By Kirk Boxleitner
Watching Alien: Romulus was a rare experience for me, as I saw a thoroughly entertaining and well-made film, but one that left me less optimistic about the future of the franchise it is associated with.
The original film “Alien” premiered in 1979 and officially became a franchise with the release of the first sequel, “Aliens,” in 1986.
Both films are generally considered critical and box office successes, but the track record of the half-dozen or so features that followed is, to say the least, more uneven.
The good news is that Alien: Romulus is by far the best film in the series since the first two.
What’s troubling is that almost all of its greatest strengths come from recreating many of the best aspects of 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens.
Many intellectual properties have essentially focused on producing endless covers of their own biggest hits, so a film franchise could suffer an even worse fate.
But especially after the reductionist pandering to fans of the “Alien vs. Predator” films of 2004 and 2007, followed by the initially promising but ultimately failed “Prometheus” prequels of 2012 and 2017, I am somewhat dismayed that the best “Alien” film in decades is limited to the same three chords as the first two films in the series.
But enough insider analysis for now. If you like suspense, bloodshed and gunfire, Alien: Romulus is a well-crafted piece of media that offers well-earned shock moments, uncomfortable body horror, suitably impressive space spectacles, not-so-subtle sociopolitical commentary and a few surprising bursts of fond nostalgia.
“Alien: Romulus” takes place in the time period between the events of the first “Alien” and those of “Aliens”.
In the middle of the 22nd century, Weyland-Yutani, the most unpopular corrupt corporation of all time, has transformed a dark, remote planet barely habitable for human life into an isolated mining colony that manages to exploit its employees even worse than the real-life “company towns” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Due to the inhospitable environmental and working conditions, a group of young orphans desperately try to escape their forcibly extended contracts, even risking the recovery of an abandoned space station that has drifted near their planet.
Their goal is to recover the cryosleep chambers that will enable their crew to survive the nine-year journey to the nearest neighboring planet.
Unfortunately, they do not know until they are on board the space station is that it has failed because it made the mistake of recovering some alien survivors from the wreckage of another abandoned spacecraft in the depths of space.
While Sigourney Weaver was a reassuring constant in the first four Alien films, she hasn’t returned to the franchise since 1997’s Alien Resurrection. However, Alien: Romulus features a familiar face that I don’t want to give away but never expected to see again.
One of the merits of this film is that the appearance of this character is completely consistent with the established mythos of the “Alien” series and, perhaps more importantly, received the blessing of the actor’s estate.
The new faces in the cast do well, if a little forgettable overall. Cailee Spaeny follows up her stellar performances from last year’s Priscilla and this year’s Civil War, while David Jonsson first caught my attention here, turning what initially threatened to be a problematic portrayal into something uniquely nuanced and unsettling.
Having grown up with many of Isaac Asimov’s classic robot stories about the “Three Laws,” I appreciated seeing yet another way in which a robot’s programming could be perverted to act in what is perceived to be the best interest of the greatest number of people.
By far the most innovative aspects of this “Alien” film are the innovative fight sequences in zero gravity and the admittedly scientifically inaccurate race against time in which our protagonists’ spaceship must avoid a collision with Saturn’s rings.
By definition, Alien: Romulus isn’t a must-see for fans of that franchise, as its status as a mid-quel means the film can’t have any ripple effects on the larger mythology, but at least it makes the film’s back-and-forth an engaging experience.
