Alien: Formula

I did see 2024's Alien: Romulus a couple weeks ago. Obviously, it didn't make my top ten list, or even the runners up, but I didn't exactly hate it except possibly for the fact that a once vibrant franchise has become so rote and dull.

Oddly, it reminded me a lot of Alien: Covenant. Ridley Scott was right to go in a new direction with Prometheus but when everyone complained about that movie not being enough like Alien, he went back to more familiar territory with Covenant and created something dull. But even that wasn't enough like the original for some people and now we have Alien: Romulus, complete with a cgi recreation of a dead actor from the first film.

This film's Ripley replacement is a young woman named Rain (Cailee Spaeny). She's a poor orphaned miner but she has an android slave named Andy (David Jonsson)--presented as her surrogate brother but he's portrayed as mentally impaired and willing to follow Rain's commands. One could argue the film's setup is a reworking of Tom Sawyer. It's a little odd that Andy is the only black character in the film.

Somehow, scrap from the Nostromo has returned. Of course there are aliens and mischief onboard.

A lot of reviews have pointed out the logistical problems, like Rain not shooting the aliens because she's worried about the acid blood burning through the hull, only for her solution to this problem being to turn off the artificial gravity before shooting them, as if that makes a difference. For some reason, to audiences these logistical problems were less significant than the scientists behaving foolishly in Prometheus, at least according to the box office. Maybe people just think Cailee Spaeny is prettier than Noomi Rapace, I don't know.

It's vaguely heartening to see that Prometheus was influential enough for Romulus to include pregnancy horror and reference to the Engineer beings. Arguably, though, the film's climax owes a huge debt to Alien: Resurrection.

I would say this is a weaker film than Resurrection, which makes it the weakest of the franchise overall, but it has nice, nostalgic set design and it's not Manos: The Hands of Fate.

Alien: Romulus is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1910

The twenty pies of steel were baked at dawn.
No questions asked were answered after dark.
For night was never seen by fliers gone.
As queries clog the phones, the kings embark.
A dwarven city hides a vault of worms.
For sugar lumps, the spoon would quickly rust.
The paper cup condensed a set of terms.
Instructive phrases flowed around the bust.
Some speeding bugs have run afoul of storms.
A gusty day regresses wheat to sod.
Or solely chaff, the mulch revives the worms.
A single figure fooled the plastic god.
Another diff'rance rounds the ship to scrap.
A pointless sphere of junk becomes a trap.