Romulus Continues The Franchise’s Most Important Theme

This article contains massive spoilers for “Alien: Romulus.”

The “Alien” franchise has always been primarily about its titular creature, in a literal sense. The series — which consists of the original film, three sequels, two spinoffs, two prequels, and the new sidequel “Alien: Romulus” — has accumulated a great deal of lore over the years. Yet none of the characters (save perhaps Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and Michael Fassbender’s David) are particularly well fleshed out. The creator of “Alien,” writer Dan O’Bannon, set out initially with only one goal in mind: to make the ultimate scary monster movie with all other considerations secondary. That ethos has remained constant throughout the films, even as directors like James Cameron, David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Ridley Scott have involved entire new planets, periods, cultures, and religions with their various entries in the saga. Although Ripley and David have returned for multiple installments, the one constant has always been the Xenomorph.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate; the one constant living creature has been the Xeno, sure. Yet the other constant, a presence as monolithic and viral as the Alien that’s somehow ten times as insidious, is the “Company,” better known as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. “Romulus,” co-written and directed by Fede Álvarez, is set in between “Alien” and “Aliens,” meaning the Company is still very active during and in the events of the film.

Thanks to the movie being a subtextual summation of the “Alien” saga to date, “Romulus” keys in on the series’ most central theme, one that combines the dual threats of the Xenomorph and the Company: dehumanization. The reduction of humanity to something to be exploited, used, and discarded is what both groups represent, making them emblematic of the rot at the core of the universe.

The very first conversation we hear in “Alien” involves the crew of the towing vehicle Nostromo going over the “bonus situation” of their current haul. The two maintenance workers believe that they “deserve full shares,” implying that even though the Nostromo’s entire compliment is just seven people, the two guys who keep the miles-wide ship running aren’t getting paid the same as the other five. With that little conversation as the tone-setter for the entire film and the whole franchise by extension, it’s immediately clear that Weyland-Yutani is a bottom-line by any means necessary corporation, with no one’s best interests at heart. The role of the unseen Company in “Alien” is essentially one of compounding antagonism; it isn’t enough that the universe’s “perfect organism” that exists just for parasitic propagation is after you, it’s that your bosses have installed a corporate stooge (the synthetic Ash, played by Ian Holm) to ensure that it continues its job because capturing it could potentially be profitable.

Throughout the other “Alien” sequels, Weyland-Yutani continues to be disturbingly amoral in its quest to obtain the Xenomorph for presumably bio-weapon purposes, with “Aliens” seeing the corporation knowingly send Colonial Marines to their doom (as part of the film’s thinly veiled Vietnam War subtext) and “Alien 3” seeing them treat prisoners as fully expendable pawns (the one “Alien” film that doesn’t feature the Company, “Resurrection,” takes a look at what might happen if a military finally got hold of the creature, the answer being nothing good). The “crew expendable” mandate given to Ash as part of his Special Order from the Company doesn’t just pertain to the particular case of the Nostromo mission; throughout the “Alien” series, it’s revealed to be Company policy.

“Romulus” circles back around to “Alien” in its look at the lower middle-class citizens of the universe: not scientists or colonists but miners, those who do the endless grunt work of terraforming inhospitable planets. Rain (Cailee Spaeny), a miner since birth who lost her parents to complications from mining, has her heart set on logging enough hours to be able to move to a planet that has sunshine only to be told by a Company rep that quotas have gone up and it’ll be another six years (at least!) of hard labor before she can do so. It’s no wonder why, when her fellow miners come up with an idea to steal a ship and cryo pods from another decommissioned Company vessel to escape their mining colony, Rain agrees to the dangerous plan.

Of course, that decommissioned vessel turns out to be the Romulus/Remus space station, where the Company had brought the Xenomorph which Ripley booted into space. As Rain and her friends attempt to survive this Alien outbreak, they’re inadvertently still under the Company’s thumb, as the station’s science officer Rook (Ian Holm, Daniel Betts) enlists the humans to try and complete his bosses’ directive. As most of us who aren’t part of the 1% know, living under capitalism means a constant series of compromises and hard choices, and even those of us who can afford to pay off bills and debts are often still living hand to mouth with no great prospects for the future. “Romulus” and the “Alien” films make this “rock and a hard place” reality even more stark: you can either eke out a meager existence as a wage slave, or you can be slaughtered by (and/or used to birth) a parasitic life form. What a choice!

The Xenomorph isn’t the only parasitic lifeform in “Romulus,” however. Nor is it the only thing that forcibly transforms and mutates the individual into something part of a collective. In general, most of the human characters we’ve seen in the “Alien” series have only unknowingly or tacitly been tools of Weyland-Yutani; the scientists of “Prometheus” and the colonists of “Covenant” were attempting to use the Company as a means to an end, and it’s only people like Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) whose souls have been mutated by their status in the corporate world.

Traditionally, the synthetic characters have been “safe” from the biological horrors seen in the films; because they can’t be used by the Xenos or the goo, they’re only destroyed if they get in the way. “Romulus” corrects that oversight by introducing the idea of a module that exists in the head of every synthetic person (who are all built by the Company, it must be said) that has the potential to over- and re-write the directives and even the personality of another synthetic. This happens to Andy (David Jonsson), who is given Rook’s module as a way of allowing them to have clearance to the entire station. Who knows what Ash’s personality was like before receiving his Special Order (Bishop in “Aliens” mentions that Ash’s model “always [was] a bit twitchy”), but it could be argued that he was mutated by the Company’s directive in the same way Rook’s module changes Andy. Andy becomes colder, more ruthless, and fully under the sway of the Company’s goals, and it’s only thanks to Rain’s love for him (and the non-biological ability to literally separate the parasitic element from his system) that he’s able to return to his old self.

There’s yet another mutating menace in “Romulus”: the black goo from “Prometheus” and “Covenant.” The mutagen was created by the Engineers, an alien species who seem to be largely responsible for creating life throughout the universe, a process that involves one of their race ingesting the goo and allowing it to destroy his body before it “seeds” whatever planet it’s on. “Prometheus” reveals that the Engineers came to despise one of these creations, humanity, for its hubris, hostility, arrogance, and other factors. That’s right: religion is a lie (or a delusion for suckers at best), the gods hate us, and they wish us exterminated. Thanks to humanity’s own offspring, synthetics, this fate did not befall us, and instead, we’ve been allowed to try and colonize the universe.

That idea of colonization has always been intended for the ultra-wealthy of the universe, for after all, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) went on the Prometheus mission with the explicit goal of extending his own fading life. In “Romulus,” Rook is revealed to have extracted the goo from the DNA of the Xenomorph and intends to present it to his Weyland-Yutani bosses as a way for humanity to leap forward in its evolution. Not for altruistic or aspirational reasons, mind you, but to better facilitate the Company’s colonization efforts as well as salvage Weyland’s original mission of extending life for the elite few. The finale of “Romulus,” in which poor Kay (Isabela Merced) injects herself with some goo to try and heal her wounds, only to find her unborn baby mutated and birthed early as an unholy, murderous Offspring (Robert Bobroczkyi), is the dark refutation to the notion of humanity stealing fire from the gods, as it were.

If it’s not already clear: the “Alien” universe is one where doom surrounds every living thing in existence, and has since life even began. Whether literally or figuratively, the executives of Weyland-Yutani seem to realize this fact, and as such operate on the same basis that their/our creators, the Engineers, do: there is no creation without destruction. Extrapolate that to “there is no progress without sacrifice,” and you essentially have the unofficial Weyland-Yutani employee motto. This ethos can be seen throughout “Romulus,” in the tradition of the way the title and subtitle of “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant,” respectively, said much about the fates of the characters on board those vessels.

The ship that Rain, Andy, and the others take to reach the Romulus/Remus is called the Corbelan, which is a name that references a character from Joseph Conrad’s 1904 novel “Nostromo,” continuing the series’ tradition of shouting out Conrad. Yet the name is eerily close to the word “corban,” which means “a sacrifice or offering to God among the ancient Hebrews.” As the refugees from the mining planet explore the Romulus and Remus station, they learn that the station was named after the Roman myth about twin brothers who were only able to start the great city (and empire) of Rome when one killed the other.

Most curiously, the music accompanying the station’s automated history lesson about Romulus and Remus is Wagner’s “Entry of the Gods into Valhalla” from “Das Rheingold,” the piece that represents David’s self-actualized superiority over his creators in “Covenant.” Given David’s deep understanding of “no progress without sacrifice” and this music choice, could one of the board members of Weyland-Yutani be David himself?

Of course, the “Alien” universe and films are not without their rays of hope. For a long time, Ripley herself was the face of resistance against the Company, beginning as someone merely attempting to observe quarantine protocol and ending as the leader of a revolt against oppressors on a prison planet. Most importantly (if sadly short-lived) was her friendship with the synthetic known as Bishop (Lance Henriksen), proving that artificial persons and humans could find affection and common ground. It’s a quality that survives into her resurrection as the clone Ripley 8 when she saves the android Call (Winona Ryder) from harm. That’s a big deal, for it’s that class and/or species disparity between humans and synthetics that helped lead to the creation of the Xenomorph, as seen in the cruel and bigoted way Peter Weyland and many other humans treat David in “Prometheus.” Although Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is shown to have a similarly affectionate relationship with Walter (Fassbender) in “Covenant” as Ripley will in the future, David sadly does not allow that progressive relationship to blossom.

This is why, for now, what hope exists in the “Alien” universe lies in the relationship between Rain and her adopted brother Andy in “Romulus.” It’s the shared love between these unlikely siblings that allows both of them to survive their ordeal, a survival that flies in the face of the doom that the Company’s name for the station seems to prophesy. Throughout the film, both end up refusing to sacrifice one another, just as neither harbors any prejudice for the other based on their species. In a universe engineered (literally) around parasitic destruction, they commit to fixing each other. In a galaxy that seems to demand dehumanization, they retain their humanity. It is their — and, in this world, our — final defense, and could be our greatest retaliatory weapon. Maybe someone can hear our screams, even in space, if we only shout long and loud enough.

“Alien: Romulus” is in theaters everywhere.