Alien: Romulus (2024 film directed by Fede Álvarez) (previously: So Disney has ordered a direct-to-Hulu Alien movie)

[A24 4,603]

[leeallen01 2,179]

Heard this isn't good from someone I pretty much trust their movie opinions. Apparently the characters are thin and the set pieces are mostly nothing different. Not sure if I'll see it. I'll wait til it's on streaming eventually. 

[tomsmoviemadness 3,609]

 

https://filmmusicreporter.com/2024/08/14/alien-romulus-soundtrack-album-details/

 

Here’s the album track list:

 

1 The Chrysalis (2:38)
2. That’s Our Sun (2:55)
3. Wake Up (1:40)
4. Entering Nostromo (2:52)
5. Searching (2:55)
6. There’s Something in the Water (2:49)
7. XX121 (3:37)
8. He’s Glitchy (4:27)
9. Run! (2:47)
10. Prometheus Fire (4:19)
11. Guns V Acid Blood (1:33)
12 The Hive (1:41)
13 Andy (1:38)
14 Gravity Purge (2:13)
15 Elevator Shaft Attack (1:22)
16 Get Away From Her (4:31)
17 The Offspring (6:07)
18 Collision Warning (3:35)
19 Raine (1:09)
20 Sleep (2:06)

[Jay 39,754]

That article states that Mutant's physical version will feature six additional tracks

[Thor 8,502]

I've more or less finished my review now (I'll post a Google Translated version of it when it's out), but the score was disappointing in the film. I mean, like the "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink" reference approach of the film, it's very disparate -- ranging from beautiful themes, throbbing electronic pulses, some of Goldsmith's stylings, literate references to earlier themes - from Goldsmith to Gregson-Williams to Goldenthal. There's not much in terms of a singular identity here, BUT it would possibly work better on album. 

[tomsmoviemadness 3,609]

I agree that the score can at moments it does have a bit of an everything and the kitchen sink feel. But I thought his string work and his more orchestral horror moments were really strong. Especially with the homages to Horner's snare drums.

 

Curious to hear it on album.

[Thor 8,502]

1 hour ago, JNHFan2000 said:

I agree that the score can at moments it does have a bit of an everything and the kitchen sink feel. But I thought his string work and his more orchestral horror moments were really strong. Especially with the homages to Horner's snare drums.

 

Curious to hear it on album.

 

I agree. There are good moments, musically. But a criterion for a score to work in context, at least for me, is some kind of overarching vision or consistency. This score had none of that.

[Stark 566]

Goldenthal is referenced?!

[Thor 8,502]

30 minutes ago, Stark said:

Goldenthal is referenced?!

Yes, the Fox logo warp.

[Taikomochi 1,257]

Have not made it fully through the album yet, but the synthetic action cues are truly awful. As generic and unpleasant as you could possibly imagine. Some decent atmospheric scoring otherwise, but it’s hard to imagine sitting through this album knowing the sonic equivalent of a cluster migraine is around the corner at any given point. Oh well…

[tomsmoviemadness 3,609]

Offical credits for the album when it comes to earlier material.

 

Jerry Goldsmith
XX121
Andy

Harry Gregson-Williams
Prometheus Fire

 

James Horner is also credited in the film, but more in a homage and orchestration way, than real statements of his themes.

[Taikomochi 1,257]

I thought that might be a reference to Prometheus (if the track title didn’t make it clear enough lol)! Very well incorporated.

[Holko 10,396]

22 minutes ago, Taikomochi said:

Have not made it fully through the album yet, but the synthetic action cues are truly awful. As generic and unpleasant as you could possibly imagine. Some decent atmospheric scoring otherwise, but it’s hard to imagine sitting through this album knowing the sonic equivalent of a cluster migraine is around the corner at any given point. Oh well…

I skipped through it and it does have some alright or good stuff here and there... but at its best it just makes me wonder why they didn't get Young for this

[HunterTech 1,290]

1 hour ago, Holko said:

I skipped through it and it does have some alright or good stuff here and there... but at its best it just makes me wonder why they didn't get Young for this

 

Because it'd mostly be Pet Sematary Young before it's Nosferatu Young 

[saulocf 87]

Here is my review of it.
https://reviewsonreels.ca/2024/08/15/alien-romulus/

[Edmilson 9,116]

The movie is expected to do $40M in U.S./Canada. Together with a $35M overseas outlook, Alien: Romulus could reach a $75M global start.

 

https://deadline.com/2024/08/alien-romulus-box-office-preview-1236040511/

[Thor 8,502]

My (spoiler free) review of the film, as run through Google Translate.

 

 

[rough cut 1,744]

I saw the film today. The first half was great, the second half not.

 

Spoiler

The first half really felt like a continuation of the Alien universe of the first two movies… how is life on the colonies? How did Weyland Yutani evolve as a company. That part is great. Then, halfway through - I’d say about the time the aliens show up - it’s like it’s written and directed by someone else. Instead of continuing the Alien world building, it turns into a “greatest hits” of scenes and one liners from the first four movies. It felt completely unoriginal and very much like adolescent fan fiction. Very unsatisfying.

 

Final impression of the movie would have to be that it’s more bad than good.

[heidl 404]

18 minutes ago, Thor said:

My (spoiler free) review of the film, as run through Google Translate.

 

 

 

Great review! I completely agree with everything you said. Let's hope Noah Fawley can bring to the Alien franchise what he brought to Fargo a few years earlier. 

 

The Alien franchise obviously needs visionaries, not fanboys, to bring forth new remarkable entries.

 

8 minutes ago, rough cut said:

Final impression of the movie would have to be that it’s more bad than good.

 

Imho it's more good than bad. It could have been a lot worse. A lot!

[GerateWohl 5,159]

Just watched Fede Álvarez' Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix and wasn't impressed. But I have to confess, I just watched the original and not any of the sequels. The frightening thing was this whole weird cannibal family. But here it's just leather face slaughtering twens. No different than any random Jason or Michael Myers movie. Nothing special. 

 

So, that lowered my expectations for Romulus accordingly.

[HunterTech 1,290]

26 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Just watched Fede Álvarez' Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix and wasn't impressed. But I have to confess, I just watched the original and not any of the sequels. The frightening thing was this whole weird cannibal family. But here it's just leather face slaughtering twens. No different than any random Jason or Michael Myers movie. Nothing special. 

 

So, that lowered my expectations for Romulus accordingly.

 

Alvarez only produced the last Texas Chainsaw movie, so it wouldn't be indicative of his capabilities as a director

[GerateWohl 5,159]

2 minutes ago, HunterTech said:

Alvarez only produced the last Texas Chainsaw movie, so it wouldn't be indicative of his capabilities as a director

Ah ok. Then I got that wrong. 

I was quite impressed with his Evil Dead remake. 

[Brundlefly 2,395]

On 08/08/2024 at 7:45 PM, Mr. Hooper said:

“Alien is just a ghost train where something jumps out and you don’t know who’s going to die next,” Gilliam told the site. “When I watched the first Alien, all I kept saying was, ‘Just kill them all and be done with it,’ because you just know that they’re all going to die along the way."

Considering these are the words of a film director, there is too much focus on the WHAT and alarmingly little sensibility towards the HOW.

 

Still, Gilliam has made some incredible work, namely Brazil, The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Tideland (the latter being his hidden gem).

[tomsmoviemadness 3,609]

Nice video on the score.

 

Few takeaways:

- Wallfisch mentioned there was no temp track at all. And they really tried to emulate the silence in the film, by not having too much music 

- There are at least 3 themes: Rain's Theme, Andy's Theme & the Xenomorph theme. All 3 are in some way linked. They're the same notes being played in different order or in reverse for example.

 

 

[Dunge_Onmaster 23]

For me this music really has zero recognition value. Clichéd horror score at AI level. Soon you won't need a composer and expensive orchestral recordings for something like this. It's a shame when you consider what other great music has been created in the series. Even Gregson-Williams and Kurzel have contributed some solid material. Similar to Blade Runner 2049 and IT (2017/19), there would have been an opportunity here for truly great genre music, but it was missed once again due to the choice of composer.

[crocodile 8,606]

The film is OK but for every new cool idea there's another one recycled. They clearly pulled The Force Awakens on this where they try to recapture some of the tone, sequeeze in lots of fan service while introducing new cast (who felt bit too Disney pretty for this movie somehow). I appreciate that they spend a lot of time introducing the environment and playing with mood and sound like the original did. It was mostly entertaining but can't say it felt like a fully nourishing meal.

 

Karol

[Arpy 4,159]

I thought the visuals and the sets were beautiful. It didn't mess around, wasn't bogged in unnecessary character bullshit and looked good while doing it.

 

 

The score had all the bells and whistles of something in the vein of Goldsmith but didn't have a strong thematic identity to the point where I feel it needs a theme to at least match the original films'. 

[Henry Sítrónu 528]

very odd that Ben emphasizes that they tried to emulate the silence in the film, by not having too much music whereas it seemed to me that quite a few scenes where drowned in music, therefore making them actually less scarier.

[Andy 5,214]

On 31/7/2024 at 1:32 PM, Andy said:

My daughter is 21 and has never seen any of the Alien films. 

Now, do I educate her on the first two films or let Romulus be her first?

 

On 31/7/2024 at 2:12 PM, Tallguy said:

Throw her in with this as her first movie. Let us know how it goes!

 

On 31/7/2024 at 2:20 PM, Mr. Hooper said:

Agree. Let her first exposure be on the Big Screen—IMAX, if available.

 

Then show her where it began.

Tickets purchased for Sunday! I told her she is part of a JWFan experiment and she is excited!!

[Richard P 4,265]

Not planning to see the film, but I have the score on now, and it's becoming clear that outside Wallfisch's work for The Invisible Man and to some extent Annabelle: Creation, his music isn't for me. I don't usually go for fairly extreme views but this score was a total waste of space - fairly anonymous orchestral material and absolutely grating electronic work. I'm near the end and I've got almost nothing good to say about it. That makes a very disappointing year, Wallfisch-wise for me, but probably just clarifies that I'm not a fan.

 

Streitenfeld and Kurzel managed to do some original work in my view, melding interesting textures with little motifs. Shame about this one.

[ddddeeee 364]

I thought this was lame, to be honest, which is a bummer because I like Fede and felt like he would have been a great match for the source material. It has no bite. It's just another franchise greatest hits package, but not willing to commit to doing the work that made those hits hit in the first place.

 

It's competently made through and through, but there's just no meat there. It's the first Alien movie that isn't weird, and that's a real shame. 

[Edmilson 9,116]

I really liked Wallfisch's work for The Flash, it was one of my favorite scores from last year. Just pure orchestral fun like we were back in the 90s. Twisters wasn't bad but it was surely a step down.

 

Even It 1 and 2 had some great cues, too bad the albums were too long.

[Yavar Moradi 3,030]

41 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

Not planning to see the film, but I have the score on now, and it's becoming clear that outside Wallfisch's work for The Invisible Man and to some extent Annabelle: Creation, his music isn't for me.

 

This not do anything for you?

 

 

Yavar

[Richard P 4,265]

Hmm, not really. It may be orchestral, but in terms of melodies and actual emotion, I'm not getting a whole lot from it.

[Chewy 2,587]

Vinyl edition of the score is now listed on Mutant website:

https://www.madebymutant.com/release/468582-benjamin-wallfisch-alien-romulus-original-soundtrack

 

Tracklist is the same as the digital release, no 6 additional tracks as it was announced on that filmusicreporter.com article 

 

[Luke Skywalker 1,967]

Saw the film today. Enterntaining, not bad. Decent for the franchise standards…

 

by the least, i feel releasing it on disney + would have been an error. The film has cinema release value.

 

for the record the cinema was filled with teenagers and some applauded at the end of the film…

[Nick1Ø66 6,059]

24 minutes ago, Luke Skywalker said:

for the record the cinema was filled with teenagers and some applauded at the end of the film…

 

Teenagers have a long history of applauding when they see other teenagers stalked & killed in gruesome ways in cinema. 

[Bilbo 3,868]

Probably the third best Alien film but that’s a very low bar to clear. Nowhere near as good as the first two obviously. It falls apart in the final third or so. It’s entertaining enough though as an excuse to eat popcorn and drink coca-cola. There are worse ways to spend a Friday evening. 

[Luke Skywalker 1,967]

I liked that it referenced the first film and prometheus, therefore it was not just another spinoff like film.

 

 

Though it lessens ripleys victory in the first film…

 

Spoiler

I suppose it is more accurate to use ian holm android due the film taking place near the first film. But i suppose hiring fassbender would have been cheaper than paying holm’s state and cgi-deep fake him?

 

[crocodile 8,606]

I forgot to mention I really liked the artificial person Andy, think he really stole the show. But then, that often seems to be the case with these movies.

 

Karol

[Steffromuk 507]

I quite enjoyed the movie for what it is. It's a nice but flawed appendix to the franchise. I really like to listen to Walfish's score, even though I found it a little too present at times in the movie.

I think the Alien franchise has the richest and most constant collection of scores in quality, out of all movie franchises. I like all the Alien scores almost equally and each composer who contributed managed to honor their predecessor while adding their personal tune and vision.

 

For the gamers among us. I feel like this movie and its score owe a lot to Dead Space 2 for its atmosphere and visuals.

[A24 4,603]

[The Train Station 8,866]

Glad this score made no impression on me in the cinema because I've largely given up collecting these anonymous sounding sequel scores to franchise movie series where the music largely peters out into dreary, inferior pastiche scrapbook albums. I'm just gonna go and listen to my 1988 Silva release of Alien and the 2001 DE of Aliens instead.

[Hurmm 91]

I watched this last night and it was...squarely average, at best. As it's been said before, prior entries in the Alien series always an individualistic stamp by each of the director, which is absent here. 

 

The beginning on the planet itself was promising, with hints of intriguing world-building, and the production sets are very good, but once the supposed thrills start it all begins to come apart. 

 

I don't necessarily mind aping the beats of the first two movies, but what's actually here is just so... unengaging. There are a couple of tense moments to be sure, but they are not sustained and largely operate on a scene-by-scene basis, whereas the first few Alien movies had this suffocating and oppressive atmosphere sustained throughout (yes even Aliens and Alien 3, and to an extent Resurrection too). 

 

I also heard about this wild ending but it was rather tame and timid, and again clearly aping some of the beats from earlier movies. 

 

As of now, I'm probably ranking this 7 out of the 7 Alien movies. I don't quite like Prometheus and Covenant, but at least that had ideas and a certain Fassbender saving the day. 

[Andy 5,214]

On 17/8/2024 at 12:18 PM, crocodile said:

I forgot to mention I really liked the artificial person Andy, think he really stole the show.

Aw, thank you Karol. That’s very kind of you to say. 
 

Although, I prefer the term artific-  oh, uh, never mind. 

[John Dutton 7,498]

People still watch Alien movies since Hudson died? Why?

[Hego-Damask-II 52]

On 16/08/2024 at 8:19 AM, JNHFan2000 said:

Nice video on the score.

 

Few takeaways:

- Wallfisch mentioned there was no temp track at all. And they really tried to emulate the silence in the film, by not having too much music 

- There are at least 3 themes: Rain's Theme, Andy's Theme & the Xenomorph theme. All 3 are in some way linked. They're the same notes being played in different order or in reverse for example.

 

 

I appreciated those choices. Having just seen the film today, my initial impression of the score is that it felt to me like Williams with a dash of Goldsmith baked in a contemporary crust. Good stuff and the quotations were nice to hear.

[Marian Schedenig 9,149]

Saw it today. I'm conflicted. I almost wish it wasn't an Alien film because it might have worked better as a generic space monster horror flick. It feels like there's plenty of good stuff about it, but overall there's just too much of everything - too much up to 11 action/settings, too many horror tropes (the kind that Don't Breathe either avoided or used well - here they feel generic, and out of place for the franchise), and most of all too many easter eggs and quotes from the other films - it doesn't even feel like fan service anymore, more like "how can we justify putting this bit from that film in next". And sadly it didn't seem like watching it again knowing what to expect will make these things less annoying. Sure, the entire film series (minus the prequels I suppose), starting with Aliens, is built on repeating the same scenarios, and it wouldn't be the same franchise without it. But by the time Romulus reaches its climax, you feel like the characters themselves must surely recognise that their lives are being written by people whose main focus is to string together as many quotes and references as possible.

 

I like the world building in the beginning - the first time in the franchise that you get to see proper crowd scenes instead of a very isolated environment felt engaging. The callback to the original film's tech (complete with sound effects) were nice, before the easter eggs went overboard (though I'm not sure how I feel about the 3.5" disk drive that shows up at one point - something that was state of the art at the time of ³, but is almost as dated now as the 1979 stuff). Some good space scenes, and apparently even some clear influences from Alien Isolation. The droid stuff was also conceptually interesting.

 

But much of that starts to feel pretty rushed rather soon, and the characters remain flat, making them much more disposable xenomorph fodder than e.g. the Nostromo crew. According to IMDb, Scott advised Alvarez to cut down the film, because he had too many interesting ideas and spent too much time on them. Maybe that's why it felt like it didn't have enough ideas and instead threw to many random fragments around.

 

Quote

And why CGI resurrect Ian Holm, when it's not even his character anyway, and his version here is much more prone to hyperbole compared to his understated performance as Ash? I'm not strictly opposed to artificially resurrecting actors when it makes sense. But it seems entirely unnecessary here.

 

The score felt mostly anonymous. Some nice enough atmospheric material earlier on, with some Goldsmith-y woodwinds (apparently his actual themes pops up as well, but I didn't notice it). But once the action starts, it's either loud drumming or loud clusters (with choir) - think Goldenthal clusters, but without any of the musical coherence Goldenthal would give them.

 

As I said to the friend I saw it with: If the prequels failed (according to some; I didn't hate the first and barely remember the second, which I've only seen once) because of hubris and being too high concept, this one does because it's too deliberately too low concept.

[crocodile 8,606]

I think the film is mostly enjoyable but also very unremarkable. The Force Awakens is a perfect analogy here. After initial classic movies, they did controversial prequels and after that decided to go back to basics in Disney's hands, with a particular fetish for recreating the grimy production design etc. They have two sibling-like characters as leads. Both quite likeable. The lead female Rain (see the similarity?) is made interesting by performance rather than the rather unimaginative writing. The male lead, on the other hand, ends up being the most refreshing aspect of the film. Their relationship is the core of the story and easily the best things about it.

 

There are differences, of course, but it feels like the same basic premise - a new generation of kids discovering the old franchise hence serving as avatars to the new audience. Like everything these days, it is merely a product. I've seen worse though.

 

The score is solid, to be honest. I am also not fan of the intrusive synths in the monster sequences but that is not for lack of ability. All in all, I quite like it.

 

I've read a lot about people complaining about the slow start to the film. It's the best part of the film!

 

Karol

[Marian Schedenig 9,149]

19 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

As I said to the friend I saw it with: If the prequels failed (according to some; I didn't hate the first and barely remember the second, which I've only seen once) because of hubris and being too high concept, this one does because it's too deliberately too low concept.

 

Just noticed that this might be confusing to some: When I say "prequels" in my post, I'm talking about Prometheus and Covenant - not the Star Wars prequels.