****MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ALIEN: ROMULUS AHEAD. READ WITH CAUTION****
Alien: Romulus is finally here. And with it we get to explore a beloved franchise through the eyes of Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez. He was inspired by a restored scene from the extended Special Edition cut of Aliens. In it there were a bunch of kids running around the colony. He told himself, “If I ever tell a story in that world, I would definitely be interested in those kids when they reach their early twenties.”
Now in Alien: Romulus a group of young space colonizers end up facing the deadly xenomorphs and facehuggers when they scavenge a derelict space station. Making up this this group is Cailee Spaeny, David Johnson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu. One by one, these young women and men are either killed or implanted with a chestburster.
***LAST CHANCE. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD***
By the end of the movie, Spaeny’s Rain, Jonsson’s Andy, and Merced’s Kay are the only survivors left. Thinking that they’d escaped the danger in space, they prepare for cryosleep. But not everything is what is seems as Kay had injected herself with the bio research from the derelict station to save her own life and that of her child. As we saw in Prometheus with Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw, that leads to complications for the baby.
This is where the Guillermo del Toro easter egg comes into play according to Álvarez, who has had a long friendship with the director to the point where they’ve done panels together and at San Diego Comic-Con, he appeared to ask a question of Álvarez.
During an interview with Remezcla, Álvarez was asked about what Latine creatives in horror inspire him. His immediate answer was, “I mean, Guillermo, no doubt, right? He knows how to do scary creatures.” And he does. Over the years del Toro has brought to life astounding creatures like The Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth, the Fish-man from The Shape of Water, and the tooth fairies from Hellboy. But this one particular monster that inspired Álvarez was from del Toro’s 2002 film Blade II.
Back to Alien: Romulus.
After being released from the cryopod Kay gives birth to a monster that is part alien and part human, complete with acid blood. This creature is a tall and looming pale figure with a sharp tail just like the xenomorph. And when Rain finds Kay, after discovering that something was wrong on their escape ship, she comes upon the creature feeding from Kay via a proboscis coming from inside their mouth. This particular proboscis is inspired by the reapers in Blade II who had a 3-way jaw and a proboscis that they drink blood from.
“There were a few creatures from Blade that were referenced at some point [when working on Alien: Romulus],” Álvarez said, “At one point we were doing something very specific [the creature at the end] and everyone was like, “Wait, is that…it reminds me of that guy, the one who opened his mouth into a double jaw that Guillermo created for Blade II. Fantastic.” It’s also important to note that Álvarez had his hands to his face, recreating the way that a reaper opens its mouth to feed, leaving us to believe he definitely did this in the writer’s room as well.
Read the full Fede Álvarez here.
Alien: Romulus is now in theaters.