Movie Review: Alien: Romulus
Movie Review: Alien: Romulus
I have conflicting feelings.
Shitting this post out raw because I don’t feel like editing. Fuck you.
TBH when I saw this movie was coming out I thought it was going to be more of ridley scott being a pretentious and sclerotic retard, b/c of course he would write a reference to roman history into the title. I don’t follow pop culture at all so I didn’t hear about it until the day my mom bought us tickets and said we were going to the movies. I’m against going places against my will but I didn’t have plans so I might as well. I grew up on the alien films and they used to literally gave me nightmares, so its time to pass judgement onto this new one. I was pleasantly surprised, but not because the movie is specially good. 6 ish out of 10. But it has enough good and bad to make me feel conflicted, and its definitely above avg for today (avg film today is like 3-4)
I can split my thoughts on this movie into 3 categories.
The Bad
Aggressively dated characters. These characters are all very current-day. Mystery meat chavs, spiritual but not religious shit with the asian pilot and her hair sucks, the chav’s sister who has a completely different accent and is also pregnant. Black guy who I think was also in Get Out, And the main girl, a gloomy and scared but turned courageous white woman (a mainstay of the alien films). I think these characters probably all had the absolute worst of them sanded off, probably a competent senior designer stopping millenials from coalling up the script too much. annoyingly loud music, and frustrating horror/sci fi tropes. I think I already talked enough in my other stacks/posts about how modern music sucks and modern mediaslop (movies/shows/whatever) suck, you can fill in the blanks, its just an annoying soundtrack. Music does not need to be really fucking loud to make the movie scary, the original alien movie is exactly what taught the horror world about the importance of sound. unfortunately though, like laugh tracks are psychologically proven to make people laugh, loud noises are proven to make people stressed, so this probably won’t change. They can access all the ships main systems from any terminal, but they cant open doors at 2 major parts of the film because of security clearance (the second time is many times worse because they can somehow still mess with them even while a hostile operator elsewhere in the system is supposed to be blocking their access???). Grown ass adults LARPing as teenagers on screen. Xenomorphs still grow ridiculously fast, but they aren’t as bullshit as they were in alien covenant, from spore to fully grown xeno in minutes. There are a lot of stupid decisions made, but at least these people are clearly dipshit teenagers and not proffessionals, so it does work in their favor believability wise, when they makestupid decisions. Though the Black guy is the only voice of reason once SHTF The black guy acting like a middle of the road (not quite severe not quite high functioning) autist for the earlier parts is cringe, but the way the character is written does make it work, and him not being that way the whole time makes it not completely unbearable. He’s an aging piece of tech that holds sentimental value to the main girl because he was salvaged and made a family droid by her father. It does make sense an android built to simulate human behavior would start acting off if falling into disrepair like he is. Though its stupid that he immediately loses all of the repairs/updates to his systems the chip caused when it was removed from his brain. You don’t just remove repairs and updates from a system, thats like copying files from a flash drive and then when you remove the flashdrive they’re deleted from your computer. Not how this stuff works. asteroid belts/ planetary rings are of course many times more dense than they’d ever actually be in space, for dramatic effect and to make them a tangible threat for the film’s needs, that’s acceptable. Temperature is an environmental factor in this film a few times, its handled inconsistently and changes really fast in one place and then unbearably slow in the other.
A Tribute
A tribute to the classic alien films with the first practical effects I’ve seen used in modern cinema for a long time. Incredible set design. CG is still there and a big part of it but it doesn’t feel as shitty. The aliens themselves are both CG and practical, I’d have to rewatch to tell which scenes were which for the most part, since I thought they were all CG. The only obvious practical part is when their heads are exploding, which was great. The opening is excellent, the practical miniature ships against the backdrop of space feels authentic, and it starts incredibly strong. I was convinced I was watching a really old film at first, until the actors that look and speak like current year people came on. Thankfully their dialogue doesn’t have any modern neologisms, otherwise it would’ve made the film brimstone. But they still have the look and feel of current year about them. The monster that appears in the end of the film is a great revisiting of the idea of the human-alien hybrid from alien 4, that doesn’t look as cringe inducingly goofy, and remains a generally uncanny lanky man, even if he goes from fetus to full grown man within 5-10 minutes. This film explores the same biological/cosmic/existential horror the alien world is already familiar with, the monster with the penis head is still thematically all about rape and pregnancy. Including the pregnant woman makes what was previously an allusion in the first film as explicit as it can get. Also aliens have a coccoon middle stage now, and that coccoon has a big cunt hole the alien emerges from. This is actually what Giger wanted to design the alien eggs like in the first place, though facehuggers also look like cunts from the receiving end. Giger was obsessed with drawing dicks and vaginas, what else can I say, the movie can’t be blamed for it really. It works in being disgusting, which is what it’s supposed to be anyway.
Sometimes Fairly Clever
Sometimes this movie displays a shocking level of competence, intelligence, and internal consistency. What Immediately comes to mind is the 0 G scene with the pulse rifle. Or how the black guy (an android) goes from a dysfunctional epileptic sperg to the most competent and best character in the movie. If not for our Blerd droid being the voice of reason (I know, minorities being smart should be another strike against this film) the characters wouldve made a dumbass decision to get themselves killed immediately. Thankfully this movie realized that all the characters being fucking retarded would make it too hard to watch. The final scare sequence isn’t just a cheap jumpscare at the end of the movie, but i’d argue its in a way more interesting than the similar sequence in the original Alien. It actually is a whole situation with setup and not a last second tack-on the hero solves in 5 seconds. The facehugger room was set up really well and I actually enjoyed it a lot, even if they broke their own rules they established about it, it was a thought-out sequence. The echo/thermal/pheromonal location of the face huggers would’ve sure as hell sniffed them out in seconds when they panicked or spoke. People’s reaction to the androids talk about quarantine was understandable, though the conflict was escalated very quickly.
Anyway those are my thoughts on the movie since it’s still fresh in my mind. I don’t have much else to say about it, it’s mid. Above avg today though will probably result in normgroids calling this a masterpiece or a work of genius or something. Sigh.
Good night.
I wish more people would open their ‘stacks like the first line, very swag
Make ur posts audio