The Big Picture

Expect a carnage fest in Alien: Romulus with characters meeting terrible endings. Fede Álvarez isn’t holding back on the horror.
The film will show what the Xenomorph does in detail – a slow burn structure similar to Aliens with dynamic characters to invest in.
Filmed in IMAX, the director took out unnecessary footage to create a lean and mean version. Practical effects give an old-school feel.

We’re less than a week away from Fede Álvarez’s sequel, Alien: Romulus. When the filmmaker first completed his director’s cut, it notoriously received high praise from franchise creator Ridley Scott, and has since piqued fan interest with a great looking trailer introducing the doomed crew. While at San Diego Comi-Con, Álvarez sat down with Collider’s Steve Weintraub for an in-depth, spoiler-free conversation about what we can expect from his take on the Alien universe.

Having helmed horrors like the bloody Evil Dead (2013) and the silent killer Don’t Breathe, we knew from the moment he was announced that Romulus would be a carnage fest. But just how much destruction is he putting Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, and the rest of the cast through? Well, he isn’t shying away from it. He tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub, “Probably some of them—a lot of them—will find terrible endings,” and this sequel is going to “show a few times what the Xenomorph does to people when it actually gets to you and you keep rolling, and you keep showing it.”

If Alien: Romulus is high on your must-watch list this year, you don’t want to miss out on the full interview. Álvarez talks kills, orchestrating the Chestburster scene, filming in IMAX, honoring and taking influence from Alien and Aliens, and working with the original effects team from Aliens to bring Xenomorphs back to life with spectacular practical effects work. They dig into so much more of what to expect as far as tone and story structure, as well. Check it out in the video above or the transcript below.

Alien: Romulus While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.Release Date August 16, 2024 Director Fede Alvarez Writers Fede Alvarez , Rodo Sayagues , Dan O’Bannon , Ronald Shusett Studio(s) Scott Free Productions , 20th Century Distributor(s) 20th Century Franchise(s) Alien Expand

Yeah, Fede Álvarez Is Taking Out the Whole Ship – Are We Surprised?
You get a Facehugger, you get Facehugger, and you get a Facehugger!

COLLIDER: One of the things about Alien movies, as you know, is the death scenes. I know that you have this big cast, and maybe one of them is gonna survive—maybe. So what is it like as the co-writer and director trying to come up with iconic, cool death scenes?

FEDE ÁLVAREZ: Like Quentin [Tarantino] said once, “I will reject your hypothesis.” [Laughs] Because if you think about the first movie, most of the kills happen off-camera. You don’t see them. You don’t see a lot of death. They cut right away, but you know how they will go down. But Alien is so interesting; you rarely see the Xenomorph actually murdering someone. You see the inner mouth coming out—boom. Headshot, right? But then you don’t really see it. You just really figure out a way to escape it. I can think of a few, but usually the creature gets to you, and they cut away, gets to you, and cut away. People don’t know. Do they eat you? How did they kill them? And that’s what’s great about it is that you really don’t know, and you rarely see it.

There are other monsters that you know exactly the way they kill. The Xenomorph is really tricky. I mean, I know it will do the inner mouth in your skull thing, that’s for sure. But then there are other ways, and it’s always better in your head. So, everybody has a different idea of what it is. All that said, I guess after so many movies, it got to a point that we probably have to show what the alien does to you [laughs], and we’re probably doing it in this movie. Without spoiling it, we actually got there, and we show a few times what the Xenomorph does to people when it actually gets to you and you keep rolling, and you keep showing it.

Do you know how I know what happens in this movie? Because you’re directing it, and I know the way your mind works, and I know you wanna show it.

ÁLVAREZ: [Laughs] That’s good.

‘Alien: Romulus’ Is Taking a Page Out of ‘Aliens’ Script
Image via 20th Century Studios

How did you decide on the characters that you wanted to portray in this and make all of them dynamic and three-dimensional when you obviously had limited screen time?

ÁLVAREZ: Something I learned making other horror movies, as a writer-director, is I could tell in Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, there were all these scenes about the characters that we wrote because we wanted to know more about them—they all got cut out. [Laughs] They never made it to the final cut. Because with horror, people want to get scared, they want to get the horror, and they want to get to the next kill. Once you enter that roller coaster, it’s really hard to stop it, navel-gazing about, “Who am I?”

If you’re really purist in a way, in the first film—which is funny because you make this film, and everybody goes, “I hope they have great characters, and I hope really flesh them out,” — you don’t know who anybody is. You barely know their names, and that’s it. You don’t know where they’re from, what they like, what they hope in life, who loves who. There were intentions in the scripts for Alien of certain relationships among them, and there never was any time to do it because I think if you’re doing it right, and you’re effective, there’s not a lot of time for that.

All that being said, I think that audiences definitely want a lot more from the stories, and I think we have enough time here because it’s quite a slow burn. The structure is very similar to Aliens in a way, which really takes a while to really get to the horror. But I think by the time you get there, you’re invested in those characters, you want them to succeed, and that’s what makes it so heartbreaking when, unfortunately, probably some of them—a lot of them—will find terrible endings.

You Get More ‘Romulus’ in IMAX
Image via 20th Century Studios

I am a huge fan of IMAX. Talk a little bit about the ratio. Is this one of these you really do want to see in IMAX?

ÁLVAREZ: We didn’t want to make it in IMAX just to be like, “Well, you can see it on IMAX, and the screen is bigger.” We want it to be a different experience. So, for the IMAX version, we went the full aperture. We shot it on cameras that were IMAX certified, and they were almost 4:3, where you have a lot of top and a lot of bottom. All the other versions are just your classic aspect ratio for film. If you go to IMAX, you just get that massive screen, and you get more of the movie, actually, more of the top and bottom, so you get to see a lot more things, and it’s really gorgeous. I mean, nothing beats that IMAX experience. Unfortunately, not everybody’s lucky enough to have an IMAX close to their home, but if they do, they should definitely check it out in IMAX.

I am so happy I will be seeing it in IMAX for the first time. I love talking about editing, as you know. I don’t know actually how long the movie is, but did you have a way longer first cut? Did you have to end up cutting out like 30 minutes? How did that go?

ÁLVAREZ: The first version was probably two hours, 15 minutes, I believe. Then the process that I go through in every movie is the same. I do the first version of the cut and then I go, “Okay, now let’s take out everything I don’t need to tell the story.” You go medieval on the cut. You just butcher everything. You take everything out. That cut was reduced to an hour and a half. Then you realize you destroyed the movie and you made it too short. [Laughs] Then you do the right process, which is the process not of deduction, not to subtract what you don’t need, but to add what you must have. So then you start looking at it as, “What do I miss here? That has to be in there. The other thing we cannot lose.” You bring it back. That process is a way better process for the film. Once we did that, we added Wētā, and we ended up at almost two hours.

So it was basically 15 minutes you cut out of the film.

ÁLVAREZ: Actually, for the physical release of the movie, I was doing the deleted scenes—I wanted to make sure there were enough deleted scenes. There are a lot of extras and there’s a lot of del deleted scenes, but they’re not really technically deleted. I think there might be a couple of deleted scenes, but most of them are extended versions. What I end up doing is you take the scene, and you want this movie to be lean and mean—and with my movies, I always try to make it as lean and mean as they can be—and you just compress it. You manage to make sure there’s no fat there and it is as effective as it can be. So, the story is probably exactly the same. If you compare it with the one-hour-and-fifteen, you watch the two-hour-and-fifteen, and someone else watches the two hours, you won’t find the differences by talking about it. But if you look at it, you’ll see that things just move quickly in some parts, I guess.

Fede Álvarez Goes Old-School With Practical Effects
“Let me show you how movies used to be made.”
Image via 20th Century Studios

One of the things that I’m so excited about is the fact that you’re doing practical and miniatures like old-school filmmaking. Can you talk about why that was so important for you, and which shot or sequence are you just so excited for people to see because it just looks real?

ÁLVAREZ: I knew on day one there were gonna be practical effects. I mean, that’s what I do. That’s what I did on Evil Dead when everybody was doing CG gore all over. I was like, “I’m not gonna do any of that. I’ll go do practical stuff.” Same here. [Laughs] This was a little bit like, “Let me show you how movies used to be made. We don’t do this thing, we do that.” So I knew from the get-go that I was gonna do it the old-school way. That’s the easy part, to say it.

To do it, that’s the hard part. It’s not even the hard part to bring people on, bring the right team to do it right, to build the creatures and make them look amazing. The hard part is making it look amazing in-camera so it doesn’t get replaced by CG in post. That happens a lot of time. A lot of people have the right intentions and they don’t manage to shoot them well, and it doesn’t work. That’s the best compliment I got from the Legacy guys who build most of the creatures. They were like, “Thank god, you figured out a way to shoot them that they look effective and you could keep them in the movie.” But the whole thing is a big collaboration. Everybody’s the best of the best. It’s the old-school guys that brought all these practical effects, ILM and Wētā doing incredible CG that’s invisible in places that you will never see it. That is the right way to do it. But that was a challenge, and hopefully you feel that we succeeded.

As far as the scene, there are many. I think one of my favorites, because it’s all pure old-school puppeteering, is a Chestburster. That was just a joy to see happening. The complexity of it is nine people puppeteering that thing. It takes so much time and love and effort to do it right, but I’m super proud of that scene.

What Do You Think — ‘Alien’ or ‘Aliens’?

This is the Star Wars: Empire question. Do you prefer Alien or Aliens or the extended cut?

ÁLVAREZ: At the panel yesterday, Ridley [Scott] showed up and asked me to rank all the Alien movies. I think there are two different questions. One is, “What is the best one?” And the other question is, “What’s your favorite?” See, mine, I have the same answer. If you ask me, “What’s the best Back to the Future movie?” One. “What’s your favorite?” I’d say two. I guess it’s similar here. [Laughs] Which is the best one? Alien. Which is my favorite, the one that has a place in my heart, it’s probably Aliens because of a generational thing. I saw it first.

There’s no wrong answer with Alien and Aliens.

Alien: Romulus is taking over theaters on August 16.

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