I’ve reached the end of my Alien marathon. Allow me a moment to summarise. After the high bar set by Alien, Aliens was always going to struggle but it has its charms. Alien 3 is an improvement, but Resurrection is a soulless mess. AVP is surprisingly fun, but AVPR pushes the spin off too far. Prometheus has aged well and is elevated by the even better Covenant. So where will Romulus take the parasitic Aliens, tethered with our flawed humanity (with a thing for novelty drinking birds). We start here in space of course. A scavenger ship, targeting a bit of space debris. Not just any space debris. It’s the first thing we see, but this time, a spaceship and its crew aren’t the soul focus. Not yet anyway. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) lives in a hellish mining colony with her brother Andy (David Jonsson), a loose term, he’s an android, but lovingly defective somehow. Their world is typically dystopian. Dark, wet, dirty future tech and neon lit by bin fires as workers wander around in utilitarian garb. They want out, but are trapped by the company, the ever present Weyland. They need another option. Handily, their mate Tyler (Archie Renaux) has one. He and others have spotted a signal (funny that), coming from an abandoned ship floating just above their location. It has enough power and hypersleep pods to get them to their dream destination, Yvaga, a planet with daylight. It may seem fantastical, but honestly it’s a refreshing set up. The gang are all young, they want a better future than the hand dealt their dead parents. They have the means, the drive, the opportunity. The only problem is, the abandoned ship is actually a space station, The Renaissance, part of which is Romulus (the other Remus). With names like that, it’s not going to be plain sailing is it. Yep, you guessed it. It’s abandoned for a reason… Aliens. That scavenger ship brought in something best left in space, but it seems humans are still obsessed with trying to control these creatures that do not want to be controlled. It’s quickly apparent they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. The place is full of Alien embryos. This doesn’t just rely on the Aliens though. There’s a good solid story behind these characters. They’ve all been dealt a bad hand. The android hating Bjorn (Spike Fearne), the pregnant (usually a good thing but not in an Alien film) Kay (Isabela Merced), although it’s Navarro (Aileen Wu) who’s the first recipient of a face-hugger. A rebooted Rook (CGI Ian Holm) helps fill in the blanks, but leaves out the bit that they’re pretty much screwed. It’s tense stuff. Trapped on the ship, there’s one way out, but to make it they’ve got a fight on their hands. There’s some great sequences with stealthfully skittering face-huggers and naturally some gnarly Aliens, all while the ship draws dangerously close to an imminent crash in a fast approaching debris field. Nothing is new exactly, but it feels like a fresh lease of life to a story in its 9th outing and that’s pretty good going. It takes what we know and twists things in if nothing else cinematically inventive ways. The core characters have real clout. This is largely down to Andy and Jonsson’s portrayal of him. It’s an emotional rollercoaster and he’s absolutely magnificent. He’s the most interesting character in an Alien film since 1979. Even more so than Fassbender’s David/Walter, who although packed with depth was a bit impenetrable. Andy is oddly relatable. You got to want your characters to survive once the bones start cracking and the blood starts flying. Andy is the glue holding this together as the body count rises and Rain goes full Ripley. It is predicable, but there’s also a surprise or two. Its only downfall is no definitive conclusion, but that’s been the same issue for 45 years. Maybe next time, in the 10th episode, we’ll finally reach the end. It feels time.
8/10
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