Alien: Romulus

There is a difference between continuing a movie franchise and perpetuating it. To continue a franchise is to evolve it, to grow it. The next chapter changes the stakes, introduces new locations or concepts, cycles out old cast for new, and generally moves the universe and the overall narrative forward. Ghostbusters; Afterlife, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3, most MCU movies in the first three phases, all great examples of how to continue a franchise. Perpetuating a franchise, however, is far more crass and cynical. It only requires repetition. Nothing moves forward, arcs resemble flat planes, nothing changes in the universe. While no movie is made purely for artistic reasons, franchise perpetuations wear their commerce-driven decisions on their sleeve, mostly because they have nothing else to show for it. Think any Pirates Of The Caribbean movie after the third one (some might say after the first one), any Terminator movie after T2, or the recent Halloween trilogy. You can add Alien Romulus to that list. Is it the worst Alien movie? No. Alien Resurrection is right over there, being abjectly awful in every late 90's way. But it cannot hide its nature as a corporate cash-grab, so at least it's honest in what it is. Alien Romulus manages a different kind of vulgarity. It masquerades as a return to form, while being nothing more than a rehash of ideas we've seen done elsewhere in the franchise, and done better. At the center of this movie's problems is Fede Alvaresz, a human AI generator of a director. He doesn't create, he imitates. He doesn't have fresh ideas, he only remixes what has been seen. He can show you things you've seen before and do a damned good job imitating them, but he doesn't have the slightest inkling of what makes those things good. Witness his abysmal Evil Dead movie, where he copied the original's copious gore and disturbing body horror, and lifted the entire "group of people in a cabin" premise whole cloth from the original, but fails to make anyone likeable (which, when you have Jane Levy in the cast, should be impossible), and thinks that the only way to convey horror is hopelessness and a perpetual grimdark atmosphere. He makes the same mistakes here; he lifts elements from all over the Alien franchise, from being stuck on a ship to an android looking out for Weyland-Yutani's corporate interests instead of the humans (namely, using the xenomorphs for biological purposes). It references colonial marines and has the pulse rifles. It has a bunch of aliens instead of one. One of the characters even steals the "get away from her you bitch" line, which is not only unearned and out of place, it also screams that this movie is depending on the quality of better movies to support its weak structure. Alien Romulus does nothing different from Alien or Aliens, and done exceptionally better there. That also extends to following the franchise's rules, as Alien Romulus decides to throw established lore out the window when it suits plot needs. Remember in Alien how the facehugger was on Kane for quite a while before, having implanted the egg, it detached and died? And then it was still a while yet before the xenomorph burst out of him? Never mind that, in Alien Romulus, implantation takes a couple minutes, tops, and the alien will hatch fully formed maybe 15 minutes later. And there's a whole new part of the growth cycle introduced, another cocoon stage for the xenomorph after birth but before being fully formed. But that's okay, because the movie is full of plot holes that it makes no attempt to explain. How can a ship that has come to a dead stop in space suddenly be falling on a vertical plane? Why is there an android with what is portrayed as neurological damage? In the climax, four levers need to be pulled to release the cargo bay; we only see three happen, and the third seems to happen because ... The Force? How does the cabin Rain is in get dangerously cold when the cryo fuel leak is in another cabin that is sealed behind doors two cabins away? How did a space platform suddenly show up in orbit? And why did nobody get suspicious about a suddenly-appearing space platform that is derelict? I could go on, but you get the point. The writing is sloppy and haphazard. Things happen because the plot needs them to, not because they're the natural course of events or driven by the characters. For that to happen, there would have to be characters. Not a single member of this cast has a defined character; Isabela Merced is pregnant. Navarro is a pilot and bald. Bjorn has an impenetrable accent and is a jerk. Rain, the painfully obvious Final Girl, is a painfully obvious Final Girl. Nobody has an arc here. Nobody faces any personal growth. Think back to Aliens, how Ripley is torn apart upon waking up to find out her daughter got old and died in her cryo-sleep, and how she processes that grief and gets another chance at motherhood with Newt. Nothing even remotely like that is here. These characters are as stock as an 80's slasher. It doesn't have the courtesy to have an original ending, as it does the same "going to cryo-sleep for a long, unsure journey" ending Alien AND Aliens did. The audacity of this movie's unoriginality is mind-blowing. I will complement the movie on looking good. Cailee Spaeny is a serviceable Final Girl, although I much rather would've had Isabela Merced in the role, instead of wasted as a human Macguffin. The visual direction is fine. But the story is so unbelievably lazy, using cliff notes from other, better installments and trying to present them as its own, I don't see any reason why anyone should watch this instead of the far superior Alien or Aliens. Alien 3 was a mess, but at least it was a unique mess. Resurrection was terrible, but it was also bog standard and made with all the passion of a Thomas Kinkade painting. Alien Romulus tries to be prestige and present itself as bringing the franchise back to its roots, but, like Alvarez did with Evil Dead, all he did was poorly copy other people's notes and present it as his own work.