Alien Romulus: The director takes this influence… and it doesn’t come from cinema!

Seven years after the release of Covenant, the alien saga returns to cinema. Not with the prequel, but with the sequel. After the release of the first Jean-Pierre Jeunet film in 1997. Titled Romulus, the feature film was commissioned by Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) and its story is set between aliens and aliens.

In the year 2142 to be exact, twenty years after the events of Ridley Scott’s film and twenty-seven years before James Cameron’s film. Two filmmakers from whom Fede Álvarez was clearly inspired, as he confirmed to us during a visit to Paris, borrowed the contained horror from the first and the action and the multitude of creatures from the second.

But that’s not all: a plot element recalls the resurrection of Alien, and the story is related to Prometheus (we won’t say more here). And many have thought (correctly) about video games Alien: Isolation Released in 2014. For reasons of atmosphere and because its story takes place fifteen years after the Ridley Scott film and follows Ripley’s daughter.

Romulus isn’t an adaptation or a remake in disguise, but Fede Alvarez counts the game among his sources of inspiration. Because, in isolation, where they served as both survival points and warnings of impending danger, the director hid the phones in several scenes.

“The film is structured so that every time something bad happens, you see the phone”he said in the podcast The whole movie.

“In a game, whenever you see a phone, you know you’re going to have a bad time. It’s the same here. They’re strategically scattered throughout the movie. And when you see it, it means you have to prepare yourself for the impact.”

But the effect of isolation on Romulus goes beyond this glaring detail. And this was crucial in the project: “It made me realize that aliens can be scary and well done”continues the director. “I played it a few years after it came out, around ‘Don’t Breathe.’

While playing the game, I realized how scary the aliens could be if we brought back that tone of the saga

“I told myself at the time that if I could do anything, I would love to create an alien and scare the audience again with that creature and that setting. It was through acting that I realized how scary an alien could be. You brought it back to that tone.”

Don’t Breathe Released in 2016, it’s been a long road for Fede Alvarez. But the wait was worth it, because Alien: Romulus delivers on its promises. And it will also please fans of the Isolation video game, in addition to making new audiences want to play it: the number of players since the release of the feature film is on average 5-6 times higher than before as of 2024 flow charts. which allows him to reach the points he had in April 2020.