Movies News Talk
Based on the flood of face huggers and what resembles an alien queen at the end of the second video, Alien: Romulus almost probably features more than one Xenomorph. Given that Aileen Wu's Navarro and Spike Fearn's Bjorn are assaulted by face huggers in the teaser alone, it already suggests that Alien: Romulus will include twice as many aliens as the original film. Since the Alien franchise has never been able to match the simplicity of the original film since its first sequel was released 38 years ago, this is fantastic news.
The initial film by Scott took its time building up the Xenomorph's ultimate entrance. Though it happened only 55 minutes into the two-hour film, Alien's famous chestburster sequence was so graphic and powerful that few spectators gave a damn. But Aliens had to raise the stakes significantly to keep spectators interested after many knock-offs of Alien's premise were paraded in the years that followed. Later Alien films such as Alien 3 neglected to value this, producing a film with a dismal simplicity but a predictable pace and story rhythm. Fortunately, Alien: Romulus has sidestepped this before.
Although the forthcoming Alien film Alien: Romulus claims to bring back the roots of the genre, its new teaser shows the film won't be travelling too far back in time. Starting with director Ridley Scott's classic Sci-fi Horror film Alien in 1979, the Alien franchise got off strong. Alien tracked the crew of a doomed spacecraft as the eponymous monster picked out one at a time, a claustrophobic, single-setting horror thriller. Director James Cameron's sequel Aliens sharpened the action and reduced the horror aspects of the franchise in 1986, arming its characters and pushing them to confront a whole Xenomorph swarm.
Every Alien film from then has battled the same problem. The franchise's episodes might either take the more broad, action-forward approach of Aliens or return to the small-scale, self-contained terror of the first film. The future reboot Alien: Romulus promises to mix the two techniques, and director Fede Alvarez's film is even set between Alien and Aliens to help to clarify. For even a genre expert like Alvarez, this could be a difficult tonal balance to achieve. Fortunately, the second Alien: Romulus teaser shows the film won't have one error from past in the genre.
Given viewers have never seen the monster before, Alien could create a horror narrative with a lone Xenomorph. From its horrific beginning from Kane's chest to its ultimate full-size reveal close to Alien's ending, Scott's film threw viewers by surprise with its long-awaited revealing of the monster in its whole. Xtro, Creature, Inseminoid, Galaxy of Terror, Forbidden World, and Star Crystal all tore off Alien's idea and structure in the next years, so Aliens couldn't get away with just setting another space crew against another Xenomorph for two hours.
Fortunately, Alien: Romulus's second teaser shows that Alvarez has no intention of cutting back on monsters. While a dozen face huggers can be seen swarming through the space station in an earlier teaser trailer, many others can be seen slithering around the Romulus lab of the trailer. Technically, viewers are not sure for a sure that the relaunch will release more than one Xenomorph let wild on the station. But the fact that Bjorn and Navarro both fall victim to face huggers strongly suggests this, and Alien 3 suggests it would be the wise choice.
Although the forthcoming Alien film Alien: Romulus claims to bring back the roots of the genre, its new teaser shows the film won't be travelling too far back in time. Starting with director Ridley Scott's classic Sci-fi Horror film Alien in 1979, the Alien franchise got off strong. Alien tracked the crew of a doomed spacecraft as the eponymous monster picked out one at a time, a claustrophobic, single-setting horror thriller. Director James Cameron's sequel Aliens sharpened the action and reduced the horror aspects of the franchise in 1986, arming its characters and pushing them to confront a whole Xenomorph swarm.
Every Alien film from then has battled the same problem. The franchise's episodes might either take the more broad, action-forward approach of Aliens or return to the small-scale, self-contained terror of the first film. The future reboot Alien: Romulus promises to mix the two techniques, and director Fede Alvarez's film is even set between Alien and Aliens to help to clarify. For even a genre expert like Alvarez, this could be a difficult tonal balance to achieve. Luckily, the second Alien: Romulus trailer shows the film won't have one error from past in the series.
Although the famously turbulent production of Alien 3 went wrong in many ways, one of the movie's overlooked crimes was downplaying the titular menace of the film. Though the film's monster counts a decent 17 victims during the sequel's running, Alien 3's lone Xenomorph horror tale failed to scare spectators. Romulus's chestburster tease all but shows that the reboot will have more than one Xenomorph frightening the crew since Navarro can be incubating an alien while Bjorn is depicted devouring a face hugger's tentacles.
Although Alien 3's narrative had other flaws, a major one with the sequel was that one Xenomorph no longer appeared as terrifying as a whole alien hive. If any slasher franchise included two killers in one sequel, viewers would naturally expect next films to push the envelope even more. As such, Alien: Romulus is making a canny decision by hiding its exact number of Xenomorphs until the movie arrives. Judging by Alien: Romulus’ trailer alone, viewers can be relatively certain that the heroes will face more than one of Alien’s titular terrors.