Alien: Romulus’s new popcorn bucket is a missed opportunity

The upcoming Alien: Romulus is jumping on the popcorn buckets trend, but it seems to miss what made its predecessors great entirely.

Custom popcorn buckets are no new thing, but they’ve become easy meme fodder in recent years. The viral success of Dune 2‘s grotesque “wormussy” popcorn bucket has led to more elaborate and complicated designs.

We seemingly peaked with Deadpool & Wolverine‘s horrifying popcorn bucket, with Wolverine’s mouth agape and begging to be stuffed with delicious buttery popcorn.

Alien: Romulus, on the other hand, goes in the other direction and seems to miss the point entirely.

Revealed via Cinemakr’s Twitter/X account, the Alien: Romulus popcorn bucket is really impressive at first glance. It is a gorgeously rendered mock-up of the Xenomorph’s head and has some genuinely impressive paint and detail.

It seems obvious that it would be trying to emulate the Dune 2 or Deadpool & Wolverine buckets in its design, with the popcorn going into the Xenomorph’s mouth. But alas, that is not the case. A lid on the top pops open so you can fill the bucket, then cradle it as if you are carrying around a decapitated Alien.

It’s an odd choice considering the standards that have been set before and the iconography of the Xenomorphs. The image of the Xenomorph with its gaping maw, menacingly staring down Ripley in one of their many staredowns, is an iconic one.

Why would you not just make this popcorn bucket’s mouth open up? You could even detail it with the additional secondary mouth for added detail (or, if you really wanted to please cinema fanatics, as the entrance for a tube to disperse butter through their popcorn).

While the popcorn bucket feels like a missed opportunity to capitalize on what makes the Alien franchise great, it is still an undeniably gorgeous piece of merch for the franchise. No release date has been announced, but they’ll presumably be available in theaters in time for Alien: Romulus to scare moviegoers everywhere.

Plenty of people will be able to hear you scream when Alien: Romulus hits theaters on August 16. Until then, check out all the best movies hitting streaming this month, and you can also see which TV shows to add to your watchlist.