The Alien: Romulus Trailer Makes The Original Movie's Tagline Horrifyingly Literal

1992's "Alien 3" was advertised with the tagline "The B*tch is Back" and the new trailer for the upcoming "Alien: Romulus" implicitly carries that same promise. True, original "Alien" protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is nowhere to be seen, but a new crew of future victims has a Xenomorph infestation to deal with.

This trailer proves that, for better or worse, director Fede Álvarez knows his sh*t when it comes to "Alien." Based on this two-minute preview, a group of young people — headlined by Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny, of "Priscilla" and "Civil War") — break into an abandoned space station, hoping that whatever is inside can buy them a better life. Instead, they stumble onto hibernating facehuggers that soon get loose. Things predictably go downhill.

This sounds like a streamlined version of the original 1979 "Alien," where the Nostromo investigated a crashed alien ship and brought the Xenomorph back onto theirs. The set design and imagery of "Romulus" echoes the original too, particularly a shot of metal pipping melting from (presumably) the Xenomorph's acid blood being spilled upon it.

The most blatant reference to the original "Alien" comes about halfway through the trailer. After building up how screwed these characters are, the trailer cross-cuts between shots of them trying to run and/or hide from the Xenomorph(s) and three successive intertitle cards: "In Space" — "No One" — "Can Hear You." This culminates in a close-up of a blood-splattered Kay (Isabela Merced) screaming, but the only sound heard over this and the next montage is a ringing to indicate silence.

This is, of course, a clever reference to the tagline of "Alien" — "In space, no one can hear you scream."

The original "Alien" has a minimalistic poster; an egg with a glowing green, v-shaped crack set against the black void of space. Sitting underneath the egg on the poster is the aforementioned tagline. This tagline first came from Barbara Gips, wife of Phillip Gips (the graphic artist who designed the "Alien" poster). As Mrs. Gips recounted to The New York Times in 1981: ”I looked out at the water, thinking how lonely it seemed at night, how lonely it must be in space [...] All of a sudden, that line occurred to me.”

So, straight from the source's mouth, the tagline is meant to conjure up feelings of loneliness. Space is big and empty, so no one can hear you scream because no one else is around for light years. Whether Gips realized or not, it's also scientifically accurate; sound waves don't travel in the vacuum of space.

The presentation of the tagline in the "Romulus" trailer banks on the audience knowing it. "Iconic" is a word used sparingly at /Film, but the tagline of "Alien" earns it. There's a reason it's trotted out again and again whenever the original film is rereleased for a commemoration event.

While using the tagline to sell "Romulus" is an easy nostalgia grab, its usage is clever. Completing the sentence not with the word "scream" but with a shot of a character doing just that? That's effective visual storytelling, just like denying the audience the sound of that scream (and proving the tagline correct in the process) shows setting-appropriate use of sound.

All that's left to wonder is if Álvarez's reverence for "Alien" produces a movie that makes audiences want to scream even half as much as that one did in 1979.

"Alien: Romulus" is scheduled for theatrical release on August 16, 2024. Its synopsis reads:

"Alien: Romulus" takes the phenomenally successful "Alien" franchise back to its roots: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.