The review embargo has lifted on Fede Alvarez’s “Alien: Romulus” and early consensus fits in well with my own sentiments: it’s just alright.
‘Romulus’ has a 63 on Metacritic (based on 36 reviews). Many critics didn’t like the final act, and it’s surely going to be talked about a lot. I give Alvarez credit for wanting to go in that ballsy direction, but it just didn’t work. Of course, I won’t mention a word about it. This is a spoiler-free writeup.
Fact of the matter is, did we really need another ‘Alien’ movie? Of course not. But I still had some hopes that Alvarez would deliver the goods. In a way, it certainly does in the middle section, which is where the pulse-pounding action takes place, and I adore Cailee Spaeny’s on screen presence, but it’s also nothing we haven’t seen before. The main characters all get knocked off, one by one, and you can already tell, very early on, who will survive and who won’t.
The ‘Alien’ saga, which began in 1979 with Ridley Scott's seminal film, with Sigourney Weaver in the lead, has had many sequels over the years. Álvarez, best known for “Don't Breathe” and the “Evil Dead” remake, tries to revive it, but his back-to-the-basics approach (think “The Force Awakens”) feels uninspired. Many of Alvarez’s narrative beats are stolen from the first two films.
Scott remains as producer. This is 20th Century’s attempt at reviving the franchise. The last one, 2017’s “Alien: Covenant,” directed by Soctt, was both a critical and commercial disappointment. Not many cared about that movie, which was well-made, but inconsequential.
If I had to rank all of the Alien movies, it’d look something like this: ALIENS > ALIEN > PROMETHEUS > ALIEN 3 > ROMULUS > COVENANT > RESURRECTION.
I will always swear by 2012’s “Prometheus,” which was unfairly maligned at the time of its release. Dom Nero‘s “It’s Time To Redeem Prometheus,” which appeared in the 9.1 edition of Esquire kind of nailed it. He called it a “masterpiece.” I wouldn’t go as far as to use the “M” word in describing Scott’s eccentric film, but it’s far and away the best ‘Alien’ movie released since James Cameron’s 1986 film.
“Prometheus” took a rather harsh beating from the film community, which still puzzles me. Yes, it was promoted as Scott’s return to the ‘Alien’ franchise, but what we got instead was a heady, richly detailed and incredibly thoughtful film about human existence, and not the slasher-film-in-space that most people expected (and that Alvarez has given us here again). It was a big, bold and satisfying blockbuster from Scott.