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.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 