Cailee Spaeny – Pain In The Bud

Review: Alien Romulus Is The Only Worthy Sequel To The 1979 Original

It took a fresh vision to prove there’s still cinematic life in the xenomorph and its ability to terrify audiences, but Romulus really shines where its affable characters are concerned.

Over four decades and six films — eight if you count crossovers — in the Alien universe, no one had been able to capture even a fraction of the terror, novelty or magic of Ridley Scott’s original 1979 science fiction-horror classic.

James Cameron turned the immediate sequel into a James Cameron movie, which means it’s packed with Velveeta one-liners, Spanish catch-phrases that no Spanish-speaking person would ever utter, and doesn’t exercise an ounce of the restraint Scott used to such cosmic effect.

In the third outing, David Fincher took on the impossible task of trying to reconcile the tone of the first two films and set the entire thing in a drab space prison, while Joss Whedon’s script for the fourth film was Firefly in Alien trappings.

While the xenomorphs never looked better, Alien: Covenant felt like half a movie, ending on a cliffhanger that will never be resolved.

The titular monster had been stripped of nearly all its mystique by the time Scott returned to the franchise with Prometheus and Covenant, the fifth and sixth installments.

Both films were visually spectacular thanks to Scott’s efforts, but suffered from characters audiences couldn’t connect with, and in the case of Damon Lindelof’s script for Prometheus, characters the audience loathed. Instead of leaving the origin of the aliens ambiguous, Prometheus and Covenant offered a bizarre, nearly franchise-killing backstory involving alien-designed panspermia, artificial intelligence gone rogue and half-baked creationism given the veneer of science.

When Fede Alvarez presented his vision for an Alien film, he understood he had two do two things:

Ignore everything that came after Scott’s original film
Offer something more than the formulaic “monster stalks the cast deck by deck and kills them one at a time, leaving only the Final Girl”

Alien: Romulus sets off on that task by engaging in economical world building to give us more context than the five previous sequels managed together.

It’s tightly focused on our heroes, a group of five twenty-somethings who were born on a fiery world where lava perpetually flows, novel diseases spawn every year and a permanent atmospheric coat of soot and ash hides the sun and sky from the people who live there.

It’s a hellish place, and they’re there because multinational megacorporation Weyland-Yutani (“the company” in Alien parlance) wants the valuable ores within the planet’s crust. Like the crew of the Nostromo, the people are expendable in the company’s pursuit of profit.

Alien Romulus: Jackson's Star — The people who live in the colony at Jackson’s Star can’t even see their own sun as they slave for Weyland-Yutani corporation.

Our heroes work for the company, and they’re all orphans who lost their parents to work-related accidents or diseases from the mines.

Marie Rain Carradine’s (Cailee Spaeny) hope lies in the completion of her indentured servitude. With 12,000 hours of service to the company under her belt, Rain can finally take her brother to the colony world Yvaga, where the air isn’t toxic, people aren’t worked to death, and best of all in her mind, you can see the sun.

When Rain visits a Weyland-Yutani administrative center to formally separate from the company and relocate to Yvaga, a bureaucrat doubles her work requirement to 24,000 hours with the stroke of a key, damning her to another five or six years toiling on a planet that kills everyone eventually. Worse, the bureaucrat transfers her from farming to the mines, where her parents died.

“Know that the company is really grateful for your service,” the Wey-Yu representative says with an infuriating affect, dismissing the shocked young woman.

It’s in the depth of her despair that Rain gets a message from her friend Tyler (Archie Renaux) and listens to his pitch. Tyler and the others were working their orbital jobs miles above the colony’s surface when their computers pinged, alerting them to the approach of a massive starship.

Scans revealed a decommissioned Weyland-Yutani vessel that hadn’t been entirely stripped of its useful parts, slowly drifting through the system. Crucially, the ship still carried functional cryo pods, which would allow the group to sleep out the nine-plus year journey to Yvaga.

It’s freedom, there for the taking “before someone else does,” Isabela Merced’s Kay tells Rain.

When Rain balks at the dangerous and highly illegal plan, Tyler points out Weyland-Yutani will never grant them approval to leave the nightmarish world where they were born.

“I don’t want to end up like our parents,” he says, nodding toward the dead-eyed, soot-covered miners marching back to their utilitarian prefab homes after another shift toiling for the company.

You don’t need to guess that the plan does not go smoothly, nor the reason why.

What most people will need to know, in order to entrust two hours of their time to a franchise that has been beating a dead horse for decades, is that Alien: Romulus is the kind of sequel Scott himself would have made after the original, at the height of his directorial powers, if he hadn’t moved on to other projects.

Romulus replicates the magic of the original by taking things in exciting new directions, and by giving the audience a series of astonishing set pieces, including a gloriously nail-biting sequence that not only captures the beauty of space, but reminds us how hostile it is to our fragile human bodies.

It also takes care to give us reasons to root for characters we’ve just met, to sympathize with their plight and understand why they’d do something so desperate and reckless.

Alien Romulus: Cailee Spaeny — Cailee Spaeny is inarguably the best of the actresses who have tried to take the mantle from Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in the last several films from the franchise.

Rain and her friends have one important thing in common with the characters from the first Alien film — they’re fighting for survival in more ways than one. There’s the immediate threat to their lives, and their eventual slow, agonizing doom if they don’t find a way off their colony world.

Unlike the characters from the previous sequels, they didn’t volunteer for a military mission, an archaeological expedition or to be pioneers on a world full of life. They’re desperate adults barely out of childhood who know life holds nothing but misery for them if they don’t succeed.

Like the best science fiction, Romulus doesn’t just entertain, it uses an imagined future to comment on our society. AI has now permeated our lives, but mainstream science fiction is still stuck on the same tired “AI evolves, turns on humans for reasons and tries to wipe us out” narratives.

Alien Romulus — Andy (Jonsson) in an airlock early in the film.

For those of us who are genre fans, it’s frustrating to see Hollywood clinging to ideas that were first kicked around many decades ago by science fiction novelists. Besides, the “AI turns on humans” thing has little to do with reality and everything to do with human anxiety that we’ll be judged for our behavior as a species the moment we encounter an intelligence capable of judging us.

Romulus eschews the formulaic stuff to explore a more interesting question: what separates biological intelligence from artificial intelligence, and can the latter really qualify as life? Can machines ever approximate human emotions, or are they limited to simulating them for our benefit? It’s still not the most original idea, but it’s a marked improvement from the same old Terminator and Ex Machina-inspired narratives.

As for the alien itself, it’s more menacing than it’s been since the first film, and it has a few tricks up its sleeve thanks to circumstances that tie directly into the original. To say more would be an injustice, because the twists here are well-conceived. They also make perfect sense given what we already know, and don’t require any great shift in franchise lore.

Lastly, as an admirer of retrofuturism, I can’t let this review pass without praising the set designers, special effects teams and Alvarez for reviving the utilitarian 1970s vision of the future from the original. This is a worn, lived-in universe, not a gleaming utopia. Alien’s aesthetics influenced virtually every science fiction effort over the last 45 years, and for good reason.

Alien Romulus sets design — Set designers at work on an interior for Alien: Romulus

There’s something anachronistic about a civilization that has mastered interstellar propulsion, cryopreservation and advanced artificial intelligence, but remains reliant on monochrome displays with vector graphics and tactile interfaces. And yet that visual shorthand signals to viewers that this is a return to the fundamental elements of the franchise, and a universe where space exploration is corporate and soulless.

Perhaps the best sign that Romulus has revived Alien is the fact that a sequel is already in the works. Spaeny and David Jonsson, who plays Rain’s brother Andy, are already on board for a second installment.

There’s certainly more story to tell, and if Alvarez can maintain the magic blend of homage and novelty that made Romulus such a strong entry, we’re in for another fun ride. To Yvaga!

Alien: Romulus is available to stream on Max, Hulu and Disney+. For a list of alternate sites where the film can be rented or purchased, or to check availability in regions other than the US, check out the movie’s listing on JustWatch.

Review: Civil War Is A Warning To America

Alex Garland’s latest film is a road trip through the ruins of America as the nation is engulfed in a modern day civil war. It wasn’t so long ago that such a scenario would be unthinkable. Now we wonder if it’s an inevitability.

There’s a moment in Civil War when Kirsten Dunst’s world-weary photojournalist sits down in the ruins of a US industrial park, with tracer fire lighting up the night a few miles away, and turns to Stephen McKinley’s print scribe.

“Every time I got the photo and survived a war zone,” Dunst’s character tells him, “I thought I was sending a warning home: don’t do this. And yet here we are.”

In a movie that works on every level as a warning to the American public not to throw away what we have, what we take for granted, that one quiet moment feels like director Alex Garland speaking directly to the audience, making sure no one can miss the point. Don’t do this.

civilwar08 — Dunst, left, and McKinley share a quiet moment in an industrial park as a battle rages a few miles off. Credit: A24

The sad truth is, the United States now seem more divided than at any other point since the original civil war. We’re dangerously close to the abyss, and the people dragging us there are the most ignorant of us. They’re the people who can’t tell you the name of their own congressman and can’t articulate what the three branches of government do (or even what they are), but insist everyone listen with rapt attention as they screech incoherently about politics and demonize those whose views differ.

They’re the people who return the zealots to congress, who populate the extremes and openly fantasize about purging the country of the ideologically impure.

Civil War: Dunst and Spaeny — Kirsten Dunst, left, and Cailee Spaeny in Civil War. Credit: A24

They’ve sworn fealty to ideology, abdicating their responsibility to think about things for themselves. Because, frankly, it’s easier to pick a pundit and an alignment, construct a filter bubble in which they never have to be confronted with a fact they don’t like, and be constantly reminded how they should feel about everything from petty culture war issues to conflicts happening a comfortable distance away. That way everything remains neatly in the abstract, and the consequences are someone else’s problem.

But not this time.

Civil War’s cast is phenomenal, but much of the film’s power comes from seeing the familiar become the horrific. Garland illustrates the banality of evil by taking his characters on a journey through the war-torn east coast, past shopping plazas cratered by rocket propelled grenades, waterways filled with bodies and playgrounds on fire. One highway overpass is vandalized with a spray-painted “Go Steelers!” while the bodies of two Americans sway on ropes beneath it.

In refugee camps in Pennsylvania and Virginia, people who could be our neighbors talk quietly around fires while their kids play with soccer balls and chase each other. The film’s main characters, a quartet of journalists trying to get to Washington, DC (where we’re told presidential loyalists shoot members of the press on the spot), marvel when they ride through one idyllic small town where people walk their dogs and hang out in coffee shops as if the country isn’t tearing itself apart.

It’s only when they stop to talk to the proprietor of a small shop that they realize the illusion of normalcy is maintained by an army of sharpshooters keeping watch from the rooftops.

Garland wisely stays away from the specific ideological reasons for the civil war in favor of showing us the fallout.

The president is on his third term. He’s authorized airstrikes on fellow Americans, imprisoned dissidents, put a bounty on journalists and hasn’t offered the public anything more than teleprompter-fed remarks in more than a year. But his authoritarian grip on power is finally fractured when two fed-up coalitions of states break away from the union. The more powerful of the two, the so-called WF (Western Forces), is extremely well-equipped: a shot of one of their camps shows F-35 Raptors, mechanized infantry and heavy lift helicopters.

civilwar01 — Dunst’s character in a Western Forces camp. Credit: A24

These aren’t people living on the margins of society, armed with civilian versions of AR-15s. They’re US military, entire divisions defected in opposition to Washington with all the firepower and logistics capacity that entails. Separately, another secessionist coalition led by Florida is making its way up the east coast, seeking to turn the Carolinas and other states to their cause.

The noose is tightening around the president’s neck, even as he insists “the greatest military campaign in American history” under his command has defeated the secessionists, like Baghdad Bob in the Oval Office.

Civil War: Nick Offerman — Nick Offerman plays the authoritarian, three-term president who has ordered airstrikes on American citizens and had journalists executed. Credit: A24

As the Western Forces and Florida Alliance push toward D.C., there’s a renewed sense of urgency in symbolism. The president, Wagner Moura’s Joel says early in the movie, will be “dead inside a month.” Both coalitions are intent on reaching Washington and ending the war on July 4th.

“The optics,” Joel tells the other journalists, “are irresistible.”

Thus, the reporters decide to go after “the only story left,” which is to attempt to interview and photograph the president before he’s deposed or killed, despite the very real possibility they’ll be executed on the White House lawn before they can ask a question.

The film’s central characters are Dunst’s Lee Smith, a celebrated photojournalist who has seen it all, Moura’s Joel, the reporter who is partnered with Lee, McKinley’s Sammy, a reporter for “what’s left of the New York Times,” and Cailee Spaeny’s Jessie, a green but fearless 23-year-old who wants to be a war photographer like Lee.

Lee and Jessie meet at the beginning of the film in Manhattan, where both are photographing unrest as people crowd a disaster relief tanker, hoping to fill their containers with water. The fact that one of life’s most essential needs is no longer guaranteed, in New York City of all places, is just the first sign of how bad things have gotten.

Jessie moves in, snapping away as the crowd pushes toward the tanker and NYPD officers try to maintain order. When several people rush the tanker, Jessie gets hit in the face by someone swinging a bat.

Reeling, she stumbles away from the crowd, and Lee immediately mothers her, taking the young woman a safe distance away. She takes off her bright yellow press jacket and gives it to Jessie, then tells her: “If I see you again, you’d better be wearing Kevlar and a helmet.”

Civil War: Cailee Spaeny and Kirsten Dunst — Spaeny, left, and Dunst. Credit: A24

They do meet again, the next morning. Lee is surprised to see the younger woman in the back seat of their truck next to Sammy. Furious, she pulls Joel aside. He explains that Jessie had approached him late the previous evening, asking to tag along with him, Lee and Sammy on their trip to DC.

Joel argues that Lee was Jessie’s age when she began her career, but he’s not acting out of the kindness of his heart. He is a man, Jessie is a beautiful young woman, and he has ulterior motives.

Lee’s mouth twitches in disapproval. She sees this fresh-faced, naive 23-year-old, and sees herself before she’s become jaded from a career of documenting humans doing horrific things to each other.

Civil War would be a road trip movie, if road trip movies illustrated camaraderie by shared trauma. Pockets of violence are everywhere. Some involve presidential loyalists fending off advance elements of the Western Forces, but some are civilians who see an opportunity to kill, torture and pillage with impunity.

Dunst is magnificent as Lee, wearing the war photographer’s trauma like armor, her disgust with humanity apparent in her tired eyes. McKinley is the old-school print scribe who can’t quit, even as his body fails him.

“You’re worried I’m too old and too slow,” he tells Lee and Joel early in the film as they drink in the lounge of a Manhattan hotel, imploring them to let him accompany them south to D.C.

“You aren’t?” Lee answers.

“Of course I am,” he admits. “But are you really going to make me explain why I have to do this?”

Civil War: Wagner Moura — Wagner Moura’s Joel screams in frustration and rage after a particularly traumatic scene. Credit: A24

Here again, so much of the movie’s power is showing America in a state we only see from a distance through the dispatches and footage of war reporters. As the three of them sip their drinks in the hotel bar, waiting for their stories and photos to transmit over glacial wifi, the power drops.

“That’s every night this week,” Lee sighs.

“They’ll switch to the generators,” Sammy says.

They’re not in the shell of a formerly grand hotel in Baghdad or Damascus, relying on juice from old car batteries. They’re in New York, America’s greatest city, the cultural, media and finance capital of the world, a metropolis that operates on 11 billion watt-hours a day. A devastated, eerily quiet New York which resembles the early days of the COVID lockdown, yes, but New York all the same.

After watching Civil War, I was disheartened to see the usual rage and incrimination in discussions about the film. Depending on their political backgrounds, people are sure Garland — a native and citizen of the UK — is “a lib” or “a MAGAtard.” Opportunities for thoughtful discussion are derailed in favor of the usual talking point regurgitation.

But the hope is that the sensible are the silent majority, that we aren’t so fattened by domestic stability, security and a feeling of invincibility that we can’t see what’s right in front of our faces. We would do well to remind ourselves that the scenarios we experience only in the safety of fiction still happen all over the world.

As you read this, people are dying of exhaustion and suffering pointless deaths in North Korean and Russian hard labor camps so brutal that we don’t even have a way to place them in context. The people of Haiti are terrorized nightly by ultra-violent gangs who have filled the power vacuum, raping and executing with impunity. Gaza has been bombed to rubble, and its rubble has been bombed to sand. People hoping to escape abject poverty embark on the hard journey to America only to find themselves sold into sexual slavery. Men and women in Asia, desperate to find jobs, arrive at what they think are interviews only to be kidnapped and spirited away into compounds in lawless Myanmar, where they’re forced to sit in front of screens for 20 hours a day running “pig butchering” romance scams on lonely American retirees. If they try to flee, they’re shot.

And just yesterday, a man walked up to a golf course in Palm Beach county, pointed the muzzle of an AK-47 through the chain link fence and tried to assassinate a major party American presidential candidate — the second assassination attempt in three months.

The people who most need to hear Garland’s message are those least likely to heed it, but we can hope. Reality has a funny way of obliterating fantasy, and it’s better for all of us if our delusional countrymen don’t find out the hard way that war is neither fun nor glorious.

Let’s hope Civil War remains a movie, and not a prescient preview of things to come.

Civil War is currently streaming on HBO Max and is available to rent via Apple, Amazon and other online streaming platforms.

Header image: Western Forces units fire rocket propelled grenades at White House loyalists using the Lincoln Memorial for cover. Credit: A24

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