Alien: Romulus (2024)

Plot of Alien Romulus: A bunch of young people working in a pretty hostile environment decide that if they can get to an abandoned space station they will be able of recover some sleep chambers which will allow them to escape in the direction of a dream planet, a journey which will take eight years. One of their number is Andy, an android who they need to operate some of the space station’s systems. On the station they find a damaged android, Rook, and also are able to install a system in Andy which updates him, turning him essentially into a different person. It is not long before one of the group Navarro, is attacked by a face hugger which processes her, and while she in trying to escape with others the alien burst out of her stomach, and in the shock they crash their spacecraft into the station, which is destabilised and will crash in the planetary rings of the place they have just left in hours. They then dash about trying to survive, some times with the help of their android, sometimes not, and as for the pregnant girl…

Content: There is no sex or nudity, or drinking. The IMDb parent’s guide suggests there was a bit of hash smoking but I don’t remember it. While they do have firearms their use is limited because the alien blood will make holes in the space station. They dash about a lot in semi-darkness and the more gross events are muted because they take place in the gloom. The remains of Rook who may the android from the Nostromo keeps us up to date with what is going on.

A View: On a production budget of about $80 million the film has probably made some money, and it was well liked by the critics. Honestly, for me there was quite a bit wrong with it. There was a lot of build up to the first face-hugger incident, some of which they could have used to give us a better idea of the environment we were entering, as it was the cast were dashing about endless corridors in the dark. And they were so young, to the point that I thought the target audience must have been young adults. Perhaps it was, and I read that some of it was based on a computer game. Well, there we have it.

Fun fact: The director said that the rich people lived in an Apple-esque environment, the poor in zeerust.