Alien Romulus - Game Over, Man! Game Over! in English
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00I think it's fair to say that the Alien franchise hasn't exactly gone from strength
00:04to strength over the years.
00:06Yeah, it opened strong with one of the greatest horror movies of all time, followed by an
00:10action-packed sequel that retained the tension and horror while upping the stakes and pacing.
00:15Then it all started to go downhill with a grim, mean-spirited third instalment that
00:18spoiled everyone's fun, and a weird, tacky, cash-grab fourth movie that we don't talk
00:23about now.
00:24After trying and failing twice to cross over with the Predator franchise, we were subjected
00:29to a pair of overblown, overhyped prequels that tried to answer questions nobody wanted
00:34to ask, and proved that film directors don't always get better with age.
00:38And honestly, that really felt like the end.
00:40Every possible avenue had been explored, every permutation of the original concept had been
00:45tried, and the poor old xenomorphs had finally been defeated by the one enemy that even they
00:50couldn't overcome.
00:52Corporate greed.
00:53But hey, when you're a creatively and morally bankrupt studio that's paid an obscene amount
00:57of money for 20th Century Fox and all the IPs under their banner, you're gonna find
01:02a way to dig just a little deeper.
01:04Which brings me neatly along to Alien Romulus.
01:07Ditching the pretentious, high-minded philosophy of the Prometheus movies, the trailers instead
01:12promised a more stripped-down, back-to-basics approach to the Alien franchise.
01:16A smaller budget, practical effects, and a return to the retro-futuristic production
01:21design of the earlier movies.
01:23So far so good, but does it actually deliver?
01:26Well...
01:28Watching Alien Prometheus feels like two very different movies awkwardly bolted together.
01:32The first one is a tight, well-paced sci-fi thriller with a simple premise, great production
01:37design, a small cast of characters, an intriguing mystery, and some excellent performances by
01:42talented actors.
01:44In short, it's a simple but effective foundation for what could have been a decent Alien movie.
01:49The problems begin when set-up has to give way to execution, and the tension gets squandered
01:53by the predictable horror tropes of dumb characters making dumb decisions, protracted
01:58chase scenes, shameless key-jangling, and repurposed dialogue.
02:02And by the end, all sense of logic and consequences goes completely out the window, and the film
02:07devolves into mindless action and goofy attempts at body horror.
02:10Now, I suspect I'm going to take a lot of flack for saying this, because for some reason
02:14everyone fucking loves this movie, but what the hell.
02:17I am become Drinker, the destroyer of dreams.
02:21Anyway, grab your pulse rifle and motion tracker and let's begin, shall we?
02:25So Romulus is set about 20 years after the events of the original Alien, and it kicks
02:29off with a Weyland-Yutani ship recovering the original Xenomorph from the wreckage of
02:34the Nostromo.
02:35Now, I'm pretty sure that the Nostromo was vaporised by not one, but three thermonuclear
02:40explosions and the Xenomorph was blasted out into space from Ripley's escape pod,
02:54so the chances of actually finding it two decades later are about equal to finding an
02:58attractive woman at a Warhammer convention, but man, it sure is cool to see stuff from
03:02the original movie, amirite?
03:05Keep that little writing philosophy in mind because it'll be important later.
03:09Anyway, the real action picks up with our main character, Rain, who works as a labourer
03:13on a mining planet run by the company.
03:15She lives with a decommissioned android named Andy, who acts as a kind of adopted brother
03:20for her.
03:21Anyway, she's not exactly thrilled to be trapped on a planet where it's dark 24 hours
03:24a day and the life expectancy hovers somewhere around medieval Europe, honestly love, try
03:29living in Scotland, it seems like a picnic by comparison, but when her contract gets
03:33extended due to labour shortages, it's pretty obvious that the company is never actually
03:37gonna let her leave.
03:39That's when she's contacted by her ex-boyfriend Tyler with news that a derelict space station
03:43has been detected orbiting the planet.
03:45Tyler and his crew plan to head up there in a cargo hauler, steal some cryopods and use
03:50them to travel to a much nicer planet a few light years away.
03:53The catch is that they need Andy's help, because he's the only one who can interface
03:56with the station's computer.
03:58Before you can ask questions like, why is nobody else investigating this space station?
04:03Or wouldn't Weyland-Yutani have sent out their own recovery team for it?
04:07One and the others are on their way.
04:08They make it on board and discover that the station isn't derelict at all, in fact it
04:13was some kind of classified research facility experimenting on the xenomorph, and well,
04:18it went about as well as you might expect.
04:20The other problem is that it's orbit is decaying so they only have a few hours to
04:23find what they need, get back to their ship and get the hell out of there.
04:27Not bad, a small group of characters with a clear objective, a ticking clock, a dangerous
04:32threat to contend with and some interpersonal tension to ratchet up the drama.
04:36Not exactly revolutionary, but a decent foundation for a neat little alien adventure.
04:40Unfortunately this is where the script starts to go off the rails.
04:44One of the crew gets infected by a facehugger and tries to escape on the cargo hauler, but
04:48oh no, the chestburster kills her just as they're lifting off.
04:51You know, I'm pretty sure that the whole process from facehugger to chestburster is
04:55supposed to take a couple of days, but now it's basically instantaneous for the sake
04:58of plot convenience.
05:00And oh no, the cargo hauler crashes into the station and causes a big explosion that pushes
05:05it off orbit and then comes to rest completely intact in a hangar on the other side of the
05:09station.
05:10Wow, that was a lucky chain of events.
05:12Lucky it didn't just tumble off into space or get completely destroyed like the dropship
05:16from Aliens.
05:17Remember that?
05:18Remember how it triggered an overload in the atmosphere processor so the characters had
05:21to find a way to escape?
05:23The writers of this script certainly do.
05:25And while I'm on that subject, that's not the only idea that they borrowed from other
05:29movies.
05:30Remember the pulse rifles?
05:32Remember Ash?
05:33Remember the alien hive?
05:35Remember the laser mist?
05:37Remember the black goo?
05:38What was that black goo?
05:40Remember the alien skeletor baby?
05:43Remember the fourth act stinger?
05:45Remember this line?
05:46I prefer the term artificial person myself.
05:48Or this line?
05:49I thought you'd hate my sympathies.
05:51Or this line?
05:52Get away from her.
05:53You.
05:54Bitch.
05:55I've heard enough of this and I'm asking you to pull the plug.
05:59Honestly, I could probably spend about 2 hours listing all the stuff this film shamelessly
06:03steals from other movies in the franchise, but for the sake of brevity I'll move on.
06:08So the main objective now is for the gang to hike across the station, avoid the aliens,
06:12recover the cargo hauler and escape before the whole place goes boom.
06:15Oh yeah, and Andy's been upgraded with a new operating system so he's like Super
06:19Andy now, but can they still trust him, or is he now a servant of the company?
06:23What's the true purpose behind the research here, and will any of them make it out alive?
06:28Now I don't want to go all in on the negativity right off the bat.
06:31There are things in Romulus that I really appreciated, so let's go through them first.
06:36The cinematography, production design, props, costumes and soundtrack are all excellent.
06:41They've successfully replicated the look and feel of the original movie, and I appreciated
06:45the opening segment on the mining colony that gives us an actual window into what it's
06:49like for normal people working on a whale in Yutani worlds.
06:52I like the early hints that humans are struggling with deep space colonisation, hence the attempts
06:56to mix them with alien DNA to make them stronger.
06:59Yeah, the payoff doesn't make much sense when you realise the solution is to turn all
07:02of humanity into horrifyingly deformed monsters, or the fact that they already have perfect
07:07workers in the form of androids who never get tired or sick or have to be paid but whatever.
07:13I like the fact that this project was done on a pretty modest budget of $80 million without
07:17sacrificing quality or scope, proving that you don't need hundreds of millions of dollars
07:21to deliver a top-notch visual experience.
07:24It uses a lot of practical effects, there's some decent gore and body horror and the production
07:28probably saved a ton of money by not hiring any big name actors.
07:32On that subject, the cast all do a reasonable job.
07:35I say reasonable rather than great because they're nowhere near as memorable as the
07:38crew of the Nostromo for example, partly because the decision to cast a bunch of 20-somethings
07:43robs them of some much needed gravitas, and partly because the script doesn't tell us
07:47a whole lot about them despite the amount of time we actually spend with them.
07:51In Alien, I felt like I knew the crew pretty well within like the first 15 minutes, but
07:56by the end of Romulus, I struggled to name a single character or what their personality
08:00was like because they all have the same background, played by actors of roughly the same age.
08:05The only exception to all of this is David Johnson, who does a superb job playing two
08:09completely different versions of the same character in Andy.
08:12It's great stuff and he really captures the innocent vulnerability of a being that's
08:16trying his best to fit in without really understanding the people around him.
08:19Kaylee Speeney is fine as rain I guess, she doesn't have Sigourney Weaver's intensity
08:24and charisma or Noomi Rapace's physicality, but she gets the job done without too much
08:29fuss.
08:30Rain's likeable enough and her relationship with Andy is a nice twist on the usual dynamics
08:33we see in films like this, even if it doesn't come close to the emotional impact of Ripley
08:38and Newt.
08:39The actors are fine, the director's good and the production is excellent, the only
08:42real problem is the script, especially the third act which throws so much ridiculous
08:47shit at you that it honestly feels like it was lifted from a completely different movie.
08:51Before you know it, characters will be flying up and down elevator shafts fighting aliens
08:55while the gravity goes haywire, or shooting a swarm of them with a pulse rifle and acting
08:59surprised when acid blood goes flying everywhere, or injecting themselves with the black goo
09:03for no reason so that they can give birth to an alien baby that instantly transforms
09:08into a 10 foot tall human xenomorph engineer hybrid for yet another climactic showdown.
09:13The script just never lets up, it doesn't know when to quit and instead of being exhilarating
09:18it just becomes kind of tedious and exhausting by the end.
09:22All that carefully crafted tension and worldbuilding just goes out of the window in a confusing
09:26maelstrom of what I can best describe as JJ Abrams brand of rapid fire stupidity.
09:32Just keep hitting the audience with more idiotic stuff that makes zero sense but looks really
09:36good so they never have time to stop and think about it before the next dumb thing comes
09:39along.
09:40Basically Romulus has got a strong opening, a slightly shaky middle and a finale that
09:45screws the pooch so hard that the pooch is gonna be in therapy for the rest of its natural
09:49life.
09:50It's not exactly a terrible movie but it's definitely not great either and what's frustrating
09:54is all the right elements were there to deliver something so much better than what we got.
09:58And what's weird is that people seem to be going nuts over this film, it's had a
10:02huge opening weekend and if you believe the chatter online it's the greatest thing since
10:06Sigourney Weaver picked up a pulse rifle.
10:08To people who think that way I would politely suggest they go back and rewatch the first
10:12two Aliens movies, really think about how they worked, how they handle their characters
10:16and relationships and escalate the tension and stakes while staying fairly believable
10:21and then come back and tell me what you really think about Romulus.
10:24Somehow I don't think you'll be quite so positive.
10:28Anyway, that's all I've got for today.
10:32Go away now.