Alien: Romulus Director Explains Why New Horror Sequel Won’t Mess With The Official Timeline
This week we saw the first Alien: Romulus trailer and the new film from director Fede Alverez looks to be exactly what fans of the original sci-fi horror classic are hoping for. While the movie is set after the original Alien, before Aliens, the director promises the new movie won’t mess with the franchise, as he says he took great care to make sure the new movie didn’t upset the series.
Alien and Aliens are two of the best science fiction movies of all time, and that means there are a lot of fans who are both excited and potentially concerned about Alein: Romulus. Setting the film in the middle of the franchise has the potential to mess with the series timeline, but Fede Alverez tells Variety he worked with the directors of both movies, Ridley Scott and James Cameron, to make sure his new movie fit into the timeline perfectly. He explained…
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.
At the end of Alien Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley puts herself in cryosleep and remains there for nearly six decades before she is discovered. Alien: Romulus is set during the period when she is asleep. As the only survivor of the Nostromo, she hasn’t had the chance to tell anybody what’s out there, so nobody is prepared.
With each new Alien movie, including Ridley Scott’s most recent prequels, the mythos of the franchise has changed significantly. It’s one thing to create an origin story for the Xenomorph that may not need to apply to the installments that are set later, but setting a new film in the middle of the old ones has the potential to introduce elements that change the series.
But Fede Alverez makes it clear that he wanted to make an Alien movie and he wanted to make one that felt like it belonged alongside the others. To that end he didn’t just go to the directors of the previous films, he also worked with Aliens VFX supervisor to make sure the Xenomorphs didn’t look drastically different from the way they looked back then. Alvarez continued…
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.
Based on the initial trailer, and what Alien: Romulus details we have, the new movie certainly has the potential to satisfy all fans of the franchise. We’ll find out when the movie hits theaters in August.
