The Foreigner The franchise has slashed its nightmarish path through many dark moral dilemmas in the 45 years since Ridley Scott’s original film, dismembering corporate greed with the same razor-sharp claws it uses to try and change concepts of motherhood. But from my perspective as a lifelong fan, the films have always been an exploration of a particularly modern evil – the increasing blurring between the “real” and the “artificial,” and the eerie abyss of horror that yawns in the microscopic spaces between them.
The franchise’s best characters have always been rough, regular folks, guys with dirt under their fingernails and pockmarks on their skin, thrust into a future landscape so vast and unfathomable—basically the entire infinity of the cosmos—that their authenticity is brought to the fore by contrast. From the space truckers of the first film to the quirky mercenaries of resurrectionIn each film, there has been an emphasis on emphasizing a sense of character and humanity – this is, one could say, built right into the DNA of the franchise.
For their human imperfections then come into conflict with and are refracted through two equally disturbing and dehumanizing lenses. First there are the “Synthetics,” the human-made robots that look just like us (except for their white blood and balloon-like guts) and who, in all of these films, must constantly wrestle with their feelings about their own artificiality. (Scott’s prequels Prometheus And Alien: Covenant are particularly fascinated by the triangulation between God, man, and man-made gods – our creation and destruction, all intertwined in an elongated helix formation that takes the form of Michael Fassbender.)
And then there are the monsters. The Xenomorphs, facehuggers and chestbursters, oh my, with acid instead of blood and drooling little mouths with metal teeth shooting out of slightly bigger drooling mouths with metal teeth. And these Giger-designed creations are (dare I say it) so alien to us, so alien to humans, that the only conceivable reaction to them is utter, brain-melting fear. Even if no one can hear you scream in space, you scream and you run, and you keep running through centuries and solar systems to escape them.
The tension of these films has always been derived from the breakdown of barriers between the human, the completely inhuman, and the cyborgs in between. Not just genetic and biological breakdowns—though the films have certainly gotten a lot of deliciously disgusting payoffs from their body horror, to say the least. But morally. Our Supreme Court may have ruled that corporations are human, but the callous indifference portrayed by Weyland-Yutani (aka “The Company”) in these films has always proven to be support of the invasive species and a complete betrayal of humanity. And along with that, any characters, human or engineered, who side with the Company. Paul Reiser’s nice-guy Burke in Aliens is the most outstanding example, but each film in the series has intrigued us with which side its android character will take. That is the central element of the whole thing.
And with that we come (finally) to Alien: Romulusthe ninth film in the series – hey, it’s nine films, I have a long introduction – and the one that hits theaters this weekend. Directed by Fede Alvarez – who surprised us all by successfully rebooting the film. evil Dead franchise eleven years ago by infusing it with a vicious nihilism that blew up Sam Raimi’s delicious slapstick—Romulus feels strangely both like a standalone film and a greatest hits package in one. (I was repeatedly reminded of JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakensand take that as you will.) There are moments of immense beauty to behold here, and there are moments of rollicking rollercoaster fun. And there are moments of fanservice that are so crudely offensive to a fan who loves being served that I nearly ripped all my skin off there in the theater. But more than anything, this is a movie about which side the damn android will take, and what that means for us.
Romulus Cailee Spaeny (flawless and great) plays Rain, an indentured miner who has worked her hands to the bone for the company (and watched her parents work themselves to an early grave), all under the promise that she will eventually earn herself and her brother a ticket to paradise in another world. Her brother Andy (David Jonsson) is a slightly dysfunctional android whom Rain’s father paired with Rain as a child—Andy’s main job is to help Rain achieve whatever Rain wants to achieve. And Rain, in turn, has learned kindness and empathy from having to care for this simple (and widely despised by those around her) figure. They are an inseparable pair.
And if you were wondering in advance of the release why this film is called Romulusthen I can only recommend everything I said in the last paragraph – if you know the old story of the twins Romulus and Remus and know that the creation of the Roman Empire was at the expense of the latter anyway. But don’t worry – the film will enlighten you if you don’t know that.
Because when the company hides the whole “don’t work yourself to death” thing from her, she decides to let her friend with benefits Tyler (Archie Renaux) in on his crazy idea of hijacking a piece of space junk floating just above the atmosphere. Somehow he knows it has exactly the technology they need to make the trip to paradise on their own. If they can snatch the stuff before anyone else does, they’ll be OK. Off to the wild, free frontier. But who knows, it won’t be that easy – the space junk turns out to be an entire abandoned space station. One that’s split in half. Halves called (say it with me) Romulus and Remus.
While the Foreigner The franchise’s long-standing obsession with motherhood gets a big nod in Romulus‘s final act (and don’t worry, you won’t miss it, I promise you) was Romulus is more concerned with – if you can say it is about anything other than making you jump out of your seat every five minutes, and I’m not entirely sure about that – it turns out to be brotherhood. (Just like Alvarez’ evil Dead(which also dealt with the bond between siblings.) Rain and Andy are the only characters who make an impression here – Rain’s friends who come along on this space junk adventure aren’t defined much beyond their typical characters and are clearly reduced to cannon fodder from the moment they’re introduced.
But in this way Alien: Romulus manages to find a fresh sliver of humanity worth digging into—the bond between human and android as a community, as a brotherly hope teetering on a terrifying precipice. It is right now, at this moment, that our own entanglement with technology is becoming less and less escapeable by the millisecond. We must come to terms with our half-selves, our manufactured skins, because our future seems perhaps to really depend on it in some very important, very vital ways. And somewhere, beneath all this Romulus‘ Characters who act like absolute and total jerks from start to finish, these ideas actually blink like a reboot light.
That means, ultimately Romulus feels undone by a corporate-driven sense of risk aversion. (The damned Company strikes again!) This franchise was once famous for bringing on board a new visionary director who reshaped the world to fit their vision. But the parts of Alvarez’s previous work that are on display here – the aforementioned sibling bond from evil Dead but also the plot “stupid children on a crime spree” comes directly from his film Don’t breathe– everything here feels forced into someone else’s monster. What should be simple, and is sold as simple, instead becomes knotted and painfully beholden to what came before. It proves too big for Alvarez – maybe it’s too big and tangled for anyone at this point. I hope not, but maybe.
When the film literally Frankensteinizes itself into an inexplicable monster in the final act out of a need to bridge the franchise’s mismatched parts, it feels less like the big, weird momentum it should have and more like the mush that was the end of David Cronenberg’s The fly. All metal and flesh and twitching pools of pus. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s slimy, it’s often funny, it’s clearly made with a fanboy’s love and it shows off a lot of fine craftsmanship. But the pieces just don’t fit together. It’s three halves searching for a whole, and once again humanity pays the price.
