The new "Alien: Romulus" trailer brings the franchise back to its sci-fi horror Roots

The new "Alien: Romulus" trailer brings the franchise back to its sci-fi horror Roots

The "Alien" franchise is back to basics. That's what it looks like in the new trailer for "Alien: Romulus" in the 2013 "Evil Dead" remake with Fede Alvarez, the director of "Don't Breathe." The epic myths that director Ridley Scott explored in his latest "Alien" films "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" have been replaced by visceral horror stories that recall Scott's original 1979 film.

Thanks to her roles in "Priscilla" and "Civil War," Cailee Spaeny, a recent breakout star, stars as a Ripley-like protagonist in the film, and is one of a salvage crew investigating an abandoned space station, and they have some very close friends who are seriously trying to ruin them. You will encounter creatures that are easy to spot. Like the original "Aliens," "Romulus" focuses on a small group of people in a limited space, terrified by a terrible, deadly enemy.

The trailer is full of images and moments that evoke the classic elements of the franchise, including variations of the original catchphrase. It is.The acidic blood of the aliens eats the walls, and the character carefully wanders through the sinister dark corridors, and in a particularly terrifying moment, one character uses a scanning device to illuminate the pregnant aliens in the chest cavity. 

The first half of the trailer is interrupted by the intense sound of what turned out to be an alien preparing to burst free.

The trailer focuses on the alien's "Face Hagger" stage, a small version that latches on the human face, so that eggs that grow in the human body can be transplanted. The face Hagger skitters around the station after the character, and at one point the character warns that "there's something in the water" as the face Hagger swims towards him. This is a smaller version of the scene in "Alien: Resurrection," in which a larger alien swims quickly through a flooded room after the character.

The iconic fully grown alien only appears for a short time towards the end of the trailer, including the final shot to intimidate Spaeny's rain Carradine with an image reminiscent of the famous shot of an alien right next to Ripley's face in "Alien 3."With the help of Scott himself as a producer, Alvarez clearly knows the history of his franchise, and he knows how to get responses from longtime fans.

As one of those longtime fans, I'm cautiously optimistic about Alvarez's take on the material. I like Scott's vast treatment of the lore behind Aliens, but the first film in the series remains my favorite, so I'm up for a more streamlined, horror-oriented "alien" story. "Romulus" is set between the events of the first two "Alien" movies, so it does not have much continuity baggage to deal with. I'd miss Sigourney Weaver's presence as Ripley, who anchored the original four films, but I thought Spaeny was great in "Priscilla" and "Civil War," so she seems like a worthy successor.

I'll find out with everyone else when "Alien: Romulus" hits theaters on the 16th.

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