Alien: Romulus
Twenty years after Ripley survived Weyland-Yutani Corporation’s mission aboard the Nostromo, twenty-five year-old Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny, "Civil War") is desperate to find a better life than the one that killed her parents in the same corporation’s Jackson's Star mining colony. When her ex, Tyler (Archie Renaux, Netflix's 'Shadow and Bone'), approaches her about using her synthetic ‘brother’ Andy (David Jonsson, HBO's 'Industry') to help steal a ship to journey to a new life, she reluctantly agrees, but when they stop at a decommissioned space station to procure cyropods, they’ll find more than they were looking for in “Alien: Romulus.”
Laura's Review: B
Cowriter (with partner Rodo Sayagues)/director Fede Alvarez breathes new life into an old franchise while honoring the original, just as he did with his 2013 “Evil Dead,” while also repeating “Don’t Breathe’s” suspenseful use of noise and heat detection. This new iteration gives us another conflicted synthetic, this one given emotional underpinning by Jonsson, and layers the film with the maternal instinct, both human and Xenomorph. Best of all, Alvarez has come up with a way to tie the original 1979 “Alien” to “Alien: Prometheus” in a third act stunner of creature design and visual effects.
Rain depends on her ‘brother,’ a broken synthetic her dad found in a trash heap and reprogrammed with dad jokes and the mission to do what is right for Rain, for emotional support amidst life on a planet with 0 days of sunshine and indentured servitude to Weyland-Yutani, the corporation who just doubled Rain’s service as she hit the 12K hours that was supposed to free her from her contract. Jackson Star is a place of metallic grunge and its literal constant grind makes some early dialogue difficult to distinguish. We may also wonder why Andy, Rain’s ex Tyler and his cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn, "Back to Black") have English accents while Rain and Tyler’s sister Kay (Isabela Merced, "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), who Rain will learn is pregnant, and Navarro (newcomer Aileen Wu), who will pilot their ship, have American accents, given that they all grew up in the same place, but that’s a quibble.
A ticking clock is introduced when we learn the crew has only 36 hours to get what they need from the Romulus Remus station before it crashes into Jackson Star’s rings, but that clock drops to below an hour after initial mishaps. As a product of Weyland-Yutani, Andy has the ability to unlock station doors, but the plan is to decommission him once he’s proved his usefulness, the reasons for which are unclear (sound issues), but something Rain has sadly agreed to.
Navarro docks expertly and Tyler, Bjorn and Andy set out to find the cyropods. They’re successful, but the pods only have enough fuel for 3 years when their destination requires enough for 9, so everyone but an ill Kay set off to locate fuel. They’ll find the remains of a synthetic on the edge of a burned out hole and a lab Tyler, Bjorn and Andy enter. They’ll get locked in just as creatures familiar to us but not to them begin to drop into the water around their feet. As the lock requires a science officer’s rank which Andy does not have, Rain thinks fast and retrieves the appropriate disc from the destroyed synthetic, slipping it through for Tyler to insert into Andy. As one might guess, this has unforeseen consequences, like Andy trying to keep them from bringing Navarro back after they’ve removed a face hugger from her head.
One by one, this crew will meet awful fates, Bjorn, Andy’s cruel tormentor, the first to go. Alvarez introduces such concepts as the ability to control gravity, both useful and a hindrance in fighting aliens; an x-ray wand that reveals interior horrors; an alien that shoots acidic blood like spikes and a corporate compound purportedly capable of reversing aging and even death. He also reintroduces a very familiar face and a very familiar phrase.
Spaeny may not project Sigourney Weaver’s badassery, but she holds her own and she and Jonsson create a relationship worth rooting for. “Alien: Romulus” is the eighth movie in this franchise and Alvarez and producer Ridley Scott are still finding stories worth exploring.
Walt Disney Studios releases "Alien: Romulus" in theaters on 8/16/24.
