(courtesy IMP Awards)
An inescapable part of every movie that falls into the now venerable Alien franchise, now in its 45th year, is how starkly monstrous and otherworldly the xenomorphs are.
Everything about them feels alien, hence the title, and it horrifies us that anything that primal and darkly dangerous could exist in the same universe as us, and with our eyes firmly on how un-human they are, it’s easy to be consumed, pretty much literally, by the violently acidic extraterrestrial elements.
But as you watch the latest instalment in this long and winding franchise, Alien: Romulus, which is being styled as an “interquel” – and yes, it is apparently a word – that slots neatly between 1979’s Alien and Aliens, one thing that strikes you again and again is the innate humanity at the heart of this pulse-pounding story.
The usual elements are masterfully accounted for by director and co-writer (with Rodo Sayagues) Fede Álvarez from the slow-burn discovery of life in its most brutally efficient form to the inevitable destruction of everyone and everything in the chaos that follows, but what hits you again and again is how human the people at the heart of the story are, and most particularly Rain (Cailee Spaeny), an orphaned miner on the perpetually dark colony world of Jackson’s Star, run by the inarguably evil Weiland-Yutani corporation.
All she wants is to escape the blighted planet, swatched in mud and industry to a suffocatingly nightmarish degree, and so, while she has her doubts about the veracity of the plan, she and her timid synthetic human brother Andy (David Jonsson), she goes along with a stupidly audacious plan by the handsome and considered (mostly) Tyler (Archie Renaux) who’s her ex, to steal some cryogenic pods off an orbiting derelict spaceship and head to the paradisiacal world of Yvaga where sun and freedom beckons.
With Tyler’s sister Kay (Isabela Merced), his douche cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), who has a hatred of synths and Bjorn’s girlfriend Navarro (Aileen Wu), ace pilot, along for the ride, they set out to change their fortunes and reshape life as they know it.
But of course, this being an entry in one of the darkest franchises of all time, things do not go according to plan.
After a masterfully slow-burn and reasonably nuanced lead-up where the group’s innate idealism and hopefulness is on glorious display – the tragedy is, of course, for all that YA excitement, clumsily expressed as it is, you know it will all come to a crashing, brutally destroyed halt in a not too distant moment – Alien: Romulus seemingly rips apart any and all ideas about their lives getting better.
For all their naivety, which leads to some very dumb but very brave decisions being made, what these six people want, and Rain is adamant Andy is just as much a person as anyone else, is simply a life free from corporate tyranny and grinding heartless capitalism.
So pervasive is the corporate hand of Weiland-Yutani, and so indifferent is it to human suffering and aspiration – later in Alien: Romulus you come to understand just how bleakly and horrifically committed they are to bolstering the bottomline – that you could well argue that they are the real monsters of the Alien franchise.
They are ones who propel these six young people to take some huge chances, to endanger themselves, and it is they, who like John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) in Jurassic Park, harness the “life will find a way” ethos, which is brimming with hopefulness and brio, so that it becomes some sort of weaponised nightmare.
What powers Alien, even when death is so pervasive and all-consuming, is life, both in its most mindlessly instinctual and brutalist form, and with what philosophers and religious types of old would call a soul, as it battles it out to see who will emerge on top of the evolutionary pile.
While you might think that Tyler and Rain are far too hopeful, they are simply doing what anyone or thing with a beating heart would do – trying to make the most of their lives and hopefully realise their dreams of bettering themselves and their lives.
Weird as it is to think it, that is what the xenomorphs are doing too, and while you definitely want humanity to come out on top, and are appalled at the way Weiland-Yutani is used a biological enemy for its own gorily nefarious ends, you can’t begrudge these alien creatures for simply doing what comes naturally.
They are, after all, in the ring with us, because of the corporation’s grimly self-interested meddling.
So, again, while Alien: Romulus is gore and terror and great and terrible loss, it is, at heart a battle about life, and how it is expressed; no prizes for guessing who emerges the victor in this one, but what you’re left with at the end of the film, is a meditative sense that life is so vibrantly committed to surviving that it will whatever it takes to do so.
It’s chilling and inspiring all at once (as long, of course, as unlike Rain you are not trapped on spacefaring vehicles with a monster that simply wants to end you and nothing more) and it is a stark reminder that for all the blood and gore and running and screaming, there is a real intelligence and thoughtfulness.
With some quite definitive nods to the franchise, and fan service being cleverly observed – witness Rain at one point, massive gun in hand, backlit as she takes on her enemy in battle and the uttering of one very particularly immortal line by Andy – Alien: Romulus is both a creature, quite literally, of its now lengthy heritage but also a breath of masterfully executed fresh air, not simply with the inclusion of some very YA faces, but because it remembers that what sits at the end of any Alien story is an innate humanity that will not be denied.
Alien: Romulus might scare the bejesus out of you, and it is terrifying on all kinds of bloodthirsty and social commentative levels, but what powers this clash of life with starkly different impelling motivations is a need we all have to not just survive, but to live and thrive and to strike out for something better, no matter what it takes.