“Alien: Romulus” is the seminal film featuring the alien xenomorph, which has continued to fascinate since H.R. Giger’s monster was first seen on film in 1979.
Why is the alien parasitoid impossible to kill?
- It is at the top of the food chain and uses its instincts to keep that position. It’s not evil or sensitive, it just is, says writer Gabrielle de Bourg, a Swedish lecturer on popular culture.
Then workers – including Sigourney Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley – were sent into space on a rescue mission after receiving a distress signal. It turns out to be a warning.
But then one of the crew members is already “pregnant” with an extraterrestrial parasite that explodes from the chest of its host animal.
The monster in adult form resembles an uncooked crayfish – with a huge, phallic head without eyes, sharp tentacles and caustic acid like blood.
- There is something sexual about an “alien’s” body. It is both muscular and stately. If you look at other monsters, they are often nasty and hideous. The xenomorph is truly a work of art, and the biomechanics make it extra exciting, says Gabrielle de Bourg.
Tytti Soila is a professor of film studies at Stockholm University and thinks it will be interesting to see the “sibling dynamic” in the new film “Alien: Romulus”, which has its cinema premiere on Friday. In action, it takes place in the time between the original film and the sequel “Aliens” (1986). Now it’s a crew from the younger generation who get to meet the monster.
Soila points out that Freudian themes are common in the “Alien” films.
- Freud has written about how the repressed returns. What one is ashamed of and afraid of in oneself always appears, and in the same way this monster always returns.
- Creatures that we cannot control, and that are better than us, create a feeling of helplessness. In an age where we can control more than ever, the uncontrollable primal force becomes even scarier, he believes.
“Alien: Romulus” premieres on August 14, and Fede Alvarez (“Evil Dead”, “Don’t Breathe”) is the director. In advance, he has promised that most of the characters “will die in a gruesome way” – and that this time, unlike in the previous films, the audience will get to see the murders.
The monster, the xenomorph, has been interpreted as an allegory for the dark, feminine, as well as for predatory capitalism – and key to the origins of humanity. The only thing that is certain:
It always comes back.
She believes that the first “Alien” film, which came out in 1979 with the Norwegian subtitle “The 8th Passenger”, has influenced almost all science fiction horror films since then.
Few figures have captured the fear of the unknown like this iconic xenomorph, which was created from surrealist Swiss artist H.R. Giger’s nightmare – which won him an Oscar for the “Alien” film in 1980.
“Alien” drew inspiration from the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Both the monster’s indifference to human life and the fact that it is from primeval times – like the creatures discovered by geologists in Lovecraft’s short novel “Mountain of Madness” (1936).
The horror in the “Alien” universe will be relevant again in 2024, says presenter Billy Rimgard in the popular culture Swedish podcast “Obiter Dictum”.
This is the seventh film in the “Alien” universe, excluding “Alien vs. Predator” films. In 2025, the precursor series “Alien: Earth” will also be released.