The Alien franchise is returning to theatres across the world with Alien: Romulus, the latest from writer/director Fede Álvarez. I’ve enjoyed some of Álvarez’s previous movies, including the remake of Evil Dead (2013) and Don’t Breathe (2016). The cast of this film includes Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, and Archie Renaux, among others.  The Alien franchise is a weird one. It began with two classics in Alien & Aliens, but then it really goes downhill from there. Alien 3 was famously plagued with a troubled production and significant studio interference. After that, audiences were subjected to Alien: Resurrection and two Alien vs Predator movies, none of which I even enjoyed as a kid.  Ridley Scott, the director of the first Alien movie returned to the franchise with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, which are prequels to his original film. I haven’t seen either movie in a while, but I remember feeling pretty middling on them overall.  This movie takes place between Alien and Aliens and the synopsis is very simple and spoiler-free:  “While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” I wanted to lay out the history of the franchise because if you count the AvP movies, then the Alien franchise includes nine different films and hasn’t delivered anything a fraction as good as its first two entries.  A lot of the marketing and buzz around Alien: Romulus promised a return to the franchise’s roots. So does Alien: Romulus recapture the franchise’s glory, or should we jettison this one into space?  My Spoiler-Free Thoughts Oh boy. I have a LOT to say about this movie and I will eventually dig into spoilers, which you can read after the verdict section of this review. First off, I really dug this movie as it started. The sets and the props looked amazing. They managed to teleport me back to the first Alien movie with the retro futuristic tech that those early movies are really known for. I also loved the sequences in open space too. I was blown away by just how beautiful it all looked and how it all sounded. The tagline for the first Alien was “In Space No One Can Hear You Scream” and I loved the use of silence in these moments. That, combined with some stunning visuals really blew my socks off. I saw this at a smaller Cineplex theatre, but I would’ve loved to see the movie in IMAX for those shots alone.  I also liked the initial setup as well. The characters are in a location and situation that’s much different than other Alien movies. The main cast are also new to the franchise and are living in a less than ideal situation working for the infamous big bad Weyland-Yutani Corporation.  The movie doesn’t take much time to flesh out most of the characters, but I would say only David Jonsson as Andy did anything for me anyway (I will talk more about his role in the spoiler section). Cailee Spaeny as Rain was good as the film’s lead, but I think the character just didn’t have much on the page that really made me invested. Rain has a reluctance to participate in the mission, but she handles everything thrust on her as if it was natural to her and it honestly made me forget about that aspect of her character as the movie progressed.  This is where things took a sharp turn for me though. As the Alien part of the movie really begins, the movie starts to fall apart. First of all, we have yet another use of AI and CGI to recreate a dead actor, which I just am never going to be okay with (more on that in the spoiler section too). Aside from being pretty morally reprehensible, it also just looks terrible a lot of the time. Some moments it’s not so bad, but then there are some others where it just looks like they didn’t bother to finish working on it. The character is also present for a good chunk of the movie too and every single time they appeared I was just more and more disappointed with their inclusion.  This also though was the first sign to me of just what kind of movie this really was. When I logged this movie on Letterboxd, I wrote, “The Force Awakens of the Alien franchise (derogatory)” and I think that says it all. This movie is somehow derivative of basically all the movies that came before it. I will discuss this in more detail in the spoiler section, but basically this movie is just a generic Disney franchise film set in the Alien universe. It links to previous movies for no real narrative reason, it has cheap callbacks that made me audibly groan twice during the movie, and it does nothing compelling, new, or interesting.  I was perplexed thinking about just who this movie was for and why it exists, but it’s because I forgot for a moment that this was now a Disney owned IP. Disney acquired the Alien franchise when it acquired 20th Century Fox. So naturally, Disney had to make its generic and derivative rehash of a beloved IP because that’s all they seem to bother doing now.  For all of the faults in the Alien franchise, and there are plenty, this movie felt the most soulless of all of them. I will elaborate more in the spoiler section after the verdict.  Verdict If you’re all aboard the Disney train and you love watching movies that are simply trying to cash in on your affinity for older movies that you love, you might be happy with what Alien: Romulus has to offer. Despite a very solid acting performance and some beautiful visuals, this movie falls apart when it uses the digital recreation of a dead actor, adds ham-fisted lines recycled from better movies, and does absolutely nothing