Alien Romulus, a film I dislike so much it showed me just how much I love the original Alien trilogy
This is a long one.
I make a point of not being negative. Films, books, music. Anything someone has taken the time to create and release. And I have huge respect for anyone who sees the process through.
But Alien Romulus...I cant think of a time I’ve had a more visceral reaction to a film. And I have to get it off my chest.
Fede Alvarez said he wanted people to either love or hate his movie, and regretfully (and I do mean regretfully), I absolutely hate it. But I dont think in the way he ‘hoped’.
This is not a reaction to a divisive film - this isnt Alien 3 - where storylines and decisions that were made were so brutal and powerful, they divided fans - even to this day.
What I dislike so much about Romulus is its mundanity. That to me - admittedly someone who would sit in the 0.01% of fandom for pickiness - this is the most beautiful looking bland film I’ve seen since Prometheus, with none of the ambition or originality.
I'll cut to the chase by listing my main issues now and also state in bold uppercase characters, SPOILERS AHEAD:
- The characters are well acted, but bland and unmemorable.
- The dialogue is largely borrowed from previous scripts with callbacks that are borderline unforgivable.
- The Facehuggers lose their terror and are reduced to little space crabs.
- The Aliens are woefully undercooked and lack the danger, menace and surreality we love them for - and are far, far, far too easily killed. And arguably, theyre not the biggest threat in it.
MY FIRST EYE ROLL
There’s a big piece of spaceship with the name ‘Nostromo’ written on it, conveniently in tact, floating about in the opening scene, in case we werent sure which wreckage we’re dealing with - inexplicably this is also repeated in a later exposition dump, again just to keep audiences up to speed.
My first issue with this is the fact there is even space debris to begin with - I thought it was pretty obvious the Nostromo was atomized in Alien - but I'm happy to concede this point as I have so many gripes and as previously mentioned I'm probably in the 0.01% of people this would annoy.
My first eye roll was at dialogue near the start of the movie, when Rain sees her planet's sun for the first time and tells us its how she imagined it, before looking wistfully in the distance and confirming, “in my dreams…”. Compare that to the establishing scene in Alien, where our crew mumble and garble inane conversation whilst they chow down on their breakfast. Grounding the far fetched concept by allowing us to relive similar conversations we've all probably had with co-workers...we know everything we need to about the Nostromo crew without them 'performing' for us.
Its a pity as this scene followed my favorite part of Romulus where Rain is told the target she had hit had been extended by the company and she has to stay on the colony for years longer than shed hoped - something anyone who has had ever had a job will recognise - frankly, I wish there was more of this subtle word building.
MY FIRST LOOK TO THE CEILING
My next gripe is a ‘biggy’. Andy, exceptionally played by David Johnston (widely considered the films stand out star with no disagreements here (although I think Isabelle Merced sells every scene shes in expertly too)), is given the uneviable task of delivering the movies two worst call back lines - this being the first.
As the syth of the outfit it seems the writers/director just couldnt resist to give him the “I prefer the term artificial human myself” line. Yes, word for word copied from Lance Henrikson’s Bishop in Aliens. I want to make a note and say that I wouldnt have minded even if it was a derivative version of this line, if it absolutely had to be in the film - “Can you say aritifical human please?”, “do you mind calling me an artifical human”, anything, but a word for word copy and paste from the iconic 1986 classic, does personal pride not dictate a better effort?
There are many other more subtle ‘call backs’ - Game over man, Busy little creatures etc etc, but I will put them in the super fan category and let them go, theres much worse to discuss.
TOO MUCH EXPLANATION, NOT ENOUGH MYSTERY
Looking back at the orginal Alien Trilogy, every time. EVERY TIME, we are presented with a facehugger, there is mortal danger. Theyre like a bullet thats already been fired. If they are homing in on you, it'll take two or three hardened space marines struggling to stop the inevitable. Like all the aliens, we dont know how they work, he dont know how theyre so efficient, we just know the chances are it'll be over, soon.
In this film, a group of scavangers, admittedly with help of a revamped synth, are able to simply walk slowly, quietly and keep their body temperature down in a room crawling with them (however, if you look carefully some of the facehuggers look like someone stuck a rubber model on top of a remote controlled car) - and it works. Simple as that. And that’s it, danger averted. Our iconic creature of horror are tamed.
STARTING TO SQUIRM
David Johnson quite rightly got a lot of plaudits due to his performance, switching from loveable, damaged and faulty to a slick, emotionless and calculating synth (and back again), he was excellent. But one of the problems I have near the films climax, is that Rain leaves the pregnant Kay, who is in pretty bad shape, to go back into the hive to save David who has turned back into his lovable self.
She leaves a pregnant woman, to go back and save a robot who, depending on which tiny dvd he has in his neck, will either be the ‘brother’ she grew up with or a company tool who endangers all of the group to get an alien.
And I know what you’re thinking. This was the emotional anchor-point. It was about their relationship. But wouldn’t the emotional pull, wouldn’t the human story of love and sacrifice shown throughout the original trilogy, have Rain sacrificing her ‘brother’ who has been a little ‘naughty’ throughout the film, to save Kay and her unborn baby. What would Ripley, Hicks, Parker, Dallas, Vasquez have done?
And while I remember, the alien hive, the place we were introduced to for the first time (canonically) in Aliens. The claustrophobic, fear for your life, watch your every move, so dangerous and terrifying a squad of highly trained marines barely survived, descent into hell, is treated in such a pedestrian manner, I’ve seen scarier train stations.
Theres just no sense of threat as the protaganists enter the alien hive. With so much talk of getting the series back to its horror roots, I cant help feeling this film proved that horror isnt the actual root of this franchise, its surrealism. Dallas, Kane and Lambert walking on LV-426 toward the derelict, is a journey to the centre of HR Giger's mind. Aliens continues this. The hive is disorientating, weird, oppressive. But in Romulus, this is forsaken for a shadowy tunnel with monsters hiding and ready to jump at you with a growl - its reduced to a trope.
EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION
Its something we cant seem to get away from in modern cinema at the moment, but this obsession to explain everything just so our smart phone, short form content, social media addled little minds can understand whats going on is just getting insulting.
In case we didnt pick up that the alien specimen came was the same Alien from the 1979 film, and just in case it wasnt made clear by the floating debris bearing the name, Nostromo, at the beginning of the film, the film's most controversial character, Rook, tells us all about it.
Im going to gloss over the distractingly poor SFX, the potential ethical considerations and plain shoe-horning of Rook, as this could be a whole new post, but uneccessary as it mightve been, this is not Romulus' gravest sin. It is however, another example of the reluctance to try something new in a now trope ridden IP.
...back to the exposition...
The best way to describe the original trilogy, or one of the ways to describe it, is 'an elevated sci-fi/horror experience for adults'. It never panders. It never patronises. You have to keep up (but the story telling is so good and skillful you never really have to), and it does all this whilst brimming with shadowy mystery.
And for a movie that wanted to get back to roots of the franchise, Romulus doesn’t follow this tradition. And it uses a CGI of Ian Holme’s likeness to give us an MCU worthy exposition dump to catch us all up, with what we already should’ve probably worked out. The alien from the ‘79 classic was found in the wreckage of the Nostromo (remember we knew that because we saw the big nameplate floating about) and it ran amok while they were trying to use it for various nefarious purposes etc etc.
It’s not even that there was exposition, it’s that...who cares? The alien and all that comes with it, as fascinating as it is, is possibly the least interesting thing about the franchise. It’s always been the blue collar workers getting shit on by a huge corporation for something that could wield them profit or power. It’s about a group of well rounded, believable, relatable characters in an impossible, horrifying situation and how they cope with it, how they try and survive. At its best, we watch it and imagine we were part of that small band or survivors, and how we would react. Hearing about Weyland Yutani’s grand plan, we already got it when Ash spoke about the creature with cold admiration.
And speaking of the sinister, calculating performance Ian Holme gave us, what a way to ruin it by giving us the second worst callback of the film - “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.” Conveniently explained away by the very charming and likeable director, Fede Alvarez as just something that model says. This is when I looked around the cinema, thinking, “is it just me?”.
HEAD IN MY HANDS
Ok, so I’ll just cut to the chase here. After the most infamous callback from the film, everything really falls apart for me. Really falls apart. And the call back is painful. Unnecessary. And all the worse for knowing that originally there was no dialogue and the temptation to add it in was just too...tempting.
“Get away from her you bitch.”
I was already getting increasingly annoyed when Rain, who had never picked up a gun, was shown how to use a pulse rifle by Tyler who knew how to use one by reading magazines and gaming, and proceeded to mow down the hive of aliens - again, something a platoon of marines couldn’t quite manage. Where Aliens was full of danger and horror and people scrambling to survive, in Romulus it’s as easy as that.
Terrible.
But just when I thought the downward trajectory couldn’t get any steeper, we got ‘get away from...’ errr I can’t even bring myself to repeat it again.
Why couldn’t they just leave it? Alvarez seems quite proud of it. Citing getting a huge cheer in the showing he was sitting in as validation. Since when is a film a sport where the crowd needs to cheer? Again, what is the original trilogy without its long, eerie moments of silence?
From this point I was gone, and what I was starting to think, whilst watching this film, was sad.
IS IT OVER YET?
I was excited for this film. I’d heard the hype. How it was getting back to the roots. The practical effects. The alien. The retro tech. And by the way, this is a beautiful film and the retro tech vibe, is perfect. But I can’t help thinking that had they spent less time on that and more time creating memorable characters, writing original dialogue and not rehashing the same tropes, it would’ve been a much more meaningful film.
And I wouldnt have been thinking, hoping - whilst watching the film in what should’ve been the exciting climax - that this would be the last one they ever made. That this is another beautiful looking, boring, mess, where the good moments were far overshadowed by the usual trope filled drivel the prequels were guilty of. And even more of a concern, during Ripley v4’s (aka Rain) final showdown with yet another alien-not-the-actual-alien, in an airlock, with a countdown, I found myself wishing she would just press a button and crash the whole thing and leave us with no survivors. And thats something I didn’t even think watching Covenant, at least I was semi bothered about the character's fates in that one. Think about that.
THE FUTURE
But I wont get my wish, for the studio to just leave us to enjoy three great films. No, somehow Romulus appealed to the masses in such a way we’re getting a sequel and even worse, there’s even talk of another AvP.
It’s too bad the franchise that showed us how corporate greed eats the soul out of everything for money, has fallen victim to that very horror.
Like I said when I started, I dont like to be negative but ahhhh...that feels better.