August 16, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Culture Representation: Taking place in the year 2781, mostly in outer space, the sci-fi/action/horror film “Alien: Romulus” (part of the “Alien” movie franchise) features a racially diverse group of people (white, black, Asian, Latin) who are young space colonizers.
Culture Clash: During an unauthorized mission, the space travelers encounter an army of vicious and deadly alien creatures.
Culture Audience: “Alien Romulus” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the “Alien” franchise and movies that skillfully blend suspense with science fiction and gory horror.
After a slow and somewhat jumbled start, “Alien: Romulus” gets better as it goes along. It’s one of the most suspenseful and visually striking movies in the “Alien” franchise, with a nearly perfect mix of science fiction and horror. The movie leans into some nostalgia for the first two “Alien” movies, but it does so in a way that seems like the right amount of fan service instead of being lazy and pandering.
Written and directed by Fede Alvarez (who co-wrote the “Alien: Romulus” screenplay with Rodo Sayagues), “Alien: Romulus” is the type of franchise movie where viewers don’t need to see any of the other movies in the franchise. Viewers who don’t know anything about the best “Alien” movies—including the original 1979 “Alien” film and the 1986 sequel “Aliens,” starring Sigourney Weaver has chief heroine Ripley—might enjoy “Alien: Romulus” slightly more than viewers who already know what to expect.
The story is essentially the same as the first “Alien” movie: People are trapped on a spaceship with deadly alien creatures that are spawned from a “mother” alien, who’s the most dangerous of all. “Alien: Romulus” is at its weakest in the beginning of the movie, because it could have done a better job of establishing who these characters are. All of the principal “Alien: Romulus” characters make their first appearances in the “Alien” franchise in this movie.
In “Alien: Romulus” (which takes place in the year 2781), the main protagonist is Rain Carradine (played by Cailee Spaeny), who is obviously supposed to be the “new” Ripley. Rain has an adoptive brother Andy (played by David Jonsson), who is soon revealed to be an artificial person, also known as a synthetic. The movie has several scenes that show how there is human prejudice against synthetics, which is a commentary on how some humans perceive artificial intelligence.
Rain and Andy live on the Jackson Star Mining Colony on a planet far away from Earth. The personal backgrounds of almost all of the characters are very vague. The only things revealed about the backstories of Rain and Andy are that they grew up together, and Rain’s parents died three years ago of an unnamed lung disease. It’s a post-apocalyptic world where human survivors are looking for new planets to colonize.
Rain and Andy soon get pulled into a scheme with other young colonizers from Jackson Star Mining Colony to raid and steal items from a decommissioned space station consisting of two modules: Romulus and Remus. The other space travelers are compassionately brave Tyler (played by Archie Renaux), who has a mutual attraction to Rain; Kay (played by Isabel Merced), who is Tyler’s friendly sister; Bjorn (played by Spike Fearn), who is Tyler and Rain’s mean-spirited cousin; and androgynous Navarro (played by Aileen Wu), who will remind some people of the Private Vasquez character (played by Jenette Goldstein) in “Aliens.”
Without giving away too much information, it’s enough to say that “Alien: Romulus” has several plot developments that happen because of what type of module is inserted into Andy, whose actions are affected by the programming in each module. Bjorn is bitter that his parents were killed by a synthetic, so he mercilessly bullies Andy. Meanwhile, Kay has a big secret that she tells Rain, and she makes Rain promise not to tell anyone else.
Jonsson gives Andy a soulful personality for a being that is supposed to have no soul. The heart of the movie is the close sibling bond between Rain and Andy, who have loyalty to each other that gets tested at least once in the film. Spaeny does a very capable performance as the main hero. But is the performance instantly iconic, like Weaver’s depiction of Ripley? No.
“Alien: Romulus” has some very formulaic elements of a creature feature horror movie. And there are a few scenes with elements that are directly copied from “Alien” and “Aliens.” However, where “Alien: Romulus” really excels in the last 20 minutes, which has a few surprises and some of the best scenes in the film. “Alien Romulus” has no mid-credits or end-credits scene, but there’s no doubt that this movie was made with a sequel in mind.
20th Century Studios released “Alien: Romulus” in U.S. cinemas on August 16, 2024.