Tuesday, August 20, 2024

A Familiar Hug

This past weekend, I went to see the new Alien: Romulus, widely billed as a proper return to form for a franchise that had strayed too far from its horror/slasher roots.

This sequel, set sometime between the first two films, follows a scrappy group looking for an escape from the dystopian mining planet where they live. Their plan is to board a derelict station to steal a set of hibernation pods, which they'll then use to travel to a new planet and better life. But of course, they don't know why the station is derelict, and quickly find themselves hunted by nightmarish monsters.

Coming off of the deeply boring Alien: Covenant, it's easy to like this new movie. Probably too easy. It absolutely feels like it's far and away the best Alien movie in a long time -- a really long time if you hated Prometheus (or if you think it barely counts as an Alien movie). But then, the bar on "best Alien movie in a long time" is awfully low, and while Romulus clears it better than a French pole vaulter, it doesn't feel like it will be remembered for as long.

There are several effectively suspenseful sequences in the movie. The better ones revolve around genuinely new set pieces that feel different from anything presented previously in the franchise. Without getting too spoilery, I hope, I'll just say that many of the Alien sequels skip past the threat of the "face huggers" to go straight to slasher scenes with the xenomorph itself. Romulus works in more than one clever sequence that makes the skittering face huggers a true menace unto themselves.

The movie also takes a pretty big swing for its ending. From what I see online, not everyone has been accepting of it. I myself see it as a Checkov's Gun displayed so prominently in act one that it simply has to be fired in act three. And it certainly feels new for the franchise.

I also quite like the musical score by Benjamin Wallfisch. Early queues are very clearly and directly inspired by Jerry Goldsmith's work for the original Alien. But by the end of the first act, the sound is already evolving, incorporating an eerie choir with almost ecclesiastic intensity. It grows into a unique thing of its own.

Which is really what I wish the rest of the movie did. I have to lead off praising the new elements of Alien: Romulus forcefully, because it doesn't have nearly enough of them. For the most part, the movie is such a slavish remix of "the best parts" of Alien and Aliens that it sort of leaves me wondering who it's for? It feels like the writers plotted out dozens of their favorite lines, images, and set pieces from those first two films, and then wrote a script to connect those dots and restage every single one of them. Is this for the audience who has seen and loved those movies? If so, what then of the fact that every one of these remixed elements is just an imitation of something that was great the first time? Is this for people who haven't seen those movies, because they are (sad, but true) quite old? Then what's with the overwrought efforts to make sure that characters are framed in exactly the same poses, saying exactly the same lines from Alien or Aliens?

Another part of Alien: Romulus that I found quite off-putting can't be talked about without spoilers. I'll avoid getting super-specific, but you should still skip this paragraph if you want to be careful. Romulus uses CG to "bring back" an actor from an earlier film, looking as they did at the time. My issue is that this use of CG still doesn't look good. It has stalled out for years at the same point: these CG recreations look fairly convincing... right up until they speak. The moving mouth always looks awkward, almost like cartoon animation drawn over a still photograph. And while this movie provides some context for why the character might not "look quite right," it still doesn't look good.

In a charitable moment, where I'm focused on the effective sequences in Alien: Romulus that feel truly new, I might give it a B-. But taking a step back to see how little that content features in the whole, I think the movie feels more like a C+. Alien fans will likely feel more rewarded by this than other recent films in the franchise, but it's hardly a film you need to rush out to see.

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