Movie Review - Alien: Romulus (2024)

[Dave Gray]

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Premise: A group of young space-miners see a way off of their planet through a heist of abandoned company-owned equipment, but instead find something far more dangerous.

Rating: Great components, but worse than the sum of its parts.

Alien (1979) is one of my favorite movies of all time and I believe that there's a real case to be made that it's the best sci-fi film ever made.  I hold it in incredibly high regard.  Aliens (1986) is a very good sequel that doesn't touch the original, but makes itself special by existing in almost a completely different genre.  The other entries in the series range in quality, but to their credit, often bring new vibes each time and don't simply try to tread on the original.

Romulus is a different animal.  On one hand, it's a competent sci-fi thriller.  It has a few cheap jump-scares, but it's got the components to be great: a good cast with good performances, a great new character and relationship, new action set-pieces and ideas, stellar iconography to draw from, and in general (aside from one glaring exception) the movie looks fantastic.  The sound (and especially the lack of sound) is awesome.  However, when added together, the film serves more as a remix of the other films as opposed to its own entry.

Nostalgia is a strange balancing act and this movie doesn't do it well.  It's as if the characters themselves have nostalgia for the Alien franchise, going so far as reusing the exact same lines from the original films.  It's one thing to borrow (and even better, borrow and then subvert) similar setups or themes or subjects, but this just goes too far.  At its heart, it's re-doing Alien, with (to its credit) a peppering of vibes from the entirety of the rest of the saga.  Here and there, it nails it...it twists a familiar Alien trope in a great new way.  But more often than not, it doesn't work as well because it feels like a missed opportunity for a new idea, sometimes it's just a weaker copy of the original, and a few times it's cringe-worthy and awful.  A previous character is referenced using that off-putting digital reconstruction/uncanny valley face.  It looks completely terrible, but it also doesn't really help serve the story.  Since these new characters in the film don't know the callback, it's just for the audience and it feels like cheap parlor tricks.  It's terrible looking, distracting, doesn't help tell the story, and shrinks the universe.  I really can't stress how bad the effect looks as compared to the rest of the film.

It's weird, though, because in individual parts, the movie is really awesome.  The beginning shows a mining planet and rarely in the Alien franchise are we on planet surfaces seeing how people live.  It's a bit of a shame that we are again dealing with miners, since it's treading the first movie, but even that is forgivable.  The planet surface is full of new ideas and it looks cool.  The cast is great and the film introduces a new AI character that is a top-tier Alien character along with some good character twists.  His performance is great and he steals his scenes.

Many an Alien film have a "ticking clock" element and the one here is really cool, also.  Several new action sequence or danger elements using things like face-huggers, acid, etc -- they are used to great effect in ways we haven't seen.  There are so many good ideas that when things fall flat, it's even more apparent.

The 3rd act of the film definitely feels rushed and doesn't set up and build the way the rest of the film does, and though it will be controversial, I think it's disturbing, expands on the lore, and feels like it helps create a bridge to films like Resurrection and Prometheus.  The final act doesn't have as great of special effects and we don't give the idea enough time to gel, but I appreciate the swing.

What we are left with is a good movie.  But it really should have been a great movie.  Had the studio had the courage not to pander to its audience and feed us regurgitated material and had more opportunities been taken to depart from the familiar, this could've been up there with the first two films.  As is, it's treading the oh-so-familiar legasequel territory where it feels like its main objective is to remind you that you liked an old thing.  And not only does it do a lot of that, it does it badly.  Alien is one of those properties where the look of it....the sound....the feel -- it's so iconic that if you set a new story in that universe, it's strong-enough to feel like it belongs.  You don't need to literally play the old hits.

So, mixed bag.  Good movie, but so frustrating that this kind of stuff keeps happening, preventing us from making truly new entries in the franchise.

[Phishfan]

I watched the first two but left the franchise alone after that.

[Pappy13]

What's your take on Twisters Dave? Have you seen it? I kinda had the same issues with it that you're mentioning here. I didn't really know it when I went to see it, but I guess it wasn't supposed to be a sequel but rather a remake of the original. It didn't work for me. I really loved the first movie and basically I felt like I was watching an inferior version of the same movie. I would have thought that Spielberg would have been able to make an even more impressive version than the first movie, but I had just the opposite reaction, that it was of lesser quality than the first one. Nothing seemed like an improvement on the original. Not the story, not the cinematography, not the special effects, nothing. I've heard the score is really good, but I'm not a fan of Country music so it didn't really have much impact on me. I'm not really sure why they decided to make this movie honestly. I mean I guess some people haven't seen the original and they will enjoy it, but it's not like the original movie is that old, they could have just gone to see it instead and been just as entertained, if not more in my opinion.

[Spider-Dan]

I tried to watch the first Alien movie, but had to turn it off in anger after the characters started making dumb decisions.  (This is why I can't watch horror movies.)
Aliens is one of my favorite movies of all time.
Haven't seen Alien³, saw Alien: Resurrection in the theaters and thought it was a poor man's Aliens.  Saw both AvP movies in the theaters, meh.
I can't remember whether I've actually sat down and watched the entire Prometheus movie, or if it's just the dozens of YouTube clips I've seen and the plot synopsis that I've read.  Haven't watched Covenant, not really interested in Romulus.

Overall I think I prefer the action movie interpretation of Alien films, so I don't think this one will be for me.

[Dave Gray]

I tried to watch the first Alien movie, but had to turn it off in anger after the characters started making dumb decisions.

I have to push back on this.  If you literally turned it off, then you missed some important things because there were twists that revealed character motivations that explain their behavior.  Give it another shot.  I don't throw around "best of all time" lightly.

[Dave Gray]

What's your take on Twisters Dave? Have you seen it?

I haven't seen it.

I have flirted with seeing it a few times, but my wife wants to see it, which actually (strangely) means I'm less likely to see it, because I end up waiting for her forever and we never get it done.


I'm not sure how I feel because I think that the first Twister was a big movie for its time, but it's never one I thought was stellar or anything.  Is Twisters kind of a remix of ideas?

[Spider-Dan]

I have to push back on this.  If you literally turned it off, then you missed some important things because there were twists that revealed character motivations that explain their behavior.  Give it another shot.  I don't throw around "best of all time" lightly.

I'm familiar with the plot of the movie.  I'm not talking about decisions made by the android, if that's what you're referring to.

[Pappy13]

I haven't seen it.

I have flirted with seeing it a few times, but my wife wants to see it, which actually (strangely) means I'm less likely to see it, because I end up waiting for her forever and we never get it done.


I'm not sure how I feel because I think that the first Twister was a big movie for its time, but it's never one I thought was stellar or anything.  Is Twisters kind of a remix of ideas?

In my opinion it's a reimagining of the movie, but doesn't really add anything to the movie. I guess it's supposed to be for people that haven't seen the first movie. If you've seen the 1st movie, you've seen this one in my opinion.