“When the first trailer for Alien: Romulus was unleashed like a facehugger exploding from an ovomorph egg, fans leapt up in awe due to its instant, throwback feel. The highly claustrophobic and bleak atmosphere, combined with realistic-looking sets and a clear use of practical effects, harked right back to Ridley Scott’s Alien, and from that point, we have all been waiting with bated breath for its release date. To celebrate the arrival of Alien: Romulus, we caught up with its director/writer Fede Álvarez (Evil Dead), to discuss character dynamics, xenomorphs and how he went about crafting a film that could appease both new and old fans of this legendary, space horror franchise!”
STARBURST: In the Alien saga, there’s always a back-and-forth between the lead character and an android. With Alien: Romulus, it’s no different. So, what was it like to work with Cailee Spaeny (Rain) and David Jonsson (Andy)?
Fede Álvarez: Those two were amazing, I couldn’t ask for a better casting when it came to playing those two roles. They are, on many levels, very similar. The dynamics captured on screen are very similar to their dynamics off-screen. Their personalities and how they interact. I would probably say that David is more similar to Andy from the start, as opposed to the company man Andy. It was truly a privilege, what can I say, great actors, that really inject so much life into the characters. When you’ve seen the movie, the evolution and the transformation of seeing Andy going from who he is at the beginning to who he becomes at the end is quite unique. The androids rarely have an arc in these movies, so it was great to see one where an android goes through a full arc.
There are a lot of exciting callbacks to earlier Alien movies. How important was it for you to thread moments like that in, and ultimately, how did you create a film for both newcomers and old fans of the franchise?
It’s not that difficult at the end of the day. With any movie and any new story, usually, particularly in science fiction, when they’re big universes, as soon as the story starts, people are going to be referring to things that have happened in the past. There’s always a backstory, there’s always something that happened before, there’s always other characters. No story starts when the universe started, right? Every story and movie starts at some point in time when a lot of things have happened in the past that will affect the story. This is no different. What changes here is those stories that happened in the past were actually already made into other movies that you can go and watch if you want. But for the newer audience, those stories are for reference, for things that happened in the past, and that’s just the backstory of this movie. So it’s quite simple. I think the key is to make sure that there’s nothing in the movie that references nostalgia, or if you’re in the audience, you just go, “What?” you blank at it, and you feel like you’ve been left out. That would be unfair to the young audience that shows up to this movie. To feel like everybody is reacting to something that they don’t understand. They miss out and don’t understand the movie’s meaning. They don’t understand where the story is going because they haven’t seen the other movies. That would be a shame. So, we tried to build it in a way where you aren’t required to have seen the other ones, but if you have, you just understand better what they’re talking about.
When it came to designing the Xenomorph costumes, you worked with Shane Mahan. How did this collaboration come about, and what did you really want to see from the Xenomorph design within Alien: Romulus?
Well, I knew from day one that I needed to bring back the team from Aliens. Those guys are very active and the best of the best when it comes to practical effects and creature work. So, I knew Shane specifically needed to be involved in the film, and he knows a Xenomorph really, really well. From Aliens, he went off to work on Jurassic Park, and a lot of the classic animatronic movies of the era, and recently a lot of the Star Wars content. However, he hadn’t really gone back to the Alien world in a long time, so he really wanted to go back. He was joking, well, I don’t think he was joking, but I thought he was joking, saying, “I can’t wait to go back and get it right this time.” When these people push themselves so hard, and when they’re trying to do the best work they can, even in movies that we consider to be classics, they look back on them and they go “Ah we should have done this better, we could have done better with this.” He had a lot of thoughts about what he could have done better with the Queen in Aliens. So he brought a lot of those improvements to the Xenomorph on our movie, when it comes to the animatronics. Obviously now there a lot of tools that didn’t exist back in the day, so he could use all of the technology from 2024, and it looks like nothing else people have seen in movies.
Alien: Romulus is in cinemas now. Read our review here
