I saw Alien: Romulus

Alien: Romulus, Disney's grasp at Fox's enduring franchise, falls somewhere between Alien and Aliens  in the coveted year, 2142: a prequel/sequel rolled into one. It's produced by Michael (Echo Valley) Pruss, Walter (The Warriors) Hill, and per the fine print, Ridley Scott and is directed by Fede Alvarez, who coscripted with Rodo Sayagues, his Evil Dead 2013 collaborator. The plot places wannabe, space cadets on a derelict but operational, outpost called Renaissance, which consists of matching modules, Romulas and Remus (get it?). The craft offers the chance to led its leads to a place of sunshine and growth, but considering what's on board, don't hold your breath. 

The cast and crew are both an afterthought and precursor to Alien and Aliens' ensembles, wedged in a mining, industrialized, working-class crevasse. The "grass roots" alliance consists of Cailee Spaeny's Rain Carradine, the beleaguered, Ellen Ripley, heir apparent; Archie Renaux's Tyler, Rain's affable ex; Isabela Merced's Kay, Tyler's pregnant sis (oh, how convenient!); Spike Fearn's resentful Bjorn; Aileen Wu's tech-bent Navarro; and David Jonsson's Andy, my favorite of the lot, if only due to his underdog, android relegation. And yes, the rumor is true: An A.I. Ian Holm makes an appearance. He's not Ash, but a model named Rook, who's just as cold and analytical.

The working-class-hero angle is Romulus' philosophical point and push: a hopeful means through which the characters can flee their outcast states. This is used much in the way of Prometheus and Covenant's sublime, religious overtones, but all with a warm-up, Weyland-Yutani suppression. However, Romulus just nibbles off its lofty, anti-capitalist dread, and those nibbles are hard to buy, considering that this fable comes during a time when blatant, political misdirection, more than any corporate command, pounds the "little guy" into the ground. In other words, Romulus' advocation feels like a shoehorned, Upton Sinclair alibi, and a distilled, if not inaccurate one, at that.  

Romulus works better when it mounts its monstrosities (and my hat goes off to Fede for that artistic factor). Romulus is foremost a monster movie, with fast facehuggers, a slow-burn chestburster and a horde of unabating offspring. The Xenomorphs become evermore present as the plot progresses (a trend set by the sequels/prequels, as well as the AVP crossovers), and their hunting tactics here are as gripping as Cameron's acclaimed try. By the time the movie enters its final act (seized by slimy hybrids in the Alien: Resurrection vein), it's pure blood, sweat and tears, parenthesized by an implied and repugnant, Romulus/Remus, "wolf mother" nurturing. Therefore, to say that Romulus is akin to a high-fueled, amusement-park, dark ride wouldn't be dishonest. In generating its gasping fear, it does rise to its rollercoaster occasion and once there, never lets go. 

Where it falls short, however, is where it excels: meaning that it misses Ridley Scott's prequel annals of origin. Romulus needn't have been religious or theological to succeed (that's for certain), but maybe a sharper allusion to the Romulus/Remus myth (with a parallel nod to Cain and Able) would have worked to its benefit. There's a missed opportunity here, for such could have better emphasized the fable's haves-and-have-nots undercurrent, as long as it essayed the pros and cons of the age-old debate.

Regardless of its thematic teases and their lopsided downplays, Romulus holds the same worth (the same nightmarish plan) as other Alien movies. While the Jurassic submissions have become more intermittent in their donnish prominence, the Alien saga (as this chapter shows) can still hit the shivering mark, even as it misses its identifiable resonance.