Summary

Success of Alien: Romulus brings revival to franchise.
Romulus sequel must avoid turning Rain into Ellen Ripley.
Explore brother-sister relationship while avoiding a potential superhero status.

The success of Alien: Romulus feels like the Xenomorph franchise is alive and well again. While the previous films following the Ellen Ripley era have offered some interesting stories but nothing has really stuck. It feels like the people working on movies like Prometheus and Covenant tried to go off the beaten path, but perhaps strayed just a little too far. Meanwhile, Romulus returned to what made this franchise one of the best science fiction horror IPs.

While it’s great that Alien: Romulus was good enough to get people fired up and excited about the future of Aliens movies, that renewed excitement and what caused it should also lead to a cautionary tale. Hollywood tends to learn from its mistakes slowly, and when it does learn, studios tend to get a little too over-conversative. They tend to return to the well that provided them success the first time. That’s why Romulus has to, at all costs, avoid becoming too much of a copycat to the original trilogy.

Alien: Romulus Needs Its Own Path

With reports that Alien: Romulus is getting a sequel and that Cailee Spaeny’s Rain as well as her AI brother Andy will be featured in the next film, there’s a minefield that the next flick absolutely has to avoid. It’s going to be very appealing to the studio to essentially turn Rain into a younger version of Ellen Ripley for more reasons than one.

Cast	Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn Aileen Wu
Written by	Fede Álvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Directed by	Fede Álvarez

However, the premise for the Romulus sequel should find a way to stay away from simply turning Rain into an action hero. One of the of most interesting aspects of the newest entry into the long-running franchise is that all of the characters felt like people we’d never really seen in this universe before. Certainly there have been other artificial people before, in pretty much every installment, but even Andy put a new spin on a well-recognized type of character.

One way to avoid going down the Ripley path would be to maybe even come up with a way to do a prequel where the audience sees more of what happened to the Renaissance crew. Though that would obviously make it pretty hard to include Rain unless the movie is going to have some cut scenes showing what she’s doing as the crew is getting picked off one by one.

Assuming the next movie is a true sequel and will pick up shortly after the end of Alien: Romulus there are still some angles that the movie can lean on that allows Andy and Rain to continue to grow and entice the audience without turning into action heroes.

Assuming the next movie is a true sequel and will pick up shortly after the end of Alien: Romulus there are still some angles that the movie can lean on that allows Andy and Rain to continue to grow and entice the audience without turning into action heroes. Without turning into people that suddenly find a way to be almost as deadly an entity as the Xenomorphs themselves. That kind of story arc was interesting for Ellen Ripley, but it loses a lot of punch if it’s done all over again.

One area where Romulus could really mine is the continued brother-sister relationship between Rain and Andy. The audience saw in the last film that while Cailee Spaeny’s character did have some feelings for her synthetic brother, the bond wasn’t complete. She was willing to leave him in order to get off planet and start a new life. She even held that piece of information behind to trick him into helping. But after all they went through, perhaps that bond has strengthened.

That brother-sister relationship could even be mined for a more emotional payoff. Make Rain powerless to stop Andy from getting dismantled by a Xenomorph. Or maybe even have him run into trouble with the people on another world who don’t like artificial people. A run-and-hide story from both Xenomorphs and evil humans could be exciting and would allow Spaeny’s character to stay far away from superhero status.

Leave Ellen Ripley Alone

Not looking like a copycat is just one of the reasons why the Alien: Romulus sequel needs to stay away from Rain being and Ellen Ripley redux. There’s also the idea that Sigourney Weaver has made the character iconic. She’s made it a name that people who don’t watch a ton of sci-fi horror or science-fiction know quite well and at the drop of a hat.

Rain needs to forge her own path. She can’t be seen as an Ellen Ripley redux but she especially can’t be seen as an Ellen Ripley light. That will not only undercut the work that Spaeny has put into her character but also kill any momentum that the Alien: Romulus sequel might have. While this next film shouldn’t go so far off the beaten path that it gets left on the side of the road like Prometheus or Covenant, but it can’t walk the same path so completely that people feel like they’re just watching more of the same.

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