Set between Alien (2122) and Aliens (2179), Fede Álvarez directs and co-writes standalone interquel with regular collaborator Rodo Sayagues.
Cailee Spaeny - Rain
David Jonsson - Andy
Archie Renaux - Tyler
Isabela Merced - Kay
Spike Fearn - Bjorn
Aileen Wu - Navarro
Summary
2142.
Rain works on the Jackson's Star with her synthetic brother Andy, where the sun never shines.
Knowing she'll be stuck on mining colony for another 5-6 years, Rain, Tyler, a pregnant Kay and co take a crate to an apparently decommissioned space station to steal cryonic chambers, so they can escape to independent system Yvaga.
As pods lack fuel, they enter a room storing energy cartridges.
But high temperature awakens spider-like creatures, who just want to give everybody a hug.
Uh oh!
Stay calm and keep quiet
The Renaissance is divided into two modules and/or laboratories - Romulus and Remus.
The former is obviously what subtitle refers to, but Rain and Andy's relationship mirrors a famous story in Roman mythology about twin brothers.
Director previously explored sibling trope in Evil Dead with Mia and David.
Anyway, after Alien and Aliens, this is the third best entry in the series.
From bleak atmosphere, to nostalgic sets and gorgeous cinematography, it's visually incredible.
Using hints of Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, together with his own orchestral beats, Benjamin Wallfisch's score fits like a glove.
There's some awesome tension (at one point Don't Breathe in space), facehuggers are terrifying again and gooey effects are splendid.
As for the xenos themselves, we largely go back to basics, using a combination of full-size animatronic models, puppetry, stunt people and CG.
Spaeny proves again how talented she is and Jonsson nails dual personalities.
However, other characters are nothing more than cannon fodder and can eat my pulse rifle.
Dead Space style zero G is an interesting addition and used to great effect when peeps are forced to negotiate xenos and acid.
Moving on.
Rook
Deepfaking Ian Holm continues Disney's morally questionable trend of bringing back the dead.
To compound situation, face and mouth were so fucking distracting.
Daniel Betts provides voice and facial performance.
More so, Weyland Yuntani building a physically identical model to Ash to carry out their mission 20 years after he was destroyed makes no sense.
For shiggles, another synthetic called Rook appears in Broken, one of 18 short stories in anthology novel Aliens: Bug Hunt.
Climax
A badly wounded Kay injects herself with the black goo from Prometheus.
She soon gives birth to a pod, which splits open revealing a human-esque baby.
It immediately grows into the Offspring, a grotesque hybrid creature (portrayed by 7 feet tall Robert Bobroczkyl in his acting debut), smacking of both the Engineer and Newborn in Resurrection (and Dren in Splice).
Before getting ejected into space, monster kills its mother.
Pretty bonkers, right?
But what's worse is that depending on camera shot, face changes.
Alien: Isolation
Emergency telephones strewn around the station go further than decoration, as just like game, set up shit hitting the fan.
Soon after boarding the Renaissance, somebody picks up a stun baton, which can fry synthetics.
This could be a reference to dealing with Working Joes.
However, nest sequence was very near to the knuckle.
Fan service
Aside from relentless visual nods to Ripley in Alien and Aliens, dialogue had me cringing in my seat.
Rook: "I can't lie about your chances, but you have my sympathies."
Originally:
"I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies. [smiles]
But poor old Andy gets the shit end of the stick:
"Prefer the term artificial person myself."
And when gunning down a xeno:
"Get away from her [pause] you bitch."
Delivery is so forced, so unnecessary - it's FUCKING embarrassing.
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