Alien Romulus: A Love Letter Written in Acid

1,920 words

Raw, analog interfaces and whirring computers, primitive digital readouts, clicking binary code, churning cogitators, and flashing buttons. Eerie red light transfusing a zero-gravity space, the silent cockpit of a spaceship, and the white lights of the Mother artificial intelligence mainframe room. The tortured, dying machines of the analog age. It’s hard to think that the low-tech three-dimensional modelled interface of the original Alien would be so effective at conveying the idea that a massive, lumbering space craft was descending towards the foreboding moon, Acheron (aka LV-426), like a Sardaukar dropship descending towards Dune’s Arrakis. Who knew that a xenomorph with acid-for-blood and its wasp-like parasitical birth throes would grow into a deadly living weapon to shock audiences for decades. The Alien franchise has done just that.

Romulus opens with a Weyland-Yutani space craft drifting slowly towards a debris field from the long-derelict wreck of the Nostromo —the ill-fated hauling vessel from Alien— amid the ominous original score by Jerry Goldsmith. The purpose of this salvage mission is to recover the coveted remains of the xenomorph that Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) battled aboard the vessel. The scene ends with Weyland-Yutani personnel resplendent in bulky hazmat suits hauling away something large and mysterious. The fossiliferous outline of a xenomorph is shown cut from the recovered space rock all accompanied by the dark choral vocalizations reminiscent of music from Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A dystopian public address announcement awakens Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) from a dream about a sunset on the distant planet Yvaga III:

Attention all workers. Attention all workers. Day shift starts in T-minus fifteen minutes. Farmers to report to mess hall immediately. If you are experiencing any symptoms such as fever, cough, vomiting or difficulty breathing, proceed to the medical bay for examination. The safety and well-being of our colony is Weyland–Yutani’s top priority. Attention all workers. . .

It reveals the dismal, Dickensian conditions of Jackson’s Star mining colony and its effects on the beleaguered human workforce. The suggestion is one of terrible conditions along with corporate dishonesty as profit and power are the company’s main concern. Weyland-Yutani depends on fragile humans to extract minerals from the underground mines of Jackson’s Star, which is situated on LV-410, a remote volcanic world perpetually shrouded in smoggy darkness.

Rain and her constant companion, the sleepy-eyed malfunctioning synthetic Andy (played by black actor David Jonsson), are then seen having a meagre breakfast lightened only by Andy’s near-constant stream of dad jokes: “Did you hear about the claustrophobic astronaut? He needed space.” Their conversation turns serious as we learn that they’re three months behind on rent, and that Rain has a mind to escape to Yvaga III.

The vast scale of Blade Runner’s city scape is not there, but elements of it are as the perpetually dark main street of the mining colony has a gritty, shadowy feel. It is bleak and industrial with massive ships and machinery, dirty miners and their colossal extraction vehicles moving amidst slag heaps and automated big-wheeled autonomous vehicles. A red neon sign that reads “Bar” is visible, a subtle nod to scenery in Aliens when the Colonial Marines first set foot on the rainy LV-426.

Rain enters a dingy office to inquire about her sought after travel permit. A soulless human clerk tells her that she is unable to leave the mining colony because the cold, dehumanizing company she works for needs more workers and has arbitrarily raised quota hours that would essentially shackle her to work in the mines for another five to six years. The subtext being that workers are dying in the mines.

A recurring theme of the Alien franchise is the unbridled power of major corporations, which is of course part of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The Tyrell Corporation, and its successor company in Blade Runner 2049, the Wallace Corporation, have near-unfettered reach and power. They are corporations that need to be brought to heel by a powerful fascist state.

One of my criticisms of this film despite its obvious veneration for the original series, is the contrived diversity of the cast. As we all seem to intuitively know these days, though, this diversity casting is almost unavoidable as studios feel compelled to tick off all the race and ethnicity boxes. Nonetheless, Rain and her motley crew of diversity hires are bound and determined to escape the mining colony. The cargo hauler that they’ve commandeered is without the necessary cryo-sleep equipment onboard, but an opportunity arises. A disabled Weyland-Yutani space station has drifted into LV-410’s orbit that might just have the salvageable hypersleep pods that they need.

There are some dazzling special effects in this movie. The scene where Rain and crew take off from the surface of the gloomy planet in their commandeered mining hauler, the Corbelan IV, is well done and is referential to several planet-fall scenes throughout the franchise except in reverse as they are going up into orbit to the derelict space station. The rattling shaking sounds of the craft during take off and rough assent accompany the fearful exhilaration of the youthful pirate crew. The film’s director, Fede Alvarez, must have emphasized the importance of using sounds from the original films during this sequence.

In order to gain access to the now disused wreck of a station named Renaissance, with its two modules Romulus and Remus, our merry band of doomed young people needed Rain’s synthetic, Andy, in order to access the station. Rain’s ex-boyfriend Tyler Harrison (played by Archie Renaux) explained that they needed Andy as he speaks Mother, the ubiquitous computer language that runs Weyland-Yutani equipment and facilities.

As you can imagine, alien antics ensue as the young space-wreckers unwittingly unleash the aliens held in stasis on the mysterious station. The eery red emergency lighting that suffuses a flooded cryo-chamber set to a discordant soundtrack as facehuggers escape their glass prisons, drop into the water, and begin to hunt our increasingly nervous cast of interlopers. This scene is terrifyingly good and harkens back to the atmosphere of Alien, Aliens, and Alien: Covenant. It is obvious that the film’s director is a fan.

Another motif that has come up time and again in the franchise is the willingness of our characters to break quarantine, disregard quarantine, or failure to even spell quarantine. That happens here as our shorn-headed Asian character, Navarro (played by Aileen Wu), runs back to the ship with an alien growing in her chest. In Romulus, their seemed to be an accelerated gestation period for this little barbed chestburster. It took a bit longer for Kane, played by John Hurt in Alien, to have a happy burst-day breakfast in the iconic original scene.

The iconic pulse rifle makes an appearance in the movie with some differences from Aliens. Instead of black and khaki, it is white and has aim-assist that allows the wielder to easily find targets. This gives the impression that even the diminutive Rain can use it. This of course results in one fun scene of rapid-fire alien blasting with the classic pulse rifle sounds, xeno screams, and resultant acid spray floating through zero gravity.

In his perceptive review “Memory: The Origins of Alien” Alex Graham writes:

Alien is essentially an allegory for the dangers of interacting with foreign species and allowing them to enter into one’s abode. The endoparasitism of the xenomorph is particularly reminiscent of the Jewish modus operandi of crypsis and covert control. Where Star Trek paints a utopian picture of inter-species cooperation and envisages a universe governed by enlightenment and progress, Alien speaks to the perennial nature of the friend/enemy distinction and the terror of the unknown.

The theme of Jewish parasitism, malevolence, and corrupting nature in Alien: Covenant is also explored by Buttercup Dew and Trevor Lynch in their respective, insightful reviews. Trevor Lynch writes:

Buttercup Dew is right to see Covenant as an unconscious anti-Semitic allegory, and the final scene encapsulates the full horror we all feel at the spectacle of our sleeping race being turned into experimental playthings then corpses by beings that look huwyte on the outside but operate on a misanthropic, genocidal code on the inside.

I would argue that the same warnings are articulated here in Romulus as well, albeit unconsciously and derivatively as the film is essentially director Fede Alvarez’s panegyric horror love letter to the franchise.

Another of my main criticisms of the film is its use of a computer generated deepfake Ian Holm, who died in in 2020. They lost me when I was listening to a CGI rendering of Bilbo Baggins’ torso telling the main characters that they were more-or-less screwed unless they took the top-secret vaccine the Weyland-Yutani corporation had been cooking up. Ian Holm’s likeness in this case is used for the synthetic named Rook. He is supposed to be identical to Ash from the original Alien. This was a disappointing departure from the look and feel of the rest of the movie.

Nevertheless, Rook explains to our interloping youngsters that the Renaissance station (with its two modules, Romulus and Remus) contained a laboratory that experimented with the recovered alien in order to produce a serum (or vaccine?), codenamed Z-01, to improve humanity. Rook explains:

Prometheus Fire. The divine gift to humanity. Z–01 contains the genome responsible for the Xeno’s ability to accelerate and slow down its metabolism at will. Its symbiotic capableness easily rewrites the host’s DNA through its blood. This is a much needed and well overdue upgrade for humanity. We simply cannot wait for evolution anymore.

You see, human weaknesses and susceptibility to disease along with excess deaths wasn’t the most cost-effective thing for the company. It is obvious that this is in reference, in part, to one of the franchise’s worst films Prometheus. Furthermore, there may be some allegorical allusions happening here to a certain COVID-19 pandemic, so-called vaccines, and the ongoing mystery about worldwide excess deaths, but I digress. It is also noteworthy that when Andy has his module software updated with Rook’s, he goes from child-like sleepy-eyed negro-bot to cold, calculating corporate android.

When our pregnant character, Kay (played by Isabela Merced), uses the experimental vaccine, her wounds are healed, but she goes on to have an unnecessarily gross alien birth scene reminiscent of the disgusting and tasteless scene from Prometheus. Although this scene isn’t as grotesque as the one from Prometheus, it isn’t much better. The baby in this case survives and turns into a lanky and monstrous hybrid creature that hunts down its terrified mother. All the while, a familiar automated female voice intoning pending disaster counts down. This leads us to another scene that has recurred several times in the franchise where the female protagonist, in this case Rain, ultimately blasts the grotesque hybrid creature out of the airlock.

Romulus is a scary, scuttling, violent love letter written in acid-for-blood ink by a barbed pen. It really is an homage to the original two movies in the franchise with its countless references by way of dialogue, sounds, and scenery. Even the less well-liked sequels and prequels are referred to during the film. Unlike the disastrous and contemptuous nature of the later Star Wars films directed by the sneering Jewish director J.J. Abrams, Romulus gives the impression of a director who was and is a genuinely obsessive fan. That is a good thing. If you’re looking for profundity, I don’t think you’ll find it here though. Its value is in its reversion to the innovations of the first two. Its faults are its own.