Since Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant in 2017, it’s been over 7 years since audiences could experience a new entry in the Alien franchise. As of August 16th though, we have finally been able to view and assess director Fede Álvarez’s vision for the franchise, Alien: Romulus. This film, while loved by most critics and average viewers, has been divisive within the fandom for one reason or another. Luckily, it’s safe to say that Alien: Romulus was one of the best entries, albeit with some flaws like any good movie.
Before delving into spoilers, there are many things to like about the film, especially the visuals. Throughout many interviews with Alien: Romulus‘ director, especially one from the Hollywood Reporter, he details how he prefers practical sets/effects and all the hard work that went into it. In fact, very few portions of the movie utilized CGI, and that was only for parts of the film that literally required them. As the original movies did before him, the minimal VFX and CGI was a noticeably better decision, particularly for the Xenomorphs. They used similar techniques to the original films to recreate the alien, such as casting shadows to obscure the figure for suspense, all well done.
I won’t dive deep into a summary, but I will mention parts of the story when relevant, starting with the deaths. Out of our protagonists Rain, Andy, Tyler, Kay, Bjorn, and Navarro, the latter is the first to die when a chestburster erupts through her ribcage. Later on, Bjorn gets melted after trying to kill an incubating Xenomorph before his cousin Tyler is skewered by it. Kay is the last to die, but I’ll bring up the cause later. All these deaths shared one thing in common though, they were all well-executed visually.
Overall, the best part of the film was Andy’s character. Andy is a Synthetic, the Alien franchise’s term for an android, and the brother of our main character Rain. At the beginning of the movie, he is a cute character, loving dad jokes but naive as to why people don’t like him as an “artificial person” as he likes to be called. Later on, he retrieves a chip from a near-dead Synthetic (important later) which changes his personality entirely. Instead of being loyal to his sister Rain, he became loyal to the Weyland-Yutani corporation and lost his humanity. He makes many decisions throughout that, while keeping our protagonists alive for a little longer, were callous sacrifices. It truly shows why humans don’t like Synthetics, cold and merciless beings willing to sacrifice others for the “greater good” of their cause, drawing parallels to the AI or even leaders in our world.
Before my main criticism, I want to discuss a very controversial portion of the final act, the human-Xenomorph hybrid. Earlier on in the film, Kay discusses that she is pregnant, while near the end she injects herself with the main compound everyone was trying to protect. This ends up rapidly speeding her pregnancy, and for lack of more appropriate words, she dies in childbirth to a ginormous human-xenomorph hybrid. Most either loved or hated this decision for how absurd it was, but it was a great (and genuinely terrifying) choice. The best way to describe it is like if SCP-096 or Slenderman were body horror-reliant, keeping you on the edge of your seat for the remainder of the movie. It was also a good callback to Prometheus’ lore, with many connecting the Offspring to the Engineers.
The one thing to dislike about Alien: Romulus was the character of Rook, a pointless cameo that rooted itself into the story for zero reason. While Ian Holm, the actor who played Ash in 1979’s Alien, died several years ago, his likeness was used for Alien: Romulus. While Ash himself wasn’t revived, Rook was a look-alike portrayed mostly by actor Daniel Betts. Still, both AI and CGI were utilized to put Holm’s face on Betts because the director felt “It was unfair that the likeness of Ash was never used again.” When your film’s entire premise hinges on a massive corporation working people to death and beyond, alongside the rest of its franchise, maybe don’t bring actors from the dead for money?
Rook wasn’t even a useful character anyway, but the film wants you to believe that he is. He is the Synthetic that Andy receives the Weyland-Yutani chip from earlier on and the one who influences Andy to protect the aforementioned serum from then on. Still, this could’ve easily been done without Rook, and there was no other point where he improved the film whatsoever. Ash was ultimately a call-back for Alien fans to say “Wait, is that Ian Holms? Didn’t he die four years ago?” because his face was the only reason for his inclusion.
Overall, I’d recommend it, and even consider it among the best films the franchise has to offer alongside Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). It has everything you’d need to love in an Alien film, some phenomenal visuals, gruesome makeup effects, and a good insight into its universe at large. On a story front, Andy is a complex look into AI’s true intelligence and potential “humanity”, and there are plenty of interesting twists on the original formula. As mentioned before, Rook was a near-useless inclusion, but while he certainly didn’t add to the movie, he didn’t detract from it either. Luckily, 2025 has had several films that were beyond worthy of going to the theater, and Alien: Romulus joins them. I’d recommend buying tickets before it eventually releases on streaming, it’s certainly improved by the large screen and amazing speakers!
