Before it had a name, the xenomorph of the Alien series had a nightmarish presence. Its gruesome and iconic life cycle, established 45 years ago in Ridley Scott’s Alien, is eternally disturbing. After erupting from a glistening yonic egg sac as a nymph with a scorpion-like tail, the creature attaches to the head of its victim. Then it impregnates the person, plunging a phallic organ down their throat through what appears to be its own mouth—a fiendish kiss. Next, it goes limp, drained by the act. Briefly. Soon after, it emerges engorged from the host’s chest, fatally barging through their ribs. From there, it grows in size, hunger, and menace, killing rapaciously until someone, usually a plucky woman, expels it into the vacuum of space.
In the first two films of the series, the creature offered a buffet of metaphors. At its core, the xenomorph represented the vast unknowability and hostility of the universe, which no amount of human engineering can truly overcome, even on Earth. “The perfect organism,” as one character describes it, also embodied the uncanny, its monstrous intersexuality, bipedal frame, and cold sentience channeling the entire animal kingdom, an omni-chimera. Further still, the beast personified survival, its twisted evolutions and outsmarting of technologically advanced humans demonstrating an impressive resourcefulness.
Thrillingly, these many meanings were enhanced by the people and androids the xenomorph stalked, who had more interiority and personality than typical horror movie fodder and had more blue-collar charm than the standard sci-fi cast of scientists and soldiers. They strutted through the films’ meticulous sets, which narrowed the vastness of space into claustrophobic shafts and tunnels, with the nonchalant swagger of stevedores. From the scores to the editing, Alien and Aliens pulsed with ideas about birth, death, work, and the cosmos, robust hearts of darkness. (Speaking of Joseph Conrad, one of the ships in Alien is named after his novel Nostromo.)
The latest installment, Alien: Romulus, is more of a dusty hall of fame. It takes place between those two films, chronologically, and attempts to restore glory to the storied franchise by going “back to its........