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Alien: Romulus, A breathe-taking journey (Part 2)
4.Sexual Violence
I have mentioned a lot of Sexual Violence on this but haven't actually talked about it. This is a recurring theme in this franchise, both explicitly and implicitly. Not going to go through the foundations like the sex organs implications on Xenomorph/facehugger designs as those are set in the earlier movies. Kay in this movie is very important to this core message of the series. She is the first one to be pregnant as a crew member (with an actual human) in the franchise, and she refers the father to be asshole. And of course from the movie we know that she would inject herself with the pathogen and create this Offspring. For me, she referring the father to be asshole is important in the sense that at the end it was the pathogen which is the Offspring's father. The pathogen itself is also a symbol of unconsent sex in the Ridley Scott's Prequels; It invades your body and create a xenomorph inside you, without you agreeing to it. It certainly isn't symbolised as strong as the facehugger's appearance (a male sex organ coming out from a female sex organ), but this movie certainly put more meaning to it. Kay injected it to herself, she was willing to give in to survive, which is dark actually. She gave "consent" to this thing to survive, it's horrible to think about it but it's true. Kay's decisions doesn't just end there, she also rejected her own child. The Offspring is deformed in our human terms, they don't have a sex, they don't have any sex organs (in fact there's a big cross down there). All the Offspring wanted was milk from their mother, but Kay rejected it because they were a bastard child. This is easy to read in, this is a reaction of someone having a child but it wasn't what they expected, like mutants in Marvel.
5.Implications/Future
Last part we mentioned Kay and her Offspring, but there's actually a really interesting reference to the Myth of Romulus and Remus. Romulus and Remus are twin children of Mars the God of War in Greek Mythology, they were ordered to be killed as they are a threat to King Amulius's rule. But instead they were abandoned in their cradles on the river of Tiber. They rescued by a mother wolf, and the mother wolf fed them milk. Eventually Romulus became the founder and first ruler of the Roman Kingdom. The Offspring seeking milk from Kay and eventually sucking blood from her can be a possible way to read into this. We also know that Xenomorph doesn't die easily in outer space in this movie. As Kane's Son also didn't die although it was drifted in space for 20 years, the Offspring might actually not be dead. So my question, will this be a possible future where the Offspring build their own Roman Empire. Another question is raised if this theory is true, where is Remus then? Well Remus might just be the original baby inside of Kay metaphorically. In the mythology, Romulus did eventually kill Remus as they disagreed on where to build Rome. The human side of the baby and the perfect organism side of the pathogen just simply cannot coexist, we humans are nowhere "Perfect" in their terms as we have rules and restrictions to temptations (all the sexual violence) (Well some people in this world are closer to Xenomorphs then we think if you are wondering :)).
One more interesting ponder to the future of the franchise is the pathogen on the ship. We never knew what happened to the pathogen after Kay injected one, but I assumed it's still on the ship. There are also a lot of references to old Alien movies but it's hard to list them all but here's a few I caught:
Exact same movement sequences after Rain comes out from the elevator - In Aliens where Ripley went down the elevator to save Newt
Tyler teaching Rain how to use the rifle - In Aliens Hicks taught Ripley how to use the rifle
Xenomorph slowly approached Rain - Alien3 Xenomorph slowly approached Ripley and sensed the Queen
Entrance to the space station - the airducts in Alien where Dallas died
The Offspring - Alien Resurrection (I'm so glad they redeemed the idea of human/Xenomorph hybrid thank God)
There are more like Prometheus references but the list is getting long
I focused on dissecting the movie so much all most forgot to mention how I feel about other aspects. Composer Benjamin Wallfisch did a great job on music, especially the opening sequence, nothing extreme special but created a atmosphere just like 1979 Alien, so not much to talked about on this. I really like the reddish colour tone in this movie, it's very different to other Aliens movies. It created this sense of urgency where other other Alien movies couldn't. I'm going to compare this with 1979 Alien, it is not the same suffocation you get when you watching this. 1979 Alien doesn't let you breathe, you drown in it, But Romulus do let you breathe. Not saying its better or not but, it gave the sense you can run from it but still suffocating, which I think it's built upon the use of sound/music, the red colour tone and also the story pacing. I personally think Alvarez did a great job in pacing the story and shots in this movie, it leaves enough room for each act in the movie and still have more than enough detail to develop each character in the movie (except Navarro in some way), and it didn't feel like it's dragging or unbalanced. Same as the Alien formula it's in 4 acts, but with a slight twist and I will just call it 4.5 acts. The last jump scare really caught me off-guard, as you would expect 4 acts from an Alien movie and it ends after the Alien is suck out to space..? You get what I mean, the slight moment is just really laughing at people like me try to predate a movie.
To conclude, I really think Fede Alvarez did a great job in reinvent the Alien formula and really happy to see his imaginations worked out in this movie. This might become my second favourite Alien movie now, sorry Aliens you are now third.
Well thank you for reading this if you sticked to the end, it's my second time writing these and well it will be my first one to post though so thank you. I just enjoyed doing this I might do more in the future. And do please subscribe to follow more content, I am going to focus on Marvel comics character for a bit (particular X-men as I'm watching the old animated series now and there are so many interesting stories), so stay tuned for that!
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Alien: Romulus, A breathe-taking journey (Part 1)
Before I start just wan to tell the people that are reading this, thank you. I've been making videos for few months now and it started with me writing a analyse/review like this to Dune Part 2 (and i will post that later as well). Probably not many people will read this but I am doing this for myself, a log of me exploring the world of film/TV/Games/Comics/... endless art. So let's start! Spoiler Alert!!!
Let's start with the background of this movie. Written, Directed by Fede Alvarez(never seen any of his movie, oh boy he is on my radar now), the movie is the seventh instalment of the Alien franchise. The story is set between 1979 Alien and 1986 Aliens, 20 years after the events on the Nostromo. The movie's tone is finally back to 1979 Alien's dark, suffocating atmosphere, but with every detail turned 180 degrees. Although the screenplay is not directly written by Ridley Scott, but this movie managed to tie Ridley Scott's vision of the Alien universe so well together. We might never see the last of Alien prequels from Ridley Scott again, but this movie did give hope for the franchise; The way it reimagined the Alien story formula, the imagination and creativity for the twists, and they way it makes the universe feels alive again, not just pure money making machines for Fox like Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection.
1.Polarity
If you have ever watched 1979 Alien, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, you will know how the title of these movies are first shown. The titles are built up by the strokes of the letters slowly. But in Romulus, instead it fades from the full word Alien to / | | | \, which is how the original Alien title started. This insignificant act of changing Ridley Scott's title sequence has already set the message of this movie: It's going to be different and everything will be in its extreme polarity to 1979 Alien. I'm making comparisons to 1979 Alien as this movie is clearly taking inspiration from the movie and reimagining it in Alvarez's way.
Like 1979 Alien, the movie doesn't rush to show you the Xenomorph, well at least the "True One". Kane's Son, the alien from 1979 Alien is shown twice in this movie, with the assumption of us knowing the story of Nostromo. This is the first difference to the formula, the movie is built upon a known horror already known by you. Doesn't matter if you have watched the original movie or not, you are familiar with the horror whether you like it or not (except if you are a caveman for 45 years and had no internet). And this didn't deviate us from the magic of the unseen horror, instead it intensified it. Also I would like to mention Rook, or should i say Ash. When I first saw Rook's body in the cinema I immediately picked up that this is so kind of reference at least to the first movie, similar clothing, a dying synthetic. Well turns out I was right, it was him. But it was more than just a tribute to Ash; in some way he is Ash. Not that he acted like him or had the same goal, but it's the reminder this character brought out, the adoration he had for "Sexual Violence" and Greed. Just like 1979 Alien, he was the other threat in the movie other than the Xenomorph, but it's more this time, all because of Andy and the pathogen. Rook is infectious, more than the pathogen. Very much different to Alien's Ash, he was seen broken all the time, near death before the crew discovered him, he lost the ability to influence the events physically like Ash. But he was able to "infect" even though he was "contained", which in some way stronger than the pathogen itself.
2.Surprises/Chekhov's gun
Well do you notice there's not an ovomorph (alien eggs) in the movie at all? The facehuggers all came from cryopods. There were no flamethrowers all the other movies at all, but cryoguns. You got to give points to these creativities, they are not much on their own, but with all of them combined with the idea of Polarities in the movie, really showed us Alvarez's imagination and his way of showing it to us so subtly.
Chekhov's gun is a really common idea in story-telling/screenplay-writing, it's basically stating that everything you saw on screen, has its purpose/use and eventually appears in the movie. There are many basic ideas like the gravity in Romulus station with acid blood, Bjorn dropping his keys and even the hook on Kane's son from 1979 Alien. But the one thing that really stands out in the movie Chekhov's gun-wise is the dangling hook from the cargo bay, it was first shown in the movie when Andy was messing with it. Once again it's an insignificant act, but the fact that this foreshadowed the demise of the Offspring so early on in the movie, with no room for you imagine to implication of this for the movie later on, creates such a satisfying moment when you see Rain interact with that object near the of the movie. If you take Andy's scene with the hook out of the movie completely from the movie, it surely wouldn't change much except this idea of Chekhov's gun. The extremes of Chekhov's gun are always presented in genres like Crime, True Crime movies, and I did not expect a use of it like this at all in this movie. The detail matters, often a lot of people ignore this fact, and this is exactly how to make a world-building so exciting.
3.Siblings
There are 6 members on Corbelan IV, 3 pairs of siblings: Tyler and Kay, Bjorn and Navarro, Rain and Andy. With the addition of Rook, these seven characters reflected the seven crew members on the Nostromo (a reference i guess). All these pairs of siblings are all different relation-wise, Tyler and Kay are biologically related, Navarro and Bjorn are adopted siblings, and Andy and Rain... well connected by Andy's programming by Rain's father: To protect Rain. Andy being a synthetic or artificial person, he is really different from all the synthetics we have seen in the series, especially David. David himself has no limitations to his thinking and programming, he is able achieve his goal without obeying the three laws of robotics, but he is not able to love or care like Walter in Covenant. Well he very much did try to "love" Daniels by kissing her, and he is capable to have emotions at all, but he is just not to able to care and love like Walter and Andy. Andy is the opposite to David, in every way his motor skills, his programming, in some way his emotions; He was able to say out loud he cared for Rain, and only do best for Rain. But he doesn't do it to take advantage of her, he does it because he is not programmed like his brothers Ash, Rook, David... This makes Rain and Andy more a sibling compared to Rook in the movie. At the end of the movie, we saw Rain putting Andy into the cryopod, peacefully; Unlike Covenant where it is David the synthetic putting Daniels into cryopod, distressingly. Ripley in 1979 Alien hated synthetics after the events on Nostromo, but here we see Rain loving her fellow companion and willingly to put a being that doesn't need to be stasis into a cryopod, so he doesn't have to be alone. This is exactly why i think Alien: Romulus is a story about extreme polarity, especially when we have a character like Andy that defies the sexual implications that Ash and David had setup for us.
(more next post)
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