Now in its seventh installment since 1979, the Alien franchise delivers a predictable product. Ridley Scott’s Alien of 1979, was a ground-breaking – or rather space-breaking – sci-fi horror flick that made an indelible mark on cinema history. It was seven years before a sequel arrived, partly because science fiction writer, A.E.van Vogt, claimed the filmmakers had ripped off his novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950). A lawsuit was settled out of court, and James Cameron would write and direct Aliens (1986), which was almost as well-received as the original film.
Alien 3 would follow in 1992, and Alien Resurrection in 1997, along with two trashy spin-offs in 2004 and 2007. The big upheaval occurred in 2012, when Scott returned to direct Prometheus, which took the Alien story onto a new level, grappling with vast metaphysical themes such as the origin of human life. I liked this ambitious film, and admired Scott’s willingness to depart from the sci-fi action-horror formula. The fans, however, hated it. Not enough face-hugging, exploding chests and slavering monsters.
Ever the pragmatist, when Scott directed Alien Covenant (2017), he re-introduced all those favourite thrills. Although he didn’t entirely abandon the philosophical dimension, the ideas were buried in a vivid, bloodcurdling narrative. As usual, studio number-crunching had won out over artistic integrity.
Contemporary Hollywood has become so captive to the box office that it seems no successful franchise is allowed to depart too far from tried and tested formulae. Every James Bond film contains exactly the same mix of elements, and the same plot devices recur with mind-numbing frequency in superhero films. Star Wars and the Marvel Comics Universe have become cults. It’s what the fans have been conditioned to like and expect, with the slightest variation threatening huge potential losses. The studios have created a machine for themselves that brings in billions so long as they keep churning out soulless product.
Alien: Romulus takes few chances. It’s a so-called “interquel” inserted between the events of the first and second Alien movies. Directed and co-scripted by Uruguay’s Fede Álvarez. It continues the practice of signing up a promising younger director, giving them a big break (and a big budget) so long as they play by a strict set of rules. There is some small leeway for originality but an obligation to include all the things the fans have been proven to love.
One need only look at the promotional image to see the ‘facehuggers’ are back. So too is the alien bursting out of someone’s chest and dripping acid when killed. There’s the same pattern of crew members being picked off one by one as they fall prey to the ‘xenomorphs’, which begin life as small, blind flying stingrays, and grow into huge, drooling, humanoid monsters. There’s also a morally challenged android or two, and the signature conceit – a vulnerable young woman fleeing the monsters, and aggressively fighting back.
In this film, the inevitable Sigourney Weaver substitute is Cailee Spaeny, recently seen as Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s dull bio pic. Spaeny’s character, Rain, is a worker on a bleak planet owned and operated by a mega corporation that treats its employees as slaves. Her ‘brother’ is a “synthetic” called Andy (David Jonsson), who is programmed to look after her, and apparently to tell terrible jokes.
When a derelict space-ship drifts close to the mining planet, a group of Rain’s friends decide to grab it “before someone else does”. These young escapees get hold of a smaller ship and head for the larger one. Needless to say, this is the ship from the first Alien movie, on which most of the crew were wiped out by murderous xenomorphs. Soon our group of friends is facing the same problem.
Amid the ship’s wreckage and bodies, the only flicker of life comes from Ian Holm’s mangled android, Ash, who burbles back to consciousness and tells them a few depressing facts about the life forms they are confronting. We all know what happens from here, the only interest lies in the way the carnage unfurls.
The novel aspect of Alien: Romulus is the idea of a group of young people trying to hijack a spaceship, as they might hotwire a car, but it’s no joyride. If the film remains highly watchable it’s because of a lavish expenditure on CGI and special effects, which must have absorbed most of the budget. Frugal with star salaries, the 26-year-old Cailee Spaeny is biggest ‘name’ in the cast.
The plot is a patched-up, confusing affair, its weakness disguised by regular gorey action scenes and a suitably doomy soundtrack by Benjamin Wallfisch, with guest appearances from Jerry Goldsmith and Richard Wagner. We don’t spend enough time with the characters to feel any sympathy for them when they are snuffled by the monsters. They are hardly more than counters on a chequerboard waiting to be eliminated. All the big moves have been so dutifully rehearsed in previous films that it’s no longer shocking to find a creepy little monster plastered on someone’s face or bursting from a human chest.
Much of the horror comes from the way the xenomorphs conduct their assaults, which is a form of rape. Attaching themselves to a victim’s face they push a long, fleshy protuberance down their throat, leaving a seed that will feed on the host and hatch out of their torso. As the story invariably comes down to a young woman fleeing these monsters, we feel the sexual menace behind the overt threat to life and limb. These creatures don’t simply kill or devour their victims, they violate them, colonising the host and asserting their biological supremacy. It’s a dramatisation of rape as a weapon of war.
The title of the film hints at the possible relationship between humans and xenomorphs by referring to the mythical brothers, Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome. In the Roman story, Romulus kills his brother. In the Alien movies, an attempt to learn the secrets of a “perfect organism” to create a more resilient strand of humanity, has unleashed a ferocious enemy that threatens to wipe out everything in its path. This is the “promethean” aspect of the saga – the sense that human beings have brought this doom upon themselves by overreaching their own evolutionary limitations.
In this studio concoction, Álvarez can only hint at a more ambitious narrative. Any underlying meanings and metaphors are lost in the procession of action-horror set pieces. By now, even the most narrow-minded fans must be feeling these scenes are too familiar for (dis)comfort. After seven chapters, the series is floating, like the abandoned space-ship, as a gigantic piece of astrojunk, cluttered with the bodies of dead characters and fossilised storylines. As we know from the first film, in space no-one can hear you scream, but it’s equally true no-one can hear you yawn.
Alien: Romulus
Directed by Fede Álvarez
Written by Fede Álvarez & Rodo Sayagues
Starring: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, Robert Bobroczkyi
USA/UK, MA 15+, 119 mins
Published in the Australian Financial Review, 17 August, 2024