Alien Romulus, the latest iteration of 20th Century Studios’ sci-fi horror franchise and the first since Disney took over, desperately wants to please its fanbase. At its best its characters and situations cover the faithful like a warm, familiar blanket. At its worst it grates on one’s nerves by becoming either much too familiar for comfort or – even more egregiously – slavishly observing one element of Alien lore while mindlessly contradicting another. As a whole the film is both irritating and frustrating: irritating because it keeps making bad creative choices, and frustrating because one solid rewrite could have easily fixed every problem that derails it.

As a science fiction film in its own right, I would not recommend you rush to see it. As an instalment of the 45-year-old Alien saga – Predator meet-cutes excepted – I would personally rate it as sixth-best out of seven. It is not very good, but it is no Alien Resurrection thank goodness.

Orphaned colonist Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaney) works in the mines of the hellish planet LV-410, living with her adopted ‘brother’ Andy (David Jonnson): a reconditioned artificial person. Trying to leave but trapped under a punitive corporate contract, she teams up with a group of friends to raid an orbiting derelict station for supplies. Once onboard, misfortune traps them there with the remains of a dangerous experiment abandoned by the company.

Writer/director Fede Álvarez clearly loves the Alien movies. Arguably he loves them a little too much. While early scenes suggest a broader fictional universe than the claustrophobic terrors of the previous films, as soon as events shift to the twin stations of Romulus and Remus it all becomes a constant remix of previous Alien films. I literally mean all previous Alien films. Whether your taste runs to Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), or even Prometheus (2012), Álvarez has included a reference, an homage, a narrative link, or literal lines of dialogue. Regarding the latter, the first time (‘I prefer the term artificial person myself’) it is actually rather cute. By the time Álvarez is shoe-horning in ‘Get away from her, you bitch’ I promise you will be wanting to reach into the screen and give someone a slap.

Even if you appreciate the extended fan service, you will likely trip up over the contradictions between this film and earlier iterations. Never has an alien gone from facehugger to chestburster to fully grown xenomorph with such rapidity – we are literally talking minutes. The trademark acid-for-blood no longer goes inert when the creature dies, which has a direct bearing on the plot, and will surely annoy the hardcore.

One addition to the film bears particular criticism, but is difficult to talk about without spoiling the plot. Suffice to say that the use of CGI to puppeteer dead actors into life – even for cameos – is as galling now as it was when Lucasfilm included Peter Cushing in Rogue One.

To his credit Álvarez does know his way around an action scene, and the design team have done an excellent job of replicating the broken-down old-fashioned technology of the original Alien. Romulus is a handsomely-presented film, and if your tastes run to style more than substance you will likely have a better time here than others. The one key exception comes during the climax: you will know it when you see it, and nothing in the entire franchise has ever looked quite as silly.

The cast are generally solid, although the majority are working with parts so thinly written that their names may as well be Dies First or Gets Implanted. Cailee Spaney does an excellent job with the film’s richest character, but it is David Jonnson who is the absolute stand-out as Andy. The story allows significant shifts in his character, and the chance to play a particularly complex individual.

For me the beauty of the original three Alien films was how each director – Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher – were able to imprint their own specific aesthetic and tone to the concept. Each film was strikingly different, while still forming a cohesive whole. That process wobbled badly the fourth time around – mainly due to a tonal mismatch between writer Joss Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet – and to my mind suffered from Scott’s return for the underwhelming diptych of Prometheus and Alien Covenant (2017). Here the idea has been abandoned entirely. Had Álvarez contributed more of his own ideas and less of other people’s, Alien Romulus might have had a better chance of creative success. As it stands, the film is 21st century Disney in a nutshell: revive an existing property, offer variations of the same content, market it all to hell, and forget about the art: this is pure commerce.