Alien is one of our weirder mega-franchises. Ridley Scott’s 1979 original was a nasty claustrophobic thriller that Scott himself once called a “haunted house movie in space.” It was followed by sequels that maintained its slasher format to exceedingly brutal degrees. When Scott returned to usher the franchise into the 21st century, he did something unexpected: He took a sharp left turn into cerebral sci-fi, delivering a ballsy prequel that delivered a cynical interpretation of humanity’s place in the universe. Prometheus and Scott’s even bleaker sequel, Alien: Covenant, were somewhat rejected by audiences who just wanted to watch a gross alien murder a bunch of people. So it makes sense that 20th Century Studios execs, in a panic over preserving one of their last staying pieces of IP, called on Fede Álvarez, whose breakout hit Don’t Breathe was a nasty claustrophobic thriller that practically screams “Hey, this guy could make a solid Alien movie.”

The result, the midquel Alien: Romulus, is a solid Alien movie. But in its sweaty attempts to bring the franchise back to basics, Romulus feels less like its own movie and more like a greatest hits of the Alien series. It’s a well-constructed sci-fi thriller that delivers plenty of gruesome gore and taut set pieces — without any of the bold creative swings of previous films. It’s a movie that is very much a part of the current “rebootquel” phenomenon sweeping Hollywood. And because of that, it’s too creatively cautious to fully embrace all the weirdest, most alienating parts of a truly great Alien movie.

Astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this time-lapse imagery of an aurora dancing through the skies over Earth's polar latitudes in streams of flickering red and green light.

A recent uptick in solar activity has lit up the polar skies with auroras: streams of red or green light that happen when charged particles from the Sun race along the lines of Earth’s magnetic field to collide with the upper atmosphere. This usually happens close to the North and South Poles, but auroras have been visible at lower latitudes several times in recent months. Astronauts aboard the ISS arguably have the best view of all, and Matthew Dominick just proved it.