"The [focus on] opening weekend is more based on the fact that most movies are terrible and they think you can hopefully fool people into believing that is good," Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez tells Exclaim! during a sit-down in Toronto. "You get all their money on the first weekend and by the time they realize it sucks, you got enough money."
He adds with a grin: "That's never been my bet."
Before joining the Alien family, Álvarez was perhaps best known for writing and directing 2013's Evil Dead and 2016's Don't Breathe — two films that enjoyed critical praise and impressive box office receipts upon their release, but undoubtedly found their legacy and classic standings in the years since.
"When we made [Don't Breathe], it had nothing going for it. We didn't have massive stars or anything like that," recalls the filmmaker. "But the movie came out [and] it was special for a lot of people. [It] had legs and kept going and stayed in theatres for a long time."
Álvarez's belief that "a good movie always has its life," feels like the healthiest way to approach a juggernaut like the Alien franchise, and a lesson learned from Ridley Scott's initial film in 1979. Considered today to be a watershed moment in the blended sci-fi/horror genre, younger generations in particular can be forgiven for not knowing that upon its release, Alien received mixed reactions.
Although James Cameron would add to the mythos of Alien seven years after Scott with near-unanimous praise for 1986's Aliens, as more entries have been added, the franchise seen its fair share of ups and downs. Álvarez, though, sees his entry as something that builds off of the world Scott built but entirely its own.
Set chronologically between Scott and Cameron's films, Alien: Romulus features a new group of adventurers who take to space in the hopes of travelling to another planet with greater opportunities and better living conditions. The young crew, led by Cailee Spaeny (most recently seen in Alex Garland's Civil War and in the titular role in Priscilla) as Rain Carradine, scavenge a disused space station for equipment when they come upon terrifying alien creatures.
"I'm assuming you've never seen anything. That's the way it should be made," he explains, describing it as unfair "and not really enjoyable" to require audiences to watch all six previous films in the franchise to be able to understand his latest film.
Álvarez and writing partner Rodo Sayagues, however, did take heed of Scott and Cameron's examples — and a general tenant of filmmaking — to ensure more was shown rather than said.
"That's what movies are. It's a visual medium, and, at its best, it should be all [about] the image," Álvarez asserts. "We have the long chunks of this movie where there's not a word being spoken. Toward the end, there's a massive stretch of 20-something minutes where maybe there's two or three lines being spoken. It gets really intense."
The early visuals of the Alien films have long been lauded for their ability to create such a complete world and for pushing the envelope in terms of what was possible for creature design. In Romulus, Álvarez continues this forward progression, incorporating modern technologies to deliver some truly gnarly aliens.
However, Álvarez is quick to acknowledge that what has propelled the long-lasting desire for Alien films are the themes Scott introduced — themes that, like every other aspect of the film, were revolutionary for their time.
"Corporations showing their true colours [that] they don't really care about the individual, [was] radical at the time," says Álvarez, citing how those themes came out of a post-Vietnam War America when the country was "starting to wake up to that reality."
He laughs, "Now we all know corporations don't give a shit about the individual."
In addition to our shifting ideology as a society, the manner in which themes are successfully delivered in films has changed greatly as well, especially in recent years, when it feels like filmmakers and studios go to great lengths to make clear what their themes are in no uncertain terms, rather than allow audiences to find them through nuance and discussion.
In contrast, Álvarez insists that being too on-the-nose is not the way forward: "You don't inject theme into a story theme injects itself." Rather, he hopes his films, including Romulus, will incite debate among friends — which, incidentally, is how movies find a long shelf life.
"I failed if I have to tell you what it's about and the movie did not convey it," he says. "Sometimes with my movies, people put other meanings in it that I never intended, and who am I to say that it's not about that if that's how it felt for someone? It's a pleasure to see [a movie] grow and people making it their own. Everybody finds their own angle."
It'd have been easy for Álvarez to create a movie that's all spectacle, but as he so clearly states, he's not a filmmaker in it for the opening weekend draw — he's here to bring audiences stories that will be on our minds for years to come.