Following its release, it’s clear that Alien: Romulus has been a major success. Director Fede Álvarez pulled off the seemingly impossible and made another Alien installment that most of the franchise’s fans approve of (a task that seemed particularly daunting after the massively divisive Prometheus and Alien: Covenant). More impressively, he took the series back to its slasher-inspired roots, delivering tension, gore, and scares with laser-like precision after a series of sequels that largely focused on action.
Thankfully, Alien: Romulus feels more like a greatest-hits collection for the franchise than simply a retread of the original, and Álvarez still manages to find a few opportunities to put his personal stamp on Alien. A zero-gravity fight, reminiscent of the Dead Space games, is particularly bonkers, and the last 15 minutes are utterly insane in the best way possible. But the film’s most surprising connection involves the character of Kay (Isabel Merced), the pregnant colonist, who Álvarez said was directly inspired by the video game The Last of Us Part II.
How Did The Last of Us Inspire Alien: Romulus?
One of the most important characters introduced in The Last of Us Part II is Dina, Ellie’s girlfriend. While Ellie is so beloved for her snark and boisterous personality, Dina works as a more grounded personality. After Joel is unexpectedly killed by another survivor, Abby, the game goes into particularly dark territory as Ellie embarks on a quest for revenge, with Dina functioning mostly as a sort of conscience for her.
She also proved unexpectedly groundbreaking in the video game industry, as she was written to be openly Jewish (even if she didn’t follow many of the religions’ traditional practices), and, according to NPR, many writers considered her character one of the first believable depictions of Judaism in a game. Crucially, she’s also pregnant for the first two-thirds of the game, thus sitting out most of the action and largely only appearing in voiceover as she communicates with Ellie. She gives birth to a son during a time jump as the story reaches its climax, and the newfound family Ellie is offered proves key to the game’s devastating conclusion.
It was specifically Dina’s pregnancy that inspired Fede Álvarez for Alien: Romulus. A couple of weeks ago, he took to X/Twitter to answer fan questions, at one point stating: “Fun fact: I was playing The Last of Us 2 while writing Alien: Romulus. The story of a pregnant Dina made me think of having the character of Kay be pregnant too.” However, as evidenced by Romulus’s shocking climax, it’s safe to say Álvarez took the storyline in a completely different, much more horrifying direction.
But the similarities between The Last of Us and Alien: Romulus don’t stop there. In a particularly bizarre case of art imitating life, shortly after filming wrapped. Kay’s actress, Isabel Merced, was cast in Season 2 of The Last of Us — as Dina.
Pregnancy Symbolizes Different Things in Alien and The Last of Us
However, even outside this crazy coincidence, it’s striking how much Romulus feels indebted to The Last of Us, which itself feels indebted to Alien. Most obviously, they’re both horror thrillers, where the characters struggle to survive against terrifying monsters and seemingly impossible odds. Both franchises are distinctly bleak tonally, rooted in a sense of futility, that staying alive is only a temporary measure to push away the inevitability of death in a world that’s gone to hell. Alien and The Last of Us also heavily emphasize their female leads, suggesting that they’re best equipped to survive in a place where man arguably killed the world.
But Kay’s pregnancy in Romulus functions as a fascinating counter-argument to Dina’s pregnancy, specifically in what they mean for their stories on a symbolic level. In The Last of Us Part II, Dina and her newborn son represent a lifeline for a vengeful Ellie and a promise that she can still find solace in a family even after Joel’s murder. Their relationship also illustrates how much Ellie stands to lose as a result of her bloodlust; the game’s devastating final scene reveals that Dina has finally abandoned her, leaving with her newborn child. Even after Ellie has come to the painful realization that killing Abby will only continue the cycle of violence, her all-consuming anger has still left her with almost nothing.
Whereas the birth of Dina’s child depicts how life can still find a way even after the world’s gone to hell, Romulus takes a much more bleak and sadistic approach to childbirth. This is already in tradition with the rest of the Alien franchise; much has already been discussed about how the facehuggers and xenomorphs play on the viewers’ fear of pregnancy and bodily violation, and the use of phallic imagery for the creatures only further emphasizes the point. Yet the new film takes this allegory to its most extreme endpoint, with Kay’s pregnancy making the implications literal.
Unlike Dina, Romulus’s pregnant character is forced into the action. Thus, the facehuggers and xenomorphs pose a direct threat to her unborn child. When one of the creatures severely wounds Kay, she’s forced to use a mysterious substance, Compound Z-01, to rapidly accelerate her pregnancy and allow her to give birth safely. However, in the film’s most horrifying scene, Kay gives birth to a monstrosity, as her child has mutated into an Engineer/human hybrid. This showcases how, in Fede Álvarez’s world, pregnancy is not only no relief from the horror but can be twisted into arguably the most horrifying thing of all.
Video Games Are Finally Starting to Influence Modern Blockbusters
But the most fascinating takeaway of all is one that’s become increasingly apparent over the last few years — video games are reaching a degree of artistic legitimacy that they’re starting to directly influence modern media. As evidenced by Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ sly references to Metal Gear Solid in Kong: Skull Island, Wes Ball’s vocal love for The Legend of Zelda franchise (which helped him get the directing spot for the upcoming film), and now Álvarez’s homage to The Last of Us, it’s clear that our new generation of filmmakers are openly inspired by video games. As the casting of Isabel Merced in The Last of Us shows, it further emphasizes how life is continuing to inspire art, and vice versa, in new and unexpected ways. Alien: Romulus is now playing in theaters.
