'Alien: Romulus' director Fede Alvarez: Sci-fi that focuses on VFX spectacles betray a core tenet of movies

Filmmaker Fede Alvarez has made his mark on the Alien franchise with Alien: Romulus (now in theatres), starring Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux and Isabela Merced. With Alien director Ridley Scott serving as a producer on the new film, Alien: Romulus, set between the Alien and Aliens films, follows Rain Carradine (Spaeny) and her brother Andy (Jonsson) trying to leave their sunless colony.

Assembling a group of young scavengers for this escape plan, they find an abandoned spaceship that could be critical to their journey. But as you expect, their plan results in encounters with terrifying creatures, xenomorphs and facehuggers.

In terms of Alvarez's approach to adding to the Alien franchise, which has been a particularly impactful cinematic experience for many, the filmmaker stressed it's about matching the "emotions" of the previous films.

"That is the key, to replicate the emotions, not the story, not the characters necessarily, not even the sets," Alvarez told Yahoo Canada in Toronto.

"It's really about trying to tell a story that evokes similar emotions. The thrills, the scares, the claustrophobia of those films, and that was the main goal for me and everybody involved in this film. To kind of create a film that felt like a good amalgamation of Alien and Aliens, but being its own ... and having a lot more elements that just transcend those two films."

Watch: 'Alien: Romulus' director Fede Alvarez on the 'biggest challenge' in new film, replicating 'emotions' from previous movies

Part of that expansion of the franchise is Alvarez's commitment to focusing on the human element of the story, letting the audience spend more time with the characters to understand them, aside from the spectacle of the film's visuals.

"That was also something that I felt it was not explored too much in the other movies," Alvarez said. "It's just very surface level and it works perfectly in those films, but I think these days, maybe because of the television of it all, we got used to really [getting] to know characters a lot more and I think as an audience myself, ... I demand a lot more of movies."

"I really want to know the characters more. I want to understand the relationships. I want to know what they want from life. I want to just really feel them, that they pop out of the screen. And so we decided to tell a story that really allowed us to not only be relentless and horror packed and action packed, but at the same time give you enough time to spend with these characters and get to know them."

Moving away from practical effects has 'betrayed' a core element of movie making

Even before Alien: Romulus hit theatres, curious fans were already discussing Alvarez's promoted decision to lean into practical effects as much as possible. As movie making technology evolves, that's something we're not necessarily seeing as much, but Alvarez still believes it's critically important for movies to feel "real."

"That's maybe something that some movies in this genre gave up through the years lately, where the goal is not to make it look real anymore, but just to make it look spectacular and big," Alvarez said. "But I think that ambition has just betrayed one of the main things about movies, that you've got to believe that what the characters are going through is real and that the worlds you're looking at are real"

"[That's what] the best science fiction movies did. That's what the original Alien did. ... People really believed those people were out there in space. ... There's an ambition to fool you and to make you believe all that is real, and ... for some reason people gave up on that. And it looks beautiful and great in a lot of movies, but they're clearly made in a computer."

'Alien: Romulus' plot reminded James Cameron of growing up in Canada

While it was nerve-wracking enough for Alvarez that Ridley Scott was the first person to see a cut of Alien: Romulus, Canadian James Cameron, who directed the 1986 film Aliens, also spoke to Alvarez about his movie.

"What else do you want than have one of the masters sit down with you and discuss the story, watch the movie and give notes," Alvarez said. "They're so different, Ridley and Cameron, that it was a complete master class to just hear them talking about it. So they were really helpful."

"Basically Cameron was telling me about his story making the original and then I shared some of the stuff that we were doing in this one. And he was really helpful in the science of it. From the very beginning he loved the idea of kids in a small town where you could just be a farmer or a miner, and the dreams to get out of there. He told me that he was reminded of his time growing up [in Canada], and in a small town where he came from, where there was just one store to buy the clothes and everybody wore the same things. ... I remember that he was hooked right away in our premise, because he said he was reminded of growing up here."