Alien: Earth just dropped a chest-burstingly good episode ahead of next week’s finale (read io9’s recap here), but fans are just as eager to learn what’s next for the sci-fi series on the big screen. One who would know is Fede Álvarez, who helmed last year’s Alien: Romulus and is closely involved in its sequel. He’s not directing it, but he’s helping choose who does—and he co-wrote the script with a bit of important Alien history in mind.
While some fans (ahem) think Alien 3 is actually pretty entertaining, it is a universally acknowledged truth that the 1992 David Fincher-directed release does two characters from 1986’s Aliens extremely dirty.
After Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), her sorta romantic interest Hicks (Michael Biehn), her sorta adopted daughter Newt (Carrie Henn), and mangled heroic android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) escaped the dreaded LV-426, Alien 3 tells us, they end up crash-landing on a prison planet. Only Ripley survives, aside from a facehugger whose presence is necessary for Alien 3 to retain its expected creature horror.
It’s devastating not just for Ripley but also for the audience, who surely would have liked to see Hicks and Newt carry on after narrowly escaping the terrible fates met by nearly every other character in Aliens. Álvarez, who clearly has a deep love of the franchise, is well aware of this fact, and he wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to the survivors of Romulus.
According to a YouTube video from Epic Film Guys Jeremy (via ComingSoon) documenting Álvarez on a panel at Cincinnati’s recent HorrorHound Weekend, the director feels fans’ specific brand of Alien 3 pain. After explaining he always intended to just direct one Alien entry, he noted:
“But we [Álvarez and his co-writer, Rodo Sayagues] did want to write it. Mostly it’s because we love the characters we created, so we want to make sure no one kills them right at the beginning of the next one… They went and killed Hicks and Newt just like that, and we were like, ‘Hey, let’s not let that happen.’ So we wrote it and made sure they stayed alive, and now we can let someone else make it.”
Good news for fans of Cailee Spaeny’s Rain and David Jonsson’s Andy, who may yet live again—and keep the Alien series streak of exploring unconventional sibling relationships (with Alien: Earth now in the mix) alive too.
After Alien: Romulus proved to be a success for 20th Century Studios, grossing $350 million globally, sequel plans were quickly announced, with its director, Fede Alvarez, thought to be returning.
Turns out that’s not entirely the case, as Too Fab reports that Alvarez will not be coming back to direct the Alien franchise follow-up feature after all. The filmmaker attended the red carpet for Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood and shared, “We just finished the script, actually, for a sequel for Romulus. But I’m gonna pass the torch on this one as director,” and added, “I’m going to produce it, with Ridley Scott, we’re gonna produce it together, and we’re right now trying to find a new filmmaker to come in.”
The script for the Alien: Romulus sequel at least has Alvarez re-teaming with co-writer Rodo Sayagues, who he has long collaborated with on past features, including their Don’t Breathe series and Evil Dead (2013). The Alien franchise is currently experiencing a resurgence in the zeitgeist between Alvarez and Noah Hawley’s current FX series, Alien: Earth.
It will be interesting to see what filmmakers step up to the plate to continue Ridley Scott’s original sci-fi universe. Our only request besides more stories is for Disney to just please bring back Alien Encounter at Walt Disney World so we can have our terrifying Alien meet and greet since you can argue now the Aliens are official Disney royalty, and they can feature prominently everywhere. Hey, the Alien: Earth immersive experience at SDCC was met with a lot of love. We stan the Disney Alien Queen and its offspring’s takeover of the Disney pop culture sphere.
A year ago, Fede Alvarez brought the Alien franchise back to life with the well-received Alien: Romulus. It earned $350 million globally, and 20th Century Studios quickly put a sequel in development, with Alvarez writing and presumed to be directing.
But now the filmmaker has revealed he will not be behind the camera but rather is on the hunt for a new director to take over the franchise that stars Cailee Spaeny.
“We just finished the script, actually, for a sequel for Romulus. But I’m gonna pass the torch on this one as director,” he told TooFab Thursday at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. “I’m going to produce it, with Ridley Scott, we’re gonna produce it together, and we’re right now trying to find a new filmmaker to come in.”
He penned the script to the sequel with Romulus co-writer Rodo Sayagues.
Upon release, Alvarez told The Hollywood Reporter the team had ideas for a sequel to the movie, which ended with its two surviving lead characters heading to Yvaga.
“My philosophy is that you should never make [a sequel] in two years. You’ve got to get away. You’ve got to get the audience to really want it,” the filmmaker said at the time. “If you think about Alien and Aliens, there’s seven years between them. But we definitely have ideas about where it should go.”
Both Alien and sister property Predator have enjoyed renewed interest in recent years, thanks to Romulus and the FX series Alien: Earth, and Predator movies such as Prey and the upcoming Predator: Badlands, which arrives on Nov. 7 and stars Elle Fanning.
Just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be another installment in the Alien franchise, “20th Century Studios” goes and releases Alien: Romulus. In fact, it was among the only “blockbusters” of Summer 2024 apart from Twisters and Deadpool & Wolverine (and no, Alien: Romulus still couldn’t even manage to topple the latter movie from its number one spot at the box office—such is the power of Marvel). So, in some sense, Earth was “clamoring” for a movie of this nature…being that Hollywood refuses to make anything new when it comes big-budget fare. Though they were at least “adventurous” enough to tap Fede Álvarez (known for another “quiet” movie: Don’t Breathe) as the director and Cailee Spaeny as the lead, Rain Carradine. The “Ellen Ripley replacement,” if you will.
Unlike Sigourney Weaver stepping right into Ripley’s shoes after a bit part in Annie Hall and the lesser known Madman, Spaeny actually had a few films under her belt before taking on such a weighty role—having already done so with the back-to-back release of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla and Alex Garland’s Civil War. And yes, she’s been in a blockbuster before, even if it was one that landed with a thud: Pacific Rim Uprising. Later, she took a wrong turn with The Craft: Legacy in 2020 before correcting things with How It Ends the following year. In short, Spaeny has run the gamut of roles before Rain in Alien: Romulus. Which takes place two decades after the destruction the USCSS Nostromo that audiences witnessed in 1979’s Alien. The alpha and the omega of Alien movies. Which is, in part, why Álvarez is so committed to paying homage to it—in addition to remaking Ripley through Rain (another “R” name—and one that Ross Geller famously mocked when Rachel Green suggested it for their baby, replying to her with his imitation of a person with such a name: “Hi my name is Rain. I have my own kiln and my dress is made out of wheat”). Of course, everybody knows that no one can (or will) ever hold a candle to what Weaver did for the part of “leading lady” in Alien, and yet, they can try to present a new-fangled “badass” version of her. Only Rain doesn’t quite come across that way, instead exhibiting the sort of vulnerability and reluctance specific to the current generation. A generation that could never convincingly say, as Ripley does in Aliens, “I can handle myself.”
Rain’s intrinsic fear of, well, everything is revealed from the outset, when her ex-boyfriend, Tyler (Archie Renaux), has to vehemently convince her to join him and the “crew” he’s assembled to enter an abandoned ship with cryostasis chambers that will allow them to defect from the godforsaken planet they’re stuck working on in favor of Yvaga—a planet where the sun actually shines (side note: the planet they’re on has plenty of dystopian Blade Runner flair). The crew consists of Tyler’s sister, Kay (Isabel Merced), his cousin, Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Bjorn’s adopted sister, Navarro (Aileen Wu). Of course, it isn’t that they really need Rain to come along, so much as her adopted brother, Andy (David Jonsson)—who just so happens to be an android old enough to know how to interface with an abandoned spacecraft that’s of “Andy’s generation.” Or close enough for him to understand it.
Still, Tyler does a good job of sweet-talking her into getting some balls by reminding her that Weyland-Yutani is never going to let her leave no matter how much she works, having just fulfilled her contract only to be told that she’s being sent to the mines now (essentially a death warrant), informed she must remain on the planet to work for another “five to six years” before she can again be given the consideration to leave due to a shortage of workers. Thus, as usual, this installment of Alien continues to serve as an undercutting commentary about the callous exploitation of the working class by their oppressive employers. And while Rain might be “Gen Z enough” to lack the same amount of grit as Ripley in the face of adversity, she’s not Gen Z enough to demand a “flexible work schedule” and a “work-life balance” if she’s to be expected to continue working for Weyland-Yutani.
After all, one of Alien: Romulus’ key goals appears to be to maintain as much of the status quo as it can from the previous films, including pronounced “homages” (even to the less beloved Alien Resurrection, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant). Obviously favoring Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens, what with everyone still thrusting so much undue hate upon David Fincher’s Alien 3—even though it yielded one of the most iconic images from the franchise: a xenomorph up close and personal with Ripley, who turns her face away from its dripping, drooling open maw. In fact, that’s the image Álvarez borrows from for his “nod” to Alien 3—even though, in this case, it doesn’t really work because Rain isn’t pregnant with an alien queen and, thus, there’s no way the alien would take its sweet time about appraising her instead of just snapping her up in its jaws.
Elsewhere, some of the exact same lines from previous Alien movies are used as “callbacks” designed to provide “fan service,” though it often feels a bit too heavy-handed. Take, for example, Rook: the same (or a similar) model as Ash (Ian Holm, regenerated from beyond the grave) saying, “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.” Or Andy echoing Bishop’s (Lance Henriksen) aphorism, “I prefer the term artificial person myself.”
Indeed, Andy gets far more venomous discrimination for being a “synthetic” than Bishop ever did—mainly from Bjorn, whose prejudice stems from an android not saving his mother from death in the mines, instructed to help twelve other miners instead by its supervisor, sacrificing the lives of two for the greater good of the dozen. It hardly makes Bjorn’s level of contempt justifiable, with the supervisor being the one to place his rage toward, if anyone.
And, speaking of rage, the perfect opportunity for it to arise (though it never quite does) within Rain comes after another cheesy callback to Aliens, when Tyler teaches her how to use a prototype of the M41A Pulse Rifle the same way Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) taught Ripley to use an actual M41A Pulse Rifle. The latter reacts with far more titillation and gusto to learning than Rain, who still comes off as an overly cautious, scared little girl about the whole thing. In part, that “little girl” vibe compared to Ripley is likely because Spaeny is twenty-six to Weaver’s thirty-seven (when filming the indelible gun scenes for 1986’s Aliens). Granted, Weaver wasn’t much older than Spaeny in Alien, filming it when she was twenty-nine. Even so, she looks older in her twenties than Spaeny does in hers—in that way that all people who were in their twenties “back then” look older than people do now (chalk it up to “healthier lifestyles.” Though mental health has ostensibly been sacrificed as a trade for physical health…).
What’s more, because of the generational divide between the first two Alien movies and the present Alien: Romulus, it’s inherent that Weaver, a product of the time when the films were made (no matter how far into the future it was intended to be), would come across as, let’s say, more tenacious and less fazed by the proverbial horrors—including the ones specific to a human-killing race of aliens. Her coolness under pressure intermingled with unflinching badassery that also exudes an impenetrable “don’t fuck with me” air is something that no Gen Zer (whether on the “geriatric” side of that age group or not) ever stood a chance at emulating, let alone recreating.
Which is why, ultimately, the hardness of Ripley (even in name alone) can’t be usurped by Rain, a moniker that radiates the kind of hippie-dippy aura the aforementioned Ross Geller was talking about. Some might argue that this is a good thing, that it’s long been time for a heroine with “softness” and delicacy anyway. That women don’t always need to imitate the roughness of men in order for their strength to be taken seriously. Sure, that might be true—but it’s not true for an Alien movie.
Good or bad taste is difficult to define, but easy to point out, and Alien: Romulus, from Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez (who famously delivered a fantastic Evil Dead flick over a decade ago), offers a bizarre mix of both. It’s clear that Álvarez wants to hearken back to the analog, tactile sci-fi vibes of the original Alien flicks, with plenty of satisfyingly twisty knobs and low-fi computer screens that will delight any old-school fan. And with a great, young cast that includes Civil War’s Cailee Spaeny and The Last of Us’ Isabela Merced, Romulus feels like it’s courting both the original Alien lovers and a younger, fresher group of potential fans. And it’s fast, too—the two-hour run-time flies by without any filler, and a perfectly paced build-up results in a third act that will have your heart pumping almost the entire time.
But the massive weak point in Romulus’ hull is its reliance on winks, nods, and nostalgia—including one poor-taste cameo that made me cringe every time the character was on-screen. Though I think any casual Alien fan will enjoy the film and miss many of the Easter eggs, there are some egregious references throughout that had my eyes rolling around in my head. Nostalgia is a helluva drug.
Alien: Romulus looks damn good
Álvarez reportedly told the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con crowd that seeing Romulus didn’t require prior knowledge of other Alien films, and that “member berries cannot be the full meal” (a reference to a South Park joke about nostalgia), but I’m not so sure that’s true. From the moment Romulus opens, there are references aplenty—the opening shot shows the wreckage of the Nostromo, the ship from the first film, floating in the empty vacuum of space, for Engineer’s sake.
Though after that, Álvarez swiftly (and smartly) turns the attention to Alien: Romulus’ cast of young adults, who live and work in a dreary, depressing mining colony called Jackson’s Star where it’s always raining and everyone is always sick. Rain Carradine (Spaeny) and her “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), a damaged Weyland-Yutani synthetic reprogrammed by Rain’s late father to protect her at all costs, live a life of indentured servitude—Rain is forced to work in the hopes that she’ll earn enough hours to leave Jackson’s Star and head to Yvaga II, a terraformed planet that’s less miserable.
After a Weyland-Yutani employee denies Rain’s request to go off-planet, she jumps at the chance to change her fate: A ragtag bunch of teenagers (and her friends) discover a “Weyu” ship drifting in the planet’s atmosphere, and they want to fly up and steal its crypods so they can venture out to Yvaga themselves. The problem? They need Andy, who can access all of the ship’s systems, even though his strange gait and stammer indicate that he isn’t in perfect working condition.
Image: 20th Century Studios
Andy and Rain’s relationship is the beating heart of Romulus, played to perfection by Spaeny and Jonsson—from the moment his big, sad eyes appear on screen, I know Andy is going to break my heart. Andy’s affinity for puns, which he struggles to get out due to his stammer, endears you to him within moments, and Rain’s good-natured annoyance at his bad jokes further defines their lovely relationship. Romulus tries to fill out the rest of its character tropes like previous Alien films, with a crass and rude British guy, his grim, no-nonsense partner, a kind-hearted heartthrob, and a sweet (and newly pregnant) best friend, and the young actors all play them well, even if their characters aren’t fully fleshed out. But Rain and Andy? I’d die for them.
Visually, Romulus is as close to perfect as a sci-fi horror flick can get. When the shuttle carrying the teens up to the derelict Weyu ship (which is actually a decommissioned outpost, and, as you might suspect, full of facehuggers) soars upward into the planet’s upper atmosphere, the visual effects dazzle: rain pelts the hull, lightning flashes all around it, and strange, red-orange veins of light run through the clouds. When it bursts through the cloud cover, Rain sees the planet’s sun for the first time ever, and I feel a similar stirring of awe in my gut.
Romulus truly is beautiful, from the cinematography to the set design to the way the iconic xenomorphs look. Álvarez impressively and effectively plays with color, light, and texture (wispy gray smoke, white-hot steam, tar-black blood), and the pitch-perfect mix of practical and digital effects blends iconic Alien iconography with impressive, modern tech. And then there’s the digitally recreated elephant in the room.
Romulus and references
As I mentioned, there are a lot of Easter eggs in Alien: Romulus. The decommissioned outpost (split into two massive sections called Remus and Romulus) is powered by a computer called MU/TH/UR 9000, a newer version of the one running the Nostromo in 1979’s Alien. When one of the motley crew members bullies and denigrates Andy, he stammers back a quote from Aliens, saying he prefers the term “artificial human” just like Bishop told Ripley back then. The outpost’s door mechanisms are the same ones from 2014 survival horror game Alien: Isolation. Hell, even the original xenomorph, the one Ripley blows out of the Nostromo airlock, haunts Romulus—its corpse is suspended from the ceiling in the derelict ship, its acid blood having burnt through several floors and destroyed the place.
But the most egregious Easter egg is a rotten one: a digitally recreated Ian Holm, who played a secret synthetic in the original film that was placed on the Nostromo by Weyland-Yutani to help further the company’s attempts to secure humanity’s fate in the stars by any means necessary. The digital avatar of Holm, who passed away in 2020, looks bad and uncanny almost every time it’s on screen, and the fact that the damaged robot (who goes by Rook in Romulus) is just a torso perpetually leaking the synthetic’s iconic white diagnostic fluid makes it even worse. His appearance is so bizarre and unnecessary (and so prevalent, as Rook has a ton of screen time), that it sours so much of what makes Romulus enjoyable.
Image: 20th Century Studios
From the moment Rook is introduced, I watch the rest of Romulus with my eyes narrowed suspiciously, waiting for another Easter egg to (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not) puncture the fourth wall and boop me on the nose with a “see what I did there?” Thankfully, the cast’s incredible acting and the film’s perfectly paced action effectively distract me from my fear of another reference lurking down a dark corridor. There are several truly gruesome scenes—acid burning off fingers, a facehugger artificially pumping someone’s lungs while attached to them, the gnarly cracking of ribs and spines, and a few brand-new takes on the iconic chest bursting scene—that will delight body horror fans. And all of this action is propelled forward by Spaeny and Jonsson, the latter of whom does such an impressive 180 with his character that it leaves me speechless. Romulus also adds a bit more lore to the franchise, specifically around a certain stage in the xenomorph’s evolution, that gives Álvarez an excuse to put a giant, wet, undulating vagina in the film, just as H.R. Giger intended.
But just when I’ve forgotten about the torso of Holm lurking in a dimly lit corner, when I’ve just been delighted by a zero-G action sequence that involves floating, spiraling acid blood Rain and Andy must avoid while suspended in mid-air, when I realize that Álvarez almost perfectly times the outpost’s countdown timer until it will collide with the planet’s icy ring to the runtime of the film, Romulus comes back around to the references. The proto pulse rifles from Aliens, Rook spouting an exact quote Holm uttered in Alien, Spaeny in her cryo-undies wielding a gun just like Ripley, Andy stammering “get away from her you bitch,” a human/xeno hybrid that makes your skin crawl, a face-to-face moment just like the meme.
Thankfully, Romulus ends strong, with an emotionally powerful, deliciously disgusting final scene with a jump-scare that almost made me pee myself. I just wish that it had the confidence to stand on its own a bit more, rather than deliver nods and recycled lines on a silver platter with a wry smile. Though, whether you’re a fan of the franchise or not, I believe Alien: Romulus is worth a watch—maybe some fans will adore the references, and those who know nothing about Ridley Scott’s legendary sci-fi universe can remain blissfully unaware and just enjoy a well-paced, well-shot, well-acted romp. It’s a win-win in that regard.
The Xenomorph in Alien: Romulus.Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Like the Terminator, Alien is a franchise in which no new installment stands a chance of being the best. The fight here is for third place, behind Ridley Scott’s chilling original and James Cameron’s action-packed sequel. Most of the subsequent efforts have catered to different tastes, leaning more towards cerebral science fiction (Prometheus), bleak character drama (Alien3), or goofy action schlock (Alien vs. Predator). With his first swing at the franchise, Alien: Romulus, director Fede Álvarez makes the daring choice to aim at the dead tonal center between Scott and Cameron’s twin masterpieces. The result is an adrenaline-fueled slasher movie in space that sacrifices the subtlety and creeping dread of the original for more shock, gore and thrilling, fist-pumping violence. It’s a shallower product than either of its inspirations, but it also has its own, distinct energy. It doesn’t totally jettison the franchise’s 45 years of baggage, but when it does, what’s left is a damn good monster movie.
ALIEN: ROMULUS ★★★(3/4 stars) Directed by:Fede Álvarez Written by: Fede Álvarez, Rodo Sayagues Starring: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu Running time: 119 mins.
The setup for Romulus is reminiscent of Álvarez’s own calling card film, 2016’s Don’t Breathe. A group of twentysomethings born into poverty on a corporate-owned mining planet seize on an opportunity to escape their miserable lot. It should be a simple heist—slip aboard a derelict spacecraft, steal the equipment they need to journey to a nicer planet, get out before it crashes. But the vessel isn’t as empty as they’d presumed. There are terrifying monsters onboard intent on either gutting or impregnating them. Will any of these young hard cases live to see their better tomorrow?
Leading this ensemble is Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine, the heist’s most reluctant participant and our obvious Final Girl. Spaeny gives a reliably solid performance, but the real star of the show is David Jonsson as Andy, a glitchy android who she sees as a brother. Andy was programmed to protect her when she was growing up, but now she’s become his caretaker. Their relationship is both charming and discomfiting. Andy adores Rain, but he’s programmed to. He’ll do what’s best for her at every turn, with a smile on his face, but is he also being exploited? It’s an interesting new wrinkle to the Alien franchise’s meditation on artificial intelligence, which has been depicted as either sinister or benign. As Andy, David Jonsson gets to play a little bit of both. The emotional core of Romulus is the way Rain and Andy are each transformed by their nightmare in space, and how it forces them to reevaluate each other.
Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson in Alien: Romulus.Murray Close/Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
This isn’t to say that Alien: Romulus is a predominantly cerebral or even emotional experience. Far from it. After roughly 40 minutes of establishing the characters and setting up potential future calamities, Romulus becomes an unrelenting thrill ride that fulfills every last one of its wicked promises.
Romulus leans harder into being a monster movie than any of its predecessors, and Álvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues seem committed to using the entire monster. Too many Alien sequels speed through the most viscerally terrifying part of the xenomorph’s bizarre life cycle, the “facehugger” stage represented by a skittering arachnid that latches to a victim’s head, forces its ovipositor down their throats, and implants them with their ultra-violent offspring. Romulus, by contrast, gives these little bastards nearly half the movie, allowing them their own chase and stalking scenes. As in Don’t Breathe, Romulus doesn’t move on to its next threat or premise until the last one is completely exhausted.
Cailee Spaeny in Alien: Romulus.Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Álvarez shows admirable restraint in the introduction of the more famous eight-foot-tall adult xenomorph, treating it as an obscure new threat rather than an iconic character whose action figure stood on your cousin’s windowsill. There is a (hopefully, justified) assumption that this will be many viewers’ first Alien movie, and the effort to wring maximum suspense from the premise is valuable even to a longtime fan. The film does eventually make the typical third-act shift from horror to action, but until then, “scary” is prioritized over “cool.”
Nevertheless. Romulus still indulges in some of the worst impulses of the “requel” or “legacy sequel.” An original Alien cast member is digitally resurrected for a small role, and they look absolutely awful. This is the first new Alien film under Disney’s ownership of the franchise, and it seems as if they simply cannot resist employing this technology at every opportunity, regardless of whether or not it adds any value to the story. There are a few other cringy, incongruous nods to the franchise’s legacy that distract from what is otherwise a fully satisfying and self-contained space slasher.
The past decade has convinced audiences to expect less from Hollywood blockbusters, not just in terms of quality, but from how much of a story is told in each movie. At multiple junctures, Alien: Romulus teases a development that seems like a hook for a sequel or spin-off, but Álvarez doesn’t wait until the inevitable next Alien to play all of his cards. Romulus leaves nothing on the table. It is, for a change, an entire damn movie.
Could this be a portent of the franchise’s future? Might the xenomorph—the perfect movie monster—become less like Michael Myers and more like a zombie or vampire, a terror that can be used to tell a variety of horror stories rather than as a foil to a handful of protagonists or as installments in a dense mythology? This possibility is as exciting as the film itself.
Alien: Romulus has a lot to prove when it comes to drawing from the sci-fi franchise’s body of work to produce a film worth another go-around. Fortunately, the director Fede Alvarez appears to have done his homework and a bit of extra credit pulling from the series’ 2014 sleeper-hit video game as well.
In an interview with GamesRadar+, Alvarez revealed that playing Alien: Isolation while filming Don’t Breathe inspired him to make a horror film as terrifying as the atmospheric first-person horror game.
“Alien: Isolation was kind of what made me see that Alien could truly be terrifying and done well [today],” Alvarez told GamesRadar+. “That’s why, at the time, I was like, ‘Fuck, if I could do anything, I would love to do Alien and scare the audience again with that creature and those environments.’ I was playing, and realizing how terrifying Alien could be if you take it back to that tone.”
Alvarez wasn’t just inspired by Alien: Isolation’s tone, he also lifted the game’s visual clues to build suspense and dread for moviegoers. As GamesRadar+ notes, Alien: Isolation has not-so-safe save points in the form of an emergency phone. Instead of providing players safe harbor to panic-save their progress, players are instead greeted with an excruciatingly slow operating time on the phone, leaving them vulnerable to surprise Xenomorph attacks. In layman’s terms, whenever phones appear in Alien: Isolation, gamers reflexively sit forward in their chairs in fear of something untoward happening to their virtual person.
“The movie is set up in a way [that] every time something bad is about to happen, you will see a phone,” Alvarez said. “In the game, every time you knew there’s a phone you’d go, ‘Fuck, I’m about to go into some bad set-piece.’ It’s the same thing here. You’ll see they’re planted strategically throughout the film. When you see the phone, it’s like: brace for impact.”
If Alien: Romulus’ first reactions are anything to go off of, Alvarez knocked it out of the park by playing the series’ hits while also injecting his own flair for ominous practical effects—and gamer know-how, to boot. Alien: Romulus opens August 16.
When you don’t have star power or a massive superhero movie to show off in San Diego Comic-Con’s highly-visible Hall H, you have to get creative.
And Disney and its 20th Century Studios division did just that for its Alien: Romulus panel. A little theatrics — red strobe lights followed by a gurgling man stumbling on stage, then dying from a “chest burster” — and video questions from surprise filmmaker guests such as original Alien director Ridley Scott or filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, among others can go a long way to bolster the already strong clips that were shown.
And if that fails, then you leave them with parting gifts, in this case, rubber alien “face huggers” that were distributed to all 6,500 or so people who packed the cavernous hall of the San Diego Convention Center Friday, many of whom immediately proceeded to take selfies and post the photos to all their friends. Promotional messaging succeeded.
Romulus is the first movie to hit since 2017’s Alien: Covenant and is the first movie to be made since Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019. And while two were made in the 2010s with mixed success, those were also big-budget productions, befitting to the manner which filmmaker Ridley Scott is accustomed.
This new one was directed by Fede Álvarez, the filmmaker behind more modestly-budgeted horror movies, including his hit, Don’t Breath, and stars fresh faces and rising actors such as Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fern and Aileen Wu, all of whom were in attendance Friday, minus the latter.
Alien, of course, is not some new commodity. It’s a revered movie franchise that has had some of the best filmmakers in the director’s chairs, including Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Álvarez said he felt immense pressure in taking on the movie and was standing on the shoulders of giants. But he also said the pressure went away when he was on set, which was very practical and to him, a very real environment.
“The pressure goes away, for me, when you suddenly realize you’re on tiny Weyland (a corporation in the Alien universe) shake and bake colony and every vehicle that goes around is real and the neon sign is from Aliens,” he said. “To be on this real space…”
The cast bonded strongly during the making of the movie, which was shot chronologically. But it also meant a loss when one of them shot a death scene and left the production. And as any Alien fan knows, there is a lot of death.
“It was emotional,” Álvarez noted, “because that person now has to leave and you continued with the rest of the cast. And (the deaths) kept on happening.”
The filmmaker and cast tried to honor those who came before them and for the production, that meant going back to the original designs and even hiring crewmembers such as Shane Mahan, who worked on the alien queen in Cameron’s 1986 entry, Aliens.
Álvarez described his creative process as being tortuous, with him thinking his work stinks much of the time. He believes it pushes him to strive for better results. And that honesty won over his cast.
“We could really trust him,” said Spaeny, who starred in Priscilla and Civil War. “He wanted to do something for the fans as a fan. He was very vocal.”
The filmmaker is chasing a high from film that is elusive, even as he wants to deliver that drug to the audience.
“For me, when you sit down in the theater, the logo shows up, the lights go down, I feel that this is it. This is the one that is going to change my life,” he said. “And it’s kinda crazy because most movies are shit. Five minutes in, you go, ‘This is not going to change my life.’ But for the first five seconds, you do feel that way because it did happen to you. And we all keep looking for that moment.”
And it was the ethos he brought to his set.
“It was important that we all knew that and that we honor that,” he continued. “To give 200 percent. And these kids did that to give you the movie you deserve.”
