Fede Álvarez on Alien: Romulus

The 77th edition of Edinburgh International Film Festival kicked off last night with the UK premiere of The Outrun. Last night also saw EIFF launch its new Midnight Madness strand with Alien: Romulus, the latest film in the long-running Alien series which feels like it's had almost as many outings as EIFF (this is the seventh film in the franchise; ninth if you count the two Alien vs Predator spinoffs). 

After two visually striking, philosophical and slightly convoluted entries from Ridley Scott (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant), Alien: Romulus is a much more nuts-and-bolts horror that takes place a few decades after the events of Scott’s original film (released 1979), and a few decades before James Cameron’s bombastic Aliens (released 1986). 

The film centres on Rain (Cailee Spaeny), a young woman who’s trapped in a contract working in a grimy mine on some godforsaken deep space colony where the sun never rises. There’s also her “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), an android saved from decommissioning by Rain’s father who has one prime directive: do what’s best for Rain (although Andy is somewhat defective, and more often it's Rain who has to take care of Andy). Along with a few more misfit pals from the colony, they decide to break into an abandoned space station that’s drifted into their planet’s orbit and plunder its cryogenic chambers, which will allow them to escape the colony. But, you guessed it, there are some terrifying xenomorphs on board. 

Alien: Romulus is directed and co-written by the talented Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez, whose 2016 breaking-and-entering horror Don’t Breathe is still one of the best genre films of the 21st century. His take on an Alien flick is at its best when it’s a breakneck cat-and-mouse thriller, and at its worst when it's shamelessly crowbaring in references to the earlier films. 

The EIFF screening last night was initially billed as the UK premiere. Quite the coup! But it turned out 20th Century Studios, owned by Disney, changed their mind and went for a more traditional premiere in London instead and didn’t bring director Álvarez or any of the young cast up to EIFF’s screening. So ahead of this downgraded Scottish preview, I had a quick chat with Álverez via Zoom from London, where he told me about his interest in centring an Alien film on younger characters and taking notes from the delightfully cantankerous Ridley Scott, who produced the film.

The Skinny: You were born in 1978, so you’re essentially the same age as this franchise. When did you first encounter Alien and this world?

Fede Álvarez: I think it's probably when I was 12 years old. I found Aliens first. They put out the VHS to push the promotion of Alien 3. So I watched that first, thinking it was going to be some sort of Star Wars type of movie. And for the first hour of Aliens, you could actually believe that. It starts as a space adventure. But then at the midpoint of the movie, when they reach the Hive and all hell bricks loose, you realise this is not Star Wars.

I completely remember watching that with a smile on my face, but terrified at the same time, thinking I had just discovered a world I'd never seen before. It was violent and scary. You know, one of the marines you love at the beginning just gets set on fire and falls down a shaft, and I was like, 'Oh my god, this is completely violent and crude, I love it!' And after Aliens I watched the first one on television, and then soon enough Alien 3 came out. So I think I got a dose of all three back-to-back in the same year.

One thing that connects Alien: Romulus to previous films of yours like Don’t Breathe and Evil Dead is that they’re focused on working-class kids getting up to mischief. Why do you think you’re often drawn to those types of characters?

I've always been fascinated with characters that age. I think that's when we have our last stretch of major change; I think whoever we become at that age is who we are for the rest of our lives, usually. So it's more believable, for me at least, to see someone have some sort of radical change at that age, and the events of the movie will impact their life forever. 

I also think young people work better with horror. For me, horror is more effective when the characters are at that age. And it was funny, I realised while making this film with younger people how Alien is the total exception to the rule. Like, Alien is one of the few horror movies where the protagonists are older. There's nobody particularly young, right? You could argue that The Exorcist has a lot of older characters, but at the centre of it you have a kid. I mean, obviously Sigourney Weaver and Veronica Cartwright were in their late 20s when they made that movie, so it still has that element, but most of the characters are a bit older, so Alien is really the rare example.

From the very beginning, it was one of the things that I thought could make my film distinctive. This hasn't been done before with Alien films, and it will just put a new spin on it, and make things feel different, right? Even when we play some hits – I could play some hits from the earlier films and make them feel different.

I was also interested in the class aspect. Class has always been central to this series, if you think of Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto's characters arguing about overtime in the first film, or the fact that there is this Weyland-Yutani Corporation controlling everybody’s lives. And that’s really central in your film: your characters are essentially all indentured labour that's trapped on this planet by the company.

As a writer, you write from what you know, and that's where I come from. I was born in a third-world country during a dictatorship – that's Uruguay in the 70s and part of the 80s. And even when I was a teenager and the dictatorship was done, the mentality was still one of no future and limited choices, and that you got fucked by the government. That sounds very specific, but it's a universal feeling. Everybody, everywhere, for the most part, shares that feeling that you grew up in the wrong place, with very limited options, and there's an establishment that controls your future, and there's nothing you can do about it. ​​And that's really what the monster comes to represent in this movie.

The ship and the monster and everything they have to go through to get a better life, it's a whole representation of that teenage angst that's about trying to break free and to get to a better future, but there's so much stuff in the way that will make it impossible. For me thematically it's just fitting and supports the story.

 
Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson in Alien: Romulus

Another thing that’s a little bit different is that in your film this group of people are all friends or related in some way. Some are lovers, some are siblings and cousins, and they’ve all known each other for years. That makes the dynamic different when people are being picked off one by one.

Absolutely. Hopefully you felt that way. In the other movies, a lot of times they're just colleagues, and when someone dies, it's a bit like, 'Woof, that guy is gone I guess. OK, let's move on.' You know, it's not a big tragedy. I thought it could make it harder on everybody if these people are really close. There are a few moments where these characters look each other in the eye for the last second before they're gonna die, and it's way harder. The audience usually cares for the character as much as other characters care for them. If no one cares for the character in the story, then, well, it's fine, because death is bad for the ones left behind, not for the ones who died. So that was something I was confident about: it would make for a more intense ride if they cared for each other.

I also like how you’ve created this really grubby, handmade world that feels a little bit less hi-tech than some of the other Alien movies. All the technology is dirty and falling apart. 

I think it's realistic as well. I don't know why in movies we think that once there's a colony in space, it's going to be some sophisticated, futuristic thing. I don't think it's going to be any different than a mine in the desert right now on some remote location on Earth, or you know, an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. They tend to be miserable situations, right? Those are not highly desired jobs, so everybody who goes there are usually people who have no choice. So these are people whose parents have said, 'OK, I gotta go to this colony to look for new opportunities.' So I wanted these kids to be the first generation born there.

There's a conversation you catch at the very beginning when we open on the colony. There's a father arguing with his son, and his son says, 'I didn't ask to be brought here.' And the father screams back at him, 'You have no idea how lucky you are'. And we don't know, the conditions on Earth could be way worse. I felt that made it real and they're both right. I think the parents are probably right that they're lucky to be there and the kids are right to feel like they were fucked over by being brought there.

You clearly love this franchise, and you've filled this film with lots of callbacks to the earlier films, some small and some really big. Obviously you want to make something that feels fresh and original, but these references also celebrate the history of this beloved franchise. How did you find that balance?

Well, I honestly think more about the young audience, the new audience, than the fans. Because I am a fan, I know that I'm never going to write something that, as a fan, I would hate to see – something that's pandering or too obvious or just played exactly the way the original movies played. I wouldn't be happy with that. I'm a fan, and I'm from that generation, I grew up with it, so naturally the only thing I can do is write something that I will enjoy. I really focus on thinking I'm telling the story to someone who's never heard of Alien before. 

That's the exercise while I'm writing: I imagine once upon a time, there was this ship, and it has to be a story that's from scratch and that you can understand if you've never heard [of the franchise] before. And I have the privilege that I can take all these amazing ideas and concepts from all these other movies and I had all these masters that did all this trial and error for 45 years, you know, from many movies. They tried things and I can now, with perspective, look at them and see, well, that worked, this is dated, this didn't age well. It's a total privilege to have that history, so it makes the work way easier, in a way. And so that's really what I do. 

I have to ask you about working with Ridley Scott, who's such a fascinating character. I love his bullshit-free attitude in interviews. He's the rare exception of someone from Hollywood who says exactly what he thinks. He's one of the producers of Alien: Romulus. How was he to work for?

He was great. Honestly, I was terrified because of the reasons you mentioned. When I sent him a script or when I showed him the movie, I was always terrified, because I knew he was going to tell me the truth right away. You know, whether he liked it or not, he was going to be blunt and to the point, but he's been super nice with me and super respectful.

He was honest and gave me his notes and the things he thought needed to change or be better, or that he thought I should remove or keep in the movie, stuff like that. And a good, strong producer should do that for you, they should save you from yourself. So he was really direct and strong with those things, but I'm a stubborn man as well.

There were many things that I thought he was wrong about, and many things I thought he was right about, but that's the beauty of it, you meet in the middle; together you try to find the truth of the film. Me from my seat as the writer/director, and him from his seat as producer. And it was truly a privilege. I can tell you: when you go and sit down with Ridley Scott, you get an hour of his time but it is a year of film school, you know? If you truly listen and are open to understanding why he says, it's a total privilege.

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Alien: Romulus opened EIFF's Midnight Madness strand and is on general release now