What happens when we die? What is the meaning of life? Why can’t every restaurant carry Coke products instead of Pepsi? These are some of the toughest questions we ask ourselves, none more difficult than: Alien or Aliens? It’s something that director Fede Álvarez considered while working on his new film, Alien: Romulus, before landing on the correct answer: both.
“To ask an Alien fan to choose between them is a perverse question,” he told Empire. “So I thought, how do I do both?”
Based on the trailer for the film, Alien: Romulus successfully combines the haunted house-in-space eeriness of Ridley Scott’s original film with James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel. “There’s a moment where the characters are walking around areas familiar from the Nostromo,” Álvarez teased. “Then they cross through that building and on the other side: boom! You’re in a hallway that looks like Hadley’s Hope [from Aliens].”
There will presumably be fewer nods to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.
Alien: Romulus, which follows a group of space colonizers who come face to face with “the most terrifying life form in the universe” while scavenging a derelict space station, stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu. Also, some xenomorphs.
Alien: Romulus bursts into theaters on August 16.