Somewhere in the world, there are companies that warehouse sets and equipment used in past films. From the opening scenes of the new movie "Alien: Romulus" it was like revisiting the sets of the original Alien (1979) or the sequel Aliens (1986), including the old computer monitors and related equipment. Regarding science fiction movies and arguably the greatest Alien creature ever created, these first two Alien films are the all-time standards and the beginning of the almost 50-year franchise of Alien movies.
The latest Alien movie "Alien: Romulus" has many reminders of the first two Alien movies and a character from the original movie named Ash, who is an android played by the late Ian Holm, using AI. From my memory of the original Alien from 1979, I remembered that the spaceship that Ash was on blew up. Given this fact, how could he now appear in this movie - with a timeline some 20 years after the original story?
This story is about a group of younger astronauts on a ship some 67 light years from Earth. Their mission is about trying to retrieve a valuable specimen on their space station called Romulus. Soon after they dock with another space station, where they encounter deadly alien creatures known as deadly Xenomorphs and face-huggers, that attach themselves to the face of a human host where they implant an alien that grows rapidly and explodes from the chest of the victim - one of the most impressive ideas in the history of horror movies.
That cast for this latest Alien installment includes Rain, played by Cailee Spaeny - who has an impressive start to her young acting career - having appeared in several major movie releases in the last 2 years. The android character of Andy is played very well by David Jonsson, who is close friends with Rain. The other characters have relatively small roles including Kay, played by Isabela Merced. Because Kay is pregnant, the new idea introduced in this story is that when a human is implanted with an Alien while pregnant, a new combination of Alien/Human creatures is created - something never seen before in all the many Alien movies. This idea is the only original one within this entire film.
Towards the end of this story, the climax includes too many ideas from the second Aliens movie, that I thought were contrived and lacked any attempt at originality.
Overall I thought this latest Alien movie was just OK, and I was surprised at the high 82% rating for this movie, with my rating about 70% and a very marginal recommendation only for fans of the Alien franchise.
No comments:
Post a Comment