Alien: Romulus (2024)
August 17, 2024 4:59 PM - Subscribe

While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin (39 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
this was gross and awesome

Albert Burneko at Defector summed up my feelings well: https://defector.com/alien-romulus-is-exhausting-gross-as-hell-and-incredibly-fun

Do not watch Alien: Romulus if you know that you do not like violent and frightening movies characterized for nearly their entire length by the constant immediate danger that revolting insectoid monsters will do extremely disgusting things to vulnerable people.

On the other hand, if that is your type of deal, you'll probably enjoy Alien: Romulus. It's scary as hell, and a hoot.

posted by Kybard at 7:46 PM on August 17 [4 favorites]


It felt a lot like 'Evil Dead - Rise' here where a lot of the DNA is still there, but the phenotype expressed differently. The execution of the beats, like.

This is ok. I like it.


It's not your grandpa's 'Alien' (1979). Nor your aunts/ uncle's 'Aliens.' (1986).

I like Alien: Resurrection (1997) more than this, though.
posted by porpoise at 10:42 PM on August 17 [2 favorites]


And I realy really liked 'Resurrection.'
posted by porpoise at 10:47 PM on August 17 [1 favorite]


It’s an inoffensive remix of moments from the other entries in the series, and does its best to use elements from the (not good, IMO) prequels. The new ideas it adds are good as well.

There is one bit of fan service (at the bottom of an elevator shaft) that really snapped my disbelief suspenders. Just makes zero sense for that character to say that thing. Took me out of the world.

I feel like there were equally fan-service-y moves that could have been less jarringly worked into the script. Seems like employees at a mining colony could credibly had some experience piloting heavy equipment, for example. Throw that into some of the zero-g environments and fun could have been had.
posted by FallibleHuman at 6:34 AM on August 18 [2 favorites]


I liked this for the most part. The line FallibleHuman speaks of was cheesy and out of character.

Speaking of resurrection, there is some actor resurrection (possibly using deepfake rather than cgi?) that was unnecessary and looks about as convincing as Clutch Cargo.

But I think it’s one of the best entries in the franchise, since the original two.
posted by condour75 at 8:31 AM on August 18 [2 favorites]


I enjoyed it a lot for what it is, and I would place it third after the original two. It did a great job with sets and the retro 70's aesthetics. It was tense and pretty well paced, though it doesn't have the oh so effectively slow build up of Alien (I rewatched that in theaters earlier this year, and it holds up so well, IMO).

I think it fell down a little on characters--most were one note, and that one note was fairly generic and forgettable. The actors were fine, but the script didn't spend the time or effort to make you miss anyone who isn't making it to any potential sequel. In contrast, Ripley is iconic in a way that would be really hard to replicate, but Alien and Aliens were also pretty fantastic for the way they sketched out memorable personalities for the crew of the Nostromo and the Sulaco marines, Carter Burke, Bishop and Newt.

Alien3, well, it made choices, some of which are hard to forgive though it was going for something. Resurrection was okay, but the characters were distinctly Whedon-esque, naturally, for better and worse (and felt like they could have been visiting from the Firefly universe).

Prometheus and Covenant had some interesting ideas, but also felt particularly generic* in a very 2010s way, and I never felt like the mythos and Engineer lore they created added a lot to the Alien universe (but might have been interesting as its own thing). Leaving the Aliens' origin an unknowable mystery is far more effective for the horror of it all.

(* Part of that was the way the tech and aesthetic was so very different from the earlier movies, because obviously in 2010 we imagined the future looking a lot differently than we did in the 70 or 80s. Granted, even though it was a prequel, that was fully explainable in universe by the ship Prometheus being full of cutting edge technology equipped for a personal expedition by the Weyland CEO, as opposed to old lived-in tech designed for workers considered even more disposable than the equipment. Even so, they never quite looked or felt like they fit in the same universe.)
posted by Pryde at 11:06 AM on August 18 [4 favorites]


Inoffensive I guess. One big issue is the total lack of characterisation for most of the characters. 'She's pregnant' is the totality of one character. The shorter of the two blokes is defined only be being an arsehole in every circumstance. The AP gets more than most of them. The alien gestation period now seems to be down to about 30 seconds, which I assume is a metaphor for films no longer having the time for character development.

The waving guns around seems like a worthwhile strategy to try for people who haven't seen the films, but don't we already know it doesn't work?

Bit too much of the quotes from previous films for me.

The final boss was a misstep.
posted by biffa at 12:03 PM on August 18 [4 favorites]


The minute the character said, "I'm pregnant," I was excited because I knew the final boss would be a xenomorph-baby hybrid, Chekhov's fetus. Loved that.

Most of the fanservice was fun, but "get away from her, you bitch" was kind of baffling unless Andy somehow managed to download the rest of the films in the series as part of his upgrade. Such an odd choice.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:32 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]


If there were only an insert line when Andy gets beaten up in the beginning, then 'you bitch' would make sense.

UI hated the speed of gestation, but yeah, pretty good for what it was, even if the engineer head'thing was a bit much... and also for it to have any intelligence after being born and then growing six feel tall in a matter of minutes?
posted by Catblack at 6:37 PM on August 18 [1 favorite]


Haven't seen it yet but am trying to understand the connection to the first film. Is the idea that an alien actually survived that atomic explosion that we all so lovingly watched destroy the Nostromo? Like, *really* destroy the Nostromo?
posted by mediareport at 8:55 PM on August 19


Not entirely relevant - but this interview with Quentin Tarantino about his experience of seeing Aliens on its first night of release - is fun. Having also seen it in a London cinema on release - I can't remember a such a loud response from the audience for any other film I've seen - and a reminder of what large shoes Romulus has to fill.

Inoffensive I guess.
That is probably the most damning review of anything in this particular franchise. I am imagining pastel clad aliens who are experimenting with veganism.
posted by rongorongo at 4:49 AM on August 20


Haven't seen it yet but am trying to understand the connection to the first film. Is the idea that an alien actually survived that atomic explosion that we all so lovingly watched destroy the Nostromo? Like, *really* destroy the Nostromo?

The alien in the first film survived the Nostromo's destruction by stowing away in Ripley's escape shuttle. In the final sequence, Ripley blasts it out the shuttle's airlock and fries it with the shuttle's engines. It's presumed dead, but we see the intact body floating off into space.
posted by AndrewInDC at 7:14 AM on August 20 [1 favorite]


Oh, right. I was thinking of multiple aliens in the 2nd film; there was just the one in the first. So it built a cocoon and survived deep space after being fried by rocket fire, I see. Doesn't a few seconds of flamethrower kill aliens pretty quickly in this universe, though?
posted by mediareport at 7:44 AM on August 20


I don't know if it's ever been very consistent movie to movie, but I think of it like how every horror villain is "killed" at some point and always comes back.
posted by AndrewInDC at 1:10 PM on August 20


The existence of the aliens themselves doesn’t bother me at all - we know there was at least one ship full of eggs, for all we know there could have been a bunch more on other planets, or more ships could have visited the original planet, but had their crew go into stasis pre chestburster, or any number of plausible-ish offscreen events, it needn’t imply the source was our original Alien Alien - Prometheus/Covenant do seem to make a case for our corner of the galaxy being more or less riddled with the things
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:42 AM on August 21


Well, I had a rollicking good time at this, especially the first bit with the grungy oldschool vibe that I love in my Alien. I share many of the same complaints as above, I hee'd happily enough at "get away from her", but groaned at "you bitch". Unneccessary became cringe.
I don't give a rats ass about the architects, and frankly the films they've featured in have been boring and incoherent (except that whole long glorious sequence with David alone on the ship) so I am not quite sure what it's about, but the idea of the Alien being a weapon or a tool is much less frightening than it being it's own, inherently alien being, you know?
Just me that thought the final big bad looked like Mark Z?
posted by Iteki at 7:02 AM on August 22 [2 favorites]


Like some others, I also thought Andy's fan service line was the biggest misstep of the movie. "Get away from her" would have been fine if he stopped there. It's plausible that somebody would say pretty much that exact thing in that situation. It would be been an obvious callback without crossing the line into unbelievability. But "you bitch" from a gentle android who has never dropped any profanity at all before this? Absolutely does not work. A really surprisingly bad choice from Alvarez.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:59 AM on August 22


3/5 story, 3/5 vibes for me. As I said to my wife and friend on the way home, this is a really good entry in the Alien franchise, sadly buried under a whole lotta stuff piled on top.

"Tight" is becoming increasingly important to me when I watch horror, and while this had a lot of great set pieces and all the parts needed to assemble a top-notch Alien movie, it was emphatically not tight, with a Return of the King "three endings!" problem, and the director kind of tossing in every element of other Alien movies that he liked -- or wanted to one-up -- into the blender.

I liked using an Ian Holm model of synthetic rather than a Lance H model, but I think a human actor with Holm-like qualities would have been fine and avoided the CGI uncanny valley. It wasn't even named Ash, but Rook (and the Henrickson synthetic was 'Bishop' -- is there a Knight in the wings?)

I liked their goofy-assed alien/human hybrid more than the goofy-assed Alien: Resurrection alien/human hybrid, but in a way that's like saying you like Creed more than Nickelback -- you might grit your teeth a little less, but man, it still ain't great.

I thought Cailee Spaeny did a great job, and if I squinted I would swear it was early-career Elliot Page on the screen. It's hard to remember that Sigorney Weaver in OG Alien was more like this than a kick-ass warrior woman, and I thought Spaeny nailed it. David Jonsson absolutely crushed it as Andy.

But I could have done without the Greatest Hits stuff, and while Director's Cuts very rarely make movies shorter, in this case I'd love to see what happens if somebody challenged Alvarez or an editor to see what an 85-minute down-to-the-bones version of this looks like. I bet it would be a top-two Alien movie.
posted by Shepherd at 3:06 PM on August 22 [3 favorites]


I bet it would be a top-two Alien movie.

I agreed with most everything you said, until this, which I am more cautious about. I am intrigued as to which of the current top two you think it would be better than.
posted by biffa at 3:49 PM on August 22


Okay, I think you've called my bluff. I could easily see something that sneaks in just after Alien/Aliens and before all the others, though. I was going to make a case for "I think you could beat Aliens" but I think even the best version of Romulus would be close enough to Alien-no-s that next to each other they'd be too samey.
posted by Shepherd at 9:59 AM on August 23 [1 favorite]


Mixed feelings on this one. On its own terms a pretty good movie, lots of effective tension and creepy scares. The setup felt very reminiscent of "Crater", with kids in a dangerous space mining colony that constantly changes the terms so you can never leave.

I wonder if the movie went through some big changes in the edit. It was disappointing that they built up the alien super-serum but we never saw its effects, though maybe they were always going to save that to the sequel.

I also think they could have made more of the creepy alien baby, instead of having it almost instantly turn into Peter Crouch.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:18 PM on August 23


It was disappointing that they built up the alien super-serum but we never saw its effects, though maybe they were always going to save that to the sequel.

I went to a Catholic school and our sex ed was rubbish, but SHE LAYS AN EGG!
posted by biffa at 1:44 PM on August 23


I went to a Catholic school and our sex ed was rubbish, but SHE LAYS AN EGG!

Pfft, that’s just a simple correlation. Here at Weyland-Yutani we scrupulously follow the science through rigorous replicable experimentation before we conclude causation.
posted by Pryde at 4:47 PM on August 23 [1 favorite]


That makes more, I must have mis-seen it! I thought Rain took the super-serum, and Kay was impregnated by an alien, but Wikpedia says it's Kay who took the drug.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:52 PM on August 23


Actually, I have to confess, I also thought it was Rain who had taken the shot at the time. The ovipositor incident made me look it up after.
posted by biffa at 4:44 AM on August 24


My family and I play this game during the credits called "Find the Hungarian." It's easy, because Hungarians are always very well represented on film crews.

After about one hundred Hungarian names in a row (and many hundreds, eventually) it became pretty clear they shot this in Budapest.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:34 PM on August 24 [1 favorite]


Finally seeing this and loving the roasting in this thread. Enjoyable but yeah no need for such a mash up of the franchise plus the multiple endings combined with New Alien brand InstaGrow™ shenanigans. They made a mistake bringing in a timer in so early... no chance to let a slower burn happen.
posted by kokaku at 5:09 PM on August 26


Anyone know of there's actually 46 film minutes left when they say the time btw?
posted by Iteki at 11:37 PM on August 26


Almost definitely not or that felt like the longest 46 minutes of my life.
posted by kokaku at 8:30 AM on August 27


This was the most sequelly sequel in the series, but that worked. Simply.mkaing more of the franchise, rather than trying to boldly redefine it made for more modest goals, but it pretty well nailed them. After two different sequels that made wild swings trying to deliver another A+ (which they then each whiffed on), this film being steadfast in trying to be a B and getting there was a breath of fresh air.

Fede Alvarez was a great choice for an Alien movie because he's vicious and pitiless for a commercial director.

I actually liked the hybrid design which both called back to the prequels and made large chunks of the theater I was in blurt out in unison, "WHAT THE FUCK?"
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:36 AM on August 27 [1 favorite]


No one has ever asked or will ever ask, but my idea for an Alien sequel is that a starved, weakened queen is recovered and brought to a space station for study. They keep the creature barely alive, underfed and in harsh conditions, and in an acid-resistant chamber to try and keep it from gaining the strength to reproduce. It does so anyway, but not having the strength to properly lay eggs, it sacrifices itself to produce one egg sac teeming with tiny, scorpion-sized xenomorphic, who then bust out trying to implant themselves into hosts they can exploit to become full-sized. The people on the station have to fight them off, while also being unsure who among them is slowly gestating a more normal sized face hugger.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:10 PM on August 28


Andy was the best part of the movie. He's a pretty transparent reflection on our emerging real world relationships with AI... People building relationships with derpy Replika personas and such, which really have a split allegiance with their corporate builders.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:28 PM on August 31


DoT... isn't that basically Resurrection (well, they thought the cage was alien proof) mixed with Romulus minus the are-they-one-of-them mystery?
posted by kokaku at 3:43 AM on September 1


I don't remember bug-sized xenonorphs in Resurrection. I may have to watch it again.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:00 PM on September 1


What is a facehugger if not a really big bug? (this is a bug hunt, mannnnnnn)
posted by kokaku at 9:45 AM on September 3


Saw it just now: it was fun, serviceable, inoffensive (per above). I had my issues with it so I’ll list out what I really enjoyed about it first:

⁃ the cryo room failing and ohhhhhh there’s dozens of them thawing out
⁃ raising the room temperature to be invisible
⁃ the slow horror of realizing the rat that was in the cage turned into that
⁃ swimming through the floating acid blood, which made me go OH NEAT
⁃ the xenomorph catching Rain, in which I had a mild confusion of, “was this her friend post-injection? why is it helping her? why would it—oh it’s like catching a burger before it falls to the floor”

But truly (god help me) I think I wanted it to be longer. If only to get more of:
⁃ the dystopian reality of working for WY planet-side
⁃ the moralistic fight against the prime directive
⁃ side character character-development
⁃ body horror. PLEASE it could’ve been so much worse. I wanted it to be worse. Alien movies are fun but I cannot remember the last time they gave me dread in the pit of my stomach*

*I do remember but I’ve also seen the threads on Prometheus here on this site and I know when I’m outnumbered

So anyway. It was fun. I had fun, and I’m glad I saw it in theaters. I’m also thankful I remembered my concert earplugs because that 5 dB reduction saved me from tinnitus or stuffing napkins into my ear canals like Furiosa.
posted by lesser weasel at 12:28 AM on September 8 [2 favorites]


Nailed the production design and the aesthetic.

Didn't care a whit about anyone except the robut. This can be fine in a movie that's unambiguously trash where you just want the Jason to kill them well, but less so for Alien.

I really really really liked how the egg opened up like a flower to give us an HR Giger version of an Ann Geddes (???) flowerbaby.

Didn't like how all the other women had no real purpose except to be weak and get brutalized.

The double-extra-Doug-Jones monster was okay. Would have been better if they'd made its back-hole-things pulsate like those little deer with the disgusting face holes.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:07 PM on October 19


It was...fine? I feel like if your problem with modern Star Wars movies is that there's no scenes with Luke Skywalker fighting Darth Vader in them, this is the kind of Alien movie you really wanted. It's not exactly an Alien movie I didn't want; if it lacks the boldness of Prometheus and even Covenant, it does a much better job of hitting what it aims for; as said above, if those films are trying for an A and failing, this one tries for a B and makes it.

The aesthetic is my favorite part of the film. I think that once upon a time it would have seemed strange that the Future of Prometheus would seem glossy and beautiful, that the Prometheus itself would be a glorious Maserati versus the rusted-out piece-of-shit 1978 Ford Pinto of the Nostromo. But Weyland was a strutting young rooster of a corporation then, and by the time of these films, Weyland-Yutani is a conquering parasite with no competition, nothing to prove, and nothing to gain by building magnificent things for the serfs forced to labor beneath its yoke. So they build cheap shit, because fuck 'em. Even the resurgence of smoking (presumably tobacco) makes sense in the context of this Alien film in particular -- if they're going to destroy their lungs in a mine anyway why NOT smoke?

I felt more sympathy for the lovely canary being taken into the mine for almost any character with lines in the film; its vivid coloration in the context of the grim drizzly hell planet was a very nice touch.

I did wonder if at some point in the early scripting stage the split nature of the Romulus/Remus station was more significant on a plot level. The movie doesn't really do anything with it. I wouldn't be surprised to learn if earlier versions of the script had the twin structures separated in the Alien's initial rampage; if the ticking clock aspect had been Romulus and Remus drifting toward each other to meet in an inevitable collision, that would have made the whole twin thing seem more relevant. As it stands, it feels like someone said "Romulus sounds cool," and they went with it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:06 AM on October 21


The thing that bothered me more about Romulus was that it wasn't (AFAIK) a Joseph Conrad reference. I look forward to the eventual movie that finally features the Korzeniowski.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:30 AM on October 21


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