32/10
Director Fed Alvarez from Alien 2 (1986) was looking for a special effects team to work on the creatures
Line of Events
While freeing the depths of an abandoned space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. Director Fed Alvarez explains the rule he laid down for the aliens: Romulus, that ”if it can.” be practical, it will be practical," so that the participants always acted against the physical representation of the xenomorph. Physical sets, practical creatures and miniatures were used wherever possible to help ground the later VFX work. When Rain shuts down the ship’s gravity and shoots all the aliens, all their blood is suspended in the air in long, smeary patterns. Zero gravity in real life causes liquids to form sphere shapes instead of breaking up into long, flat pieces like in the movie.
Theme from AlienWritten by Jerry Goldsmith
Andy: The solution for a claustrophobic astronaut is to give him more space. At 20th Century Studios, the fanfare freezes and turns menacing, as in Alien 3 (1992), leading up to the film’s opening scene The logo itself suffers from static and turns green. Featured in Nerdrotic: The Acolyte: Force is Female CONFIRTED? Death of Theaters – Real BBC @MauLer @HeelvsBabyface (2024). Positives first – good action, great practical special effects and nice visuals.
This camera work, visual presentation and quality, if limited, use of CGI where necessary was outstanding
Director Fed Alvarez and his production team have captured the dark atmosphere and thrilling action of Alien almost perfectly. The action was exciting with some scary moments The use of practical effects and realistic miniatures was so refreshing to see in this age of CGI excess. Seeing a fully realized Xenomorph in the flesh blew me away and the Space scenes were beautiful. Cons – Average acting, nostalgia bait story, copy & pasting in dialogue from the better Alien movies, as well as including lore elements from inferior prequels that I don’t think would exist in the official canon. Also, the reveal of the villain was "oh, get out of here" I won’t say more, apart from the excellent lead Spain, the rest of the actors/characters were good.
Honestly, that’s just lazy screenwriting and disrespect to the other Alien movies that did it first!
I found the nostalgia bait story to be boring, eye-rolling and almost 4th wall breaking, it ruined the immersion for me. I get bored with sequels/prequels that rely heavily on lazy "remember-berries" to get a kick out of casual audiences while making Alien fans cringe almost madly. Also no copying & the pasted-in dialogue from the best Sigourney Weaver Alien movies was very jarring. 20th Century Studios should have called it Alien: Remember because you relied too much on remembering this bit of… Finally, trying to cram all the controversial and franchise-damaging Prometheus crap into the movie was frustrating, I hated the whole origin of it.
Space Jockey and Xenomorph waste generation
And don’t make me a villain, I don’t want to spoil anything but it was ridiculously lazy, I think setting the movie between the first 2 movies was a mistake because you have to fit the continuity of the franchise into the movie with all the tie-ins and plot beats needed to make it fit . They should have made a sequel years after Alien: Resurrection and created a brand new Alien saga long after the Weavers’ adventures (and with better writers on board). to frustrated characters, weak "remember-berry" story and bad screenplay, it was a disappointment. Alien: Romulus, an above average Alien, is the 4th best film in the franchise.