Loving the Alien

Alien and Aliens were the stuff of childhood trauma.

Unlike my American cousins, I was too young to see Alien at the cinema in 1979. However, I avidly read about Sir Ridley Scott’s (Blade Runner) haunted house in space in Marvel UK’s Starburst magazine and had a ‘Space Jockey’ poster on my bedroom wall featuring Star Wars wallpaper until the day we moved home.

The memory of drawing, reading, building model kits, and playing with toys and video games against this backdrop is indelible (a formative film education years before college).

I watched Alien, on rental video, with an uncle in the early eighties. After Jaws had spawned shark-infested nightmares following a television screening on ITV, Alien almost put me off eating noodles for the rest of my life!

James Cameron’s high-octane Aliens followed in the mid-eighties, and my xenomorph fandom was cemented in a river of acid blood. The franchise produced further entries, but nothing matched those first two movies.

When news of Alien: Romulus, a straight-to-streaming instalment on Hulu and Disney+, was announced, I was apathetic.

However, Prey successfully rebooted Predator and then the House of Mouse upgraded Alien: Romulus to a theatrical release. My interest was piqued when I watched director Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe. He understands the horror genre, could the new Alien movie be good?

Then the teaser trailer dropped...

For the first time since my teens, I’m excited for a new Alien movie!

I'm looking forward to seeing Alien: Romulus with an uncle who introduced me to Alien all those years ago.