Xeno(re)genesis
“Truckers in space” undergoes a timely metamorphosis as Ridley Scott’s Alien regains sentience with the release of the new franchise high, Alien: Romulus—albeit one that never strays too far from the familiar tread of its predecessors’ terrain.
u/snappiness via r/LV426 (Reddit; 22nd July, 2015)
As the quintessential pariah of extraterrestrial horror in cinema, the Xenomorph has always seeded a climate of fear within the chests of onlookers in cinema seats, holding their hearts in their hands and their hands before their eyes, ever since first seminally hatching on the scene in Scott’s original 1976 sci-fi classic, Alien. An adrenaline-arousing, practically masterful cosmic and cosmetic disturbance—by way of HR Giger’s perverse schematic design—with each entry, the species has been approached in new ways so as to never tire its chokehold grip of grotesquery on audiences. It is a refreshing quality that has landed the series much acclaim over the years in execution, continuously melding high concept art with commercial instinct to generate renown and a blockbuster behemoth status to boot.
Where the most recent installment, Alien: Romulus, succeeds is as an amalgamation of all past efforts in the canon. Like its forebear, it tells the parable of the tired blue-collar worker chained to a seedy conglomerate, well-known by now as Weyland-Yutani. Branding and emblazoning their name across the galaxy, it is amidst the stark living conditions presented to us on the mining outpost, Jackson’s Star, that we meet our protagonists: Rain (played by Cailee Spaeny, coming off Coppola career-kicker, Priscilla) and brother Andy (portrayed by David Jonsson, previously seen in the heartwarming ode to Peckham, Rye Lane). Here, we also become soon acquainted with the film’s foremost struggle: driven to the stars in lieu of a fate better than the barren promises of a Weyland-Yutani life, a crew begins to coalesce, seeking their salvation in cryogenic slumber, eager to evade the cog status they have accrued in upholding the shadowy operations of the corporate machine. It is a cutting metaphor for our own earthbound existence that, surprisingly, the series hasn’t explored in such depth for a long time—if truly ever to this extent (with Scott at the helm in later years, the series’ assets were instead redrafted toward unlocking a cradle of life of his own making, delving into philosophical notions of Godhood, religion, and humanity’s devising in divisive de-facto prequel, Prometheus, and direct sister sequel, Alien: Covenant).
Regardless of this repivot in direction, caught non-chronologically betwixt Alien and Aliens, fans of the franchise still ought to recognize its formula permeate the lifeblood of Romulus. Meandering conversations, expository asides, and discussion of the circumstances that drove each character to totalitarian territory in the first place—ominently at odds with all their hopes and dreams—pad our first act aboard the subtitular mothership, no less where the much-coveted lifepods are cached and within whose innards the subsequent mission is pre-eminently situated (that is, upon interstellar escape from their colonial shackles). Thus, despite some inspired deviations, we know the drill of the subverted speculative slasher by now. Yet, acknowledging that the script is sown with predictability is by no means a derogation of director Fede Alvarez’s work; these elements feel more like a welcome hug in constellation, rather than an overt derivation or, even, pastiche.
Via official Alien: Romulus Facebook page
I would actually go so far as to say that the script is impeccably airtight in its own right, let alone within the context of being the seventh chapter in a much beloved, decades-spanning cycle (where few others have plumbed such depths and exceeded themselves in prolongation of their intellectual property). Of course, in horror, there is an expectant level of glaringly fatalistic oversight; make no mistake. Otherwise, every detail would be rendered amiss, serving to challenge our suspension of disbelief—a mentality we bring to even the most highbrow art. Nonetheless, while some have derided the Alien septet on this front, reducing its emphasis to mere happenstance that culminates in a biologically debauched crescendo of epic, self-replicating proportions, Romulus presents novel problems just as much as it rectifies them with visually dynamic, innovative flair. Essentially, what was marketed in advertisements as hollow Eli Roth-lite, CW-esque fare, most striking and resonant in its ageing down of the brigadoons fated to succumb to the Xenomorph’s perilous wrath, surprisingly thwarts such preconceptions. Reshaping plot convenience into plot intricacy, this is largely due to the off-the-wall bombast of genre contemporary Alvarez’s piloting, reminiscent of that which pervaded his gnarly Evil Deadreimagining, but thankfully devoid of the trite, all-too-real cynical depravity found in his Don’t Breathe.
Phenotypically speaking, intelligence is also a key hallmark of the antecedent Romulus in its exploration of what it means to be a life-turned-lifeform. Closely confined to a vivarium that houses a whole host of movable pawn Homo sapiens, an armada of the immovably forceful Xenomorph, and just two transhuman Homo novus, it is the outnumbered synthetic species that ultimately come out on top as the movie’s MVPs—indomitable in cognitive resilience, much as the Xenomorph is physiologically intimidating in its fluids and physically imposing in its frame. While the alien is efficient, catalyzing its own existence from facehugger to chestburster before landing in its anthropologically liberated final form, the synthetics add a layer of metaphysical contemplation and rigid-yet-dubious ethical quandaries to the already gritty, metallurgic flavor of the narrative, in spite of an outwardly tranquil appearance and the delightfully drab monotony of their utterances (think the nuance of Michael Fassbender’s portrayal as David in the prior prequel duology, or even Deckard’s replicant dilemma in Blade Runner).
All-in-all, Alien: Romulus ideologically pits the organic, self-sustaining imperative of a human-seeded species against the soulless corporate directive overriding a human-designed one—leaving us, the lesser humans, as playthings caught in the crosshairs. The result is glorious; in an era of poorly lit Netflix and pseudo-streaming schlock, the Romulus is beautifully shot with aesthetically stimulating precision. Through composition alone, the film’s cinematography conveys even the minute subtleties of dwindling mortality. Harbored within a divisive and inexorably lore-driven final third act, which hybridizes and harkens back to past series experiments, you can’t help but feel though that it is ultimately about human tenacity, underscoring our ingenuity to outlast the odds in the primal, self-reflective face of our own futility.
