Alien Identity Crisis

In space, no one can hear you hedge your bets. One of the most beloved sci-fi horror IPs returns for another attempt at recapturing the magic that has eluded the Alien franchise since 1986. Writer-director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) takes over the reins from Ridley Scott with ‘Alien: Romulus’, abandoning Scott’s planned prequel trilogy and situating the proceedings between the events of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986).

Can you believe it’s been seven years since the last Alien film? A lot has changed since then.  The xenomorph is now a Disney princess. Also important, big studios (read: Disney) don’t seem to know what nerds want from blockbusters right now. Do they want to relive their childhoods? Do they want to see their favorite IPs cover new territory? The answer is invariably both (and neither, I guess?), but — and here’s the important part — it requires finesse.

‘Alien: Romulus’ starts out promising to deliver this balance. For my money, this is the first Alien sequel to feel like it’s in-universe since Alien 3 (your mileage may vary on that one). Because of the setting, Romulus treats us to a return to the lived-in retro futurism that made the first two Alien films iconic in terms of production design. This owes credit more to the 2014 game Alien: Isolation from which Alvarez drew some inspiration, but it does its job all the same to transport fans of the franchise to a distinct place of immersion.

ALIEN:ROMULUS  ★★ (2/5 stars)
Directed by: Fede Alvarez  
Written by: Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues (based on characters by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett)
Starring: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced
Running time: 119 mins

The story also seems to want to take us somewhere new. Thankfully, the inciting action does not involve responding to a distress signal or beacon. Instead, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) an orphaned young woman trying to work off her debt to the Weyland-Yutani corporation in a mining colony with her adoptive android brother Andy (David Jonsson) finds herself wrapped up in a scavenging scheme with her group of friends. They intend to rob a derelict ship of its cryosleep pods so they can skip out on their debt and travel to a different planet nine light years away. Fox finally figured out how to put 20-somethings in space for a xeno encounter to tap into that Gen Z market.

This setup feels good. The first two-thirds of the film feels like that confident tightroping of merging old with new. We see things we’ve never seen before like an often skipped over stage of the Xenomorph lifecycle and an especially close encounter with a facehugger. We also get an interesting new wrinkle in how the Company intends to use the xeno specimens they keep trying to secure, somewhat closing the loop with the deadly pathogens of the prequels. And the relationship between Rain and Andy is especially compelling mostly thanks to a nuanced performance by Jonsson but also for demonstrating that there’s more potential complexity to the synthetic persons of this franchise than being either ruthlessly villainous or completely selfless.

The final act, however, goes out of its way to show us things we’ve definitely seen and heard before in the name of fan service, devolving into a bizarre rehash of oddly specific ideas and imagery from every previous Alien finale. In one telegraphed moment, Rain stands with a pulse rifle with wind (from inside a ship?) blowing her hair, channeling Ellen Ripley’s exact stance in Aliens before going back to rescue Newt. I counted at least three groan-inducing exact quotes from previous entries in the series. By the time you get to the final ship’s log sign-off it has all already felt perfunctory for 20 minutes.

And then there’s the ghoulish resurrection of the late Ian Holm as the face and voice reference for a new android character who might as well be the return of Ash. It’s hacky and unnecessary. It’s also a grim signpost of the times where we keep trotting out the desecrated corpses of forty-year-old franchises, trying to make everything old new again, while tapping on the dopamine receptors of nerds with Family Guy reference syndrome.

Whereas other recent Hulu/Disney horror franchise resurrections found success on the small screen, ‘Alien: Romulus’ not resoundingly knocking it out of the park with a wide theatrical release feels like that much more of a disappointment, and I’m a ‘Prometheus’ apologist.

There is a way forward for the Alien franchise, but it certainly doesn’t involve retreading, or rather trampling over, hallowed ground. Here’s hoping Noah Hawley’s television series delivers something that cracks the code on the perfect organism.