Director Fede Alvarez has opened up and shared more about what inspired his story and vision for Alien: Romulus! While making the rounds for interviews, having one such chat with GamesRadar, Alvarez explained that one specific shot from the Aliens: Special Edition inspired a thought in his mind which acted as the basis for his Alien movie - what would it be like for young colonists, growing up in a Weyland-Yutani shake-n-bake colony? This suggests that the 6 scavengers we know about who embark on a mission to steal materials from the abandoned Weyland-Yutani Romulus station are in fact young adults who grew up in a Weyland-Yutani colony! This would make sense and also explain how they come to learn about the abandoned station and its whereabouts.
As Fede explained:
She’s a younger character. All the characters are very young. That was inspired by the beginning of the extended cut Aliens. There’s a shot that really inspired the whole story, where you can see all the kids running around the corridor on Hadley’s Hope. I always thought, “Wow, what would it be like for those kids to grow up in a terraforming colony that still needs another 50 years to be habitable? You’re probably going to take the same job as your parents. What’s the hope?”
I thought: “Wouldn’t it be great to catch up with those characters?” Not exactly those characters, but that type of young kid, growing up in a Weyland-Yutani shake-and-bake colony, and see how their life would be when they reach their early 20s. What do they want out of life? Do they want to stay there, and do what their parents did – work the mines, work the farms – and that’s it? Or do they want more out of life?
That was what kickstarted the whole journey of this character. It was something I was always fascinated with. Maybe it’s because I’m from Uruguay and the idea of growing up in a place where you know how far you can get, and the things that happen there, and the things that will never happen there. So at the time, I always connected with those characters.
Fede further touches on his disdain for poor quality CGI and doubled down on his remarks about utilizing practical effects anywhere he could for this movie:
We went to crazy extents in this movie to do things practically. We had Weta Workshop doing a lot of the Facehuggers. And not only that, we brought back the guys that worked on Aliens. Shane Mahan, who [sculpted] the Queen’s head himself, was the one in charge of building all the Xenomorphs for our movie.
And when I say “build”, we built them. We did full animatronics for all the creatures in the movie. It was one of the best experiences in my career, just to see these guys that I admire so much, back [working together].
There were moments when we’d need nine puppeteers to make a creature work, and you had all those guys, now in their 60s, under the table. And I’m there with them because there’s not enough hands. I got to be under the table, puppeteering these things, with the guys that worked on the original Aliens. So that’s been the best part.
And then CG just comes when you really go, “Oh, if we do something here, we could do something really cool that the puppets never could.” And you go there. But we really tried… and we really succeeded.
You can read the full interview here! Banner artwork sourced for this article was created by KevinGame-2.
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