Alien: Romulus

Well we went to see the newest Alien movie…and it was exactly what I expected it to be. I think we all know by now that I have a burning, fiery hatred for remakes, reboots and unnecessary sequels. As far as those things go Alien Romulus is a shitty remake. Can’t be a sequel really because it doesn’t expand on or add anything to the world, though it does vaguely acknowledge what came before it. But really this movie was The Force Awakens. An unbelievably bad version of what launched the franchise.

First we have the subtle, passive, dated things that just didn’t sit right with me. For the first part of this mission the boys all go onto the station and the girls stay on the ship. Then we have the fact that the only “synthetic” character, who they go to great effort to tell the audience is not a real person and does not feel, is the only POC character. That’s not great. Now it isn’t outright bigotry but it's one of those things that should give you pause.

Then we have the similarities to the original that are completely devoid of heart or purpose. The main woman is the only one that survives. Now the problem with this is that in the original Ripley is the only one that survives because she is simply the smartest character, she survives because she is capable and she saves herself. In this however the main character is only the focus for approximately 30-40 minutes of the film. The rest of the story focuses on the men. She also survives by complete accident. She is astonishingly stupid, as is everyone around her. In the original movie some bad, even dumbass decisions were made. But every character wasn’t completely devoid of common sense. Yet here we are in the remake where the only thing these people have to do is shut the fuck up and walk through a hallway and one of these dudes decides this is the time for a family chat with his sister over the headset. The sister that apparently can’t navigate their ship without help and is incapable of closing doors behind her while she runs away from this alien. No one was driving this story. Things simply happened to and around the characters and none of it meant anything.

Then, of course, we have horrendous writing. This is both in story and structure. I do believe the stakes of the story changed at least 4 times. There was no message, no heart to this film whatsoever. And to make matters worse it was just messy. It felt like everyone had a different idea and they just decided to do all of them, one after another, over, and over again. It could have ended 20 minutes earlier and it wouldn’t have been overtly terrible.

Overall Alien Romulus was bad. I’m not really sure what the fascination is with remaking successful movies is, but it's done poorly every time. The idea of “introducing the franchise to a new generation” only holds merit if we lived in a world where once you watched a movie, that movie could never be seen again. No physical media, no streaming services. But that’s not the world we live in. If you want the next generation to see Alien, then show them Alien. If you want the next generation to see Star Wars, then show them Star Wars. It’s quite possibly the easiest thing in the world and yet somehow Hollywood keeps fucking it up. I give it a 4/10, it’s not completely unwatchable but the cast was no more than mediocre and cheap remakes are what is killing film.