Alien: Romulus - Film Review

 

Hi Nerds.

At the weekend I went to see the newest film in the Alien/Aliens franchise.  A franchise for the most part I like a lot.  A franchise I've been collecting in book form for years. Which I've still to read!

The film starts with the Weyland-Yutani corporation investigating the wreckage of the Nostromo, the space ship from the first Alien movie, and finding a cocoon with a xenomorph inside. Still alive.

Obviously it doesn't end well as months later the space station which is separated into two parts, Romulus and Remus, is now in orbit over a mining colony.

The main character Rain and her android Andy, which has been found damaged by her father, are recruited by her ex Tyler and his sister Kay. Along with Bjorn and Narvarro.  They want to escape the mining colony and the slavery to visit the space station decaying in orbit.  They need the stasis chambers on board, so they can fly their hauler ship to a better world 9 years away and need to use the chambers.

They enlist Rain as they need Andy to access the systems on board the station.

Obviously once they get on board they accidentally disable the face huggers that are frozen on board for research.

They find a damaged android called Rook. He is the same model as Ash from the first Alien movie. They take a chip from him and insert into Andy.  This grants him more access to the station and updates him.  It also changes his prime directive to be loyal to Weyland-Yutani.

They then have to fight to survive and get away. Although Rook has sinister motives of his own.

Overall - 

A mixed bag which relies too much on the past films.  It pinches whole scenes and dialogue from the original films, which is a bit too jarring and annoying.  These include crawling in narrow vents, and Andy telling an Alien to "Get away from her, you bitch". 

The Offspring Alien at the end looks like the one from Alien 4. The worst theft from the Alien film is having the late actor Ian Holm show up as a damaged android.  It looks good in some scenes which is made up of prosthetic and AI CGI from a scan the actor had when making The Lord of The Rings.

Luckily they had permission from the late actors estate to do this.

The characters ain't too likeable and the cast are too young.  They could have done with a couple of older actors as the first 20 minutes of them moaning is like chavs in space.

The main saving grace is Andy the android, played by David Johnsson, who steals the film. The android goes from meek to dark when his chip has changed.

Although having his prime directive change felt too RoboCop.

There are some great action scenes in the film. Especially when they are chased by facehuggers and the alien later on.  Although some parts felt rushed and chopped up too much in edit, so some scenes were confusing.

It is a good watch with good action but probably needed more work on the script and edits.  It will be interesting to see if the make a sequel to this.  

Although the story to Alien movies and books are going to be similar.

Find abandoned planet/station, find facehuggers and chased and killed by the xenomorph.

Score -  6.8/10