Movie Review: 'Alien Romulus' Starring Cailee Spaeny

Alien Romulus

Directed by Fede Alvarez

Written by Fede Alvarez

Starring Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Reneaux, Isabela Merced

Release Date August 16th, 2024

Published August, 2024

The Alien franchise is just not for me. As a kid, I had the whole thing spoiled for me. First, I saw the Mel Brooks spoof Spaceballs before I ever saw Alien. That meant that the whole chest-burster scene was not nearly as interesting, surprising or effective. Then, there is the whole Ripley is a badass thing. I grew up being told that Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley is a legendary, badass, female action hero. That is simply not the case in the original Alien. That’s not a criticism of the actual character or Weaver’s performance, the cultural reputation of Ripley is not the fault of the movie.

Ripley in the original Alien is a complicated character, a normal woman in an extraordinary situation. Ripley doesn’t morph into an alien fighting hardass until the 3rd act of Aliens, the Alien sequel. And that’s likely where the cultural perception of Ripley comes from. So, again, it’s not a flaw in the movie, it’s an accident of timing, I never got to see Alien or Aliens in the way so many fans got to see it. By the time I saw it, the franchise had penetrated the culture in such a fashion that I had effectively seen the movie without ever actually seeing it. I knew what a Xenomorph, a Chest-Buster, and a Face-hugger were before I knew who Ellen Ripley really was.

I think, a reasonable cultural comparison would be if you knew the ending of The Sixth Sense before you ever saw it. You simply cannot see the movie the way audiences in 1999 saw it or as someone who doesn’t know the ending saw it for the first time. That’s my experience of the first two films in the Alien franchise, I can never see them in the way those who saw them in 1979 and 1986 did. Thus, I don’t have the reverence or awe that fans of the franchise have. The franchise doesn’t hold any nostalgia for me.

That said, I can appreciate the films on a technical level. The first two Alien movies are exceptionally well directed. Repetitious perhaps, but still strongly crafted and great looking. The alien design is specific and unique. And the grungy production design combined with a haggard and harried cast dressed appropriately in dingy duds, serve to give the setting a lived in quality that suits the story that first Ridley Scott and then James Cameron wanted to tell. Alien and Aliens flew in the face of the then contemporary presentation of space travel as sleek and bloodless.

So, I don’t hate the franchise, I don’t go into an Alien movie eager to tell fans why the thing they like isn’t good. I just don’t have the same experience of the movies that fans hold so dear. That also means that I can’t enjoy fan service like that at play in the latest Alien movie, Alien Romulus. While fans may get excitement out of seeing their favorite murderous aliens again, along with some deep cut fan service choices, I was left to wonder why I was so bored by what I can see so many others enjoying.

Alien Romulus, so I am told, takes place between the ending of Alien and the start of Aliens. I don’t know that for certain and I don’t care enough to check. The story opens on a mining planet owned by the big bad corporation villain of the franchise Wayland Yutani something or other. Cailee Spaeny stars as Rain, an orphan who has been forced to watch everyone she loves die while working in a deadly, disease-inducing mine. All that Rain has left is her adopted brother, Andy (David Jonsson), a synthetic humanoid retro-fitted by her father with the prime directive to protect Rain at all cost. At some unknown point in the past, Andy was damaged and thus his manner is somewhat childlike.

After being told that her contract with the mining company has been extended for another six years, denying her and Andy the chance to flee to a planet that has actual grass and sunsets, Rain is dejected. That’s when a former flame, Tyler (Archie Reneaux), finds her and offers her a chance at escape. Tyler and his mining ship crew, including pilot Navarro (Alieen Wu), Tyler’s sister Kay (Isabela Merced), and Tyler’s cousin, Bjorn (Spike Fearn), have heard tell of a corporate spaceship floating unnoticed in the atmosphere just above the planet. The ship is soon to be destroyed by its proximity to the rings that circle the planet.

It’s Tyler’s conjecture that they can take their ship to this out of commission vessel, strip it for parts, including cryo-tubes for deep space exploration, and use the parts to get them to that grass and sunsets planet nine light years away from the mining colony. Tyler doesn’t really need Rain for this. Rather, he needs Andy who, having formerly been the property of the evil corporation, can exploit and manipulate any remaining security or safeguards aboard the abandoned ship. Naturally, and because there would not be a movie if she said no, Rain agrees and the crew sets off on what we know will be a doomed and deathly journey.

The lack of care in setting up this story is only implied in my description so I will lay it out for you. It’s a minor plot hole but it annoyed me nevertheless. Why, if this evil corporation is so evil that they randomly extend their worker contracts, would they allow anyone with a spaceship to come and go as they please? Rain has just been told that her travel papers or whatever have been denied because her contract has been extended. So, why would she then, without any issues, be able to board a random spaceship and leave the planet? Seems like that might make the contract rather meaningless if people can just leave if they want to.

Meanwhile, we will later learn that the planet Rain wants to go to won’t allow Andy to go there. According to Bjorn, if Andy were to go with Rain to this new planet, he would be taken away immediately or killed or arrested or something. And yet, though they are strict about not allowing synthetic humans on their planet, they will be totally cool with allowing a rando- mining ship filled with people with no traveling papers and active contracts with this evil corporation to come to this planet to stay?

I’m nitpicking, I get it, the aliens are about to make all of this stuff meaningless by turning most of these characters into futuristic hamburger, but this lack of attention to detail in the storytelling is something I find irksome. Great movies care about such details. Truly great movies make these things matter. If they aren’t necessary to the story, they simply don’t include them. In Alien Romulus, these details are functional but nonsensical. No one seemed to care enough to make it make sense and that lack of care, combined with a group of characters that I quickly tired of, made the first two acts of Alien Romulus a tedious bore.

These characters are bad. I can’t state it any clearer than that. Tyler is a vacant lot, he’s a handsome void who doesn’t exist aside from having a vague desire for Rain. Bjorn is an obnoxious twit and a bully. He hates Andy because, we’re told, a synthetic humanoid killed his mother by trapping her in a mine so that it could save several other people escaping from an accident. This explanation is tossed off as if writer-director Fede Alvarez was anticipating how unlikable Bjorn is and he desperately wanted us to give a damn if he lived or died. Unfortunately, by the time the explanation arrives, it was far too late and I was already rooting for the facehuggers.

Aileen Wu and Isabela Merced may as well have dead meat stamped on their foreheads. Wu has no character trait other than pilot. The movie cares so little about her character that her death is included in the film’s trailer. As for Isabela Merced, her character has a secret that made me nearly laugh out loud at how much it sealed her doom. She might as well say it was a day before her retirement. I really like Isabela Merced, she was terrific in the little seen Turtles All the Way Down. She has an easy to like quality that this film drowns in bad writing. Merced barely exists and, in the end, she’s purely a plot function, one needed in order to give the film its big, climactic twist. No spoilers. I promise.

Was there anything I liked about Alien Romulus? I liked Cailee Spaeny. She’s cool. I also liked the character of Andy, even though he’s as much a function of this dimwitted screenplay as Merced is. At a certain point, Andy is gifted with plot convenience powers that allow him to navigate Rain, our blatantly obvious final girl, through the needed backstory to get around the deadly aliens. Still, I enjoyed David Jonsson’s performance, even as his being a synthetic humanoid is part fan service, all of the Alien movies have a synth guy, and one who serves only to provide plot convenient services.

There is simply nothing bold or different about Alien Romulus. Well, except for the spoiler twist that I won’t spoil. I will say, it was interesting. But, by the time of the big reveal in the third act, I was ready to go do anything other than watch this movie. The third act of Alien Romulus is pretty good. Once the movie is no longer enslaved to fan service or the need for plot convenient nonsense, it becomes a decent monster chase movie. I didn’t want Cailee Spaeny or David Jonsson’s characters to die so I had a little investment in how the movie would end. It’s not good enough to get me to recommend Alien Romulus but, the solid third act kept me from outright loathing Alien Romulus.

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