If you ask anyone who enjoys the Alien franchise, they all have their choice in tone and style.
From the more slasher-inspired world of Ridley Scott to James Cameron’s seminal action horror, there’s something for everyone, but it seems to be a harsh divide. That’s why filmmaker Fede Álvarez wants to blend those worlds with Alien: Romulus.
The question was proposed if the film was more Alien or Aliens, and Álvarez addresses it. “To ask an Alien fan to choose between them is a perverse question,” he tells Empire. “So I thought, ‘How do I do both?'”
“There’s a moment where the characters are walking around areas familiar from the Nostromo,” says Álvarez. “Then they cross through that building and on the other side: boom! You’re in a hallway that looks like Hadley’s Hope [from Aliens].”
The film touches on the family bond dynamic opened in James Cameron’s Aliens. He opens up about Cailee Spaeny’s Rain and David Jonsson as her android foster brother Andy. “When her father was dying, he left Andy to be a kind of caretaker,” explains Álvarez. “But Andy is a bit damaged, and he’s an older model. So more than a surrogate father, he becomes a younger brother to her. And that was always the heart of the story: this relationship between the two…and how that relationship unfolds once shit hits the fan.”
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We’ll see where the hybrid style lands us when the film opens this August.
“While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonisers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”
Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim: Uprising, Priscilla) leads the cast of the film alongside David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu.
Alien: Romulus arrives in cinemas on August 16th.
