Everything You Need to Know About “Alien” & “Aliens” Before You See “Alien: Romulus”
With the first reactions to Alien: Romulus calling it a genuinely terrifying sci-fi experience, we thought it was a good idea to give you some grounding in precisely where the film is situated before you brave the theater to see it. Romulus is the rare interquel, connecting what happened in the 57 years between the fateful Nostromo mission of 1979’s Alien and sole survivor Ellen Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) next mission, in 1986’s Aliens, alongside a unit of colonial marines.
Ridley Scott directed Alien, James Cameron was at the helm of Aliens, and the newest film comes at the hands of Evil Dead director Fede Álvarez, but both Scott and Cameron are on board with Romulus — the former is a producer, and the latter is an unofficial consultant. In fact, Alvarez met early in the writing process with Cameron and based his idea on a deleted scene from Aliens where children were running among the workers in the space colony. “I remember thinking about what it would be like for teenagers to grow up in a colony so small and what would happen to them when they reached their early 20s,” Alvarez said in the press notes. And with Álvarez embracing the practical grittiness so beloved in the first two films, the interquel already has a lot of positive buzz going for it.
Among the elements that have helped the franchise achieve cult status is the director’s cut of Aliens, so it’s fitting that the seed of the idea for Romulus came from one of the 1986 film’s deleted and subsequently restored scenes. Álvarez told the Hollywood Reporter that he was interested in telling the story of those kids a little further on in time, and Romulus, which follows a group of space colonizers who encounter a Xenomorph while scavenging an old space station, features a particularly youthful cast of actors, including Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, and Spike Fearn.
Romulus was originally headed straight to Hulu, but during shooting, 20th Century Studios opted to give the film a theatrical release. Alvarez’s decision to write an interquel set between Alien and Aliens (besides the first two films, there are six others in the franchise: sequels Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and crossover films Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem) firmly roots his installment in the grungier sci-fi horror world that launched the franchise. Álvarez has also mentioned his interest in the main characters residing in a space colony that has yet to fully terraform, i.e., become Earth-like and hospitable to human life. He’s also clearly passionate about the aesthetics of the first two films. In 1979, Alien’s look was particularly groundbreaking, with the Xenomorph designed by Swiss artist H.R. Giger and the Nostromo crew’s spacesuits created by French artist and cartoonist Jean Giraud, better known by his pseudonym, Moebius.
Alien introduced us to Weaver’s soon-to-be iconic Ripley, a heroine with the grit and pluck usually reserved for male characters at the time. Ripley’s aboard the commercial towing ship the Nostromo, which is on its way to Earth carrying a seven-member crew in cryosleep. They are awakened by a transmission from a nearby moon that comes through the ship’s computer, Mother. It’s company policy to investigate the transmission, which Ripley later figures out is actually a warning. The Nostromo lands on the moon, and crew members Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Kane (John Hurt), and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) find the source of the signal, a derelict alien ship. The ship contains a large, dead alien and a room full of eggs, one of which Kane touches, causing a creature to emerge and glom onto his face. Dallas and Lambert get him back to the Nostromo, where Ripley tries to prevent them from coming on board but is overridden by Ash (Ian Holm), who also tries to remove the alien from Kane but cannot due to its corrosive blood. The creature dislodges itself and dies, and Kane awakens, seemingly pretty unhurt by the preceding events. The plan is to return to stasis when an alien bursts out of Kane’s chest in one of the more famous film scenes known to humankind. Kane dies, the alien escapes, and the rest of the crew, including a cat named Jones, try to find and kill the creature.
The alien vanquishes the crew one by one, and during the course of the hunt, Ripley, now the ship’s senior officer, learns a secret through Mother: Ash has been ordered by the company that owns the ship to bring the alien to Earth to be studied. Ash tries to kill Ripley, but crew member Parker (Yaphet Kotto) clubs him on the head, and Ash is revealed to be an android. After confirming what the android knows, he is shut down and burned. Before the remaining crew can destroy the ship and escape, the alien (fully grown, Bolaji Badejo played the alien) kills Parker and Lambert. With Jones the cat, Ripley manages to escape and have the Nostromo self-destruct, only to realize the alien has also made it onto the shuttle. She eventually succeeds in pushing it out of an airlock, and she and Jones go back into stasis to finally head for Earth.
Aliens picks up after Ripley spends 57 years in stasis and awakens on a medical ship. Questioned by her company bosses from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, she tells them about the eggs found on the ship on exomoon LV-426 and the alien aboard the Nostromo. In the time that she’s been asleep, LV-426 has been transformed into a space colony currently undergoing terraforming, and her employers don’t believe her story. When they lose contact with the colony, however, Ripley is asked to accompany a Colonial Marine crew aboard the ship Sulaco to investigate. She agrees, on the condition that the aliens be destroyed. They find open eggs, dead face-hugging aliens, and the dead colonists, who are cocooned as incubators for the alien offspring. They also find a lone human survivor, a girl named Newt (Carrie Henn). When the Marines kill an infant alien after it bursts out of a colonist’s chest, adult aliens awaken and kill and take hostage a number of the Marines. Ripley takes control of the situation and manages to rescue several of the crew, but a stowaway alien on board the dropship used to get back and forth to the Sulaco kills its pilots, causing it to crash.
Once again, there’s a traitor in their midst, but this time, it’s not the on-board android, a trustworthy entity named Bishop (Lance Henriksen), but the Weyland-Yutani corporate representative, Burke (Paul Reiser). Ripley learns he had ordered the space colonists to investigate the alien eggs, which he wanted to recover and profit from via biological weapon research. Meanwhile, Bishop learns that the dropship crash damaged the colony’s cooling system, and the power plant will overheat and explode, killing them all. Ripley and Newt wind up trapped with two of the smaller aliens, but are rescued by Marines. A further alien attack kills off Burke and sees Newt taken hostage. Ripley insists on rescuing her and, in the course of doing so, also destroys the cache of alien eggs and the organ the alien queen uses to lay more. The queen follows the survivors by stowing away on the landing gear of the remaining dropship and onto the Sulaco before the colony explodes. The queen attacks Bishop, Ripley once again manages to triumph by getting the alien off the ship through an airlock, and she, Bishop, Newt, and surviving marine Hicks (Michael Biehn) go into hypersleep to get back to Earth.
Based on the first two films, if there’s one thing we can feel confident about going into Romulus, we shouldn’t expect too many human survivors. But who will make it through unscathed is an open question, given the all-new cast (a safe bet is on Spaeny’s character, Rain, however). Will there be chest-bursting aliens? We’d imagine so. Is there going to be a cat? Less likely. But with Álvarez committed to both the earlier films’ style as well as their unique brand of space horror, we know we can’t wait to find out.
For more on Alien: Romulus, check out these stories:
First “Alien: Romulus” Reactions Call it a Genuinely Terrifying Sci-Fi Horror Experience
“Alien: Romulus” Trailer Bridges the Gap Between Two Iconic Films
Featured image: (L-R): Xenomorph and Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine in 20th Century Studios’ ALIEN: ROMULUS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
