The release of yesterday’s Alien: Romulus trailer seemed to go over very well with fans of the franchise. “Here,” the teaser seemed to be saying, “Is a lean, mean, meat-and-potatoes Alien movie (victims + enclosed environment + aliens) helmed by a filmmaker you all know damn well won’t be skimping on the gore or the practical effects.” What’s not to love?
Well, amongst some fans there seemed to be a small amount of confusion as to how Alien: Romulus would fit into the ever-expanding Alien timeline. We’ve known for some time that Fede Álvarez’s film would be positioned between the first and second films in the franchise, but would it truly be a standalone entry? No monkey business that might, say, invalidate anything that happens in any of the other Alien movies? As it happens, Álvarez sat down with IGN yesterday to set the record straight.
Here’s what he had to say:
“The way this movie works is if you haven’t seen any of them, you’ll have a blast. And if you haven’t seen any of them, I’m actually jealous of you because you go, ‘Wow. Wow.’ Man, you’re in for a ride. Because a lot of ideas that will feel like we just created them on here, they were created by masters of this genre in the past, and I’m lucky enough to be able to do it again.
“So if you haven’t, fantastic. But if you have, I’ve been saying you’ll be that person in the theater that won’t shut up, just talking to the person next to you going like, ‘This is from that movie and that’s from this, and [they said] this because of that reason.’ And you’ll pick up on a billion things that connect with the other movies story-wise, technology-wise and character-wise.”
In other words, longtime fans of the franchise will have their easter eggs to savor, but newcomers won’t need to know all the lore to have a terrifying time at the movies. And as for maintaining the integrity of the other Alien movies, Álvarez says he’s got us covered:
“We went to crazy extents to make sure that things were in canon and we were not contradicting or messing, I would say, any of them. It’s just something very special when you love certain movies and then a movie comes in and makes nods to them and you feel you’re the only person in the theater who must be getting this reference. That’s what it feels like. It’s really tailor-made for you. That’s my goal for the true fans out there, that they will have the experience they’ve been waiting for.”
Very well! It sounds like Alien: Romulus is about as standalone an entry in this series as we’ve ever received, and while many of us found much to love in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, it’s clear – both from the general reaction to those films and the reaction to yesterday’s Alien: Romulus trailer – that a return to the franchise’s comparatively simplistic roots might be just what the doctor ordered.
We’ll find out how it all fits together when Alien: Romulus hits theaters on August 16th. Stay tuned for further updates as they roll in, folks.
