The 581st film I have seen in theaters…

Spoilers below

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Rain and her android “brother” Andy live on the mining colony “Jackson’s star”. Her parents having died in the mines, Rain seeks to escape from her never-ending Weyland-Yutani work contract. Her ex, Tyler, and his crewmates learn of “Romulus”, an abandoned space station in orbit around their planet. They hatch a plan to sneak aboard, steal some cryostasis tubes, and fly off to a new world. Little do they know that this station had an accident, a bad one. They were researching “items” recovered from 20 year old space wreck named “Nostromo”. Things proceed as expected.

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Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson are our leads, Rain and Andy. This has been Spaeny’s year, following “Civil War” and and “Priscilla”. She’s come a long way from “Pacific Rim 2”, and does very well here. No one can match Weaver, but she holds her own fighting the aliens. Jonsson really stood out to me. Playing essentially 2 characters, I thought he was the best realized of the cast. This is an actor to watch for.

You can’t have an alien movie without a good supply of victims! This one gives us Archie Renaux as ex-boyfriend Tyler, Aileen Wu as the doomed pilot Navarro, Spike Fearn as douchey cousin Bjorn, and Isabela Merced as Kay, Tyler’s pregnant sister. All did their part to make for a memorable movie, with emphasis on Merced. Yikes. It took the birthing scene from “Prometheus” and jacked it up, lol.

More surprising was the other actor appearing here:

Voiced by Daniel Betts, an animatronic, AI enhanced Android named Rook is found on Romulus. It is the same model as Ash, the Nostromo science droid from the 1979 original movie. It also looks and sounds like 1979’s Ian Holm, an actor that died a few years ago. More on him below.

There is a healthy debate happening among the critics, and audiences, as to whether using robotics and AI to recreate a dead actor, Holm, is kosher. My take is that as long as the actor’s family/estate is cool with it, I am cool with it. Could they have just hired another actor, maybe even Michael Fassbender, to do this? Yes, they could have. Was this a much more ballsy play? Hell yeah it was. The “fakeness” and “uncanny valley” nature of the rendering has been brought up as an attack on this character. Again, this is a case where it is not an unforgiveable sin. This is a TRASHED robot character, oozing its white blood everywhere. A glitchy uncanny look is appropriate. I was also surprised that this is not a short cameo. This dude is used throughout the latter 2 thirds of the film and is an equal antagonist to the Aliens. I applaud the chutzpah.

The story itself was very good. I enjoyed the ties to the original film and admired that they didn’t ignore “Prometheus”. The final boss, Xenomorph/Engineer birthed by a human, was fantastic character design. I thought the main story between Rain and Andy was quite effective as well. As stated, Jonsson played Andy perfectly. The naïve, weak, innocent, and noble brother Andy, and the confident, assured, strategic and logical “company man” Andy. Good writing, and excellent acting.

The Xenomorphs, as always, were well designed, and the action was stellar, pun intended. I also thought the music and sound were on point. The score, by Benjamin Wallfisch of Blade Runner 2049, was a particularly good one. I like when the music is its own character in a movie, and this one delivers. The sound, especially the shuttle crashing scenes, were fantastic.

Full disclosure: I had little intention of seeing this movie. I enjoyed the previous 2 well enough, but I was pretty much over the series. Then San Diego Comic-Con happened.

I was one of those fortunate souls that got to attend SDCC this year and also got into a Hall H panel. I am not a person to live in Hall H for 3 days, but I will go if the line is easy, and it was easy for Alien Romulus. This is amusing as aside from the 2 Marvel panels, this is the one everyone was talking about.

I walked into this pretty much cold. I did not know who was acting in it, nor did I know that Fede Alvarez was the director. They were all on stage and presented a few scenes from the film, including the “chest burster” scene. This presentation sold me on the film. MY indifference turned to excitement as each new scene was shown. To cap it all off, it being comic-con, they gave us free schwag! Regarded as one of the best Hall H giveaways, everyone left that room with a face hugger mask and IMAX upgrade ticket to see the movie.

Luckily, the hype of the film actually lived up to the finished product. My only gripe with the film was the “Get away from her, you BITCH!” line. Unnecessary and smelled of corporate interference. Otherwise, this is a SOLID film.

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8/10

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So, how does it compare to the previous entries?

1. Aliens
2. Alien
3. Alien: Romulus
4. Alien: Covenant
5. Alien: Ressurection
6. Prometheus
7. Alien 3
8. AvP
9. AvP: Requiem

For me this was very much a return to form. Easily the best Alien movie since Aliens. Give Fede Alvarez another dammit!