If you were lucky enough to see the 1979 and 1986 Alien films, you probably wouldn’t have the same reaction to this film as A member of the GEN Z audience.
Alien: Romulus takes place on Jackson’s Star Mining Colony, a depressing mining planet where the sun never shines. Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) has been working off her contract so she and her brother Andy (David Jonsson), a reprogrammed synthetic human, can relocate to the planet Yvaga, where there is sunshine and hope for a better life. Weyland-Yutani has other things in mind and extends her contract. Rain’s ex-boyfriend, Tyler, convinces her to join a few other Gen Z-aged people on an expedition to a spaceship that is hanging out in space and program it to take them all to Yvaga.
My first question came at this point. How did they learn to fly any aircraft? They all seemed to be playing video games, and even though they are highly intelligent, how did they get the knowledge needed to not only steal an aircraft, which no one seems to care about but then control a ship they never had experience with? Other than video games and old records.
On with the plot. They make it to the wreckage of the Weyland-Yutani research station, the Renaissance, and all is fine. Andy is able to interface with the onboard computer, which opens doors and guides them through the workings of the ship. All is well until Tyler and Andy accidentally revive face-huggers, which causes a lockdown that Andy can’t override. At that point, Rain installs a chip from Rook, a damaged android, into Andy, which gives Andy access to the ship. Not only does it update him, but it also changes his prime directive of protecting Rain to making him loyal solely to Weyland-Yutani.
There is lots of suspense, chest busters, and people doing stupid things, like Tyler’s pregnant sister injecting herself with the hazardous “Compound Z-01,” a genetic accelerant serum extracted from a recovered xenomorph’s DNA and engineered to advance humanity beyond its fragile state to supply Weyland-Yutani with a resilient workforce for its hostile off-world colonies. Did you get all that?
Jump down to the end, after lots of drippy burning acid from the xenomorphs, Goo, face-huggers, aliens, Rain’s heroic acts, and Tyler’s sister giving birth to a new mutation.
There are four things I liked about this film:
1. The role of Andy is played by David Jonsson. The changes in character from the docile, picked, programmed to protect Rain Android to being programmed to be loyal to Weyland-Yutani. David seamlessly flows between the two character profiles, and he drew my focus throughout the film,
2. The new mutation that was created. He is a human-engineer-xenomorph concoction. The “Offspring” is played by Robert Bobroczkyi, who is seven-foot-seven tall. He looks humanish but has a tail and spikes and characteristics of the xenomorph. It was creepy when he recognized Kay (Isabela Merced) as his mother and wanted to feed her. I still have shivers thinking about it.
3. Ian Holm, who died in 2020, is the android in Alien: Romulus named Rook. He is modeled after Ash from the 1979 original movie; however, he is not Ash, as Rook is an entirely new android. It was a nice surprise to see Ian in the film even though he passed before it was made.
4. When the film was over, it didn’t have the impact on me that I had when I first saw the 1979 film starring Tom Skerritt and Sigourney Weaver. I felt that I had seen all this before. I wasn’t impressed with the film as a whole. However, my 18-year-old nephew thought it was amazing.
I give ‘Alien: Romulus’ 2 winks of the EYE for Baby Boomers and four winks of the EYE for the GEN Z crowd.
Until Next time, keep your EYE to the sky!