ALIEN: ROMULUS (2024)

I will never enjoy a clanker

Most of all I just want to know whose fault this is.

First of all, fuck whoever thought resurrecting Ian Holm was a good idea. The thought that an actor, since deceased, would be forced back into service for a role he originated is profane on a level that actually hurts. Eventually we all die, and we go away, and new people take our place. You’re telling me they couldn’t find a single person to play the top half of an android? Hell, there’s probably a stuntman who is missing his legs who could’ve been even more interesting (and mobile) in the role.

There’s a concept, it started with anime but has bled into greater culture, that I loathe: “fan service.” The idea that you can short-circuit the need to create an interesting, new piece of art if you just cram enough things people recognize in it. And look, when the alien head appears on the trophy wall of the Predator’s ship at the end of Predator 2, did I pop a little bit? Sure. But that’s a throwaway bit of production design, not an entire-ass movie built only out of things designed to get people to do the Leo “point-and-whistle” thing in real life.

This is a movie too terrified of its own place in the pantheon of Alien films and thus never takes a single risk. Everything is so by-the-numbers that the few interesting ideas (like the zero-grav scene) really stick out, like they are from another movie. And the Alien franchise is one that has a pretty interesting pedigree in terms of who gets handed the reins. People forget because Scott re-took control of it with Prometheus, but the first four Alien films were helmed by very green directors (Aliens was Cameron’s second film, Alien³ was Fincher’s first feature, Resurrection was Jeunet’s third film and first American production), so Fede making his seventh film feels like a veteran stepping in.

There’s nothing wrong with the concept of ‘kids make a break for freedom and end up on a ship full of death,’ that’s a great twist on the classic Alien setup. The problem is that it’s so chock-full of setpieces and lines from the other movies (some of which haven’t even happened yet because this is a side-quel) that it never builds its own lore.

And it is about lore. Every Alien movie substantially built out the lore. Queens and the Hive? Cameron came up with that. Alien morphology based on what it gestated in? Alien³ is where that comes from. Even Resurrection played a little with how much xenomorph biology could be dictated by science. Fede, however, is uninterested in building the lore; it feels like he was much more constrained by what has come before into building a haunted-house of greatest hits. It’s especially infuriating because when he was given the keys to the Evil Dead franchise, he absolutely took swings at making it his own, and that’s something with a much narrower and more-fervent fanbase who would be much less forgiving of straying.

The idea that Weyland-Yutani is not just evil, but actual maniacal bastards, is actually kind of lame. The big joke of the corporation is that they are not evil by choice, just by their unwavering dedication to being profitable. That’s the chilling part. If they’re just psychotically chasing and breeding aliens, that’s dumb as shit.

The real nail in the coffin, though, is the constant, constant callbacks and references. It’s like that one scene in Rogue One where Dr. Evazen and Ponda Baba show up for no reason at all except for every Star Wars nerd to go ‘oh yeah, those guys! I recognize them!’ It deflates a lot of the terror when we know exactly how fucked what we’re seeing is long before the characters do.

Two hours is probably one setpiece/fuck-finish too long, but that’s the Fede Alvarez trademark, baybee!