Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Uruguay's Fede Alvarez returns 'Alien' saga to roots with 'Romulus'

Montevideo (AFP) – It's back to basics for the "Alien" film franchise: "Alien: Romulus" hits theaters worldwide this week and director Fede Alvarez is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Ridley Scott, who launched the saga in 1979.


Issued on: 14/08/2024
Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez calls the first two 'Alien' films 'fundamental' for his career and cinema in general © Sofia TORRES / AFP

In an interview with AFP, Alvarez explained how he was forever marked by the series' early chapters as a kid growing up in Uruguay.

After Scott, James Cameron ("Aliens," 1986), David Fincher ("Alien 3," 1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Alien Resurrection," 1997), Disney has entrusted this installment to Alvarez, who is far less known.

Scott rebooted the franchise in the 2010s with "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant," and is still one of the producers.

Alvarez, whose previous films include "Evil Dead" and "Don't Breathe" -- deems the first two "Alien" installments as "fundamental" to his work and for cinema in general.

"Romulus"-- which takes place almost entirely within the confines of a drifting spaceship -- is set at the time of the first films, when teams of space travelers discover, in deadly fashion, the existence of xenomorphs, formidable extraterrestrials.

"There's a scene in the 1986 film where we see a bunch of children and young people running around a space station. I thought, 'What is it going to be like for these kids when they grow up?" wonders the director, who is now based in Hollywood.

The film is also meant to bring back the gore and horror of the first film.

Alvarez faithfully reproduces the familiar motifs and scenes, including the emblematic hatching of the parasitic alien in the body of its human host.

The 46-year-old filmmaker also revisits the visual style of Scott, whom he calls "one of the great masters of the genre."
'Ambitious film'

"It's not so much a desire to go back, but simply the fact that as a filmmaker, I want to practice as I learned to do," he explains, particularly his decision to film without "too many green screens" -- a technique allowing visual effects to be added in post-production.

Alvarez immersed himself in the "futurism of the 1980s," with mythical specimens of "Alien" controlled by teams of puppeteers.

"Technically, it's a very ambitious film," he says. "Generating real emotion in people is the most difficult thing there is."

And "when you decide to see this film, you know more or less what you want to expose yourself to. It's like when you go on a roller coaster," he explains, adding: "I like having that effect on people."

In the tradition of "Alien," which starred a young Sigourney Weaver as the hero Ellen Ripley, this film features Cailee Spaeny, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Elvis Presley's wife in the 2023 biopic "Priscilla."

Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez appears at a press conference for the launch of his new film 'Alien: Romulus' © Sofia TORRES / AFP/File

In "Romulus," she plays an orphan, reduced to the state of quasi-slave on a sunless corner of the planet managed in a "Blade Runner"-style atmosphere by the private conglomerate Weyland-Yutani, which mines a toxic mineral there.

She doesn't hesitate when a group of young rebels suggest that she try to escape to more hospitable skies.

The plan? Seize a spaceship that they think is abandoned, but really is inhabited by xenomorphs who have brutally murdered the crew.

© 2024 AFP

Movie review: 'Alien: Romulus' takes series in bold directions

By Fred Topel

 The alien is back in "Alien: Romulus." Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Alien: Romulus, in theaters Friday, is a relentless, thrilling entry in the saga. Like in most of the sequels, fans will debate some of its choices, but this entry offers admirable creative takes on the franchise.

Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her android, Andy (David Jonsson), work on a mining planet run by Weyland-Yutani, the company for which Ripley worked in the 1979 film. Rain's friend, Tyler (Archie Renaux), brings word of a decommissioned space station.

Tyler proposes stealing the station's cryosleep pods so they can escape to another colony because Weyland-Yutani keeps prolonging their contract due to miner shortages.

Writer-director Fede Alvarez, with co-writer Rodo Sayagues, creates a new corner of the oppressive world of Alien. The franchise established Weyland-Yutani considers its workers expendable, so imagine how they treat the ones who aren't astronauts.

The opening scenes on the planet suggest an entire world that exists there, and the full IMAX frame shows a lot of activity going on in the background. The gang of youths going on an adventure harkens back to the '80s movies, for which shows like Stranger Things are nostalgic, albeit too violent and graphic for kids.

But, once Rain and her friends board the Romulus station, it of course becomes an Alien movie and the focus becomes making it out of Romulus alive, let alone making it to another colony or any social parable.

Still, Romulus uses all of the accouterments of Alien for new suspenseful sequences. The characters encounter the creature, recovered from the remains of Ripley's ship, the Nostromo, for the first time, but Alvarez and Sayugues have new ideas.

So aliens at each stage of evolution pursue Rain and her friends, with their acid blood a deterrent to killing them lest they burn a hole into the void of space. The film relentlessly alternates calamities between the creatures and the environment.

Rain and Andy discover equipment used in previous Alien movies, but they have to use it with different limitations, given that Romulus is in a state of disrepair. A zero-gravity sequence is a particular highlight.

But, one reference to the original Alien requires a visual effect so bad that it should have been more obscured to maintain some mystery. The hubris of repeatedly cutting back to the fully lit effect in closeup makes it even more egregious.

The idea behind it is sound, and even shots of it on a blurry video monitor suggest that's as far as it should have gotten. Alvarez's confidence in that effect is misplaced and once it is no longer a spoiler, it will be regarded as a new benchmark for visual effects whose ambitions exceed their ability.

Aside from one glaring misjudgment, Alien: Romulus is one of the series' more ambitious and satisfying entries. It is also perhaps the first standalone entry since it neither explores the origin of the alien nor continues the Ripley story so it can focus on its own characters.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.


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