ALIEN: ROMULUS Director Shares New Insight on Film; Says He Worked with James Cameron and Ridley Scott

The first trailer for Alien: Romulus was recently released, and it looked great! I have high hopes for this movie and the trailer definitely got fans excited! It looks like director Fede Alvarez has made a solid new Alien movie!

The story for his film is set in between the events of Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens and if you saw the trailer, you noticed that the style, tone, and story drew heavily from those films. When talking about setting the film those movies, the filmmaker revealed that he made sure to work with the directors of those films to make sure he didn’t mess up the larger mythology of the franchise. He told Variety:

“Alien: Romulus takes 20 years after the first one, and for me, I don’t see it as upsetting the canon. It’s something I take personal pleasure in doing, making sure that it all tracks and is all part of the big “Alien” franchise story — not only in the story, but also when it comes to how to make it. I talked with Ridley [Scott] as a producer, and had long chats with James Cameron about it at the script level. After the movie was done, I showed it to them.

“Everybody’s really important, from the VFX supervisor of Aliens and the guys that make the miniatures, and we hired a lot of them to work on the movie. Otherwise, it’s hard to nail the style and the look and the vibe of a film like I wanted. That was the biggest pleasure of making this movie, to be able to do that whole process.”

When asked how he achieved his goals with this movie and incorporated their foundational knowledge of the franchise, he said:

“Obviously Alien and Aliens are very different movies, but we figured out ways with this story to make sure I didn’t have to choose. There are incredible, smart things [accomplished] in those movies. You really want to push it and create this world, so as a director, you’re not sitting in your chair and just pointing at shit. I do VFX shots myself. I’m puppeteering there with them. In every movie, I think, ‘Okay, this is the one where I finally got to sit down and just point at shit.’ It doesn’t happen. The movies get bigger and I’m still there on the floor getting my hands dirty. And that’s really what Ridley and Cameron told me — the only way to make this movie is you have to be involved at every level. These are very handmade movies from their directors, that’s why they’re so unique. This is not a studio movie where you come in, do your thing and there’s a machine going on that knows how to do them.”

The filmmaker was then asked what the movie has that the other movies in the franchise don’t, and he responded:

“Well, it’s definitely not just me. Roughly there are six years between the movies, so every movie has come out in a different era of filmmaking, so that’s why they’re so different. But for me, it was really taking it back to its roots. I wanted to travel back not just to the style of the original movies, but to the genre of the original movies. I really wanted to go back to the sheer horror of the first film, and to take those elements of thriller that “Aliens” has, and “Alien 3” has as well. We went to crazy extents to keep it pure to the filmmaking techniques of the first movie. But if anybody’s worried, “Is it going to be too retro?” Don’t worry, 2023 will pour through every window. There’s no way to stop the modernity of filmmaking. And from that combination of the best of the classics and the best of today, then you have something new.”

Alien: Romulus follows a “group of young people on a distant world who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” The pitch that Alvarez initially made is said to be a “really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.”

Alvarez is directing from his script written by Rodo Sayagues. Ridley Scott is also a producer on the movie along with Michael Pruss (Boston Strangler) for Scott Free, with Brent O’Connor (Bullet Train), Elizabeth Cantillon (Persuasion) and Tom Moran (The Donut King) serving as executive producers.

Alien: Romulus is set to hit theaters on August 16th.