Fede Álvarez: Crafting a modern homage to the ‘Alien’ franchise
A director’s journey through horror and sci-fi
Fede Álvarez has always walked a fine line between homage, follow-up, and innovation. His debut film, a remake of Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead,” leaned heavily into the grueling horror of the 1981 original, revitalizing the franchise. After launching his own series with “Don’t Breathe,” he co-wrote and directed “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” a sequel to “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” While it didn’t achieve the same success as his earlier works, it established him as a versatile stylist capable of infusing a film with personality while adhering to studio boundaries.
Breathing new life into the ‘Alien’ universe
Álvarez’s latest project, “Alien: Romulus,” marks the seventh film in the “Alien” franchise. This installment is set approximately 20 years after the events of Ridley Scott’s original film, placing it a few decades ahead of James Cameron’s follow-up. Drawing from a rich reservoir of world-building, Álvarez strikes a balance between Scott and Cameron’s aesthetics while delivering a story that feels fully modern.
Aesthetic and narrative balance
The film’s typeface and technology are designed to delight longtime “Alien” fans, while the youthful cast and thoughtful pace aim to entice newcomers. Álvarez’s previous work taught him how to strike this balance. “All of those things should be done in a harmless way,” Álvarez says of the film’s many easter eggs. “Meaning, ‘If you know, you know.’ But I hope a new audience of twentysomethings or teenagers goes, ‘Wow, that doesn’t look like the movies I watched last week. It has this vibe that’s different.’”
From streaming to the big screen
Initially announced in 2022 as a project for Hulu, “Alien: Romulus” was first signed in 2021 as a reaction to theaters being completely gone due to the pandemic. However, Álvarez’s ambitious vision led to distributor 20th Century Studios changing course for a theatrical release. “I remember making an announcement to everybody that this movie was going to theaters, and there was a big cheer,” he recalls. “Even the gaffer cares that this goes into theaters!”
Uniting a complex mythology
Co-written with Rodo Sayagues, Álvarez aimed to unite the complicated mythology of the franchise. “We would joke about how we wanted this movie to be ‘the one ring that bonds them all together’,” he says, referring to the pivotal bauble from the “Lord of the Rings” films. “I think that’s disrespectful to the directors that really worked so hard on those other movies. So I was like, ‘We have to embrace them all’.”
A labor of love
Álvarez’s affection for all the films in the franchise, even those less beloved, motivated him. “Even the studio was like, ‘Are we sure we want to go there?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I truly love them all,’” he remembers. “Most movies, you watch them, and you never talk about it ever again. That is a bad thing for me. I felt they all needed to be embraced by the film and make sure at some point there was a connection with them.”
Recreating the experience
Álvarez insists that his goal was not simply to continue the look, feel, or rhythms of the “Alien” movies that inspired him. “What I tried to reproduce is not only the style but the feelings that those movies gave me at the time when I watched them,” he says. “With time, people intellectualize about what they think was great, and sometimes they’re wrong. They usually go the highbrow route of, ‘It was a deep theme about this…,’ and the reality is, when you’re a 13-year-old, you’re excited about the guns and the explosions and the violence.”
A nod to the past, a step into the future
Álvarez’s approach to “Alien: Romulus” is reminiscent of his work on “Evil Dead.” “With ‘Evil Dead,’ I wasn’t trying to remake the movie, I was trying to remake the experience to bring to the audience,” he says. Though cutting to a dusty helmet or primitive computer monitor may prompt joyful feelings of nostalgia for veteran “Alien” fans, he suggests that replicating that recognizable aesthetic is an intermediary step, rather than a destination, in his effort to thrill audiences. “Hopefully what the movie will do is make the new generation understand why ‘Alien’ is so cool and scary.”
A director’s humble ambition
Pulling off this feat would be yet another benchmark for Álvarez, but he admits he’s reluctant to absorb any praise or success that “Alien: Romulus” might receive. “It’s all credit to the original movies,” he says. “My job, I think, is to explain how great those movies are and how insane those ideas were.”
“That’s the insanity in me — that I just want to prove a point to the new generation.”
For more information and to watch the trailer, visit Alien: Romulus.