ROMULUS Star Offers Insight on Practical Effects and Sigourney Weaver’s Influence — GeekTyrant

Alien: Romulus star Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) recently talked about the Fede Alvarez-directed film revealing that the production leaned heavily into practical effects. I had heard that the film would incorporate practical effects, but I didn’t know how much. It turns out they used the same team behind James Cameron’s Aliens. Spaeny teased the VFX work in an interview with Total Film, saying:

“We used practical effects. We had the same people who worked on Aliens. They came back. They were there making the xenomorph. This is a creature that they have so much love for. We had puppeteers working on the face-hugger. So to see that – it all felt so alive.”

“I had to turn off my ‘nerding out’ brain, because I was just like, ‘Wow, it’s beautiful. Ooh, you put the Giger skull…’ I had to turn that off. But it was properly scary. We set it between the first movie and the second. We were talking about, ‘How could this be a child of the two?’ So we have those heightened moments, but then proper horror.”

The actress went on to talk about Sigourney Weaver’s influence. At one point in the trailer for Alien: Romulus, we see her step out of an elevator with a Pulse rifle, which was a big Weaver reference in Aliens. Spaeny said:

“I definitely did everything that I could to bring that character to life. Watching Sigourney play that role – she’s part of the changing of the game that those films did. I could never be her. But I injected whatever I have in me into that character, and tried to make it three-dimensional – as three-dimensional as possible. So I hope that that’s there, and it comes alive.”

Alien: Romulus follows a “group of young people on a distant world who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” The pitch that Alvarez initially made is said to be a “really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.”

The director of the film previously talked about the movie saying: “Alien: Romulus takes 20 years after the first one, and for me, I don’t see it as upsetting the canon. It’s something I take personal pleasure in doing, making sure that it all tracks and is all part of the big Alien franchise story — not only in the story, but also when it comes to how to make it. I talked with Ridley [Scott] as a producer, and had long chats with James Cameron about it at the script level. After the movie was done, I showed it to them.

He added: “Everybody’s really important, from the VFX supervisor of Aliens and the guys that make the miniatures, and we hired a lot of them to work on the movie. Otherwise, it’s hard to nail the style and the look and the vibe of a film like I wanted. That was the biggest pleasure of making this movie, to be able to do that whole process.”

The movie also stars Isabela Merced and she is joined by Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (Aftersun), and newcomer Aileen Wu.

Alien: Romulus is set to hit theaters on August 16th.