Romulus proves that practical Xenomorphs are always better

The second installment in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel series, Alien: Covenant, is probably the most controversial film in the entire series. So much so that we at /Film published two opposing reviews – a positive 8/10 from Karen Han and a rather scathing 4/10 from Josh Spiegel, headlined “In Space, No One Can Hear How Stupid You Are.” Personally, I fall somewhere in between. I’m a staunch Prometheus supporter (please don’t @ me) and I think the downright nastiness of Covenant is a feature, not a bug. But there’s one aspect that, try as I might, I just can’t shake. I’m sorry, Sir Ridley Scott, but the CGI is crap at best and lousy at worst.

The threat posed by the Xenomorph species XX121, in its many lifecycle stages, is immediately diminished when it doesn’t look like it’s sharing the same space as the humans it’s attacking. Xenomorphs are the stuff of psychosexual sci-fi nightmares, but there are moments in “Covenant” when the CGI Xenomorphs look so shiny and move so unnaturally that they seem more like those awful fan-made fake trailers people upload to YouTube to garner engagement from unsuspecting fans. On paper, “Alien: Covenant” should be my favorite of the series, but it’s so hard to get excited about the characters when the Praetomorph runs on all fours like M3GAN.

I’m not against CGI, I’m against CGI when practical effects have already been proven to be better. Scott disagreed, telling Yahoo Movies it gave him more room to be creative and he thought he could “do a lot more than just have a guy running around in a rubber suit, which was all he had at the time, and which actually worked pretty well.” Again, no disrespect to the master, but something was lost when the aliens went digital. Thankfully, “Alien: Romulus” found the balance by prioritizing practical effects with CGI enhancements.

Alien: Romulus is directed by Fede Álvarez, the director of Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, who has been very vocal about returning the series to its practical roots. Since Romulus is set between the events of Alien and Aliens, it’s also thematically appropriate to try to match the look and feel of the earlier films. “I have this obsession with green screens, so we built every creature and every set,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “Everything had to be built so we really live and breathe in these spaces (…) when it comes to face-to-face encounters and creature moments, nothing beats the real thing.” He also stressed that he’s not against CGI, pointing out that part of how he landed the job on Evil Dead was his short film Panic Attack!, where he and his friends did all the VFX shots themselves.

Rather than creating a complete replacement, Álvarez uses CGI to enhance “Romulus,” keeping the focus on the practical constructions. Big actors like Trevor Newlin and Robert Bobroczkyi were hired to don alien suits, the legendary Phil Tippett Studio was commissioned to create a stop-motion rat for a regeneration scene, effects artist Ian Hunter created miniature spaceships that were either filmed directly for close-ups or scanned into CGI so the artists didn’t have to create anything from scratch. The result is a space station and a horde of aliens in various stages of life that feel inhabited, tangible and scary as hell.

The return of practical aliens who look like they actually share the same plane as the humans they will forcibly impregnate with an ovipositor or eat with an internal mouth is not meant to detract from the great visual effects work in “Romulus.” The work is the result of a collaboration between the best in the industry, including Wētā FX, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Fin Design + Effects, Image Engine, Tippett Studio, Wylie Co. and Atomic Arts.

By combining practical special effects and visual effects, Álvarez can play in the largest creative sandbox possible. While the audience’s eyes focus on a practical Xenomorph in their direct line of sight, digital Xenomorphs or other creepy crawlies can attack from other angles without looking out of place. As the miniature ship flies through the air, the viewer is taken in by the vast beauty of space and it seems as if we are eavesdropping on the travel patterns of a real ship.

A lot of attention was paid to the special effects leading up to the film’s release, but not because one art form is better than the other. Rather, it’s because special effects seem to be a dying art form… at least in the eyes of the people who write the checks for the movies. The VFX workers at Marvel Studios, for example, recently unionized after reports of overwork because the devaluation of the art of special effects meant that the VFX workers had to do twice as much work. Both art forms create magic, but when you combine them together, you can create a miracle.

“Alien: Romulus” is now playing in theaters everywhere.