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The following article contains major spoilers for Alien: Romulus.
Alien: Romulus is everything the Alien videos haven’t been since 1986: first and foremost, a very intelligent time in filmmaking.
Out: The dense philosophical subtext of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and the resulting questions about the origins of life and the goal of humanity. Returning: evil androids, decrepit spaceships, and jaw-tongued xenomorphs gnawing at weary area workers. Even though Sigourney Weaver is absent from the cast, Romulus remembers all of the franchise’s hits, bringing things back to the basics of face-hugging and chest-popping for a scream-worthy affair that looks so much like a spooky area in Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. . As is the case with a big and exciting blockbuster that will put your popcorn cravings into overdrive.
Such is the care put into the exhibition, and the wisdom of the films that preceded it, that it is striking that director Fede Álvarez, best known before taking the reins of Rómulo in the reinvented Evil Dead of 2013 and the horror of 2016 Don’t Breathe, it’s a bit of a fanatic. And in fact, it’s something that’s already been talked about in other interviews: as we speak in London, the day before Romulus hit the box office, the original Alien is already being described as the “most productive” film in the series, the The action-packed 1986 film Aliens is his favorite.
What is your position on Alien 3, very (unfairly) criticized, which director David Fincher necessarily repudiated, so terrible his experience in directing?
“I enjoyed it at the time. Right now, if anyone hasn’t noticed them, it’s very simple: okay, one is great, two is awesome, 3 is a little weird, 4 is bad. But I’m part of “What I remember , what other people were talking about, was that they had shaved Sigourney’s head, which was so rude. It was like, “Oh, great, no more ’80s hair!” He was so nihilistic.
Romulus has now had a number one weekend at the office, dethroning Marvel mashup Deadpool.
GQ: Alien has a huge fan base and they care about the story, whether it’s the videos or the comics and spin-off novels. So how do you reconcile the expectations of enthusiasts and strive to create a film that is available to everyone?An audience that is not familiar with all this and just needs to watch a smart movie?
Fede Álvarez: I do it for the new audience. I don’t do it for the fans, because it happens on its own, because I’m a fan and I’m the one who does it. That’s how I make any film, I make the film I need to see.
What I want to focus on is: what if you haven’t seen any of those movies before?How can I tell you a story about this world, about this creature, about this universe, in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re getting lost?So, the movie is made for a new audience, that’s the intention, but I know that if you’re a fan, you can’t help but love it.
What do you know more about this trend in franchise cinema towards fan service and making movies that have a litany of cameos and Easter eggs for fans?
I think they are doing too much. [Laughs. ] I think Hollywood wants to be told it’s over. Hollywood was, at least not long ago, a position where other people were begging for the movie; You were begging them to give you a new Star Wars, a new this, a new that, you just couldn’t wait. . . Now, it’s a bit the opposite. Hollywood is like, “You need some other one, do you need another one?” Anybody else?”I’ll give you two for the value of one!
They just give too much to other people who don’t even ask, and I think it’s never a smart position. The total formula that controls [the] IPs deserves to be more valuable to them and accelerated. And make sure the public is dying to have one, rather than just giving them five every year.
And while there’s so much interest in undermining nostalgia for existing franchises, you don’t spend money on new ideas, do you? The last original, big-budget, franchise-generating IP blockbuster I can think of that came out is probably Avatar.
It would be easy to blame Hollywood, but I blame myself, as well as us, the writers and creators. There aren’t many pure-blood writers anymore, writing specs, writing original stuff. I think one component of this is the lack of that. I know a lot of other people who run the studios and, believe me, they don’t get those original scripts that are great.
After a hundred years of cinema, we’re getting to a point where many of the great concepts we’ve come up with have an imprint. If I said to you, “I’m going to write this original movie about a group of kids in a neighborhood in the area, and they go to the area station and there’s a monster there,” you’d say, “C is Alien. Array. ” And I say, ” Oh no, it’s not Alien, it’s something else,” I immediately lose interest and say, “Pfft, it’s a scam, I think it’s about to start swinging to the other side. ” that in the next ten years there will be a wave of new and original concepts. I think we are going in that direction.
I think one of the things that worked with Romulus is that it’s essentially a human story about two other people (well, a user and an android) who love each other. So you started with Rain and Andy?
It was the first concept, and I actually think that’s the concept that made [Romulus] come to fruition, because when I pitched to Ridley [Scott] what I thought he was going to do with the movie, that’s what he hooked up. with. Ridley said [like], it’s your movie. These two characters, this relationship, is your film.
He saw it from the beginning and made sure I stayed the course as he started creating the story, to make sure we turned those two characters into the movie.
When did you use Ian Holm’s portrait for Rook?
We knew we were going to build an animatronic. . . [and] that he would be on the t, that he would move, that he would crawl. It would be a genuine robot, it wasn’t just going to send a user to the workplace pretending it was part of a user.
So once we make that decision, it can bear any resemblance imaginable. And so, with Ridley, we had this combined concept that he comes from the same vein as Ash from the first movie. Lance Henriksen – Bishop, from [Aliens] – was able to play other synthesizers in other films, and even Michael Fassbender did it twice. And it was crazy that Ian Holm, the most productive of them all, never made another appearance. [Ridley] was very close to Ian and concept that he would be on board.
I called his widow and the estate, we presented the concept to them and made sure she talked to all the young people and that they were all on board with this plan. …She told me that Ian had earned the bloodless shoulder of Hollywood for the last ten years of his life, and that she would have liked to have received that call, to be asked to return to Alien, because she enjoyed this character and she enjoyed the franchise . . Training
And then there was this total adventure to review to see how we were going to do it. But we discovered a cast by Ian Holm from 1999, from The Lord of the Rings, and that’s when we started putting it together. [Alvarez pulled out his smartphone. ] And in addition, the circle of relatives has been close throughout the process. They were the first to see it. And everyone was present at the premiere, all the young people and his widow.
[On his phone, Alvarez shows me a short clip showing the animatronic bust of Ian Holm. It’s incredibly realistic. ]
So it’s basically a practical effect?
Yes, you have it on set, that’s what the actors worked with all along. . . It is a very exclusive technique. It takes a lot of people. The great team that was needed to put it together is incredible.
We had Daniel Betts, a wonderful actor who performed the lines and worked with the actors on set; the lines and facial functionality that were translated to the animatronics, and then also to the CG component. So it was a task.
Was the voice an imitation?
It was the voice of actor Daniel Betts, with an equalizer and a lot of generation (you’d have to ask the sound guys) who sounded like Ian Holm.
There were also rumors that AI was being used. That’s right?
I guess the problem is in today’s discussion, and I’m not a computer engineer, but I went to school to examine computer engineering before going to film school, so I have a smart understanding of how generation works. Womb. . . they are all pieces. As far as I know, some experts would probably say otherwise, but that’s just computer language.
So CG, or some things, use AI in device learning. . . All device learning does is take pictures and wrap them around an image. Nothing more than what CG does or Avatar likes. It’s all synthetic intelligence, so it’s computers. It’s definitely a mix of all kinds of things. But I know that lately AI is the force of evil, for some reason.
Where are you?
Look, I started running in a 3D studio, doing 3D graphics in the early 2000s, and rendered a 3D wine glass that looked great; It was very basic, but it was a glass of wine. And a friend of mine who was an artist told me: “Fuck, it’s over. This fucking thing is going to update us all. All you have to do is push. “a Yetton and rendering that glass, which would take so long before.
But that is the history of art. There is a generation that makes things less difficult and faster. Now I’m scared, on the artistic side, because it’s so amazing and it’s so fast. But the feeling is the same that I have not forgotten 25 years ago. , when CG came into existence.
Need to stay with Alien?
Alien, the franchise, takes this strange approach. Between Alien and Aliens, it’s been seven years and it’s been a huge success, and it still took seven years to make Alien 3. It takes many, many years. He has never been in a meeting line where they explode, two years, two years, another, another.
I would definitely love to make one. I don’t think it’s a smart concept to make one and release it next year. I hope you don’t quote me about it when they announce that they’re going to make a sequel. . . [Twentieth Century Studios] loves Alien, and everybody loves it and understands it, too. It’s one of those franchises where you have to keep up with it, pay attention to it, and not follow one after the other.
This story was originally published in the British magazine GQ.
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