Ridley Scott Reacts To New Alien Film ‘Alien: Romulus’

Ridley Scott’s reaction to Fede Álvarez’s take on the iconic Alien franchise has been revealed and it has now hyped expectations for the next installment due out next summer August, 2024. Alvarez showed Scott the film despite warnings from collogues that Scott can be a tough critic.

The franchise first started in 1979 with the now classic Alien. Directed by Ridley Scott it follows the crew of the spaceship Nostromo as they investigate a distress signal on a desolate planet. They discover a mysterious alien spacecraft and unwittingly bring back a deadly extraterrestrial organism. This creature, known as a Xenomorph, begins to terrorize the crew, leading to a desperate battle for survival.

Reported by Collider and speaking to Guillermo del Toro at the DGA Latino Summit 2023. Fede Álvarez explains the process he went through to get Ridley Scott to be the first person to see the movie. He wanted to get his reaction, knowing he would be a tough critic, Alvarez explains below.

“I wanted him to see it before anybody. And everyone gave me the head’s up that Ridley is really tough. He’s really tough, particularly if it has something to do with his movies. He was really tough on Blade Runner [2049], which I thought was a masterpiece, and he had issues with it because it’s really hard for him because it’s his work.

I asked him about the new Top Gun and he’s like ‘meh.’ I’m like, What are you talking about? And he was like, My brother’s was original and this is like eh. He really respected it, but you could see how tough he was. So I was like, There’s no way I win this one. Even if he didn’t ask for it, I was gonna go there and sit at a table and look at him and get it. Even if he was gonna say, You destroyed my legacy, I wanted to be in front of him and see him in the eye. I didn’t want to get an email where it says….Ridley says.

“He wanted to watch it on his own. Because it was Alien. It was very important to him. He didn’t want to have anybody in the room. That makes me even more terrified while I’m waiting. And then he walks into the room and he did say, ‘Fede, what can I say? It’s fucking great’. My family knows it was one of the best moments of my life to have a master like him, which I admired so much, to even watch a movie I made, but particularly something like this, and talk to me for an hour about what he liked about it. One of the best compliments he said was, ‘The dialogue is great. Are you the writer?’ Yes!”

What is Alien: Romulus about?

This will be the 9th movie in the franchise and currently there is no clear official plot that has been revealed. Reports so far have suggested it takes place between the events of Alien and Aliens, but it’s an ‘original stand-alone’ film that will be unconnected to any of the previous films and will feature “a group of young people on a distant world” who “find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

Ridley Scott’s approval has added a whole new level of excitement to the possibility this could revive the Alien franchise after a string of poor films including Aliens vs. Predator….Time will tell!