The new Alien was born in old age. Nine tricksters were lying under the table and moving a puppet

Fans of the sci-fi horror movie Alien last week marked the 45th anniversary of the first time the spaceship Nostromo picked up an unknown signal in theaters. At the same time, however, a reboot of this popular saga called Alien: Romulus is approaching. “It will be a return to the roots. The new film is a horror thriller at its core,” promises its director Fede Álvarez.

As the AP agency writes, for the forty-six-year-old Uruguayan horror author, Forest Ghost and Death in the Dark were precisely the first Alien from 1979 and the subsequent sequel, Aliens released seven years later, were formative experiences. He still remembers watching them on VHS tapes. He felt like he was watching a more mature Star Wars.

“The world was familiar to me, as if I knew it, but at the same time somehow adult, creepy,” describes Fede Álvarez.

It was in the period between the first two films that he set a novelty called Alien: Romulus. According to the AP agency, viewers will be introduced to a group of 20-somethings who flew to colonize an unknown world and met the “most terrible life form in space” on the way, when a bloody monster crossed their path on an abandoned station. The main roles were played by actresses Cailee Spaeny and Isabela Merced, while David Jonsson portrayed the possibly human, possibly android Andy.

Álvarez deliberately engaged the stuntmen and artists who worked with directors Ridley Scott and James Cameron on the first two installments. They are excited about some modern technology that they could only dream of when filming in the 1970s and 1980s. In other cases, on the contrary, they decided that it would be best to take care of things.

Álvarez specifically mentions their debate about the best way to make objects on set melt after being hit with caustic acid. Here is the fictional alien creature Alien outside the blood.

The alien in the new movie was born old. | Photo: 20th Century Studios

“This particular trick is not easy to do on a computer. You need a quick, practical solution,” the director tells how trickster Alec Gillis taught him the procedure from the original shoot. This involves the use of polystyrene and acetone, which is a colorless liquid that dissolves organic substances.

“Like every viewer, I know very well that bad computer tricks completely spoil the movie experience,” Álvarez explains why he chose the more laborious and expensive method of building real sets and modeling puppets instead of a purely digital solution.

“Maybe in one scene nine people had to control the intruder puppet. All these guys, now in their sixties, were lying under the table. And me with them, because we were still missing one pair of hands. You can imagine what it’s like to experience something like that with the same people, who made the original Alien?” describes Álvarez enthusiastically.

It was also important for him to build a replica of the space station where the story takes place. “Nowadays, it’s more common to physically build as little as possible and do everything on the computer. But I wanted to be there, so we really built the space station that you see in the trailer to the last corner. And I spent most of last year physically on it, ” he adds.

One of the actresses, Isabela Merced, recently gave an interview to Collider. In it, she mentions how impressed she was when she first saw the intruder puppet on set.

“On top of that, there was a real, really tall person in a costume and they used a lot of effects. We had two intruders on set with us the whole time and they really gave me chills. I was very impressed with how detailed they were, like their nails ,’ he recalls.

He describes the new movie as something like “Alien 1.5”, similar in mood to the computer game Alien: Isolation from 2014. “The movie is quite claustrophobic, dark, really faithful to the original Alien. It pays a lot of homage to it,” he says.

The film Alien: Romulus was originally supposed to premiere only on an online platform, similar to last year’s Predator: Prey. But the producers changed their minds and before the shooting even started, the decision was made that the film would go to cinemas. The Czech ones will start screening it on August 15.

The sci-fi series, which was founded by Ridley Scott in the late 1970s, was revived at the beginning of the last decade thanks to the ambiguously received title Prometheus. The follow-up Alien: Covenant from 2017 was an even bigger hit with critics, although it ended up grossing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide and was a moderate commercial success.