20th Century Studios
Keeping up with the tradition of the iconic Alien franchise, Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez introduced an equally disgusting and disturbing variant of the famed Xenomorph creature.
Editor’s Note: This article will contain *major* spoilers for the ending of Fede Alvaverz’s 2024 film ALIEN: ROMULUS
Just like Aliens, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant, Alien: Romulus created a new horrifying version of the Xenomorph, this time via the pregnancy of Isabela Merced’s character Kay, who (stupidly) injects herself with Compound Z-01 – essentially Weyland-Yutani’s reverse-engineered version of the black goo from Prometheus — to heal herself.
Predictably, injecting herself with the mysterious untested foreign substance helped more than it hurt, as Kay’s pregnancy was rapidly accelerated to term, leading to the birth of what Alvarez is calling “The Offspring” (which then, also predictably, turns on Kay and kills her).
In order to bring The Offspring to life, Alvarez and the Alien: Romulus team recruited Robert Bobroczkyi, a 7’7″ Romanian basketball player who went viral a few years back due to his mindblowing height.
“The first time saw the plates, and this 7-foot [tall] actor in there, in his costume. It was terrifying,” visual effects supervisor Daniel Macarin said of Bobroczkyi in an interview with Variety. “They did such an amazing job with the look and the feel of that character that we knew that everything that we could bring to it was just going to help.”
Macarin also said that The Offspring was intended to play as a connection to the Engineers in Ridley Scott’s 2012 underrated Alien prequel Prometheus.
“It’s not something that you want to directly connect,” Macarin said. “But if you hint that there’s a larger story there, there’s more mystery, and maybe we’re just seeing the beginnings of those ideas, it was definitely something that we wanted to explore.”
Alien: Romulus, which stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu, is now playing in theaters. The film grossed over $110 million in its first few days in theaters, meaning a sequel is likely. Check out BroBible’s review of Alien: Romulus here.