by Chris Bakker, Contributing Writer
Alien has a special place in my movie life, as I’m sure it does in many of yours. For me, it sits quite neatly at the very edge of body horror that I can stomach, and with Sigourney Weaver at the center of those original movies giving birth to an iconic character like Ellen Ripley, it doesn’t matter how many other projects are added to its universe.
We can talk all day about Ridley Scott’s prequel movies, and whether or not their myth-making qualities are something that a movie like Alien ever needed, but thus we arrive at Alien: Romulus, and already you’ll hear people start to say that at least those prequels did something new; took some steps in storytelling. They’re not wrong, of course. Alien: Romulus is your typical legacy sequel, where much of the original movie is rehashed with new filmmaking techniques and a new cast that appeals to a new audience. In the old days, we’d just get a remake of an old movie, but in the age of IP, we get a movie that has to be both accessible for new viewers, and provide plenty of nods for longtime fans of a franchise.
One of the main negatives for Romulus is that those nods are just kind of awkward at best, and — depending on where you personally sit on a specific kind of technology — downright offensive at worst. I don’t mean to put too fine a point on it, but callbacks and referencing previous movies can be done in ways that make sense, that even add to character. When Taabe says “if it bleeds, we can kill it” in Prey, it’s not just a reference to Predator, even if it is clearly that.
This is not to say Alien: Romulus is a bad movie, because it isn’t, but it’s a movie that hugs the wall separating it from Alien so closely it gets hard to see it stand out. While Romulus brings some ideas of its own, most of it can be boiled down to a what if: What if Alien, but with a larger budget and modern technology. For a young audience who thinks a movie made in 1979 is too old to possibly be worth watching, that’s probably going to be enough, because Romulus is well made. It looks gorgeous, with plenty of shots that make for great wallpapers, and it has some new approaches to the things we’ve become accustomed to in an Alien movie. But if you’ve been keeping up with the franchise, this might come across as more of a step back than a step forward. Whether that step back is to bring the franchise back to basics where it should have been, or a downgrade from the prequels’ myth-making probably depends on how you feel about Prometheus and Covenant.
At the end of the day, there’s not much else to really talk about without spoiling a few things about the third act specifically that do give Romulus a little bit of an identity of its own. It’s an Alien movie that follows that blueprint pretty closely, and you probably already have an idea of how you feel about that. Fortunately, no matter where you stand on that idea as a basis for this movie, it’s well made, by someone who clearly has a great deal of affinity for what he’s working with, in director Fede Álvarez. I just wish there was a little bit more of himself in it than there is.
Rating: Liked It
Alien: Romulus is currently playing in theaters
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