Knee-jerk review: "Alien Romulus"

1. Without a doubt, it's the best one since 1986's Aliens.  And we liked Alien Resurrection (1997) more than most.
2. It's the ninth movie in the Alien franchise - if you count the Alien Versus Predator movies - so along the way, as is so often the case now with sci-fi, the mythology and backstory behind both the origin of the alien species and also the machinations of the evil Weyland-Yutani company has gotten way complicated and shaggy.
3. It's a lot to keep track of, especially at the end when the story connects to the self-important, overwrought Prometheus and Covenant sequels.  The movies probably worked better when Weyland-Yutani was a powerful faceless behemoth.  The air of mystery helped.  The more we learn about what they're trying to do with the aliens, the more ho-hum familiar they seem.
4. Cailee Spaeny is decent, if a little dull, in the lead.  The same, frankly, goes for the whole cast.  Just fine all around, but no one really pops.
5. Spaeny at times gives off Natalie Portman vibes.
6. Spoiler alert: the decision to use CGI technology to make 1979-era Ian Holm one of the supporting characters is a huge misfire.  We can understand the desperation to do as much as possible to connect this movie to the other Alien movies, but it's a gimmick that is not needed here.  The movie crackles just fine on its own.
7. Aside from the creep factor of animating a dead actor and creating a performance from scratch without his involvement, the CGI that reproduces Holm just... isn't good.  Big time uncanny valley. 
8. And from a story point of view, Holm isn't playing the character he played in Alien.  This is a different character with a different name.  But they're both androids, so the suggestion seems to be that there's this whole line of androids out there that all look like Ian Holm.  That sort of makes sense, but it's way too distracting and needlessly meta for it's own good.
9. Script-wise, the opening ten minutes are lean and mean.  We meet the main character, see her terrible predicament, then watch her grapple with a crazy, dangerous choice that might be her only way out.
10. The "big bad" alien at the very end is wild.  The filmmakers really went for it.
11. The Swiss-watch plotting of James Cameron's Aliens is second to none.  Anything that can go wrong for our heroes goes horribly wrong, again and again, but always in completely plausible ways.  Nothing feels forced.  Romulus has that same sort of feel.  Nothing is easy for the characters.
12. Zero gravity clouds of acid alien blood?  Check.
13. There's plenty of scary action set pieces here, which is really all any of us need in a sci-fi horror movie.

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