“Alien: Romulus,” the next installment in the “Alien” series, brought blood, gore and even a real explosion to the San Diego Comic-Con.
Director Fede Alvarez appeared with actors Cailee Spaeny, David Johnson, Archie Reno, Isabela Merced, Spike Fern and Aileen Wu in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday to discuss the new “Alien” film, which hits theaters Aug. 16.
Set between Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens, the film follows “a group of young people on a distant world who find themselves confronted by the most terrifying lifeforms in the universe.”
Three new clips from the film confirm the franchise's blend of sci-fi and horror.
The first trailer showed a series of terrifying shots of the newest “Alien” colonists coming face to face with Xenomorphs, facehuggers, and thunderbursters, with a villainous rendition of “I Have A Rendezvous With Death” at the start. Andy, played by David Johnson, is seen trying to fix it with pieces of another synthetic material that has been torn in half. As the colonists try to fix it, they realize they're in a room filled with alien pods that begin to hatch and attack the crew.
In another clip, Spaeny's Ryan Carradine finds herself stuck in an escape ship with Navarro, played by Aileen Wu, who realizes, to their surprise, that there is an alien inside her – which soon bursts out of her chest.
Just when Hall H thought it had been treated (or terrified?) enough, during the audience Q&A, one of the audience members asked if those in the theater had nightmares about the aliens in the movie. Alvarez began to talk about how he had, in fact, had nightmares when the theater went dark. Hall H was flooded with red lights and sirens, and then animated faces rushed across the stage, and one actor was hit hard.
The scene was followed by a final cut of Spaeny's Rain trying to escape the ship's corridor where a fully-grown Xenomorph had just hatched. Everyone in attendance was given strange face masks, and a huge photo op was held in Hall H with the cast and Alvarez.
“I think we all understood the pressure behind it,” Merced, who plays Kay in the film, said of joining the popular franchise.
Johnson added that the cast's goal was to “relieve the pressure” of being part of the “Alien” universe.
Ridley Scott, the father of the universe, and Guillermo del Toro were sent to ask Alvarez and his crew questions, including whether they could rank the films from best to worst. Alvarez declined to name the worst, noting that the original 1979 “Alien” was his favorite and that “AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem” was probably a “not very good” remake.
In the original “Alien” film, Sigourney Weaver played Ellen Ripley, an astronaut whose crew encounters a deadly alien in space. “Aliens” continues the story as Ripley awakens from cryogenic sleep to once again face a deadly alien threat during a mission to a distant space colony. Subsequent films in the “Alien” universe include “Alien 3,” “Alien: Resurrection,” “Prometheus,” “Alien: Covenant,” and 2004's “Alien vs. Predator.”
Watch Hall H's full stunt here:
