As either the seventh or ninth film in the franchise (depending on whether you count the Alien vs Predator crossovers), Alien: Romulus is up against a huge amount of nostalgia and expectation. It’s unlikely any new instalment will ever reach the heights of 1979’s Alien or 1986’s Aliens, yet the lukewarm reception of Ridley Scott’s return with his two prequel films means that Romulus is needed to revitalise the franchise.
Fortunately, it manages that, with a few caveats. Romulus is undoubtedly the best Alien film in years, balancing sci-fi and horror in a way the series hasn’t really managed since Aliens. It’s visceral, violent and unsettling, although less gorily over-the-top than I expected from Evil Dede Alverez. His script, with his regular collaborator Rodo Sayagues, is a decisive critique of the horrors of capitalism and unchecked growth. Setting the film between Alien and Aliens allows the writers to explore a largely unknown period in the series’ future history, giving us a story connected to Ripley’s without impacting it directly.
On the other hand, Romulus’ reliance on knowing references and slavish recreation of the past limits it originality. We have a new cast of characters to follow and root for, an effective updated design for the Alien (now officially named onscreen as Xenomorph XX-121) and a new corner of the universe to explore, yet we have an antagonist almost literally resurrected from Alien’s history and the repeated use of fan-pleasing old lines, regardless of whether it makes sense in context. Much of this is to be expected; we are, after all, living in the age of nostalgia. What I didn’t anticipate was the writers picking up a plot thread from Prometheus, unfortunately one that lacked much logic or coherence in the first place. This comes to the fore in the final act, derailing an otherwise impressive movie.
What can’t be faulted is the cast. While we have an uniformly young and beautiful set of protagonists – no room for the weird and wonderful in this future – they are all extremely impressive in what are solidly well-written roles. The characters are believable in a way we haven’t seen in this franchise for years, making mistakes and rash decisions that we could see ourselves making in the impossible situation in which they find themselves.
SPOILERS FROM HERE
Cailee Spaeny is excellent as Raine, the unassuming but quietly powerful lead. It’s unclear just how old she is meant to be, but the impression I get is somewhat younger than Spaeny’s 26 years. Forced into a life in the mines to survive on the brutal colony world of Jackson’s Star, Raine ahs had to grow up fast in order to stay alive and look after her android brother. Even more impressive is David Jonsson as Andy, the malfunctional synthetic whose sole directive is to do what’s best for Raine. He is exceptional as both the original Andy, awkward, sweet-natured and heavily autistic-coded; and the upgraded version, his personality altered by Company programming. It’s a sudden and tangible change in the character’s personality that Jonsson portrays with remarkable skill.
The remaining cast all give very strong performances, as characters who are also doing whatever they can to survive on a planet run according to corporate interests alone. All orphaned by the monstrous conditions and backbreaking work, they each have their own motivations for trying to escape to the non-Company world of Yvaga. Rain’s ex, Tyler (Archie Renaux) is a likeable secondary hero, with his cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn) making to an understandably dickish irritant. Tyler’s sister, Kay (Isabela Merced), almost looks like she’s going to be written out early on, but becomes vital to the plot, while Navarro (Aileen Wu) is an exceedingly cool space pilot who perhaps deserved a little more screen time.
What binds them together is their desperate need to get off this shitty planet, where the work, disease and the very air itself are killing people. Any successful Alien film has Weyland-Yutani as the ultimate force of evil, a huge conglomerate that spans the galaxy, absorbing new worlds into itself regardless of the human cost. It’s the end result of centuries of capitalist expansion; a brave thing for Disney to release, given its own monstrous conduct in recent years.
To continue this theme onboard the Renaissance station, Alvarez and Sayagues bring back Ash, or rather, an android of the same model, with the same appearance, voice and personality. Ian Holm died four years ago, and while his estate would have signed off on the use of his likeness, I remain troubled by this recent trend for reanimating dead actors through screen trickery. Recreating Holm’s performance through a combination of animatronics, digital manipulation, and voice acting by Daniel Betts, the result is eerily like him, although with the uncanny quality that can never quite be overcome. Still, on the whole I think it worked in this instance, as an android, and a heavily damaged one at that, benefits from a certain artificial and inhuman quality.
Fede Alvarez is has quickly become known for his flair for ghoulish horror, and Romulus doesn’t disappoint. While sometimes he takes the “haunted house in space” concept of the original Alien a bit too literally – screaming corpses illuminated by torchlight in the dark being a particularly over the top moment – he’s made the first truly scary Alien film since 1979. The bulk of the film is a well-structured horror, with elements set up for payoff in the climax. The aliens themselves are extremely well-realised, and there’s a refreshingly light touch with the CGI here, with physical effects dominating. The entire aesthetic of the film, retaining the grungy, tangible nature of the earlier instalments, makes it feel more real and immediate than most science fiction films this century. In contrast, the shots of the station making its close encounter with the rings of the planet are majestically beautiful, in spite of the danger and the horror going on so nearby.
It's the tying in of Prometheus and Covenant via the black goo, and the results of that, that trip the film up. While it gives the android Rook and the Company he represents a new motivation, rather than once again trying to turn the Alien into a weapon, it upends the realism of the rest of the film. The gunk was introduced in Prometheus as a liquid plot device that can magically perform whatever function the script needs at that moment. Watching it, I had hoped that Kay’s ill-advised decision to inject herself with the substance would be used a sequel hook, to be picked up in a future film. Instead, we get a tacked on final encounter with one more monster, as in the franchise’s signature horrible twist on pregnancy, Kay’s unborn child is mutated into a rapidly-maturing mutant. It’s a clear attempt to do the Newborn from Resurrection, only better, and in that it succeeds. Yet the Offspring, as it apparently named, seemingly a human-xenomorph-Engineer hybrid of some kind, arrives just to wreak mindless violence and extend the film beyond the point of interest.
It’s a shame, because it derails what was otherwise a very strong film. There’s some fascinating science fiction here, with the questions of the rights and identity of artificial people, the unsuitability of humans for life in space, and the rapacious greed of ever-growing corporations. This is combined with some truly effective horror, even if there’s a bit too much reliance on jump scares. The film never escapes the shadow of what came before it, though. Alvarez tries to recreate classic moments, with varying degrees of success, and makes the catastrophic mistake of emulating one of the franchise’s biggest missteps.
To read my rundown of the first four Alien films, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment