.
The seventh film in the Alien franchise Alien Romulus is set between the events of Alien and Aliens. The film is directed and co-written by Fede Alvarez and produced by Ridley Scott’s production company ‘Scott Free’ and Walter Hill’s ‘Brandywine.’
20th Century Studios
Romulus returns to the theme of ‘blue-collar’ workers in dire trouble established by the original 1979 feature film. In this story a collection of miners and other assorted low-value labor board a derelict station in hopes of obtained hyper-sleep pods that will allow them to escape their indentured servitude by making the 9-year voyage to the nearest planet not controlled by the corporation. the station however harbors secrets and dangers the characters are wholly unaware of and what started as a quest to escape rapidly become one of survival.
In my opinion Romulus ranks third in the franchise, directly after the original and Cameron’s direct sequel. Fede Alvarez and production designer Naaman Marshal have done a quite admirable job is creating a film that feels as though it is part of the world established by the original film and its sequel. Graphics recreated from those movies do not draw attention to themselves but create the familiar environment of those production. For the most part story beats and scenes that do call back to earlier movies do not feel as though they were forced into the film as some sort of obligatory ‘fan service.’
For the most part.
There are sadly several bits that do feel forced and contrived. I think in general it is preferrable to reference earlier films in a franchise with production design and props but not dialog. The dialog spoken by previous characters is theirs and it is unquestionably better to find the right words for you characters rather than take them from another.
The weakest section of the film for me is the final ten or fifteen minutes. Not only does it not feel earned and rather forced it extends a film that had reached a natural and satisfying conclusion with references to substandard entries in the franchise and caused the movie to end with more stolen dialog.
I find it ironic that the most enduring thematic element in the franchise is the one that screenwriter Dan O’Bannon objected to the most when it was inserted into his original script for Alien. The entire corporate conspiracy sub-plot, that the ship had been diverted deliberately and that the crew was considered expendable O’Bannon never liked but has become the defining theme of the films. It lives strong and proud in Romulus.
The next element of my review contains a spoiler so here’s a few thoughts before I continue.
Alien Romulus is a decent if somewhat flawed film that earns at least one viewing.
***SPOILER WARNING***
Through extensive and fairly well deployed CGI the filmmakers recreated on the screen Ian Holm, portraying another android in the same series that ‘Ash’ belonged to. There were some minor ‘uncanny valley’ issues, but they were well managed and actually fit the style of the film for an ‘artificial person.’
The fact that the plot revolves around a soulless corporation pushing workers to their death and seeking a way to extract value even beyond their death while the film literally extracts value from a deceased laborer is deeply ironic.
