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Alien: Romulus is a solid franchise tribute plagued by weird optics
Alien: Romulus goes heavy on the jump scares and light on character development.
Rain learns that the company’s newly calculated quotes will keep her on the colony years longer than she anticipated, and she knows deep down that her faceless corporate overlords have no real intentions of ever letting her or her synthetic adoptive brother Andy (David Jonsson) escape. Romulus ’ focus on younger characters sets it apart from previous Alien installments, and though the story doesn’t directly connect to any of the older films, it’s inferred that people’s hopeless lives of toil and struggle on colonies like Jackson’s Star are part of what makes voyages like the Nostromo’s possible. Both Spaeny and Jonsson bring compelling energies to their performances as Rain, a steely audience insert, and Andy, a peculiar synth whose outdated hardware leaves him prone to seizures and bouts of social awkwardness that read almost like a kind of neurodivergence.
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