“Alien Romulus” is a terrifying, gory, and thrilling adventure set between the original 1979 “Alien” and its 1986 sequel “Aliens.” Director Fede Alvarez introduces a new batch of characters into the iconic “Alien” franchise and delivers an interesting look at how a greedy corporation will stop at nothing to make a buck.
This group of young space colonizers, led by Rain and Tyler, leave their oppressive colony behind in hopes of traveling to a new home. The only problem is that they do not have enough supplies to make the nine-year journey to their new home.
As luck would have it an abandoned space station orbits their current planet, and it will most likely have the necessary supplies. Their group flies their ship, docks at the station, and begins their search when they are met with a horrific organism unlike anything they’ve ever experienced.
Their group gets picked off one by one, and the survivors desperately try to escape the station. Rain takes charge and with the help of her android brother Andy, the group ventures to the other side of the station to escape.
The station suffers critical damage during their escape and is sent careening into the rings that orbit the planet. Rain and a few others make it back to their ship only to find one final alien that Rain must kill to save Andy. Just like Ripley in the original “Alien,” Rain signs off as she goes into cryosleep and drifts towards her new home.
This is everything I want an “Alien” movie to be. The sets look like they were pulled straight out of the first movie and the dedication to special effects and using puppets to make the aliens come to life give me hope that this will mark the revival of the franchise.
I was disappointed in the last several movies in the “Alien” franchise, but “Romulus” stands out as high quality just like the first two in the franchise. The story was more grounded, and with one exception did not go in a weird or crazy direction.
While the final fight didn’t work for me, the other 95% of the movie made up for it. I would much rather have more “Alien” movies like this where only one part of the movie did not work out but the rest of the movie is amazing, than never have another “Alien” movie again.
“Alien Romulus” does a great job of reminding the audience of the theme of the franchise: corporate greed is bad. The inciting incident for all of the “Alien” movies is always the company wanting to make more money at the expense of people’s lives.
There were a few instances of wonky effects both practical and CGI, but after watching the movie a second time, they did not distract me or take me out of the experience as badly as the first time. The cast and crew of “Alien Romulus” did an amazing job, and I can’t wait to see what comes next from this franchise.