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The Alien franchise is one of those series that Hollywood just keeps trying to make happen; the original two critically acclaimed films were followed by two poorly received continuations, two ambitious (if underwhelming) prequels, and two crossover films with Predator. As a result, audiences have been getting xenomorph stories on and off for almost fifty years, and the franchise’s thematic and stylistic ambitions are as varied as the films’ quality. Even original director Ridley Scott’s return to the franchise with Prometheus, an attempt to manifest an overarching narrative for the series, merely muddied the waters even further, and its sequel Alien: Covenant, while leagues ahead of its predecessor, stayed the course. With all of this in mind, my general sentiment leaned towards apathy; perhaps James Cameron’s Aliens was a fluke, a rare sequel that completely reinvents the source material to arrive at an equally satisfying experience, and that this world and these characters required no follow up, no further exploration. I thought that this concept had been fully excavated for all that it was worth…and then came Alien: Romulus, a film so utterly divorced from the specific plot machinations of a larger universe that, with some retooling, could have been a complete reboot of the entire franchise. Surely, this was the aim of 20th Century Studios (read: Disney): to softly relaunch a valuable IP for a new audience. But beyond the film’s corporate mandate, Fede Álvarez manages to breathe new life into a world that had seemed all but extinct.

Alien: Romulus (Fede Álvarez, 2024)

Review originally published on September 10th, 2024.

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