I Liked 'Alien: Romulus' but I Loathed This One Part of It

So you made a movie about the dangers of playing god.

[Spoilers ahead for Alien: Romulus]

Watching Alien: Romulus, one of the things you notice fairly early on is how scaled back the whole thing is. That’s not to shortchange the VFX department or the cost of the film, but you have a film where the biggest name in the cast is rising star Cailee Spaeny (as opposed to Alien: Covenant or Prometheus, which loaded up on name actors), and they’re largely relying on practical effects of the space station rather than thrusting the characters into expansive digital environments. Of course, this is a modern blockbuster, so CGI is everywhere even if you don’t see it, but that’s the point—there’s little in Alien: Romulus that feels overbearingly CGI.

Little, but not all. One glaring bit is such a bad choice that it took me out of the film every time I saw it.

A xenomorph in Alien: Romulus | Image via 20th Century Studios

[Really, there are spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.]