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Alien: Romulus (2024)

"I can't lie about your chances, but you have my sympathies."


Even if you just based it on the law of averages, rather than diminishing returns, eventually you would get a project in this seemingly neverending franchise made after 1986 that didn't suck the sweat off a dead mans balls.

Prometheus threatened to do exactly that and I really enjoyed it, despite its flaws, even over the jeering and derision that most audience members attributed to it. Then Covenant really took the whole thing one firm step backwards. If you went looking, you can still find my review of Prometheus on several syndicated websites, highlighting its numerous shortcomings. Yet it was still the film I watched most often in its year of release. Not as good as XYZ, but still better than the tripe that had recently come before it.


Unfortunately, it took a video game (god forbid) to really pick up the baton and do things like they should be done. Alien: Isolation was streets ahead of anything that had come since James Cameron had gotten his hands on it. The reason was not originality.


The opposite was true - a deep love and respect for the source material, design, atmosphere and aesthetics accompanied with anal detail and an almost devout love for the canon. Isolation proved what you could do with all of these things, plus enviable talent in almost all departments.


Alvarez has taken note of this, almost certainly, judging by his approach to the world our characters now find themselves. Setting this addition squarely between Scott's orginal and Cameron's sequel, we realise that Ripley blowing the alien out of the airlock was not quite the last we were going to see of it.


The casting at first glance comes across as a little too Maze Runner/Divergent in its young adult approach. But as time goes on and the cannon fodder starts to dwindle, we're left with a capable main cast, not least Priscilla's Cailee Spaeny and Rye Lane's David Jonsson. Spaeny is no Sigourney Weaver, of course, and there would be no point in trying to prove otherwise, so despite some very real nods to Ripley as a respectful reminder, I don't imagine a new iconic science fiction heroine has been born.


Perhaps it's nothing more than this generations' attention span at its core, but this lacks the tension that both Alien and Aliens had in spades, Alien especially. Scott kept his xenomorph under wraps for a lot longer, not least due to budgetary constraints, I would imagine. Romulus' budget was a fairly modest 80 million dollars. Ridley Scott's budget was a mere 11 million (it was 1979, mind you).


Alvarez violently hurls the kitchen sink at you, which admittedly does keep your attention, but for entirely different reasons. We know what an Alien looks like already, so the reveal is maybe not quite the payoff it would have been at the time we first encountered it.


Overall, this is better than I was expecting, but I honestly wasn't expecting much. The franchise has been all about the dollar for far too long, until Isolation showed what love for the canon could achieve and Alvarez has clearly attempted to approach Romulus with the same reverence. He hasn't quite achieved it, but deserves kudos for even trying, where an easy cash grab may have been more tempting.




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