Alien: Romulus is an excellent instalment to the Alien franchise. It’s a simple story of a girl named Rain who wants to escape a life of poverty, so together with some friends, she heads to an abandoned spaceship to retrieve some cryopods.
Of course, they end up finding xenomorphs aboard the ship and all hell breaks loose.
Less well-known actors were cast to play the main characters which creates a sense of uncertainty for the characters survival. This is a common device used to help the viewer immerse themselves in the story more, especially in a thriller-type film like this. Romulus falls somewhere in the middle of Aliens (1986) where there is a mixture of action and horror and Alien (1979) which has less action.
It works as a good middle between Alien and Aliens since it also takes place between the two chronologically. I also like the fact that in the trailers they said “in space no one can hear you scream” paying homage to the original. For the xenomorphs and the other aliens they end up taking a more practical approach to create the characters by using a mixture of puppets and animatronics but still using CGI from time to time like with the facehuggers. Speaking of the facehuggers, they get a lot more screen time compared to the other movies where they aren’t very threatening compared to the main xenomorphs.
The first section of the movie starts off with a simple and calm build-up with introductions to the characters and preparing the audience for what is to come. Multiple times the film-makers use gravity as a threat for the humans, which is something that hasn’t been seen in an alien film previously. As it progresses, the film gets more intense with factors like the main characters being on a time limit to finish up on the ship and the introduction of the aliens.
Also, another thing to mention, the soundtrack, which was composed by Benjamin Wallfisch, which helps creates a sense of dread throughout. One of the characters, an android named rook is meant to be the same model as the android Ash from Alien who was played by Ian Holm, as Holm has since passed away CGI and puppetry were used to replicate his look perfectly.
The third act starts off with some of the characters escaping and everything is going well until the unexpected half-human, half-alien offspring shows up and causes chaos. This ending follows a similar structure to some other instalments in the franchise such as alien and aliens.
The offspring was portrayed by Robert Bobroczkyi who stands at a height of 7ft 7 giving the offspring an imposing and threatening look. This is also his first acting role. I also think that the offspring’s design is meant to pay homage to the engineers in other instalments in the series.
In conclusion, I would give alien Romulus a 9/10 since it is a great instalment to the series and a good introduction to people who are new to the series.
