Although the timeline of the Alien movies is, Alien: Romulus managed to take a story set between Alien and Aliens and use the plot to make sense of Prometheus’s many unanswered mysteries. This was quite an achievement considering Alien: Romulus also worked as a standalone horror movie.
For those who understandably don’t , Prometheus takes place 30 years before Alien, which in turn takes place 57 years before the events of Aliens. Prometheus saw its ambitious director Ridley Scott introduce a slew of new elements to the franchise’s lore, from the Engineers to the Black Goo, and leave many of these enigmatically unexplained. By the prequel's ending, Prometheus had retconned much of the Alien Vs Predator movies and left the rest of the franchise’s lore harder to unpack. However, the series couldn’t ignore Prometheus either, since its plot ties into the rest of the series.
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As the Alien: Earth makes Prometheus’s story more important than ever, it is important to revisit just how Alien: Romulus salvaged the story of the series. Prometheus and its 2017 follow-up, Alien: Covenant, flirted with the idea that Michael Fassbender’s amoral android David created the Xenomorph while attempting to construct the perfect life form. Certainly, David’s creepy experiments in Alien: Covenant implied as much, and the fact that he used the Black Goo to poison Holloway in Prometheus seemed to confirm this hypothesis.
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The ending of Alien: Covenant even implied that a victorious David was planning on using the movie’s heroes as test subjects for his next experiments with the Black Goo. However, this didn’t really add up in the larger scheme of the series. Alien Vs Predator depicted Xenomorphs on Earth as far back as the Stone Age and, even if viewers assume that Prometheus retconned the Alien Vs Predator movies entirely, the plot still has holes. The Xenomorph makes more sense as an existing creature than as a bioweapon engineered by a character from the series.
As Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley said in an interview with Engineer/Xenomorph hybrid the Offspring.
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Rather than ignoring it or retconning Prometheus, Alien: Romulus made Ridley Scott’s prequel easier to follow and understand by clarifying David’s role in the Xenomorph life cycle. While Prometheus and Alien: Covenant weren’t entirely transparent about this point, Alvarez’s movie appears to prove once and for all that Fassbender’s android didn’t create the original Xenomorph. This even makes Prometheus’s title more comprehensible, as the Engineers offered humanity an incredible but lethal gift when the CEO of Weyland-Yutani indirectly found Xenomorph DNA by visiting their home planet.
The idea that the alien existed before the prequel began but was harnessed by David on behalf of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation makes much more sense.
Much like tPrometheus gifted humanity with fire, the Engineers gifted humanity with the perfect killing machine in the form of the Xenomorph. The idea that the alien existed before the prequel began but was harnessed by David on behalf of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation makes much more sense and even fixes Prometheus and Alien Vs Predator’s seemingly incompatible timelines. In this version of events, the Xenomorphs that were hunted by Predators on Earth could have been sent there by the similarly advanced Engineers for sport.
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While these minutiae may not seem important, Alien: Romulus clarifying the Xenomorph life cycle without bringing back David was an impressive achievement. Alvarez’s movie offered viewers an effective, intense thrill ride while also making some absurdly over-complicated lore more straightforward and comprehensible, a balance that few franchises have managed when it comes to exposition. However, it is now hard to tell how David’s Alien franchise story should end since Alien: Romulus rendered his return unnecessary.
Alien and Alien: Romulus combined to explain how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation got its hands on the Xenomorph.
Viewers still don’t know what happened to David after Alien: Covenant but, thanks to Alien: Romulus, this no longer matters as much. In concrete , the events of Alien and Alien: Romulus combined to explain how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation got its hands on the Xenomorph and knew such a suspiciously large amount about its life cycle in Aliens. David’s return isn’t technically necessary anymore, but his arc feels unfinished, which is an awkward way to leave the best new character from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
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What made David so interesting was the fact that, although he committed some monstrous acts, he did so at the behest of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. David was following the directives laid out for him, which made it hard to tell how much of his villainy was motivated by emotion and how much was simply programming. Alien: Romulus’s Andy was a similarly intriguing character who proved that David’s story still has potential, but this could be a problem for the franchise going forward.
Alien Movies & TV Shows In Timeline Order |
|
|---|---|
Title |
Year Set |
Alien: Earth (2025) |
2092 |
Prometheus (2012) |
2093 |
Alien: Covenant (2017) |
2104 |
Alien (1979) |
2122 |
Alien: Romulus (2024) |
2142 |
Aliens (1986) |
2179 |
Alien 3 (1992) |
2180 |
Alien Resurrection (1997) |
2379 |
After all, David’s return to the Alien franchise doesn’t seem likely after Alien: Romulus’s ending. While Alien: Romulus did embrace Prometheus, it was also a new beginning for the franchise and most reviews cited its self-contained story as a major selling point for the sequel. Alvarez’s movie seemingly proved that lower-budget standalone sequels were the way forward for the series, not ambitious prequels that expanded its existing lore. Alien: Earth could take on David’s story, but Hawley has already explained his reticence to take this route. Thus, the Alien series may never explain what became of Prometheus’s android after Alien: Romulus.
Source: KCRW
Alien: Romulus
- Release Date
- August 16, 2024
- Runtime
- 119 Minutes
- Director
- Fede Alvarez
Cast
Rain
Andy
WHERE TO WATCH
- Writers
- Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues, Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett
- Franchise(s)
- Alien
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