‘Alien: Romulus’ (2024)
If you can’t get Ripley, go for Rain, or so that’s how this “interquel” between “Alien” (1979) and “Aliens” (1986) rolls. In theory, Ripley is in a cryogenic sleep in a space pod elsewhere as this bombastic stand-alone episode unfolds on a grungy remote mining planet where Rain (Cailee Spaeny, “Priscilla,” “Civil War”) is indentured to labor 12,000 hours before she and her brother Andy (David Jonsson) can leave. Most who stay die from lung cancer – you’d think they’d have masks and clean-air breathing apparatuses circa 2130, but no, it’s like West Virginia 1956, canary in a cage and all. Andy is Black (Rain is white) and a synthetic (or droid) like Ash and Bishop in the ’79 and ’86 films respectively. This is no spoiler, as he oozes white goo after being harassed and beaten by a mob of ruffians early on because of his mild, quirky demeanor and penchant to spout corny dad jokes (“What did the claustrophobic astronaut want? More space”). Andy served as family companion to Rain as she grew up and her parents died from the ills of the planet, thus that “brother” tag. We catch up with Rain just after she has notched her hour quota, but when she goes to pick up her off-world pass, she’s informed that the corporation running the show (Weyland, so prevalent in “Prometheus” and perhaps an intergalactic rival to Atlas in “Borderlands”) has doubled the ante; she’s got another five years to go. Syncing up with her posse of hipster hackers (an uber generic lot who, like Rain, rage against the machine) they discover a dormant space station is drifting by the plant and hatch the idea to take a mining shuttle up to the structure, fire it up, slip into cryogenic pods and jet off to somewhere with clean air and fresh water. What begins as a pipe dream quickly becomes a nightmare when the adrift Romulus turns out to be a hive of the jaws-within-jaws xenomorphs that so voraciously ate their fill of other all-too curious humans in other “Alien” deep-space chillers. “Alien” director Ridley Scott must have green-lit the full-on cut-and-paste pastiche on display here, as he serves as a producer on the film directed by Fede Alvarez (“The Girl in the Spider’s Web”). There are whole scenes and lines from the films it spans incorporated to stoke franchise fans’ glee in knowing “in space, no can hear you scream,” but the execution’s shoddy, not the least bit nuanced (or nostalgic), and mostly falls flat. The nifty special FX and the Imax-Dolby surround sound (which is how I saw it, and suggest as the way to go, if you go) elevates the grinding bang of cargo ships belly-to-belly to a near Disney-ride experience. That said, much of the action is muddled and, as far as character development goes, Rain’s synth sibling probably has the deepest backstory of all … and it’s on a programmed chip that can be slipped in and out of a slot behind his ear. Speaking of synths, AI is used to bring back the likeness of Ash – or an android like Ash. The actor Ian Holm died in 2020, so the result is creepy but cool if ultimately just another reheated “Alien” ort. Of future events, one can only imagine the additional rage Ripley spouts when she awakes in another 30 years (“What, you made a Ripley movie without me? Get my agent on the line!”). Then again, one could see Ripley and Rain teaming up and going all “Thelma & Louise” (1991, another Scott film) on the Weyland Corp. honchos and studio execs, let along the duplicitous droids and skittering xenomorphs in their way.
‘Borderlands’ (2023)
This lackluster sci-fi adventure based on the hit video game gets an extra half-star just for its fine cinematic framing of Cate Blanchett’s alluring cheekbones. You could see “Borderlands” as a project with possibility, helmed by Eli Roth as a maestro of mostly lo-fi shock fare (“Cabin Fever,” “Hostel” and “The Green Inferno”) and featuring poker-hot thespians Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine,” “Tár”) and Jamie Lee Curtis (“True Lies,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once”) with Kevin Hart as the X-factor. Unfortunately, it never clicks, and the troubled production was allegedly taken away from Roth and reshot by “Deadpool” (2016) director Tim Miller too late for a script that’s a pileup of tired lines such as “I’m too old for this shit.” Blanchett is Lilith, an intergalactic bounty hunter impossible to miss with her cool, punky pink shock of hair and tasked with reluctantly retrieving the wayward daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) of universe-spanning Atlas Corp.’s swaggering CEO (Edgar Ramírez, putting some buzz in his Jeff Bezos bit) from a rust-bucket planet named Pandora. As the storyline has it, the youth is a divine being and third key to opening something known as “the Vault” on the far-flung planet where Lilith was born. “The Fifth Element” (1997) this is not, and loose (and lame) pokes at “Star Wars” are seated here and there (Hart’s soldier in a Vader-esque mask jokes that it’s hard to breathe in) with Lilith as a Han Solo stand-in. The concept of “the Vault” as an endgame likely makes more sense in online play; here, it’s a dull, uninspired MacGuffin. Giving chase to Lilith and her posse, soon including the sassy adolescent Greenblatt tossing exploding teddy bears at friends and foes with snarky glee, are Hart’s buttoned-up soldier and Curtis’ archaeologist, Atlas security forces riding hoverboards and a blood-lusting tribe of the wasteland so originally branded as “the psychopaths” who clearly have taken their hockey mask and half-naked fashion cues from Lord Humongous and Jason Voorhees. Hart, who has motormouth comedic skills to rival Chris Tucker in “The Fifth Element,” is uncharacteristically mute here; it’s Jack Black voicing beat-up ’bot Claptrap that notches the film’s few genuine laughs. To give you an example of just how little faith the studio had in releasing the film, it was already shot and sitting in the studio vault before Blanchett delivered her knockout performance in “Tár” in 2022. Its resurrection and theatrical run, adding to this summer’s dismal screening season, is further evidence of the downstream ills of the writers’ strike.
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