Watch Full "Alien: Romulus" Online for Free
Watch Full "Alien: Romulus" Online for Free
"Alien: Romulus" Story
With no significant innovation, no plot twists, and no profound depth, this is a pure Alien film. Whether in its world-building, cinematographic aesthetics, or musical score, it faithfully inherits the series' essence. Just like the original "Alien," it's a quintessential retro thriller.
The story unfolds 20 years after the first Nostromo spaceship's xenomorph invasion, where the alien Ripley ejected into deep space has transformed into a lifeless space rock. The Weyland Corporation dispatches a recovery vessel to bring this ultimate organism back to a space station for further research... Finally, after completing her service, the female protagonist Rain prepares to leave the Jackson Colony with her synthetic android Andy. This mining colony, ruthlessly exploited by Weyland, suffers from harsh conditions, rampant epidemics, and a sky that never sees sunlight, with countless miners perishing.
However, the exploitative Weyland Corporation doubles her work hours, demanding she stay and mine for another five years. Desperate, Rain receives an invitation from Tyler and his group, who discover an abandoned Weyland spacecraft above the colony. Their plan: secure a hibernation pod to blink away to Ivaga, with Andy's access codes enabling entry. But upon arrival, they find themselves in an abandoned space station. They have just 36 hours to complete their mission before the station collides with an asteroid. Inside the ship, our favorite creature awaits, ready to use these humans as incubation chambers.
The film establishes its unparalleled atmosphere from the beginning. The rock-cutting scene shows researchers frozen like zombies in darkness and red light, the red curtains making the procedure feel like a birthing surgery. The intense reproductive worship and cult-like atmosphere merge perfectly with the xenomorph's design, elevating the themes of reproductive terror and impending panic to their peak.
The facehugger's direct reproductive violation of male characters, the alien's molting and re-hatching, the wall-mounted cocoon designs, and the increasingly bloody "birth" scenes are powerful collisions of worship and fear. It's an upgraded, voyeuristic version of "Prometheus" and "Alien: Resurrection" endings, with elements rivaling "Prey." The director ingeniously incorporates his signature style. The light and camera work during ship chaos, the precise design of weightless acid, all demonstrate the director's formidable skills.
Beyond boarding and space station scenes, this film shares little core similarity with "Dead Space" - the latter being more brutally graphic, with a darker death worship and hallucinations entirely different from the xenomorph. Confined space and alien pursuit? That's more "Dead Space" than "Alien."
Of course, an Alien movie's heart is the xenomorph itself. Fede Álvarez respectfully pays homage to the series in 80% of the film. From the opening computer navigation identical to the first film, the reversed, simplified ALIEN title, the nodding toy beside Rain and Andy's conversation, to Ian Holm's synthetic face recreation and the Bishop-like half-body - everything connects.
Particularly, Rain's heroic female image - saving Andy, whom she considers a brother - mirrors Ripley's heroic archetype. Her inner space suit sequence, pulse rifle partnership with the female hero, all echo the original. The bald Navarro and the alien's proximity in the elevator scene near the end pay tribute to "Alien 3". Was the opening reference to owing Fincher three months' rent a jab at his unfortunate "Alien 3"?
The space station's half-section, named Romulus, references the mythological tale of Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars, nursed by a wolf after being saved from infanticide. The film subtly includes wolf milk imagery, similar to how Prometheus brought fire - here, the scientists experiment on facehuggers, with the black liquid resembling the wolf's milk. Tyler encounters a plague-depicting painting of an infant suckling a dead mother's breast.
In the Alien series, we last saw plague-like scenes in "Covenant" when David released black liquid to massacre Engineers. The alien is David's perfect creation through systematic slaughter, and humans seeking life from the black liquid are absurdly seeking vitality from an Engineer's corpse.
The remaining 20% of crazy creation elevates the film with novelty. Beyond the facehugger's massive assault, the finale - a tribute to "Alien: Resurrection" - is most striking. After all these years, audiences finally witness a horrifyingly twisted alien-human hybrid, created through xenomorph "reproduction" of humans. Its uncanny, deformed appearance and unsettling grin make it perhaps the most terrifying movie monster in recent years. Its brutal, Predator-like spine-ripping matricide brilliantly subverts "Alien: Resurrection's" ending, suggesting that humans can be far more terrifying - a continuation of the film's reproductive horror.
Last edited:
