In space, no one complains about eating the same meal rations again and again and again.

I can’t speak for fans of Ghostbusters or of Harry Potter post-Deathly Hallows, but whenever I get attached to an IP, I’m excited whenever that universe shows signs of forward motion or at least simulating it. Granted, when it comes to the Alien movies, my opinions are already warped — James Cameron’s Aliens is one of my Top 5 films ever, which I saw years before I got around to Ridley Scott’s original. I also respected Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s engagingly bonkers Alien Resurrection for pushing the series’ boundaries and actually getting somewhere — anywhere — after edgy pre-auteur David Fincher’s Alien³ ramrodded Ellen Ripley’s story into a literal dead end.

All Alien works since then have treated Resurrection as The End, and/or as a disowned mistake. Directors — not to mention writers of its various transmedia spinoffs — limit themselves to rooting around the limited preceding timeline for unoccupied dance floors where they can twirl in place and try out their freshest moves, never quite distracting from how the club has had the same dusty disco strobe and jukebox since 1997. Double-dates with Predators were one-night stands that no one could maintain eye contact with. When Scott himself barged back in indignantly all, “SEE HERE NOW!” we knew he could make spaceships shinier and creatures slimier, but Prometheus gave us a half-unwritten origin and Alien: Covenant was a cram session to finish the same assignment in as few pages as possible.

27 years later the franchise continues moving nowhere at sub-FTL velocity with Alien: Romulus, a pre-sequel brazenly set between Alien and Aliens in hopes of blending in, in more ways than one. I’ve seen no previous works by Fede Álvarez or his co-writer Rodo Sayagues (though Don’t Breathe is on my extremely long mental to-do list), so I came into this with few preconceptions except a faint awareness that gore is his medium. I saw the first trailer at C2E2 with an exclusive Álvarez intro, which was promising, but the second gave away way too much. I offered benefit of the doubt for as long as I could.

Our Heroes, most of whom are inevitably disposable, are space twentysomethings who might be the softest space miners in the galaxy, possibly space-mine back-office drones who alleviate their everyday ennui by playing space pranks on a Space Dwight. (A more daring film would’ve starred the Russian miners of HBO’s Chernobyl.) They’re contractually stuck in a sunless Weyland-Yutani worksite, where their three square meals a day are probably just Vitamin D horse pills, and dream of a better life or at least some time off. They wanna go where everybody knows their name, but the nearest getaway is light-years beyond and can’t be traveled to without Alien Franchise™ cryo-chambers. If such appliances were commonly sold at Space Best Buys galaxywide, chances are they’re priced far out of these worker-drones’ pay-grades.

A plan is concocted that of course is not run by any authorities or at least reviewed for possible flaws by a grizzled old miner with decades of wisdom to dispense. All those geezers can suck it as Our Heroes leave their mining colony with no resistance whatsoever and fly out to a spooky abandoned spaceship that’s apparently driftin’ in nothingness just down the road a-ways. The place is divided into two halves, each called Romulus and Remus, which never matters. Somewhere aboard are cryo-chambers they plan to pilfer for vacation gear, hopefully still functional and definitely not surrounded by dangers that might explain why perfectly usable, expensive equipment has been left alone to gather space dust. What’s the worst that could happen?

To be fair, the setup looks fantastic, if not entirely original — space blue-collar mining towns and transports are built on dingy, industrial-chic designs straight out of Coruscant’s darkest bowels or Main Street Blade Runner. The acrid smoke and the heavy-metal tonnage are palpable. Off-planet, though, we’re back on familiar turf in more ways than one. The spooky ship has lifeforms on board. A survivor pops up. They run and bleed, and run and run and bleed, run run run, bleed bleed bleed…wait, no, there aren’t that many characters. But you get the idea. If you don’t get it, then you also won’t be driven to distraction by the score by Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner 2049, The Invisible Man). Like Álvarez, though, he’s unabashedly playing the hits, sampling cues from throughout the series. In our household I’m the worst when it comes to identifying instrumental pieces, but I’ve listened to James Horner’s Aliens soundtrack (the old half-hour version) so many times that even I could recognize the Pavlovian cues.

And those “hits” just keep spinning on the turntable. Characters spontaneously quote memorable dialogue from far better films with none of the knowing preciousness of “I have a bad feeling about this.” One classic soundbite is seemingly ruined on purpose, as if daring the audience to seal-clap at it anyway. Aliens‘ pulse rifle tutorial –- the only romantic moment in the entire film, which Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn played so subtly and wonderfully — has been adapted in toto but stripped of nuance and reduced to a video-game protagonist having earned five XP in the tutorial and redeemed it for the “Use a Gun” perk. The xenomorph chases stop and start, with the monsters sometimes posing lethal obstacles and sometimes calling time-out for off-screen smoke breaks. They’re same as they ever were, no new evolution to show off, unless you count how the final act is an offensively faithful remake of the final 20 minutes of Resurrection and features a Final Boss who’s mostly recycled, yet bizarrely remodeled to please anyone who loved Azkaban‘s wobbly PG emaciated NBA-draft-pick werewolf.

By then the rockiest of rock-bottoms has already arrived earlier on, when we greet the ship’s lone survivor, whose nature has been so controversial and featured in numerous headlines that I don’t even know why I’m treating it as a spoiler at this late date (it’s been a long couple weeks for me). Suffice it to say this blog has not supported rampant AI use and abuse in the arts over the past several years (especially not by other bloggers), to say nothing of egregious de-aging of now-older actors to resemble their former selves because The Kids These Days might recoil at the idea of recasting. If true, I blame their dead imaginations. But when it’s done to resurrect a character played by a dead actor? For more than a quick cameo? Which could’ve easily been recast or simply replaced by a new character? And when it’s the worst special effect in the entire film? Maybe the attempted deepfaking will look less laughable when Romulus comes to gas-station VHS, but on the Dolby Cinema screen I attended, even Madame Web would’ve pointed and laughed at the shoddiness and the dispelled gravitas.

Rather, the most intriguing character — by which I mean the only one — is the token android assigned to every Alien film. As Andy the android (not to be confused with Marvel’s Andy the Awesome Android), David Jonsson (HBO’s Industry, the upcoming Bonhoeffer) deserved far more space to roam. Andy is an older-model android who’s rather timid, going obsolete and not much use (more of a security blanket than a minion), but he’s an essential tool that Our Heroes need to access the dead ship’s computer using a really old programming language. He’s been his human’s best friend since childhood, and keeps telling dumb Dad-jokes because that’s how he was programmed. Then at a crucial time where everyone’s about to die, a much-needed upgrade serves as a pivot point; suddenly he’s no longer a mere tool…or so he tells himself. A better film would’ve spotlighted his inner conflicts front and center.

Alas, no Alien film ever allows androids to rise above sidekick status. Amid the occasional visual flourish here and there (including a tense set-piece involving zero-G, buckets of acid, and the defeat of physics by its mortal enemy, the unstoppable film-force called “But It Looks Cool!”), Andy’s story is eventually waylaid by further derivative material and his otherwise human companions who add up to six characters in search of a canceled CW series. Fan service and shiny surfaces don’t quite give Alien: Romulus an identity of its own, nor virtually anything else unique for future filmmakers to homage in Alien IP-dust-off sequels 20 years from now. Much as he’s tried to blend in…if Scott and Cameron are fraternally twinned Romulus and Remus, Álvarez is their other brother Rummo.

Thus we end with my version of Every Alien Movie Ranked:

1. Aliens
2. Alien
3. Alien Resurrection
4. Alien³
5. Prometheus
6. Alien vs. Predator
7. Alien: Romulus
8. Alien: Covenant
9. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

…though if I wanted to be fair (I don’t, but I’m saying if I did), I’d have to rewatch AvP to double-check. It definitely had a better Final Boss Battle.

…

Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: For want of a new Ripley, our latest leading humans include previous “stars” Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim Uprising, Bad Times at the El Royale) and Isabela Merced (survivor of Madame Web and Transformers: The Last Knight). The token males in the crew are Spike Fearn (Aftersun) as the resident jagweed and Archie Renaux (Netflix’s Shadow and Bone) as a Ken whose job is “Tall”.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Alien: Romulus end credits, though the late, legendary designer H.R. Giger receives a rather prominent name-check. Anyone like me who devoured the Alien Quadrilogy boxed-set extras will recognize Alec Gillis, who was also seminal in previous films and is likewise mentioned. The estate of the deepfaked familiar face offers their seal of approval, and the complete contents of the music section are citations of three previous Alien films and Wagner’s Das Rheingold, which was used in Covenant.

(We get it, end-credits writer, all the other Alien films had SO MUCH AWESOME STUFF in them. You can knock off the tributes now.)