Alien: Romulus

Fede Álvarez’s 2024 film runs 119 minutes and follows a young crew stripping a derelict station for parts that might get them off their colony. Álvarez set the story between the series’ 1979 and 1986 entries and told Collider he wanted an Alien film to sit inside that era of technology, which is why the screens and keypads look deliberately outdated. The android Rook is where that choice turned contentious. Legacy Effects delivered an animatronic in two months rather than the four to six such a build usually takes, puppeteers worked it from under the desk on set, and Metaphysic finished the eyes and mouth digitally. Álvarez says he telephoned Ian Holm’s widow and children himself before going ahead, and that for the home release he pulled the character back toward the puppet, so the face in the cinema and the face on the disc differ. Calling the effects wholly practical would overstate it: Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser of ILM explains that a puppet that size cannot carry fast action, so those shots are digital. Worldwide the film took $350,865,342. A good fit if you want the android to be a rig someone is operating rather than a smooth digital face. Not for anyone waiting on the earlier films’ plot to continue; the crew and the station are both new.