Alien is a highly revered franchise, and it dates back to 1979 , and people consider the first two movies to be two of the best sci-fi movies of all time. They have also garnered some big names in the directing world to come and help make these stories, which helps contribute to their prolificness. So it was fairly easy to get excited about a new one coming out, but before this week, I had only seen the first two, so I had to catch up. Thanks to the help of Disney+/Hulu I was able to do so quickly with a few commercials breaks, and I watched a new Alien movie each night last week, and for the most part, they were all really good!
Alien Romulus does take a smaller scale approach to the Alien story telling. It focuses on a group of laborers, who are trying to make it off their planet that receives zero sunlight into a better, more beautiful, terraformed planet. The group found out that there is an old, decommissioned aircraft floating around their planet, and that ship has the freezing chambers that they need to make the long trip to their home. So they use their mediocre space ship and fly up there, but what they find was not quite what they expected.
Something had clearly happened on the ship, and it was not good (you can probably guess given the title of the movie). While getting the cryo-fuel they needed for the sleep pods, they accidentally activated a heating device. So a whole hive of face huggers thawed out, and they started to go after the group, but while being chased around the ship, and trying to get the equipment they needed off the ship, they found out that there is more than just face huggers that are the problem, and an old android they thought was an ally might have a more sinister plot in mind for them.
This movie received a large amount of hype going into it, and I was excited, because Fene Alverez directed the 2013 Evil Dead, and Ridley Scott was staying on to help, and he directed Alien, Prometheus and Alien Covenant, which all looked amazing and had high level story telling. As far as the look of this movie goes, it is on par with Covenant and Prometheus, which is saying a lot, because those two movies were largely filmed in beautiful natural landscapes, and this movie was basically all on spaceships, so that creates a much higher barrier for entry, but they pulled it off well. As far as the story telling goes, it was coherent, and the motivation of the characters was clear, but it was not as strong as Prometheus, but I do think it was stronger than Covenant.
Also there were scenes where it was very clear that Alverez was at the helm, as mentioned, he directed an Evil Dead movie, and he has also done other scary movies, so he knows how to create tension, and Don’t Breath was focused primarily on sound and being quiet, and that worked well in this spaceship as well. The gore in the movie also reminded me of his other films too, there is a certain style to it, that reminded me of Evil Dead 2013, although there was no blood rain in this movie, but there was a giant cloud of floating acid.
One big area where Romulus separated itself from the previous two that Ridely Scott was involved in was the theme of the movie. Prometheus and Covenant had a strong theological base to their story telling. They were trying to figure out where humanity came from and why they were created, so they found a civilization far away and tried to get answers before ultimately meeting their demise, and a similar concept can be seen in Covenant, although they got there in a different manner. There was one lady, who had a cross necklace, and it was very important to her, and after finding the aliens someone asked her why she still believed, and she said well we might have been put on our planet by another species, but who put them on their planet, so at some point, there has to be some godlike being out there in charge, which makes for a compelling argument, but one that always hurts the brain. At some point, something had to come from nothing, but how is that possible?
Whereas the theme in Romulus had more to do with class conflict. Weyland Corporation is in all the movies, and it is clear that they are a big money corporation, but this story centers on what that means for the lesser laborers. Cailee Spaeny’s character has been laboring away on this miserable planet for years, and she has finally hit her work quota, so she goes to the office to ask for a transfer, but the lady then doubled her quota and told her that she now had another six years before she could leave. She was not the only one, the people she was trying to escape with all had similar stories, and their parents had been trapped there as well. So it was basically an endless cycle of indentured servitude that could never be escaped from due to their lack of resources, which was purposefully done by the company.
Another key portion of all the movies is the treatment of AI. There is always one android in all the films, but it is not always immediately obvious who it is, and it is a key plot twist in the original. In all the movies though, the androids never seem to be treated that greatly, and this always comes back to get the people in the end. It is a valuable lesson to take for the coming wave of AI. In a world, where there are constant problems, why would you take it out on such an important member of the team, just because you think they do not have emotions, does not mean that they cannot understand poor treatment, so they have no problem helping the aliens try and destroy the humans.
One part of the Alien movies that embarrassingly flew over my head was the whole idea of reproductive rights, but once I read a review about it, it was immediately obvious. The face huggers, place a baby alien into the person they are attached to through their esophagus, the person briefly incubates the alien, then it blissfully hatches out of their chest. Of course, none of these people want to give birth to the aliens, unless you are watching the first Alien V. Predator, where people chose to be sacrifices. So what the movies are basically saying is that if you do not want to have the baby, especially if there are health complications or it was an unintended pregnancy, then it makes sense that you should not have to have the baby.
The weirdest part about these movies is how stupid all the people are. This is a normal happening in scary movies, that people make the worst choices, and even for regular people these choices are inexcusable, even under the heightened pressure of a life or death situation, but what makes it worst in these movies is that most of the main characters are scientists, and not only that, but scientists trusted to do interplanetary reconnaissance, but they all love taking their equipment off after being on the planet for like an hour. They also regularly put their faces right in front of things that they had no idea what it was. Even in the first one, they go against all their protocols, despite Ripley’s protests, and they let the guy with the face sucker on his face back into the ship, and then they assume that there were no lasting effects of it being attached to the dude’s face once it comes off. It just does not make sense!
Now for the important part! Ranking the films in the Alien franchise!
1. Prometheus
2. Alien
3. Alien Romulus
4. Alien Covenant
5. Aliens
6. Alien 3
7. Alien Resurrection
8. Alien v Predator Requiem
9. Alien v Predator
I feel relatively confident in these rankings, because I watched them all within the past week, except for Aliens, that one was closer to a year ago, so I could see it potentially being higher since most people love it. For being almost 50 years old, Alien looks amazing, but there is something about Prometheus that I like so much more. It is probably the whole philosophical aspect of finding your creator, and it takes place in a beautiful landscape. I tend to be more partial to more recent movies as well, so that probably plays into the bias. None of them are terrible though, but there is a massive drop off to the two AVP movies, but all of the just Alien movies are worth the watch! I gave Alien Romulus 3.5 Stars and recommend seeing it in IMAX!
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