escargotomy

Having seen the original Alien (1979) in the theater as a 12 year old, none of the sequels have come close to the original IMO. And as enthusiastic as I was with the idea of Prometheus & Covenant rebooting Ridley Scott's vision, unfortunately it got very muddled and distracted and the opportunity for meaningfully linking it back to the original movie was lost. Romulus only retains Scott as a producer as he's washed his hands of artistic ownership, so my expectations were quite low. It does manage to hold attention for the first half, giving us a richer view of the Weyland-Yutani corporocratic dictatorship than we've ever seen before. But past that point all the holes in the premise get bigger and wider and it ultimately starts to feel like a video game in the third act. The movie was very Gen Z/Millennial-centric in its delivery and while there are obvious nostalgic nods to most of the previous movies in the franchise, I think they ultimately serve to say 'bye bye" to the loyal fan base who've stuck by for 45 years. Utilizing the very digital likeness of the very dead Ian Holm as a significant supporting character was a few bridges too far. Romulus left me neither impressed or wanting more of any of these characters. My personal dream of the Ridley Scott capstone on the franchise with the Elizabeth Shaw story shaking hands with the Ellen Ripley-Nostromo voyage will never be. The fact that I saw this movie less than 2 weeks into it's run as one of only 5 people in theater tells me this is probably the Alien train pulling into it's final station. Oh well.