Alien: Romulus (2024) (Movie Review)

Alien: Romulus (2024) I went to America this summer. And it was the first film I ever saw in an American cinema. So I’ll always have a special relationship with that film. Having said that, it’s not incredible! Shame! Well, it does (slightly) raise the bar, especially after the two Alien VS Predators, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017).

Here’s a recap of Alien Universe:

Alien (1979) Ahhhh! That eighth passenger! It was a shock at the time. After the cute, friendly aliens of Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (1977) and the entertaining creatures of Star Wars (1978), Ridley Scott terrified the world with his Alien in the same way that Spielberg blew the kit out of the water with Jaws (1975). In that first opus, everything was slow, frightening, surprising and new. The creature resembling a spider or scorpion jumped in the face and strangled with its tail, and we discovered that when it cut/injured itself, acid came out as blood. Then it would lay eggs inside a person…You didn’t see much of the creature, it was dark and very well done. Alien was a horror film, science fiction and thriller all rolled into one. What’s more, there was already feminism in it, but it wasn’t as ridiculous as it is today!

Aliens (1986): So there were plenty of aliens and plenty of action. Very different from the first, but complementary.

Alien 3 (1992): Faithful to the first, but set on a planet full of criminals. Ripley dies at the end while giving birth to an alien from her own womb.

Alien: Resurrection (1997): Ripley is brought back to life, thanks to his DNA. First time the android is female. The first time we see a mix of alien and human.

In Alien VS Predator (2004), we saw an exaggeration, because everything we knew was multiplied tenfold. Several eggs opened at the same time, lots of these creatures came out of the eggs, jumped, leapt and ran, attacking the Predator who had defended himself like a boss. In fact, the action scenes between the two creatures are fabulous, now that I think about it. It’s the humans that ruin everything in this film. Especially when the woman yells at the Predator like it’s her spouse! That’s saying something!!! Predator is one of the rare creatures to be able to face, with class, the most savage creature created in cinema. Well, that’s my opinion, isn’t it?

In Alien: Romulus, we see a mixture of everything I’ve just said. So… you have all the key elements in hand to decide whether or not you want to see it. Giger’s creature is still intact. My criticism of this film is once again its exaggeration. The team looks very young. They look like college graduates, whereas in the first Alien they were at least 30 or 35. Granted, they probably looked older then too… but it made sense. I’m not going to leave a whole ship in the hands of young kids and I’ll be out of there soon enough!

When I talk about exaggeration, there’s a scene that’s pretty crazy, but which you end up not believing, where Alien blood is everywhere, flying, because it’s weightless. But nobody really gets hurt. Sorry for the spoiler, but it won’t spoil your fun, I promise! Once again, we’ll either love it, say that the others are better or, more traditionally, say that only the first one is good.

Fede Alvarez, director of the very bad Evil Dead (2013), the good Don’t Breathe (2016), the second of which was relatively rubbish, has also made the sequel Millennium: What Doesn’t Kill Me (2018). I haven’t seen it, but I don’t see the point of doing these remakes. The Swedish trilogy was very good. Anyway! I had a good time for the reasons I’ve listed and I remain a fan of this franchise, even if I don’t like all of them. So that’s that! See you soon, folks!

My Rating