Romulus Had To Be “Precise” About One Facehugger Detail To Avoid Fan Criticism, Says Stars

Alien: Romulus star Aileen Wu reveals the complicated, precise detail involved in creating a life-like and accurate vision of a terrifying Facehugger attack in the 2024 sci-fi horror sequel. Wu portrays Navarro, one of the movie’s young crew of colonists looking to find a better life who acts as the group’s pilot on their mission to a long-abandoned space station. Wu stars alongside Cailee Spaeny, David Jonnson, Archie Reneaux, Isabel Merced, and Spike Fearn as the series’ newest survivors, though not all of them make it out when faced with the Xenomorph horror on-board.

With Alien: Romulus reviving the sci-fi horror franchise for a new generation, Wu opened up to Indiewire about the complexities and pressures of carrying on from past horrors. Alongside the hectic, physically intense maneuvers of the initial Facehugger attack, Wu and director Fede Alvarez were precise in ensuring that the star timed her breathing perfectly with the practical puppet’s respiration, working carefully to be in-tune with off-screen puppeteers even under the prop’s grip. Check out Wu’s explanation below:

“There were two Facehugger days. The first one is the attack, and the thrashing-on-the-ground sequence after that. I think we filmed that in three, four days. The first day was a lot of wire work. The camera sees me fly across the room, my head snaps back. I’m really surprised that my neck survived that day, but I’ve never worked with wires before, so it was a bit tricky. I practiced, I had a lot of rehearsals with the stunt team before that day, and then when it came down to actually shooting it in a space and watching playback, I realized, ‘Oh, I had to marry the stunt practical side and my character, creative, artistic side of it to make the perfect thing.’ If I could go back knowing that already, I would’ve tweaked it a bit more.”

“And then the scene where it was on my face and I’m just laying there, those were hard days, because I’m literally just laying there while the whole scene is taking place. The hardest part was matching my breathing with the creature’s bladders. Fede was very precise about that, he was like, ‘This one’s for the fans. The hardcore fans are going to know the biology of this creature and how it sustains the process of laying that egg in you. It has to keep you breathing, so whenever the bladder is full on the creature, you have no breath. And when the bladders are empty, that’s when it’s giving you the breath.’”

“That was hard, to coordinate with one of the puppeteers who’s offscreen with a balloon pump pumping the bladders in and out. Then the fingers are [around my head and] tied with eight different rubber bands, and then the tail is wrapped around my neck with a fishing line so that they could tug on it and it would squeeze the neck.”

How The Facehuggers Have Evolved Across The Alien Franchise

Later movies were able to give the creature more elaborate set pieces.

As effects have changed across the Alien franchise with new technical innovations and adjustments in budget and vision, so have the ways the franchise depicts its Facehuggers. The original Facehugger sequence when John Hurt’s Kane is attacked in the 1979 movie is a slow build-up surrounding the eggs on the engineer vessel until the creature hatches and latches onto him in a sudden jump-scare. Unprepared audiences were later left terrified as they witnessed the fate of Kane once he is brought aboard the Nostromo and his situation is shown to be inescapable, sealing his fate.

Aliens would only increase the terror surrounding Facehugger through its depiction of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Newt’s (Carrie Henn) struggle with a pair in Hadley’s Hope medical bay, where their intense spider-like movements and speed takes the two fully-aware humans by surprise, and make separating them from their prey a struggle. While opting for digital effects over practical, this spider-like nature would be emphasized in Alien VS Predator and Alien: Covenant, as they outmaneuver armed targets. With Alien: Romulus seeing the station carrying many cryogenically frozen Facehuggers now capable of traversing water, this horror has only been built-upon.

Though their later, more humanoid forms may emerge as the more terrifying threat of the Xenomorph life-cycle, Alien: Romulus makes sure to emphasize just how deadly the creature is, even in the earliest stages of its life. While H.R. Giger and Dan O’Bannon’s near-perfect and barely changed design may emphasize the horror, the work of Alvarez, the crew, and Wu brought the creature to life, alongside its terrifying effects on its host. As such, audiences were reminded that no phase of the Xenomorph should be taken lightly.

Source: Indiewire

Alien: Romulus

3.5

Alien: Romulus is the seventh film in the Alien franchise. The movie is directed by Fede Álvarez and will focus on a new young group of characters who come face to face with the terrifying Xenomorphs. Alien: Romulus is a stand-alone film and takes place in a time not yet explored in the Alien franchise.

Director

Fede Alvarez

Release Date

August 16, 2024

Studio(s)

Scott Free Productions , 20th Century

Distributor(s)

20th Century

Writers

Fede Alvarez , Rodo Sayagues , Dan O’Bannon , Ronald Shusett

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