I went along to Alien Romulus with just a few vague memories of the first film that I watched probably once, and way too young.

I know the franchise’s significance, but I somehow have made my way through life, and a SciFi film paper, without watching any more of the films.

And from a completely naive standpoint, I had a lot of fun.

At a very surface level, the movie did exactly what I expected it to. It was tense and gritty, with a solid budget, great acting and really cool effects.

But now that I’ve had time to digest it, I feel it was a mixed bag.

The majority of the film is a love letter to the original Alien series. It follows the same tried-and-true formula to deliver a story we’ve seen with fresher faces.

It spends ample time paying homage to its predecessors. Even without knowing all the references, they were made so obvious that I knew when I was supposed to say ‘Oh that’s a callback!’

Some references were tasteful, some not so much.

A misguided deepfake of an Alien OG with the sole purpose of an exposition dump felt rather disappointing. Furthermore, it felt so uncanny it took me out of the movie. When sitting alongside spectacular practical effects, you can really see the flaws in the CGI.

There was a lot going on in this movie.

It was evident that the film was toeing the line between trying to stay true to the franchise while also bringing in new ideas. And some of these new ideas got lost amongst the chaos and never quite landed.

Knowing this movie sits between Alien and Aliens, it was clear that anything introduced would have to cease to exist by the end of the film.

But still, it felt authentic to the Aliens universe. And this was largely due to the set design, special effects, cinematography and sound design. There was such a high level of craft put into making this film look, sound and feel true to the originals.

To be completely transparent, a huge reason I was keen for this film was because I really enjoyed Archie Renaux in Shadow and Bone.

I thought the entire cast was refreshing and I applaud the movie for creating space for up-and-coming talent.

The stand-out stars were definitely Spaeny and Jonsson. As the heart of the whole film, they really sold me on this movie. Their scenes together were poignant and powerful, and I was rooting for them the entire film. They truly delivered.

So then we get to the end of the movie.

In the last twenty minutes of the film, it’s like someone flipped a switch. No longer were we in a Scott / Cameron love fest.

With Fede truly showing off his style in the final act, the film starts to find its own identity.

While I don’t know if the actual final plot of the film fully gave me what I wanted, it definitely was nice to see the director take a new direction.

So where do I stand with all of this? I think the movie may have tilted a bit too far into fan-service and not everything landed.

But apart from that, it was a beautifully made thrill ride. It leant heavily into the horror and had an intensity that left me speechless. It’s definitely a film you want to watch on the big screen.

As I have been racing to catch up by watching Alien movies back to back, I can say this is a solid addition to the franchise.

The post Alien: Romulus (20th Century – 2024) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Alien: Romulus returns the sci-fi franchise to its roots with an entry that draws on the horror premise of the original film rather than the high-brow aspirations of the most recent entries.

Set sometime between the events of the first and second movie, Alien: Romulus is a more grounded effort as opposed to having the philosophical undertones of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. The result is a more approachable movie but sometimes feels more like a video game.

The original Alien movie, at its heart, was a slasher movie set in space. Following that first movie, subsequent filmmakers, and Ridley Scott, himself, seemed to overlook what makes the Alien universe so appealing. In a nutshell, it’s essentially a load of blue-collar workers in space working for a shit company. Something very relatable for most of us. In the case of Weyland-Yutani quite possibly the shittiest company ever.

Aliens shifted the series more towards that of an action movie. The third movie, which could have ended novice director David Fincher’s career, didn’t know quite what it was. The fourth movie, well, we’ll leave it at that. Even Ridley Scott’s return to the franchise struggled to revitalise the series.

Alien: Romulus seeks to right the ship.

After a brief dialogue-free scene-setting sequence that suggests that “the company”, Weyland-Yutani, is up to its old tricks, Alien: Romulus takes us back to the 1970s retro-future of Alien. Rain and her “brother”, Andy (a salvaged synthetic programmed by her late parents to look after her) live on Jackson’s Star, a Weyland-Yutani mining colony. The grim place is also in perpetual darkness.

The movie gives us a better idea of the conditions the people of Hadley’s Hope lived under that was only alluded to in James Cameron’s Aliens. The colonists, effectively indentured slaves, are forced to work for years to buy their way to a better life on a terraformed world. Most, though, end up dying of one of the novel illnesses that seem to afflict space-faring humans.

A group of Rain’s acquaintances have had enough of being exploited by the company and have found a derelict space station in the ringed planet’s orbit. The station has the cryo-pods that they need to make the nine-year space voyage to freedom. The only catch is that they need Andy’s help, as a Wayland-Yutani synthetic, to access the station. Of course, the salvage mission doesn’t go to plan.

I wasn’t sure of the distinctively youthful cast, at first. But Cailee Spaeny, fresh from Alex Garland’s Civil War, steps into the archetype made famous by Sigourney Weaver, with ease. David Jonsson, as Andy, also does an impressive job as both the malfunctioning synthetic and an upgraded version later in the film. Hats off to the rest of the cast who also do a great job of selling the idea of a rebellious, if fated, crew of misfits.

The movie features all your favourite stages of the xenomorphic lifecycle. Lots of facehuggers, a chestburster and, of course, the aliens, themselves. The movie introduces a new stage in the lifecycle, a cocoon, both for the transition between the chestburster and the adult alien, as well as a dormant stage. We also get to see something similar to the hybrid aliens in Alien 3 and the engineers from Prometheus.

The movie manages to include callbacks to all the previous Alien movies, including the two most recent entries. For instance, the USCM pulse rifles as well as a surprise appearance harking back to the original Alien movie.

The gore is unrestrained, reminding me of the disturbing scenes that were the stock and trade of the direct-to-video sci-fi horror movies of the early ‘80s. The director exploits the opportunities for body horror presented by the alien xenomorphs to the max. The addition of a refined version of the alien liquid from Prometheus results in a gross-out sequence that could scar you for life. The movie more than doubles down on the facehuggers as the crew are chased through the station by a horde of the things, their gross finger-like appendages feeling their way through that gap in a door that absolute nightmare fuel.

The movie does rely on a few too many set pieces. Having the cast tasked with challenges like traversing through floating alien acid-blood in zero-G, quietly sneaking past facehuggers and having to hit all the levers makes it feel like a video game at times.

Overall, though, it is a proper Alien movie.

It may stick too close to the formula for some, but to be honest, that’s what makes it an Alien movie. You are not going to walk away with a greater understanding of the origins of humanity, but you will have a great time having jumped out of your skin a few times and been grossed out by some proper old-school body horror.

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Disney’s 20th Century Studios takes a stab at expanding the Predator franchise with Prey, helmed by 10 Cloverfield Lane’s Dan Trachtenberg.

This fifth film in the franchise that was kicked off by the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Predator, serves as a prequel of sorts. Set in 1717, the film follows a Native American woman, Naru, and her tribe’s encounter with a Predator.

The movie starts by introducing Naru as a skilled warrior, but one that everyone feels should know her place as a woman, making food rather than hunting. It’s on one of her hunts with her dog, Sarii that Naru spots a fiery glow in the sky. Seeing it as a sign she returns to her people believing it is time for her right of passage, to hunt that which hunts her, a mountain lion in the area.

The film does a good job of establishing Naru as a very adept warrior. We see that she is dedicated and has been clandestinely honing her skills for some time. Her skill with an axe and its upgrade with the addition of a twine leash is the solution to hunting rabbits too fast for her axe alone. Naru is no Mary Sue.

The fire in the sky that Naru saw was, of course, a Predator ship dropping off a lone hunter. The movie draws upon the established Predator M.O. of alien creatures hunting for sport and trophies. We see the Predator looking for a worthy adversary, attacking a wolf and a bear before becoming aware of humans.  But it’s like this Predator is a less evolved creature than we’ve seen before, its head covering, for instance, is more like a bony carapace than a helmet (although still has the iconic targeting system). The creature also fires projectiles rather than laser beams. It can still turn invisible, though, and carries a lethal-enough arsenal even if it is of a lower tech level.

Whilst it seems that this particular Predator is a bit green, the creature is still an efficient killing machine and the movie does not shy away from the blood and gut of its forebears. Heads are lopped, limbs are torn asunder and bodies are turned into hamburger. It’s not for the squeamish. So, fans can rest assured that the House of Mouse has not softened things up at all.

The location also makes for a more cinematic affair than afforded your usual sci-fi action movie. The backdrop of the Great Plains gives the movie some breathtaking vistas. To be honest, it’s a genius idea to have a historical setting that feels so fresh as opposed to another alien on the loose in Downtown LA.

I’m no expert on Native American culture, but the movie serves as an interesting “what if?” with spears and arrows vs a hi-tech alien. The result is the sort of pure full-of-heart sci-fi action that I thought we’d left behind in the 1980s.

The cast really sells the story, Amber Midthunder’s Naru in particular, but also Dakota Beavers as Naru’s brother, Taabe. I liked how the language seamlessly switches from that of the Comanche people to English without being weird as it did come across to me in the trailer. The inclusion of French-speaking trappers as opposed to Americans avoids the awkward situation whereby the movie has two factions speaking English, for the sake of the audience, who can’t understand each other on screen.

I often find myself scouring streaming networks looking for overlooked sci-fi gems, of which there are many. Prey is going to be that movie for someone. It’s got everything that you’d want as a late-night bit of sci-fi.

It’s a hard film for me to find fault with, having grown up feasting on this sort of movie. But I suppose that the plot is a bit on the predictable side. It does telegraph future events a few times in a rather unsubtle way. The Predator, as well, does come across as a bit too much of an amateur compared to those in the other films.

You are going to hear a lot of reviews saying that Prey deserves to be seen in a theatre. It’s clearly a movie made for the big screen, but instead, it finds itself, in Australia and New Zealand, arriving on Disney +. Whilst I was one of the lucky few to be invited to see Prey at the Sydney preview event on the big screen, I think it is still going to be a great movie for watching at home. A rare treat to watch such a great bit of sci-fi for the first time while relaxing on your sofa.

Prey is a refreshing new instalment in the Predator series. It’s different, but also opens up the idea of these alien hunters visiting Earth in the past in an intriguing manner that makes me hope for more of the same.

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A young girl who survives a family tragedy.

A girl who is only just getting to grips with her mutant powers. A girl called Jean Grey.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix takes us back a couple of decades when the X-Men were seen as heroes, a younger Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) heads the school for mutants and has both adoration from the public and U.S. President aswell as a safe haven for mutants.

He takes in Jean Grey as a child and suppresses her memories of the emotional childhood experience and teaches the young Jean to take control of her powers.

As the years go on, Jean who is also known as Phoenix does well, and becomes a valuable member of the X-Men, however, one mission sets to rescue stranded astronauts on the outer sphere of Earth sees Jean’s powers infused with an intergalactic force which unlocks those memories that had been well forgotten and sees Jean taking no sides but her own as she gets to grips with herself.

Her destructive path of self-discovery leads her to a commune heralded by Xaviers old ‘friend’ Magneto (Michael Fassbender).

But as the local law enforcement, Government officials and the X-Men are all trying to reel her in, her powers become darker as does her personality quickly making Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) the most powerful and formidable mutant of them all. Even compassion from long time X-Men friend Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) does not stop her…

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a necessary chapter to the franchise as it explores one of our most beloved and perhaps lesser known characters backstory.

For many who have followed the films a few questions will be answered from the series, but just as easily, the well-crafted film could also be a standalone in its own right.

Loved it, would definitely see it again. Full recommend to all X-Men fans.

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