AUG 24 — When you’re nine films deep into a franchise, and I’m including the Alien vs Predator films as well, there really aren’t that many choices left to keep the fire burning – either you go-for-broke and explore totally new ground, thereby risking alienating the fanbase, or you go the respectful fan service route.
I’m not a hardcore fan of the Alien franchise, and to be fully honest, I can’t even recall much of what happened in most of the films that were made after the first two, and even for the first two, which I haven’t revisited in quite a while, my memory of them is foggy at best.
So, I guess my state of mind when entering this film is probably the closest to what most of the audiences walking into this are like in 2024 – they know that this is a franchise film, they’re familiar with a few things from this franchise, but they’re not going to be familiar with the specifics like they would a modern superhero franchise like the MCU or DCEU movies.
In short, the film needs to impress them on its own merit.
Now that we have that in mind as the assignment, there really is no better director out there at impressing new audiences and giving the existing ones more of the same thrills than Fede Alvarez, who did the almost impossible task of not only winning new fans with the 2013 version of Evil Dead, but also impressing existing fans of the Evil Dead movies with his understanding of what made people love those movies in the first place.
I think that’s more or less the brief that he received when he got the gig to make this latest Alien movie.
Remember, this is a big budget Hollywood studio film, a Disney one for that matter, so to expect a filmmaker working within the confines and demands of this particular studio system to break new ground, especially when handed the reins of a long-running franchise, is totally unrealistic.
The best that a filmmaker working within these constraints can hope for is to maybe put a little bit of his personality into the film, in terms of shade and colour, and I think Alvarez did just that with Alien: Romulus.
Set in a timeline somewhere between the first Alien movie and Aliens, this new film focuses on the youngest set of characters we’ve yet to see in the Alien franchise, led by Cailee Spaeny (of Priscilla and Civil War fame) as Rain, supported by her android “brother” Andy (an outstanding David Jonsson) and four other friends who embark on what’s clearly going to be an ill-fated mission of trying to salvage some cryo pods from a marooned space station just outside of their mining colony planet’s orbit, so that they can finally escape the brutal life of wage-slavery courtesy of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation that has already claimed the lives of their parents.
Awaiting them in that space station, which was divided into two sections – Romulus and Remus – are of course the xenomorphs and face huggers that the Alien franchise has made famous since they first debuted in 1979.
In short, the storyline is basically a retread of Alien all over again, with plenty of tips of the hat, action set-pieces and even lines of dialogue repeated from the first two films, making this film an unabashed piece of fan service.
But, as I said earlier, most people who walk into this movie will not even remember most of the recycled scenes and lines of dialogue because they’re just too young to even have seen the first two films, which is why the current critical and audience consensus surrounding Alien: Romulus have been very good indeed.
You see, outside of these acts of tribute/homage that only hardcore Alien fans will be able to pick up (and some, like me, will receive with delight instead of disdain), Alvarez and regular collaborator Rodo Sayaguez have delivered an expertly crafted piece of gory horror filmmaking, but wrapped in sci-fi movie packaging.
Every single attack by the face huggers here was delivered in an excellent panic-inducing manner; it’s almost as if we’re watching the Don’t Breathe movies, but with aliens in them.
And don’t even get me started on the graphic gore that’s visited upon the movie’s young adult cast, with alien slime replacing the geysers of blood that made the 2013 Evil Dead such a horrific and queasy watch.
To modern day audiences, this will feel very much as if the Don’t Breathe movies and the 2013 Evil Dead are put into a blender as the main ingredients to make a new Alien movie, which is a very good thing, if you ask me.
However, the choice to digitally recreate a now-deceased actor to restore a character from the first Alien movie, is one that I’ll leave up to you to decide whether it’s tasteful or not.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
