Listen to this article (15:21 min)
This is an online article from the Christian Research Journal.
When you support the Journal, you join the team and help provide the resources at equip.org that minister to people worldwide. These resources include our ever-growing database of more than 2,000 articles, as well as our free Postmodern Realities podcast.
Another way you can support our online articles is by leaving us a tip. A tip is just a small amount, like $3, $5, or $10, which is the cost of a latte, lunch out, or coffee drink. To leave a tip, click here
[Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers for Alien: Romulus.]
Alien: Romulus
Directed by Fede Álvarez
Written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues
Produced by Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Walter Hill
Starring Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu
(20th Century Studios, 2024)
Feature film rated R
2024 is the year of blockbuster sequels: Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Twisters, Deadpool & Wolverine, to name a few. And now the year has given us yet another in the form of Alien: Romulus. From the moment I saw the very first teaser for this film, I was probably less enthused than most of my sci-fi/horror-loving friends. And the more I saw about the film leading up to release, the more I became convinced my earliest apprehensions were right. The whole affair just seemed to retread the ground already covered in Ridley Scott’s 1979 original masterpiece. Everything from the cinematography to the character design seemed intentionally set on evoking the gloomy and murky style of Alien, rather than doing something new with the material.
What I was not prepared for was how the film would actually invoke the original, in everything from the central protagonist to the very structure of the narrative itself. Practically every story beat of Alien: Romulus is lifted from Alien, even if what actually happens is slightly different. But if you know the formula of Alien, then you will have every major twist that this movie tries to throw at you figured out in the first twenty minutes. There is a really hilarious sort of irony at work in the opening sequence, which depicts a salvage team scouring the remains of the Nostromo, the iconic space tug from the first film. If the thesis of this movie is “We’re going to plunder the bones of what came before in an effort to reconstruct something as close to that as we possibly can,” then nobody on the production team even attempted to be subtle about it.
I left the theater really debating with myself. What was it about Alien: Romulus that made the whole affair seem like a great big sigh followed by a shoulder shrug? Was it that I had just spent the day lecturing from bell-to-bell in all of my classes? Was it that I had seen the film in Dolby, with its literally hundreds of loudspeakers, and still somehow struggled to understand the words characters were whispering for the first third of the film? Was it that I was so uninterested in what quickly became one of the most predictable almost-two-hour slogs I have ever sat through that I nearly fell asleep at two early points in a surprisingly not packed-out theater?
What I have settled on is none of the above, though all are true. No, it seems to me that Alien: Romulus is simply the victim of an extremely cynical approach to filmmaking that is almost completely at odds with the kind of moxie and damn-the-torpedoes attitude that got movies like the original made. It smacks of such a lack of confidence that Alien: Romulus feels it must worship at the altar of Ridley Scott to such a degree that the very template of Alien must be copied and pasted, to the point where both movies have nearly the exact same runtime (literally a three minute difference — and you can chalk that up to the credits).
So, it should come as no surprise that the new film is just as indebted to the original thematically as it is stylistically. Alien writer Dan O’Bannon gave audiences a bleak look at a future in which corporate greed has run unchecked even into the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. The nameless “Company,” which would, in later sequels, be identified as Weyland-Yutani, is shown to exhibit the absolute worst aspects of corporate profiteering and a reckless — even ruthless — disregard for human life in pursuit of the almighty dollar.1 Alien is one of sci-fi’s most pointed criticisms of capitalism, and it makes sense that a sequel so obsessed with mimicking the original would carry over those themes as well.
Dark Things in Dark Places. The path to the original Alien is the stuff of legend. Ridley Scott, a young, depressed filmmaker feeling horribly inadequate after seeing the cultural phenomenon that was George Lucas’s Star Wars take the world by storm in 1977, was tapped for a new kind of sci-fi project by executives at 20th Century Fox. Pitched as “Jaws in Space,” the story initially titled Star Beast more or less retained the same idea as the finished product, following a blue-collar crew of spacers who encounter a monstrous extraterrestrial among the stars.2
The design of the titular monster was instantly iconic, having been developed by Swiss-born maestro of nightmare artwork, H. R. Giger. Combining the horrific with the grotesque, Giger produced the famous “xenomorph” as the big-bad of Scott’s film, with its strange, elongated black head, deadly tail, razor-like teeth, and unnaturally spindly body making the monster truly feel like the deadliest organism one could imagine encountering in the black void of space.3 From the moment the xenomorph burst onto the scene (quite literally), the monster redefined the science fiction genre for the screen, merging visceral terror with a haunting and realistic depiction of space travel that was a far cry from the optimistic utopia of Roddenberry’s Star Trek (1966–1969) or the high adventure of Lucas’s Star Wars. The industrial, lived-in design of the Nostromo set a new standard for the genre’s aesthetic, going on to influence countless later projects, from Ron Moore’s brilliant reimagining of Battlestar Galactica (2003, 2004–2009) to the much-lauded Dead Space video game franchise.4
Besides the design elements, perhaps the most significant contribution Alien made to the cultural landscape was the introduction of Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, portrayed by Sigourney Weaver. Not only did Ripley break new ground as a female protagonist in the sci-fi genre, which was largely dominated by male heroes, but she shot her way into the horror landscape as a distinctly different kind of “final girl.” More than a survivor, Ripley was a decisive, capable, no-nonsense leader who confronted the darkness of space and the horrors that awaited there with the grit and tenacity of the most iconic Western heroes, quickly solidifying her status as one of cinema’s most influential heroines.5
A hit with filmgoers, Alien won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, and nabbed three coveted Saturn Awards, including one for Scott. It was a safe bet the universe Scott created would expand, and it did so nearly a decade later with a young James Cameron at the helm. In another staggering accomplishment of cinema, Cameron crafted a sequel that, for many, supplants even the original — subtly titled Aliens (1986). Cameron was wise not to try to follow in Scott’s footsteps by recreating or evoking the mood of the original — an approach that is polar opposite of Alien: Romulus, and the end results speak for themselves.
Under Cameron’s direction, the sequel transformed the horror of the first film into a high-octane action spectacle, while retaining the central themes of corporate exploitation and the terrifying potential of unchecked scientific ambition. The introduction of the Colonial Marines, and the return of Ripley as a fierce protector in the role of surrogate mother, added layers of commentary on militarism and motherhood, two of Cameron’s most familiar themes to be celebrated and dissected by audiences and critics alike. Aliens remains a masterclass in how to do a sequel to a masterpiece effectively, proving that a follow-up could stand alongside its predecessor when enough narrative risk is taken with an eye toward enriching and fleshing out the world of the story.6
Subsequent entries, however, were met with mixed receptions as they attempted to balance innovation with nostalgia. David Fincher’s Alien 3 (1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection (1997) each brought different visions to the series, with varying degrees of success. While these films continued to explore themes of survival, identity, and the ethics of creation, they struggled under the weight of “franchise expectations” and studio interference. The prequels, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), saw Ridley Scott return to the director’s chair and expand the lore with heavily philosophical explorations of the origins of the xenomorphs and artificial intelligence. Ambitious in scope, the films were quite polarizing, with some praising their audacity, while others lamented the loss of the franchise’s horror genre roots.7 Now Alien: Romulus is in theaters and seeks to recover that perceived loss by following the template of the original film to several faults. The reviews are positive, by-and-large, and Alien: Romulus is undoubtedly a skillfully crafted, well-made twenty-first century sci-fi horror flick — but it is, ultimately, a skillfully crafted, well-made twenty-first century sci-fi horror pastiche, which perhaps mistakes an overall lack of confidence in the franchise’s potential for dedication to the original film.8
Bad Company. The Alien series, with its exploration of corporate greed and the fragility of human life, offers the cultural apologist a few opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations about faith. At its core, this is a franchise that wrestles with questions of existence, creation, and the ethics of power. The portrayal of Weyland-Yutani, the nameless “Company” of the original film, as an entity willing to sacrifice human lives for profit, is a prime example of the dangers of money-hungry materialism. The first film works almost as a kind of parable warning against the dangers of placing wealth and power above basic human dignity. It is a more vague (but perhaps more culturally appropriate) example of the dirty underside of greed that Jesus excavates when He points out to His disciples that “it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:23–24 NKJV).
And while the prequels were not incredibly well-received, they are certainly more philosophically-minded than any of the other films in the series. They provide a basic framework for discussions about a Creator-being who imbues life with purpose and meaning, and then contrast those purposes and meanings with the dangers of hubris and the pursuit of knowledge without moral boundaries (see how well this works out for the man and the woman in Eden in Genesis 3).
Moreover, the repeated theme of isolation and existential dread in the Alien films points to humanity’s innate need for connection. The vast, empty spaces of the Nostromo, LV-426, and the alien worlds depicted in the prequels highlight the pervasive sense of loneliness and vulnerability that accompanies the human condition when people find themselves severed from meaningful relationships.
And perhaps this is one of the reasons why Alien: Romulus just did not work as well for me as it has for many of my contemporaries. The “connection” that we are supposed to care about in the movie is between a girl, Rain (Cailee Spaeny), and her android, Andy (David Jonsson). While all of the human characters, including Rain’s ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux), are killed off in various gnarly ways, we are meant to root for Rain and her connection to what is, essentially, a robot, which is pretty much all that’s left of her late family. Now, I suppose I could prattle on pretentiously about how this is meant to provoke “deep questions” about android consciousness, which, frankly, the video game Detroit: Become Human handles much more interestingly.9 But at the end of the day, it all boils down to a story about a girl trying to rescue an inanimate object with a chip for a brain, while all of the humans slip away. Maybe if the story felt compelled to take a risk, we could have had a scene where Andy helps Rain to learn to let go of her parents and, as a result, move beyond her own isolation to actually care for another human crewmember — maybe Andy could have taught Rain to give him up to actually save Kay (Isabela Merced). However, that would have meant one less death scene, and that just wouldn’t do — because Ripley was the final girl, Rain has to be the final girl, too.
But, hey, at least there’s that one cool zero gravity scene. That was nifty.
Cole Burgett is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and the Moody Bible Institute. He teaches classes in systematic theology and Bible exposition and writes extensively about theology and popular culture.
NOTES
- For a fairly well thought-out analysis of how Alien handles corporate greed, and the way this infuses the original film, see Sebastian Diaz, “The Corporate Greed of ‘Alien,’” Rhetorikos, Fordham University (Spring 2023): https://rhetorikos.blog.fordham.edu/?p=1372.
- David Weiner, “Ridley Scott on the Hard Road to ‘Alien’,” The Hollywood Reporter, May 24, 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alien-ridley-scott-reveals-how-iconic-scene-went-wrong-1213109/.
- For an overview of Giger’s artwork and his important contributions to Alien, see Matt Domino, “The Nightmarish Works of H. R. Giger, the Artist behind ‘Alien,’” Artsy, May 6, 2019, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-nightmarish-works-hr-giger-artist-alien.
- To see how the film’s unique cinematography was masterminded by Scott and the director of photography, Derek Vanlint, see Vanlint’s own reflection in Derek Vanlint, “Alien and Its Photographic Challenges,” American Cinematographer, July 4, 2017, https://theasc.com/articles/alien-and-its-photographic-challenges.
- For an interesting analysis on what sets Ripley apart from so many film heroines of the twenty-first century, see Jaime Prater, “A Hero without Commentary: The Endurance of Ellen Ripley,” Perfect Organism Podcast: The Alien Saga Podcast, October 26, 2020, https://www.perfectorganism.com/blog/2020/10/26/a-hero-without-commentary-the-endurance-of-ellen-ripley-1.
- For a look back on how Cameron and company approached the making of the sequel, see Tom Fordy, “Aliens: How James Cameron Made the Greatest Sequel in Sci-Fi History,” Independent, August 18, 2024, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/aliens-james-cameron-alien-romulus-b2595780.html.
- For a brief discussion of the oddity that is the prequel duology, see Jonathan R. Lack, “Review: ‘Alien: Covenant,’ ‘Prometheus,’ and the Duality of Ridley Scott,” Fade to Look, August 14, 2024, https://www.jonathanlack.com/p/review-alien-covenant-prometheus.
- For a fairly thoughtful analysis of the emptiness of this approach to franchise filmmaking, see Peter Suderman, “Alien: Romulus Is a Slick, Empty Franchise Pastiche,” Reason, August 16, 2024, https://reason.com/2024/08/16/alien-romulus-review-ridley-scott-james-cameron-aliens-movies/.
- See my discussion of the game’s ideas in Cole Burgett, “If Jesus Were a Robot: Android Rebellion, Religious Belief, and the Messiah in Detroit: Become Human,” Christ and Pop Culture, July 5, 2022, https://christandpopculture.com/if-jesus-were-a-robot-android-rebellion-religious-belief-and-the-messiah-in-detroit-become-human/.
