An Outposter is in the future (well, Australia) so he has seen Alien: Romulus even though it’s still only lunchtime elsewhere. Long, long time Outposter Poopy Pants held in the log long enough to sit through the movie. Here is what he has to say…
Alien Romulus
**Spoiler Warning**
This review contains spoilers ’cause I’m a kent.
Take Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection, hit “purée”, remove lid, splash a dash of Prometheus for zing, and you get a nice big cup of Alien: Romulus. How does it taste?
Deliciously intense.
Ridley Scott loved this movie when he saw the first cut. Reportedly, James Cameron did not. You know why? Because this is the direct sequel to Alien. It’s truckers in space again. The tech looks like it’s old even for its time. Everything feels so cold and greasy.
But we also get to spend a bit of time in one of the colonist worlds and that’s all Cameron. Cameron doesn’t like it when another director can do Cameron as good if not better than Cameron himself. They even get into some marine tech later on.
I remember James Horner talking about Cameron spending days getting the sound of the guns right. Here, they sound even better. Eat it, Cameron. They nailed it and you know it, you slightly creepy old bugger!! Maybe take a breath and learn something. My God Avatar 2 was astoundingly mediocre.
What I truly love about this movie, this is its own movie – a full-blown horror flick. Directed by talented wierdo Fede Alvarez who did the Evil Dead remake a few years back. Personally, I loved the Evil Dead remake. It gave me nightmares, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Creepy demons staring at the camera unnerve me.
That same nerve-shredding tension and horror are here, and it’s nothing short of delightful to watch… from behind your hand. The Alien is scary again.
I was stunned at how gory and disgusting it got. My 12-year-old daughter wanted to come along with me but I was like “I think I might just see it first before I take you, is that cool” whew…
Good call on the parenting there, had she come along we might not have seen the end. Actually, that’s probably a good thing. the end is probably going to undo this movie for a lot of reviews… but I’ll get to that in a bit.
First big spoiler. Ian Holm is in this. No shit I was like ‘wow that messed up synthetic looks just like Ash” and they turn it on and holy shit, it IS Ash. Or at least it was the same model. It was great seeing him back. His cold admiration for the creature is on full display again. He offers a lot more insight into what he and the company are trying to do and at one point I was even like “damn, that’s a bold solid move that I can probably get behind.”
See, humans are not meant for space travel. We need cryo tubes for space travel, and we don’t last long on new planets, Thus colonists are encouraged to have families… so the kids can take over.
It’s a sinister spin thinking back on Hadley’s Hope. First, it was like the company don’t give a fuck, but now it’s like… or do they? The Aliens might be the key to conquering space. To use their superior bio-chemistry to survive in space and expand ourselves out there… Yeah, nah, snap out of it. We keep making that same old mistake over and over with these big nasty bugs!
Ash is very deep fake looking and it’s going to draw comparisons to Tarkin. I personally didn’t mind Tarkin. Complain all you want but both actors are dead and gone and I don’t want to see their perfectly rendered corpses confusing the issue. It has real-world consequences and I’m happy with it looking like a big budget VFX shot.
We even get another cameo from the first film… no spoilers here… It’s kinda cool. Wish we saw more. Hopefully there are deleted scenes.
We get to see the full life cycle of the Alien and Fede does a masterful job of framing a whole race against time sequence around it. So while shit is going down and people are trying to escape and save others, we know it’s pointless because they’re not going anywhere safe.
Apart from a LOT of horny little facehuggers, the film only has one primary alien xenomorph. Then just as I got used to that idea we find our characters tripping up in a nest all over bodies with bursted chests. Oh boy, you know what that means?
It’s a great action set-piece. Alien killin’ time and then to survive the onslaught only to be stuck in Zero-G with a room full of floating alien blood! It’s so fucking awesome.
Unfortunately, this is where the movie sort of shits the bed. I don’t know, I’m torn. I think this ending is going to divide fans. It might even be one of those endings that completely undermines everything great that came before it.
Alien: Romulus ends the same way Alien 4 did. I shit you not. Another Alien human baby, and this one is even more whackadoodle than the last freak. It’s an ugly fucker and I’m glad it’s dead, but I can hear everyone asking the same question. Was that even necessary?
Anyway… Romulus is a solid flick. 4 and half out of 5 eggs
