ALIEN: ROMULUS
YOUNG GUNS
THE ALIEN FRANCHISE IS GETTING AN INJECTION OF YOUTHFUL VIM WITH ALIEN: ROMULUS . WE SPEAK TO FEDE ALVAREZ AND STARS CAILEE SPAENY AND DAVID JONSSON ABOUT A FILM THE DIRECTOR DESCRIBES AS “A PUNCH IN THE FACE THAT YOU CANNOT IGNORE”
WORDS: IAN BERRIMAN
Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson and Fede Alvarez on set.
IF ANY FILMMAKER IS LIVING their best life right now, it’s surely Fede Alvarez, whose directing career has taken a path he couldn’t have dreamed of back when he was shooting lo-fi shorts on a shoestring in Montevideo.
A decade on from reviving one beloved horror franchise with Evil Dead, he’s now been given a crack at another, awakening the Alien franchise from another of its periodic slumbers in cryo-stasis – an opportunity he describes as a privilege. “It’s a world of ideas that I love so much,” Alvarez tells SFX. “To be able to go and play in that universe, it’s just totally once in a lifetime.”
The notion was first floated after Alvarez finished work on Don’t Breathe, his 2016 film about three burglars who bite off more than they can chew when they break into the home of a blind Gulf War veteran. “[Producer] Tom Moran asked me what I would do if I could do anything,” Alvarez recalls. “And I said with no hesitation, ‘I would do Alien.’” This led to a meeting with Michael Schaefer, who was then president of Ridley Scott’s production company Scott Free.
“I pitched them what is still very true to where this movie is today, just as a pure fan,” Alvarez explains. “Mostly the idea of taking it back to its horror roots: the beautiful simplicity of that, and the steps that you put the audience through when you tell that sort of story.
"Not that Prometheus and Covenant didn’t have horror in them – they had horror elements. But in a very strict screenwriting structure, from that standpoint, they’re not horror movies. And I thought what I would want to see is the simplicity of going back to the beginning of what this franchise is.”
“They’re living on a mining colony, there are no resources left, there is no future there”
With Scott Free occupied on Alien: Covenant at the time, there was no immediate prospect of the idea progressing. But Scott heard the pitch, and “it kind of stayed in the air”. Then, a couple of years ago, Alvarez got a call from 20th Century Studios boss Steve Asbell. “He said, “Is it true that you said you wanted to do an Alien movie, and you had an idea? Do you want to write and direct it?’ And I said, ‘Fuck yeah!’”
The director nutshells the storyline he came up with: “There’s a bunch of young kids from this colony. They go into this station to try to get something that will be their ticket to escape to a better life. And things go really wrong for them…”
The derelict space station, which is dragged into the orbit of a gloomy, rainswept colony world called Jackson’s Star, is named Renaissance. And that group of scavengers comprises six characters. Cailee Spaeny (who played aspiring photographer Jessie in Civil War) is Rain. David Jonsson plays Andy. The line-up is completed by Tyler (Archie Renaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Navarro (Aileen Wu) – a character we’d advise against getting too attached to…
The age of the leads is something that immediately leaps out. All six were in their twenties when principal photography commenced at Budapest’s Origo Studios, with David Jonsson, at the ripe old age of 28, practically the veteran. “He is completely the old man,” laughs Spaeny, a whole four years his junior, when SFX mentions this to her. “And we definitely let him know that when we were filming the movie.”