So, I’m not really sure how to start this review other than by saying, have you seen Alien? Have you seen Prometheus? Have you seen Alien: Covenant? Have you seen Alien: Resurrection? Mix them all together along with a short from YouTube, and you have Alien: Romulus.
It’s an alien on a ship, and our main protagonist is a woman. She lives, everyone else dies. Standard horror movie trope. Standard Alien movie trope. Sprinkle in a couple of cameos, some noticeable some blatant, to the first Alien movie. Partial spoilers: the Nostromo makes an appearance and the class of android from Alien makes a major appearance, additionally the black goo from Prometheus makes a return, and that established to have different species of the xenomorph so now you get Alien: Romulus.
So, I guess the biggest surprise was how negatively, the way the Yutani Corporation was portrayed. It looks like at this point they’re basically a slave labor force, or a slave labor company. They’re forcing over 2,000 humans on a colony world to mine themselves to death, and they can’t leave the planet. It’s called slavery, or endangered servitude. It’s still used in America (with illegals), or some other places in the world.
Plot: The main character lost her parents in the mines. All she ever wanted was to get off the fucking planet. She did her fucking time, then they denied her access off the planet. So she and her friends decide, fuck this, let’s go, but first we need to stop at this derelict space station to get some cryotubes, because it’s a nine year journey, and we didn’t think about getting that shit before we left. At this time we’re in Act 1 of every other Alien movie, moving towards the 2nd act. You establish the characters, you establish the setting, then you go, you explore some, determine why there are xenomorphs there, xenomorphs infect someone, there is no quarantine procedure, and shit gets out of control from there.
I’m not really going into any further spoilers, I think I pretty much said what I needed to say with this review. I think the franchise is on its last legs, because this is the fourth time they did the same premise. They have basically said in this movie that there always will be an Alien, but… if every xenomorph is always going to be beaten by a woman with no combat experience, I don’t see the point of these movies going further. There needs to be an Alien movie where all the Aliens win. Sort of like Avengers: Infinity War. The bad guys need to win. They need to show that they’re a threat again.
It was the best Alien since the original, but it’s still the same story and I’ve seen it done before and I prefer Prometheus at least to this one.
First screened August 18, 2024 at Icon Cinema OKC.
