Alien: Romulus promises to be a return to form for the iconic franchise that sci-fi/horror fans have been begging for. All eyes are on what filmmaker Fede Álvarez (Evil Dead) brings to the table after Sir Ridley Scott's underwhelming prequels and he's enlisted an impressive cast to be hunted down by the Xenomorphs.
Leading them is Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla) as Raines; this movie takes place between Alien and Aliens, but despite that shot of her in the movie's trailer wielding a Pulse rifle, the actress is keen to make it clear she's not emulating Sigourney Weaver's Ripley.
"I definitely did everything that I could to bring that character to life," she tells Total Film (via SFFGazette.com). "Watching Sigourney play that role - she’s part of the changing of the game that those films did."
"I could never be her. But I injected whatever I have in me into that character, and tried to make it three-dimensional - as three-dimensional as possible. So I hope that that’s there, and it comes alive."
While Spaeny understandably hopes to put her own spin on the franchise's latest female lead, it sounds like Álvarez didn't shy away from taking what worked well in those original movies and bringing it to the table for this instalment.
"We used practical effects. We had the same people who worked on Aliens. They came back. They were there making the xenomorph. This is a creature that they have so much love for. We had puppeteers working on the face-hugger. So to see that – it all felt so alive," Spaeny recalls.
"I had to turn off my 'nerding out' brain, because I was just like, 'Wow, it’s beautiful. Ooh, you put the Giger skull...' I had to turn that off. But it was properly scary. We set it between the first movie and the second," she teases. "We were talking about, 'How could this be a child of the two?' So we have those heightened moments, but then proper horror."
In the movie, while scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonisers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.
Alien: Romulus also stars David Jonsson (Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Isabela Merced (The Last of Us), Spike Fearn (Aftersun), and Aileen Wu. The movie arrives in theaters on August 16, later this year.
A handful of new stills have also been released which you can take a look at below.