A reboot and a return to basics in Alien: Romulus, in which Ridley Scott hands over the franchise to Spanish director Fede Alvarez, who returns the favour by handing producer Scott a spectacular sci-fi horror movie up with the best (ie the first two) of the series.
We’re on a grungey spaceship on a timeline somewhere between the original Alien and its follow-up, Aliens, where a murderous xenomorph is working its way through Cailee Spaeny’s girlish Sigourney Weaver stand-in Rain, David Jonsson’s “synthetic” Andy, Archie Renaux’s tough, blustering Tyler, Isabela Merced’s hot and vulnerable Kay, Spike Fearn’s callow and peevish Bjorn and Aileen Wu’s practical and sexually ambiguous Navarro.
It doesn’t matter why they are all there, though Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues give us plenty of backstory explaining all this. What matters is who dies first, surely. If you look at the star billing you can more or less work it out from there. But it seems written in stone that Spaeny is going to make it to the end.
The clever thing about Romulus is the way it mixes very familiar Alien elements with new ones. That cast, though noticeably younger than the Sigourney Weaver/John Hurt era, and playing as younger too, parallels the earlier lot. The creature is recognisably the same one that HR Giger created all those years ago. And though creature designer Dane Hallett has worked up some new (mostly vulval) angles on the old formula, it’s a testament to the power of Giger’s original vision that the creature is still terrifying. That said, it’s probably seen just a bit too much.
The ship they’re on is all clanking metal and dark corners, metal gangways, industrial production design and old-school computers that wink and bleep. Comfortingly familiar.
Also in keeping with the retro ambience is the reliance on practical effects rather than digital. If this film is anything it’s a triumph of production and creature design rather than acting. No shade at Spaeny, but she doesn’t get very much to do – and if you saw Civil War you’ll know what she can do – until the film swings into its final her-against-it section. See the original Alien for more on that.
Benjamin Wallfisch’s score deliberately echoes those of the other composers who have worked on the various movies – notably Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner and Harry Gregson-Williams – and Alvarez brought back some of the effects guys from Aliens to make the grunge look real rather than computer rendered.
Another returnee is Ian Holm, back from the afterlife – or his image and voice are CG’d into something approximately like Ash in the original Alien – as a disembodied reminder that this is a tale of the corporate versus the human, profit versus ethics, programming versus real values. Some uneasiness in some quarters about the use of a dead and much loved actor’s face, but it seems appropriate in a film that asks questions about when too much is too much.
Which brings us to the most interesting character in the film, Andy, a tame synthetic – Rain’s pet, essentially – who goes rogue (or reverts to type, take your pick) once Rook (as the Ian Holm-faced synthetic is called this time around) has got at him. David Jonsson is playing two different people, basically, and is entirely plausible as both the good, meek Andy and the driven, corporate automaton. See Michael Fassbender’s David 8 and Walter One in 2017’s Alien: Covenant for a precursor.
One other aspect stirred controversy in some quarters: the spectacularly wrong-footed decision – according to some people – to strike out in a bold new direction with a late plot twist that introduces an entirely new character, a human/xenomorph hybrid. When what Alvarez et al were clearly meant to do was stick to the program and regurgitate lore.
Toe the company line, in other words – the film has something to say about that. Personally, it didn’t bother me, though I’m not sure it really added that much. The final section would probably have been fine without it, but then this last section is so spectacular – think Alien, but with a zero-gravity twist – and put together in the best big-budget style, that you’re likely to forgive Alvarez et al, if that hybrid was bothering you in the first place.
Alvarez, something of a franchise-extending director (he did the 2013 Evil Dead remake and The Girl in the Spider’s Web, follow-up to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) has worked some magic here, with a film that tucks neatly into the Alien franchise, timeline and ethos but still thinks big. Will Ridley Scott send him on another mission?
Alien: Romulus – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2025
