Alien: Romulus - Fede Alvarez on Reviving the Franchise's Horror Roots

Hi, I'm Allison with FlickDirect, and I am here with Fede Alvarez to talk about Alien Romulus. Tell me the conversation you had with Sir Ridley Scott about, I want to write and direct an Alien film. Well, it wasn't that way. I asked his permission, actually, to write and direct. I just, I approached it as a fan, as a filmmaker, as a fellow filmmaker.

There was a movie that I had in my head that I would love to be able to do, which basically was going to take Alien back to its beginnings, against its horror roots and the simplicity of those first two movies, really, Ridley and James Cameron films, and to try to really make a movie that evokes the feelings that I went through when I watched those films originally, and Ridley was completely on board with that and has been, you know, the best collaborator one can have making this movie.

Why was now the right time? Why was now the right time to do it? I think because it's been enough time that happened, and I think for a lot of, there's a new generation out there that doesn't know about it and haven't seen any of them, and I just can't wait to introduce them to all these amazing ideas, right? Like, in a way, it's a movie that took 45 years to make, and all the ideas that are there, they were born through all this year, plus new ones, right?

So I just felt that there's a new generation that wouldn't know what it is or haven't seen them, and I just can't wait to show it to them. And what did Ridley Scott? What did Ridley Scott say to you that gave you more inspiration or made you think about it a little differently than maybe you did originally? There's a couple things. I mean, but one of them was he felt that the creature had lost his juice after so many movies that it might not be as scary as it was before, and he wasn't wrong.

I think it needed to be presented in a new way. It needed to be reintroduced. It needed to be reintroduced with all the mystery and magic that it used to have instead of overexposing it. So that was a big part. And then really another part, he's always insisted on that, and on the writing level, it's always all about never underestimate your audience, and he always says, never, always elevate, never dumb down.

That's what Ridley says all the time. Very smart. The effects were so, from what I saw, were just so great. Why? Because it was so practical, and what were the drawbacks and what were the advantages? Just, I mean, I fell in love with movies watching behind the scenes in the 80s of how movies were made, and everything you saw behind the scenes was real.

You saw real creatures, real sets. You know, maybe once in a while you would see some green screen, but that wasn't a thing back then. So once, you know, when it was my turn to make movies, you want to make them the way you learned how to make them, the way you saw people were making them. So that's why probably there's, the tendency usually of trying to make it with more old school techniques.

I do believe for horror, nothing beats the real thing. You see the real thing, not only you as an audience, but the actors have them right on their faces, and you can see it on their performances, that they're truly intimidated by the presence of these things. And I just feel it's just way more effective. The drawbacks, it's just a lot harder. It's just a lot harder to do.

It's way easier to, you know, film you there, pretending there's someone next to you and say, "Hey, cut and move on and let the CG artist down the line to put the, paint the creature in there." It's definitely way easier for us on set. Not easy for the CG artists, but easy for people on set. And for us to do it this way, it's just way harder. But like they say, you know, movies are easy to make, are hard to watch.

And so this was not easy to make at all. If they asked you to come back and do a number eight, would you do it and why or why not? Yeah, absolutely. Look, in order to make sense, usually it has to do with the characters. And if you want to follow these characters to more stories. So in order for that to happen, first, we have to see if anybody survived this movie.

It has to be characters alive to be more. If you were in a room with them, would you survive? Yes. All right. I wrote the story, so I'll make sure that I survive. That you survive. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. I can't wait for audiences to see it. Me too. you