Alien movie director Fede Álvarez, who is at the helm of major new sequel, Alien: Romulus, has confirmed the film relies on a much-loved style rarely seen anymore in Hollywood.
The seventh official instalment in the seminal sci-fi franchise, Alien: Romulus is the first Alien movie since Sir Ridley Scott’s two-story continuation courtesy of 2012’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, which came out in 2017.
While the latter might not have wowed audiences, Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens sequel are stone-cold classics from four decades ago, and it’s back close to this timeline that Álvarez has returned, with as much terror, gore and gruesome alien attacks as you could want.
The Uruguayan Evil Dead filmmaker teased footage, specially cut to avoid spoilers, ahead of the film’s general release earlier this summer, lifting the curtain a little on the making of the movie.
Following in the footsteps of Sir Ridley and Cameron with the franchise, Álvarez revealed that for Romulus he kept very involved in the full production process, from puppeteering Facehuggers to even sorting a few VFX shots himself.
He also shared that his rule of thumb was ‘if can be done practical, it will be done practical [sic]’, meaning that there were no green screens on set and limited CGI – even down to CG shots of the spaceships, which are scans of handmade miniatures.
This is something that has already wowed fans upon seeing Alien: Romulus, which delivers all the genuinely scary extra-terrestrial terror you could want thanks to its state-of-the-art Xenomorph animatronics, among other practical effects.
For Álvarez, immersion in the story for the audience – and believability of the special effects – is everything, which he feels puts him at odds with other blockbuster directors in Hollywood today.
‘Ideally, we fool you, which is what I think movies to a certain extent have stopped trying to do,’ he told the audience, including Metro.co.uk.
Expanding on his reasoning, he pointed to the CG-heavy superhero movies that have dominated cinematic releases for the past two decades.
‘Maybe because it’s a different thing, I don’t know – not to go at Marvel or DC movies but I don’t think they try to be photorealistic.’
Praising them as ‘fun and colourful’, Álvarez nonetheless pointed out that ‘no one is trying to get you to believe the creature or whatever it is, is in there’, something which he believes ‘the best movies used to do’.
‘The special effects movies used [to provoke a reaction of] ‘Wow, I can’t believe I’m seeing this!’ And it seems like those movies have given up for the most part,’ he continued. ‘But we haven’t, which has been an enormous task for us, to really push everybody involved in understanding that particularly with Alien, you need to believe that what you’re looking at is real.
‘Otherwise, it just doesn’t work.’
The writer-director, who confirmed there are stop motion shots in Romulus as well, also argued that Hollywood can often be ‘lazy’ in opting to use CGI over practical effects as it’s quicker and ‘saves you a headache on set’, even if it’s more expensive.
However, for Álvarez, it also means he would miss out on ‘the joy of seeing it happen’ on set.
In the Alien franchise, of all its various gruesome creatures, which also includes the Chestburster iteration, the towering, double-jawed fully grown Xenomorph is the most iconic.
Asked how this was tackled for Alien: Romulus, the director confirmed it was a blend of an animatronic – seen in shots requiring facial animation – as well as using a stunt performer in a suit.
Nigerian performer Bolaiji Badejo was the first person to embody the titular alien creature, at six feet 10 inches tall, for the original 1979 space horror classic.
Photos of him wearing the suit with the head off and on set with fellow crew members have become part of film lore for they appear so striking – humanising one of the most terrifying monsters in movie history.
Álvarez will undoubtedly thrill fans by revealing Romulus has also used this technique over any CGI, and he also recalled his bizarre first experience of seeing the Xenomorph stunt actor fully suited up.
‘When you see them walking in it’s always funny because someone’s having to bring [them in], holding them, because they don’t see s**t,’ he laughed.
‘I saw the pieces, I hadn’t seen the guy in the suit, and of course I bet my whole career that the guy in the suit is going to look great! Because that’s what we all want to see.
‘And then they bring the guy in by hand and the alien head bumps everything.’
It may have dented the scare factor somewhat for Álvarez, but as he added: ‘That’s why movies are all about point of view and putting the camera in the right place, but it was hilarious to see it like that.
‘Part of the art of this is to know how to shoot them.’
Romulus, which takes place between the events of Alien and sequel Aliens – both of which are set in the future – follows a group of young space colonists who, while scavenging a derelict space station, come face to face with the most terrifying life form in space.
It stars Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine, Industry and Rye Lane’s David Jonsson as her brother Andy, a synthetic (android), Kay as played by Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn’s Bjorn, Aileen Wu as Navarro and Archie Renaux – known for Netflix series Shadow and Bone – as Rain’s ex, Tyler.
And as Álvarez put it simply at the screening: ‘Things are going to go really wrong for them.’
Alien: Romulus is is in cinemas now.
This story was first published on June 19.
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