus, the name comes from mythology. The tale of Romulus and Remus is a Roman story of man who kills his identical twin and went on to found Rome. This film suggests the xenomorphs are the counterparts or “brothers” of humans or the twin race to humans and one might have to terminate the other to survive. This spins out of the idea from Prometheus that both humans and xenomorphs were genetically engineered by the same Godlike ETs. This is not the best delivered or most natural analogy.

To say the film’s main character, Rain has had it rough would be a gross understatement. She lives in a miserable mining colony where most of the population spends most of their days doing manual labor as indentured servants. Most of the people in her home colony were wiped out by a disease and her parents are dead. Presumably, many people also worked themselves to death on a dirty work colony that is filled with soot and despair. Then on the day when Rain is supposed to leave, she is informed that her leaving has been postponed. The soul crushing company that employs her has decided that they are making the requirements for leaving much stricter and now she must work an additional 12000 hours before she can leave.

Rain has a few bright spots in her life. Rain is close to Andy, the damaged synthetic being she was raised with, He is in every important way her brother. Before her dad died, he found a damaged android and fixed him up as well as he could then he programmed him to above all put the needs of his “sister” above everything else including his own. He tries to act like a family member and even tells her constant bad ”dad jokes” in order to make himself feel more fatherly but in other ways he is the child in the relationship. Tyler is Rain’s sort of boyfriend who is in a budding relationship with her. Rain is also close to Tyler’s sister, Kay, who confides at one point that she is pregnant and the father is no longer involved with her.

Rain’s friends and coworkers are in the same boat she is in, and they are treated as if they are the refuse of society. But a small opportunity opens up for them that gives them hope. Apparently, an abandoned space station is hovering above them. Although it is devoid of human life it still contains up to date machinery and technology. The oppressed workers decide to steal the small flying machine which is used to haul things to reach the station so they can fill it up with gas and escape their wretched situation., But they are about to go from the proverbial frying pan to the fire.

There are hints that the space station was a lab where scientists tried to create a hybrid of humans and xenomorphs that were supposed to superior workers. The androids think that they and the aliens are more evolved and superior to humans. One of them argues that humans should be artificially evolved and says, “we simply cannot wait for evolution” which directly points to the ending. Spoiler alert: The conclusion which is magnificent recalls the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead and goes a long way to redeeming the rest of the film. For some this great scene may go too far but for others it will make the whole film worth watching.

But there is one big reason why the film irked me and it is the main reason why the film did not get a higher rating. Alien: Romulus uses an animatronic replica of deceased actor Ian Holm, and it uses AI in order to exploit his likeness in the film. The new android, Rook looks identical to Holm’s Ash and has a similar personality and programming. Some might see this as the future of film (maybe we can watch a new Bogart film one day) but for me it is the cinematic equivalent to robbing a grave or defiling the dead. If film makers can just capture and reuse the likeness and voice of an actor, after they do that why do you need the actor at all? Just because something can be done does not mean it should be done. The film makers get into a murky moral area with this AI grave robbing and they seem to not consider the negative ramification of new science and they ultimately show they will do anything for a buck.