Ep. 248:'Alien: Romulus' Review and the Future of the Franchise

On episode 248 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch contributor Josh Parham to breakdown the various films in the Alien franchise and then give their thoughts on the latest entry, Alien: Romulus.

For listeners of last week’s episode, which covered the films of 1979 via a Oscar retrospective, you would’ve heard the team was really high on Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, Alien. Known as one of the most celebrated films of the 1970s, as well as one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made, Alien set a standard of excellence for the sci-fi horror genre that everyone has tried to recreate. The film then spanned many sequels, prequels, spin-off films going on for the past 45 years. Ryan and Josh discuss their relationship with the franchise, their favorite and least favorite things about each film, which includes Alien, Aliens, Alien3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and the two Alien vs Predator films. Once they’ve gotten through all of those titles, they jump right into a SPOILER-FILLED conversation about Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus (review here by Sophia Ciminello), which is a low stakes prequel set between the first two films in the franchise and stars Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson. While the film provides some decent kills, Ryan and Josh give their full thoughts on how disappointed they were by this film, and how they don’t know where the future of this franchise will go after this confusing, wasted entry left things off. It’s a very in-depth conversation we hope you like.

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This podcast runs 1h56m. We will be back on the next episode to preview the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. Till then, let’s get into it.

Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).