DIRECTOR FEDE ALVAREZ ON REVIVING THE ALIEN FRANCHISE WITH ALIEN: ROMULUS

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

JUST BEFORE ALIEN: Romulus launched in cinemas back in April, the movie’s director, Fede Alvarez, introduced a screening for Empire VIP Club members (sign up now, kids!). Directors’ intros are usually short, straightforward and fairly bland. Not so with Alvarez, who takes a different tack. His parting words to the audience: “I want you to love it, but if you don’t love it… I want you to fucking hate it.”

A few months down the line, it’s clear that audiences erred dramatically towards the former. Alien: Romulus, which tells the story of a group of scavengers stuck on a space station that has Xenomorphed into a deadly hellscape, made around $350 million worldwide, becoming one of the biggest films in the franchise that launched with Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien (of which Romulus is a continuation, taking place inbetween that film and James Cameron’s Aliens).

It’s not been an entirely smooth ride, though, with some pushback over certain decisions made by Alvarez — namely, the use of, “Get away from her, you bitch!”, the payoff line made famous in Aliens, and perhaps more seriously, the introduction of an android called Rook, designed to look and sound like Ian Holm’s Ash, which many thought was an AI creation. (It’s actually an animatronic puppet that was on set, augmented with CG and voiced by a combination of actor Daniel Betts and archive audio of Holm, with the blessing of his estate).

But Alvarez is, if that wasn’t already clear, someone who’s unafraid of speaking his mind, as we discovered when we sat down with the Uruguayan director on Zoom to talk about the film’s reception, those moments, and the art/ science of making E.T.s scary again…

That intro of yours in April has stuck with me. The movie’s made $350 million worldwide; I’m guessing most people loved it. Well, yes. And also, I got what I wanted — I think some people really didn’t like it, right? I don’t resent anybody for hating a movie. I remember going to see The Force Awakens and being really disappointed by it. Like, “Fuck this thing. What is this movie?” And then I rewatched it two weeks later, going, “You know what? That’s exactly the movie they need to do. It was the only way to bring back the franchise.”