I really… really don’t know how to feel about the Alien franchise anymore. 

I was eight years old when I first saw Alien. No, my parents didn’t let me watch it, but I was a sneaky kid and found a way to still watch it. It gave me a lifetime’s worth of nightmares, a true fear of Facehuggers and parasites, and a lifetime-long love for these movies. As I always say in every single article I write about horror movies or TV shows, horror is the hardest genre to get right. Alien is a masterclass in how to build tension and fear. Aliens is how to mix that with action and an even bigger fear of the unknown. And although I recognise the problems with Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, I still love those movies. Not to mention that these films gave us one of the greatest female heroes ever put on screen with Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). 

I will drop a long-ass article on you all about why I have infinite problems with Prometheus and what’s the reason behind my hatred toward the bane of my existence: Ridley Scott. I will talk about Covenant, too, the absolute shit show and disgrace of the Alien franchise. 

So I’ve been waiting for more Alien content ever since my eight-year-old self tortured herself with four movies worth of horror and nightmares. I had a LOT of faith in Alien: Romulus. I… am disappointed yet again. 

Heavy SPOILERS ahead.

Before I dive into my problems, let me clarify something. I think I am one of the most open people when it comes to movies and adding new flavour to already existing franchises. You won’t see me running around crying about The Acolyte ruining Star Wars just because it’s not the same old formula we’ve got in the originals. I am one of the people who is in love with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I absolutely adore The Hobbit movies. And, I didn’t even yell bloody murder when Rings of Power dropped. 

I also enjoyed the Jurassic World movies. HOWEVER… the Alien franchise has the EXACT SAME problem that Jurassic World has. 

 “Bigger, scarier, cooler, I believe, is the word that you used in your memo.” – Dr. Henry Wu, Jurassic World

Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) underlined  the curse the Jurassic World films had and what seems to be the  false belief that all these new filmmakers have when it comes to these movies involving monsters, dinosaurs or, in our case, Aliens. They think that they need to do more than what already worked before, and the answer to that is no, absolutely not, thank you. And yet here we are again, but in order for all of you to understand what this means in the case of Romulus, let me start at the beginning. 

The opening and introduction of this film are absolutely fantastic. First of all, it starts with a Weyland-Yutani ship finding the wreckage of the Nostromo, aka the freighter from the first movie, which was destroyed by Ripley in order to get rid of the Xenomorph. Guess what they collect? Yes, the Xenomorph, who is in some kind of cocoon, frozen in space, and of course, Weyland-Yutani being Weyland-Yutani, they open it up, and that’s all we get as a glimpse. Then, the movie introduces two of its main characters, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her android brother Andy (David Jonsson). I will take this time to say that Andy is the best character, and he must be protected no matter what. I was so worried for him throughout the entire movie, and it says a lot that I worried more for the robot than the humans… 

The dynamic between Rain and Andy is what moves the story forward, basically. They are pulled into a completely illegal mission to finally get off the awful mining planet that brings them nothing but pain, sickness, and a life not worth living. Rain – a bit reluctantly – agrees to let Andy go on a derelict space station with her friends so they can get hypersleep chambers and get away from the mining planet for good. Obviously, it is the space station where they took the Xenomorph and – of course – everyone is dead on board. 

Let me say that the first hour or so brings back so much of that atmosphere that Alien created. You truly get a feeling of unease and anticipation. When will chaos ensue? When will I be scared shitless? No? It’s not happening? Cool… you see, I saw a lot of reviews saying that this movie brings back the fear into the franchise, but I kept waiting and waiting and… it didn’t. And I am MORTIFIED of Facehuggers, but since they already spoiled the part where they first show up in the trailer, it really didn’t have that big of an effect on me. There is a later appearance in one of the space station’s aisles that is much better, and I was a bit scared throughout, but something was still missing.I am still not sure what it was exactly but I think it was mostly the tension Alien should deliver.

What is brilliant about the first four Alien movies is that even though I’ve seen them a shit ton of times and I know what will happen every single minute, it still manages to put fear into me. No matter how many times I’ve seen it, that gripping feeling is there trying to break my neck. That’s how you pull off a great movie. The characters here are AT LEAST a step up from the “we’re scientists, but we act like idiots” trope that’s been going on with Prometheus and disgrace Covenant, but to be honest, their fear doesn’t last too long.

They encounter a completely new species that they’ve never heard about before, not to mention seen before, and yes, there’s an initial “oh shit” moment for them, but it disappears way too quickly. Ellen Ripley, especially in the first movie, was scared to even move around, checking behind her back every second. We, the audience, could totally feel what she was feeling, and despite that fear that was sitting on her shoulders, she did everything to survive. Here, after that tiny part where they were scared of this new species, they get their hands on weapons real quick and throw that fear out the window.

The fact that this movie plays BEFORE Aliens, where a bunch of marines were annihilated by the Xenomorphs and were scared shitless, yet we got simple colonists with a much more advanced weapon at hand too here, is beyond hilarious to me. AND ON TOP OF THAT, Rain… with that ONE weapon… basically kills almost all of the Xenomorphs that are coming for them. WHAT!? The fear disappears.

In the first film, one Xenomorph took out the entire crew except for Ripley (and Jonesy, the cat). In Aliens, we’ve got a LOT more Xenomorphs that took out an entire colony, and the marines couldn’t deal with them. Ripley, once again, had to blow up everything to get away. In Romulus, we have an aisle full of them, and Rain easily, without a problem, gets rid of them. Why? Just… why? If one Xenomorph is not enough for your film, that’s fine… but if you put a bunch of them in the movie and get rid of them so easily you literally take out what made them so scary in the first place. 

What ticked me off even more is the fact that Fede Alvarez loves the Alien: Isolation game – rightfully so – and I could see glimpses of inspiration he took from it, but he missed the most important thing. Yes, by the end, there’s more than one Xenomorph in the game, but that game UNDERSTOOD what the first movie got so right. You were TERRIFIED of the Xenomorph, not knowing when it would show up, feeling it stalk you through the space station; it was absolutely mortifying and the reason why it worked so well. Yes, I could analyse where the game had its own problems, but STILL, the fact that the game understood what made Alien great better than these movies is unreal to me.

And… ON TOP OF ALL THIS… They, once again, got rid of the Facehuggers, Chestbursters, and Xenomorphs super quickly. Despite the flaws, the scenes involving them were the greatest parts of the movie, but… they had to go bigger. They brought back that stupid-ass black goo that supposedly created the Xenomorphs essentially, and it turned out that at the space station, they basically wanted to use that goo to speed up human evolution. I wouldn’t have any problem with this approach at all becauseWeyland-Yutani trying to play God is what initiated all the Alien movies, and of course, they would try to do this – but it obviously turns out to be a bad idea. 

We end up with an Engineer/Xenomorph mutant basically, and I was just sitting in the cinema thinking: why aren’t the Xenomorphs enough? I swear, I didn’t like that strange mutant in Alien: Resurrection either, but it was still better than this. Remember what I started with? The filmmakers think that they need to do more than what already worked before… This ending is what I meant by it. Dr Henry Wu would be proud but your audience isn’t. 

*sigh* I am very passionate about the Alien franchise. I really am. And I usually don’t mind bringing in new things to something that worked before, but Alien (or Jurassic Park, for that matter) doesn’t need that. Alien: Isolation was the last thing that understood this. I also miss Sigourney; I’m not gonna lie. Thankfully, Rain wasn’t written with the same curse that all these new female heroes are created with, but she is quite forgettable, to say the least, and survives situations she really shouldn’t. The cast itself is actually quite good; I don’t have any complaints about them at all. They all worked in their respective roles, but the biggest win in this film is David Jonsson as Andy. He is so freaking good and more complex than anyone else here. I really enjoyed what he did with the role. 

Altogether, the first 90 minutes of the atmosphere and visuals are very good, even if it fails to understand what makes these creatures scary as shit. But that last part is the curse that keeps plaguing these kind of movies. Dear filmmakers, when you have something like this on your hand, you don’t need to make it bigger and scarier for us to enjoy it, I swear to you all. 

I was already worried about Noah Hawley’s Alien series just based on the title Alien: Earth… why they feel the need to bring them to Earth is beyond me, but sure… In space, no one can hear you scream can go fuck itself, I guess. I will only watch that series because Timothy Olyphant is in it if I am honest, but I have no hope that we will ever get another good entry in the Alien franchise, man. Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 (personally), and Alien: Resurrection will always be great and very, VERY rewatchable, but I will think a hundred times about watching these new movies again. 

Alien: Romulus gets a very sad 7 out of 10 on the Couch Soup scale and the only thing bringing it up to that number (from 5, really) is David Jonsson as Andy. He saves this movie big time. It is lightyears better than that God-awful Alien: Covenant, but it is still very far from what it could be. I will go and rewatch the first four now.

 Game over man, game over.