DISCLAIMER: This article contains major spoilers for Alien: Romulus, as well as every other movie in the Alien series.
1979’s Alien is my favourite movie of all time, and the series is very near and dear to me. Naturally, I was always going to have a pretty high bar for new Alien movies, especially considering the bad has long outweighed the good. Alien: Romulus is the latest space-centric horror to pit a band of unfortunates against the iconic Xenomorph. Directed by Fede Álvarez, Romulus takes place in between Alien and Aliens chronologically, and the director was very emphatic about his desire to channel the first two movies in this series over anything that came after, a decision that sounded promising for fans who, like myself, held those two in particularly high regard. My expectations had been low, but things did sound promising the more Álvarez spoke about his desire to recapture the mystery and tone of the first two movies. I was cautious in my desire to see a new Alien break the mould and live up to the original, but I couldn’t escape that gut feeling that told me this wasn’t going to be the movie I was hoping for. I’m sad to say that gut feeling was correct.
The Sins Of The Father
The decision to set Romulus in between the first two movies was an interesting one, but it also raised a lot of questions about what kind of story it would tell. No more than fifteen years after the events of the first movie, Ellen Ripley’s sole survivorship against the deadly Xenomorph is still very fresh, and she has decades until she awakens from hypersleep and meets the Colonial Marines. Romulus decided to very directly take from Ridley Scott’s horror masterpiece, as the opening scene shows a Weyland-Yutani space probe adrift in space and searching for something very specific. After coming upon the wreckage of the Nostromo, the probe hones in on something indiscernible, a strange black hunk of matter floating amidst pieces of debris. Once it is secured, the scene cuts to a shot of several people wearing what appear to be hazmat suits as the object is surgically sliced open by a laser. Inside is, as some might have guessed, the Xenomorph from the original movie, having been blown out into space by Ripley fifteen years prior. The rough setup for Romulus is that Weyland-Yutani scientists secured the original creature and used its genetic material to make clones that they attempted to breed aboard the Renaissance, a space station comprised of two separate modules; the Remus, and the Romulus.
We follow Rain Carradine and her synthetic(android) “brother”, Andy, as they join a ragtag group of miners doomed to work themselves to death on the Weyland-Yutani-owned colony of Jackson’s Star. Dissatisfied with their lot in life, they formulate a plan to break into the Renaissance and hijack its cryogenic pods so that they can make the nine-year journey to a supposed haven called Yvaga 3. It obviously doesn’t go according to plan. Once aboard, they find the station abandoned and its inhabitants either missing or slaughtered. They also encounter a dismembered synthetic who identifies himself as Rook, an exact physical copy of Ash from Alien(I’ll get to this later). Rook explains the setup above about the discovery of the original Xenomorph, and how the creature came alive after being unsealed from its “chrysalis”. After wreaking havoc across the station, it was eventually killed with gunfire, and its body can actually be seen suspended from cables and chains above the spot where Rook lay dismembered earlier.
No Gods, No Masters
As promised by Álvarez, the first half of the movie is more reminiscent of the original Alien than anything, and it does attempt to recapture the old school, slow-paced horror it is known for. But it does little to live up to its inspiration, even if it tries its best. The first real issue with Romulus that left a bad taste in my mouth, however, was the inclusion of Rook. It has been stated that permission was sought from Ian Holm’s estate to use his likeness for the character, but that still doesn’t really undo the fact that Rook didn’t need to resemble Ash in the first place. He should have just been an entirely new character. His likeness to Ash doesn’t affect his story in any way, and it only serves to give audiences an unnecessary nostalgia trip in what can only be described as an attempt to excite them. Sadly, it had the opposite effect on me, as I would have much preferred if Rook-whose name seems to be an allusion to Bishop from Aliens-was a completely new character whose relevance and importance did not hinge on his appearance being an AI deepfake of the synthetic from Alien. On that note, Rook was supposedly brought to life using facial scans of Ian Holm from his time filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but they made the decision in post-production to “enhance” his appearance, and to assist with lip syncing his dialogue, using deepfake technology. As can be said with any and all use of this tech in cinema, it only hinders the entire experience, and it makes Rook look distractingly uncanny and unrealistic. I don’t know what the world’s weird obsession with deepfake technology is, because it consistently looks truly terrible.
Something I did not mention earlier is that Rain removes a module from Rook earlier in the film and installs it in Andy so that he can open a set of locked doors using Rook’s clearance and allow the trapped colonists to escape a cold storage room full of cloned facehuggers. As a side effect, however, Andy winds up taking on some of Rook’s characteristics, including his English accent and a new directive; to do what is best for the company. On Rook’s orders, Andy leads the other characters through the station to retrieve something known as Compound Z-01. Once they reach it, Rook explains that it is a non-Newtonian fluid actually extracted from Xenomorph DNA. Xenomorphs, as we know, are incredibly durable and can survive almost any adverse conditions, including the vacuum of space if the survival of the original Xenomorph from Alien for fifteen years is any indication. Weyland-Yutani were attempting to use its genetic material to create something that would allow humans to take on this durability, and make the exploration of space and hostile new alien worlds more achievable. Compound Z-01 was the result of their research. This substance resembles something seen before in this series, a volatile black goo encountered by the explorers in Prometheus that grotesquely and violently mutates any organic creature it comes into contact with. Indeed, Rook refers to the compound as “Prometheus’ Fire”, referencing the Greek myth that Ridely Scott’s Prometheus takes its name from. It would appear the compound is supposed to be this substance from Prometheus, in a much more refined form.
I am very much of the opinion that Ridley Scott’s prequels to Alien-of which there are two-are perfectly decent and surprisingly compelling movies in their own rights, but they absolutely do not fit into the Alien universe. They work much better as standalone experiences. Especially Prometheus, which lacks any Xenomorphs at all. On top of this, they don’t seem to have been making any concerted effort to actually connect to Alien at all thus far, and seem more interested in telling the story of the crazed synthetic David, who sets out to experiment with the black goo and create a “perfect organism”. Granted, a supposed third film in this proposed trilogy of prequels was never made, and its chances of still being made are very much up in the air. But I still find it hard to believe that it would have fit in any cleaner with this series than its predecessors. Álvarez’s decision to incorporate its plot elements so bluntly and openly is a disappointing one, as the focus on the compound immediately detracts from the nuanced cosmic horror Romulus attempts to build in its first half. In the lab where Compound Z-01 is being contained, footage also shows a rat injected with it being crushed, only to revive itself moments later. That rat would go on to horribly mutate and disfigure, judging by the grotesque rodent body bursting out of its cage in the same lab. As if this ham-fisted link to the prequels wasn’t obvious enough, Rook also says that they will succeed where “Mr. Weyland” failed, a reference to Peter Weyland, who dies during the events of Prometheus in his search for everlasting life.
Game Over
While one might expect the entire second half of the movie to follow more closely in the footsteps of Aliens, it is instead essentially a single scene where the characters enter a hive that has been created by multiple Xenomorphs aboard the station. Once inside, droves of the creatures come out of the very walls and start attacking the colonists, and Rain utilises a pulse rifle-much different in appearance and functionality to the one seen in Aliens-to mow down as many of them as she can. After a tense battle through the hive, Rain convinces a malfunctioning Andy to let her remove Rook’s module, after which Andy returns to normal and apologises for his betrayal. In the elevator shaft shortly after this, the last Xenomorph is finally killed by Andy and he, along with Rain, make their escape back to their ship, the Corbelan. But Romulus does not end here, and I almost would have debated overlooking its issues if not for what came next.
One of the colonists that accompanies the group to the Renaissance is a woman named Kay, who spends most of the movie on the Corbelan in bed due to being pregnant. After Andy receives Rook’s module and Navarro, one of the colonists, flees back to the Corbelan after being impregnated by a facehugger, Kay witnesses Navarro die as a young Xenomorph emerges from her chest. Kay later runs from the Corbelan when the resulting fully-grown creature kills her cousin, Bjorn, and begins to pursue her. After sustaining various injuries and being snatched away and cocooned in the hive by the Xenomorph that killed Bjorn, Kay is rescued by Rain and Andy before Rain instructs her to head back to the Corbelan and wait for them. Kay, however, is in possession of the Compound Z-01 sample taken from the lab, and has presumably inferred from an earlier conversation that using it will possibly ensure her survival and prevent her succumbing to her injuries, as well as save her unborn child. Kay injects herself with the compound and heads back to the Corbelan. When Kay and Andy return, she is clearly under duress, but Rain places her in a cryopod to keep her alive until they can get her help. Unfortunately, this does not go according to plan and the pod fails during her stasis. This is where things really take a turn for the worst.
The Abomination
After Kay is removed from her cryopod, she appears to be much more heavily pregnant than before and she then very gruesomely and disturbingly gives birth to an alien-looking cocoon of some sort. The cocoon shortly hatches, giving us a glimpse of a supposedly human foetus, but it is incredibly pale in colour and it has also hatched from a cocoon that resembles a Xenomorph egg, so it is safe to say this creature is far from human anymore. Rain kicks the cocoon into the cargo bay and heads down in search of its contents while Kay and Andy remain near the crypods. The Offspring, as the new monster has been officially named, grows to full size within minutes and it stands much taller than a regular human when it reappears. What many fans of the Alien series will immediately notice is that it seems to resemble an Engineer, a race of alien creatures introduced in Prometheus. Ridley Scott’s prequel storyline goes as follows; the Engineers were an advanced race of aliens that are implied to have created humanity, possibly using the chemical nicknamed the black goo. After the explorers from the ship Prometheus discover the last of the Engineers in stasis, they awaken him in search of answers about the origins of humanity, and a possible secret to immortality. The last Engineer instead turns hostile and attempts to fly his spacecraft away, seemingly towards Earth, carrying a cargo hold full of urns containing the black goo. The implication is that he seeks to drops these urns on Earth to wipe out humanity. In Alien: Covenant, it is revealed that David instead dropped these urns on a supposed Engineer home planet, where much more primitive and less advanced variants of the Engineers live. The result of the bombing causes the aliens to die horrific, painful deaths, and several nasty creatures come to evolve on the planet as a result of the back goo.
The crew of the Prometheus discover earlier in the movie that human and Engineer DNA are almost an exact match, meaning the Engineers created humanity using their own DNA. Meaning, by extension, that there is Engineer DNA in every human being. The Offspring, in both visual appearance and genetics, is clearly a three-way hybrid of human, Engineer, and Xenomorph. The compound that Kay injected herself with contaminated her unborn child, infusing it with the genetic material of a Xenomorph and causing its outward appearance to regress to that of the race whose DNA it shares. The Offspring seems to be a perfect analogy for Alien: Romulus; a disgusting, unwelcome combination of what came before, but not nearly as interesting or effective. The first half of Romulus incorporates the return of the original Xenomorph, as well as attempting to recapture the more subtle, less-action packed horror of Ridley Scott’s Alien. The pulse rifle, as well as the hive scene and the decision to name the synthetic science officer Rook, are all clear references to James Cameron’s Aliens. References to Alien 3 are largely absent, although a piece of music bearing almost the exact same melody as the music that plays during Ripley’s death scene can be heard after Rain kills the Offspring. The creature itself is basically a rehash of the Newborn from Alien: Resurrection, a movie widely regarded as the worst in the series. And the plotline surrounding Compound Z-01 and its mutagenic properties are a clear link to Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Had Álvarez instead decided to laser-focus in on Alien and Aliens as his sole inspirations, we may have gotten a much different movie. And a better movie, at that.
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
For all its issues and crises of identity, Romulus does a lot right. For one, this might be the first movie set in this universe since Alien 3 to nail the retro-futuristic aesthetic and style. Where the prequels have opted for Star Wars-level holograms and spectacle over style, Romulus instead draws upon the antiquated old monitors and panels of chunky buttons reminiscent of the first Alien in its opening minutes. There are a very small handful of moments where it veers into Prometheus territory, but it mostly clings to the recognisable tech of Alien and Aliens. The horror is also pretty effective. During the scene where Bjorn is killed by the young Xenomorph, it also emerges from its cocoon shortly after and the entire sequence is chilling. The beast slides out of its fleshy prison, a process no doubt intentionally visually similar to real life birth(and inspired by HR Giger’s sexual horror art), and very slowly and eerily stands upright in its new body. Kay flees in terror, but the Xenomorph can be seen behind her coming to grips with its adult form and stretching out its skeletal new limbs. A scene also follows this where Kay is crawling beneath a metal walkway, before the Xenomorph jumps down and lands on it with a loud crash. It proceeds to stalk her, knowing she is in the room somewhere but not sure of her exact location. The tension throughout is pretty significant, a feat also arguably not achieved since the earlier movies in this series. While the Offspring is a more unfitting addition to Romulus, the entire final act where it skulks about the Corbelan and hunts the remaining survivors is truly disturbing. From its gruesome birth, to its reveal as a fully grown monstrosity, to its slow and shambling initial movements on all fours, and even its death, the Offspring has a very memorable and very uncomfortable fifteen minutes of fame. But it, like so many other elements of Romulus, would have been much more at home in a completely different movie.
I think where Álvarez failed was trying to incorporate too many elements at once. Romulus suffers most from a lack of its own identity because it eventually devolves into a series of references to previous movies, short-lived horror sequences interspersed with some action, and shaky storytelling. Rook serves as little more than a reference to what came before, as well as a means to offer exposition to the main characters. Had they been allowed to discover the secrets of the Romulus and the Xenomorphs on their own, the experience might have been more enjoyable. And more well-rounded, for that matter. For a large section of the movie, the characters seem to be rushing through different areas of the station and navigating Xenomorph-infested passageways. They actually very rarely bond and build rapports with one another, and when they do speak they are usually speaking to Rook. It’s difficult to become attached to the new faces when half of them exist purely to die in different bloody ways, and the other half ironically exist just to be pawns for Rook to use as he pleases. And when the story does look to be coming to a close, an entirely new monster is introduced out of the blue. One aspect of Romulus’s character work that is done refreshingly well is the relationship between Rain and Andy, to the point that a part of me almost wishes they were alone in their quest to pillage cryopods from the Renaissance. Under different circumstances, the two “siblings” could have had much more of a chance to bond and learn about the Xenomorphs side by side, while Andy’s fleeting role as a villain working for the company could have been given fully to Rook altogether. It feels like a missed opportunity.
Thematically, Romulus does some very interesting things with the Greek myth that inspired its name. For those who don’t know, Remus and Romulus were twin brothers who suckled milk from a she-wolf in their youth. Romulus would go on to kill Remus, before founding the city of Rome. The inspiration here appears to be mortals who attain great power from another creature. Where the twins gained power from the milk of the she-wolf, Weyland-Yutani and the researchers aboard the Renaissance extracted power from the original Xenomorph in the form of its clones and Compound Z-01. Additionally, the group of colonists that board the Renaissance in search of cryopods are all seemingly pairs of siblings, an obvious parallel with the story of Remus and Romulus. The fact that Romulus does so much right, and almost achieves its potential, makes the final product so much more disappointing. The attempt to capitalise on the best parts of every movie was its downfall, and Fede Álvarez’s attempt at reviving the franchise instead resembles the horribly mutated Offspring more than the original Xenomorph longtime fans were hoping for. Perhaps the Alien series is better off dead after all.
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