Rather, I'm going to focus on a small nitpick -- one that does not have any bearing on how much I liked the movie. (There were also nitpicks that did have a bearing on how much I liked it, which are contained within the last ten to 15 minutes of the film, if you've seen it.)
Today I'm going to focus on an innocuous, completely spoiler-free occurrence in the film's first ten minutes. I won't even really be able to remember the particulars, but I can remember the outcome.
Suffice it to say that two characters make a bet on something, and when one loses, the other says "You owe me five bucks."
My mind immediately went to: Just how gosh darn little is five bucks worth in this Alien future?
In order to consider this properly, we're going to have assume a few things that are probably not safe assumptions. One is that the rate of inflation in this future is about the same as it is today and as it has been for the past 100 years. Another is that when they are talking about "bucks," they are talking about U.S. dollars or a currency with a very similar present-day value to U.S. dollars. In a science fiction movie where people work in mines and live on planets where the sun never comes out, neither of these things may be anywhere close to correct. However, we have nothing else to go on.
But let's say for the sake of argument they are. If so, these two characters bet each other about a nickel. Maybe less.
How do I know this?
Well online I found a handy dandy inflation calculator. You put in a dollar value for a "basket of goods" in a certain year, then choose the next year where you want to find the value of this same "basket of goods." Unfortunately, it only operates between the years 1966 and 2023, but for our purposes this will be sufficient.
So working backwards and trying to get into the range of that $5 amount of their bet, I discovered that a "basket of goods" worth 50 cents in 1973 was worth $5.60 in 2023. I'll explain in a minute why I used that 50-year period, beyond the restrictions of the inflation calculator and 1973 being the year of my birth.
I'm not sure how perfectly this whole thing works, because when I first did the year 1974 -- hoping to do a 50-year range to 2024 -- I got a very different result of $4.85. Shouldn't a later year be closer to today's value rather than further away from it?
But never mind that. What we really want is a ballpark figure here. And by averaging the two years, we can see that inflation has increased this value approximately ten times in the space of 50 years.
If we go back in the other direction another 50 years, back to 1923, and assume the same rate of inflation, that 50 cents in 1973 turns into five cents in 1923. So in one hundred years, the items has increased a hundred times in value.
It may not track for everything, but for a fairly small item, it makes sense. The chocolate bar that would cost you five cents in 1923 would now cost you around $5. Hey, we have $5 chocolate bars in Australia. I've eaten them.
So now let's look in the other direction.
In doing a little research, I found out that the original Alien takes place in 2122. Alien: Romulus is supposed to take place 20 years after that. So that would be about 120 years from now.
If we are considering this same rate of inflation, the $5 2023 amount becomes about $500 in 2123. I think I'd have to be slightly better at math to determine what another 20 years does to that amount, since I'd have to know the rate of inflation year over year, so let's just throw a number out there and say it's $700.
So if these betting Alien: Romulus characters wanted to make a bet that would hurt the loser about as much as a $5 bet would hurt you and me today, they would be betting each other about $700.
But I can see why a line of dialogue "You owe me seven hundred bucks" does not work as well, does not communicate the relative insignificance of the bet as well, as "You owe me five bucks" does. We don't analyze their reality when we hear that line of dialogue. We analyze our own. And we would think "Jeez, why would they bet $700 on something stupid like that. I hope they can pay the rent that month." Because of course, neither can we envision what rent would cost in 2142.
And how much did they actually bet each other, from their financial perspective of the world? Nay, of the cosmos?
About a nickel.
Maybe less.
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