Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

SOME SPOILERS STILL… BUT NOT FOR ROMULUS!!!

Finally and none too soon we come to Alien: Romulus. Taking place chronologically after Alien but before Aliens with an S.

I’ve always enjoyed the historical and mythological ties each of these movies has. In Alien, their ship was the Nostromo referring to an exquisite book by Joseph Conrad wherein a miner is taken advantage of by an unscrupulous mining company. Sound familiar? That in a nutshell is basically the plot of Alien.

I doubt I need to go into too much detail about the significance of Ripley‘s escape pod named Narcissus, in which she escapes as the sole survivor of the Nostromo. An egotistical Warrant Officer says “I am better than the other crewmates”; a narcissistic Warrant Officer says “There were OTHER crewmates?” Sigourney’s character is not really narcissistic, of course. I really think the name of her escape pod was just a joke more than anything significantly telling.

In Aliens with an S, the colonized planet the characters go to is called Acheron, referring to a river in Greece believed to lead to Hades. In Aliens with an S we see Sigourney’s character go down down down to a veritable hive of xenomorphs inhabited by a queen. Pretty hellish.

Alien: Covenant is filled with imagery taken from the ark of the covenant from the Holy Bible and while I’m sure it’s indicative of some covenant made between man and God (or Android David and the Engineers for good or ill) I’m too tired to analyze it at this point.

Romulus refers to the twin brothers Romulus and Remus of Roman lore. After being raised by a wolf, the grown brothers quarreled as to where they were to settle and Romulus kills Remus. Romulus then founds the city of Rome and invents the meatball sub, the perfect vessel for imparting mysterious black goo to unsuspecting crew mates. We’ve come full circle.

Back in Alien: Covenant, the psychopathic Android with a god complex, David, meets his twin, essentially; another Android of similar make and model, named Walter, who looks just like him, both parts being played by Micheal Fassbender. Eventually one kills the other with it being at first ambiguous as to who killed whom. Too late it becomes obvious to the protagonist that David has killed Walter and has been masquerading as Walter and will now continue to engineer his egg producing Xenomorph queen, the progenitor of his empire.

The Space station our victims travel to in Romulus is in fact a two part vessel called Romulus and Remus. It is emblazoned all over with references to the twin brothers of Roman lore, often seen suckling the wolf mother.

Is this a blatant indication of David’s continued research?

This however is where I stop with the explanations and just tell you, Alien: Romulus was very well done. I believe it embodied the feel and atmosphere of the original Alien, while at the same time tying Prometheus and Covenant in without dwelling on the Engineer story arc excessively. There were many exhilarating twists and turns and thrilling scenes, featuring ideas that I’ve not seen done in any other film. The ending was chilling and quite the spectacle. This was not by any means a half-assed cash grab. The writing, acting, effects, music…all superb. David Johnson as Andy was absolutely brilliant and his performance alone makes this worth the watch.

Honestly, my only complaint is against the party sitting a few rows behind me who were clearly trying to hotbox the entire theater with marijuana smoke. The usher confronted them and they tried to pin it on me but unfortunately for them, this usher was a personal friend of mine and knew me well enough to know the last thing I would want was to be hopped up on goofballs while seeing a movie like this. I tolerated the smoke but just the act of smoking in a theatre is so dangerous!

Perhaps I’ll delve into the deep symbolism and events in this film someday, but for now I will ruminate until my observations evolve into more articulate revelations. Or at least until I can get ahold of the deleted scenes and figure out what the hell was going on because I’m certain that’s where all the explanations are!

Until then, go have a meatball sub!