Alien: Romulus star Archie Renaux on the legacy of the franchise, the facehuggers and which alien was the most terrifying

Archie Renaux saw Aliens when he was maybe a little too young for the 1986 James Cameron sci-fi thriller, with his dad showing it to him when he was about eight years old. But the Alien: Romulus breakout star wasn’t alone in that.

“I think it’s a common denominator with the Alien franchise. It’s always someone’s parents [that showed them the movies],” Renaux said with a laugh in a recent interview with For The Win.

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Renaux went on to say that cast mates Spike Fearn (Bjorn) and Cailee Spaeney (Rain) were also in the same boat before explaining how much it meant to him and his parents to land a role in a franchise that has been around for 45 years.

“Those films were, like, a big part of that generation,” he said. “They were really, really proud that I was going to get to be a part of it.”

The 26-year-old actor plays Tyler in Fede Alvarez’s reboot of the horror-action franchise, and he found himself face-to-face with both terrifying versions of the titular alien with the facehuggers and the Xenomorph. Since Alvarez was committed to using practical effects where possible, this meant horrifying physical versions of the slimy creatures.

Alvarez let the cast interact with one of the facehugger replicas briefly — Renaux described the horror director as being excited about the creepy crawlies — before acting with them.

“We got to see all the details and what’s on the other side, what it looks like,” Renaux said. “They’re pretty explicit looking. That was our first experience, and then we didn’t get to see too much else until actually getting to set.”

While Renaux shared two exhilarating scenes with the slimy face spiders — both of which will have your heart pounding — it’s the adult Xenomorph that he described as the most terrifying.

“We’ve seen them before in the films and stuff, so now actually seeing one in the flesh is like so, so surreal,” he said. “Those guys that make them really go to town. They [the special effects crew] absolutely smashed it.”

Some of the crew from Aliens was back to work on this film, and that expertise paid off in big ways bringing the ominous beasts to the big screen in a fulfilling way.

“They can really make them move, and the mouth and the inner jaw, they have the kind of drooling-like goo that comes out of their mouth and stuff, and, yeah, once they have everything going, they are genuinely terrifying,” Renaux said.

Alien: Romulus has been a massive box office success, bringing in $50 million domestically and $118 million worldwide in just five days, smashing expectations and surpassing the film’s $80 million budget. Renaux and the cast felt the pressure of taking on a beloved franchise like Alien, but the response has been overwhelming for the young actor.

“To see now the reaction and how positive a lot of it has been, it’s quite unbelievable. It makes us all so proud,” Renaux said.

Alien: Romulus is in theaters now.