How ‘Alien: Romulus’ Used a Seven-Foot Basketball Player and VFX to Bring The Offspring to Life (2024)

SPOILER ALERT:This story discusses major plot points, including the ending of “Alien Romulus,” now playing in theaters.

Fede Álvarez might have just delivered one of the wildest endings of the year with “Alien: Romulus” — thanks, in large part, to its terrifying new monster, nicknamed “The Offspring.”

Early in the film, Kay (Isabela Merced) tells Rain (Cailee Spaeny) that she’s pregnant. As the Xenomorphs unleash terror on Rain and the crew, Kay is captured by one. Rain and Andy (David Jonsson) find her in a cocoon and free her. As the trio fight to escape the alien-infested space station (which is on a crash course with a nearby planet), Kay injects herself with the Weyland-Yutani “Compound Z-01” – made from matter extracted from the Xenomorphs and designed to advance humanity. But when Rain puts Kay into a cyro-chamber so they can get her back safely, something goes horribly wrong and Kay begins to give birth — to something rather horrific, a baby that rapidly evolves to a human-xenomorph hybrid.

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“The way it’s described, you’re trying to picture it in your head, and you don’t know how the director is going to create this character,” says visual effects supervisor Daniel Macarin. “Is it going to look like a Xenomorph? Is it going to be something very unique? Is it going to be something we’ve never seen before?”

As it turns out, it’s all of the above.

Because Álvarez wanted the film to be terrifying and favored practical effects over CGI, Macarin and animation supervisor Ludovic Chailloleau scaled back, helping to emphasize the work of the creature design team, but in a subtle way. Everything about The Offspring needed to be natural, with the less is more approach.

On set, The Offspring was played by Romanian basketball player Robert Bobroczkyi — all 7 feet 7 inches of him.

“The first time saw the plates, and this 7-foot [tall] actor in there, in his costume. It was terrifying,” Macarin says. “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.”

Because Bobroczkyi isn’t a professional actor, Chailloleau explains, “the way he moves is just unique,” which informed the way they animated the character. “Considering his big size and the concept of what [the creature] is, he’s giving a lot of new things to watch visually, so I found that to be outstanding.”

When Kay gives birth, the baby was a practical effect. “They put it in the egg, designed and dressed it,” Macarin says. Except the baby didn’t move —and Álvarez wanted audiences to understand that despite Kay’s gory labor, the baby was alive. Macarin’s first dilemma came in finding the right facial expression for the baby Offspring. It couldn’t look cute and it couldn’t be too angry. “You don’t want [the audience] being that empathetic with the baby, you still want them a bit terrified,” he explains.

Once the baby begins growing (at a rapid pace) and starts crawling towards Kay and Andy, Macarin added in tiny details such as extra blood dripping out of the holes in his back, adding movement to the back of its head and pushing the skin around a little bit, “just to give it that little extra bit of horror that the audience will cringe and react to,” he explains.

They also enhanced the creature’s tail, with Chailloleau cycling through numerous iterations of how it would move. Was it moving enough? Was it a part of the body or something with a different brain? They didn’t want it to look like a dog’s tail or a cat’s tail, Macarin notes; it couldn’t make The Offspring look too happy or excited.

“This is a homage to the ’80s, in design style,” Chailloleau says. “Even the models and the practical [effects], everything has to fit the way they would have done that years ago. We don’t want to look to CG, so motion is very important, because we could not animate that way 40 years ago.”

In the end, he looked to Bobroczkyi’s performance, and he took inspiration from Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and James Cameron’s “Aliens.”

“When the first ‘Alien” was done,” Chailloleau says.“It was someone in the back with string and with a bit of help to just put the tail up and the rest followed. … So, the tail is not the focus of the shot; it stays secondary, but it’s still very menacing.”

Adds Macarin: “You don’t get a lot of screen time with this character, so it’s making sure that the audience never has the wrong reaction to it. If they giggle at it or something comes off as funny, then you’ve taken them out of the moment, and we don’t have enough time to probably get them back into the action.”

The Offspring’s mini-mouth also went through several iterations during the design process. The Xenomorph mini-mouth was iconic, hard and straight with hammering teeth, while The Offspring’s juvenile version needed to be softer while edging on dangerous because it’s still growing.

In the scene, The Offspring moves towards its mother Kay, and the idea was that it was looking to feed. So as it lowers its head, Chailloleau had to make sure the mouth’s movement was connected to The Offspring and that it didn’t have a mind of its own. “It was making sure that people didn’t think that he was trying to attack her, but the mouth is still dangerous,” Macarin says.

Toward the end of the sequence, the action moves out into space (as the station begins to collide with the planet’s rings), which presented its own set of challenges. In terms of The Offspring, there was only so much that Bobroczkyi could perform.

“When they start saying, ‘We need him to hang from the ceiling. We need him to drop down,’ the actor can’t possibly do that – not in any safe way, anyway,” Macarin explains. “And we can’t replace them with a stunty, because we don’t have 7-foot 2 or 7-foot-5 stunties of his proportions that can do these either … So anything out in space, [Chailloleau] had to take over and build a fresh performance, drawing back on everything that the actor had done in earlier shots.”

Audiences have left the theater wondering about The Offspring’s close resemblance to the Engineers in “Prometheus” and Macarin affirms that referencing the larger “Alien”-universe was the filmmakers’ grand plan.

“It’s not something that you want to directly connect,” Macarin explains. “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.”

How ‘Alien: Romulus’ Used a Seven-Foot Basketball Player and VFX to Bring The Offspring to Life (2024)

FAQs

How ‘Alien: Romulus’ Used a Seven-Foot Basketball Player and VFX to Bring The Offspring to Life? ›

On set of "Alien Romulus," The Offspring was played by Romanian basketball player Robert Bobroczkyi — all 7 feet 7 inches of him. “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 says.

What was the offspring in Alien: Romulus? ›

Kay does eventually give birth, but because she injected herself with "Compound Z-01", a substance made from matter extracted from the Xenomorphs and designed to advance humanity, her baby quickly grows into a horrifying human-Xenomorph hybrid known as The Offspring.

What is the offspring in Romulus? ›

Via the magic of Academy Award-winning Hollywood creature effects masters at Legacy Effects, "The Offspring" was played by Romanian basketball player Robert Bobroczkyi utilizing practical effects.

What is the offspring in Alien? ›

The latest entry to the series, Alien: Romulus, has brought yet another new addition to the Alien lore by introducing a new hybrid species known as Xenomorph Offspring,...

Who played the human alien in Alien: Romulus? ›

Betts' dialogue recordings were then modified with the filtering software Speecher, to be based on Ash's dialogue pulled from the original Alien. Trevor Newlin portrays the xenomorph, while the human–xenomorph hybrid (credited as the "Offspring") is portrayed by Romanian former basketball player Robert Bobroczkyi.

Who gives birth to the Alien in Alien? ›

Kay gives birth vaginally, but what emerges from her womb shares little resemblance to a human baby. Rain severs the umbilical cord with her bare hands then hunts down a nightmarish alien/human hybrid peering out of an acidic placenta. Just moments after its birth, the creature has grown to an enormous size.

How was Ripley impregnated by the Alien? ›

Ripley soon learns that during her cryostasis aboard the escape pod, she was attacked by a Face Hugger, and impregnated with a Xenomorph embryo.

Who are the twins of Romulus? ›

According to tradition, Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus in 753 BC. They were twin brothers, sons of a human mother and the god of war, Mars.

Who are the parents of Romulus? ›

According to Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus were the sons of Rhea Silvia by the god Mars. Their maternal grandfather was Numitor, the rightful king of Alba Longa, through whom the twins were descended from both the Trojan hero Aeneas, and Latinus, the king of Latium.

What is the lineage of Romulus and Remus? ›

Romulus and Remus were the direct descendants of Aeneas, whose fate-driven adventures to discover Italy are described by Virgil in The Aeneid. Romulus and Remus were related to Aeneas through their mother's father, Numitor.

What gender is Alien queen? ›

While Xenomorphs are usually said to be asexual, Queens are typically classified as female, owing to their similarities with similar female egg-laying castes in the insect kingdom. Usually, there is only a single Queen present in any Xenomorph populace.

What are the baby Aliens called in Alien? ›

A Chestburster is the immature infant form of the Xenomorph which emerges forcibly from the chest of its host, killing it. The chestburster is similar in form to the fully grown alien but far smaller and pale in color.

Which Alien has the little girl? ›

Carrie Henn is a Saturn Award-winning former child actress, best known for playing the role of Newt in Aliens, the second installment of the Alien series. In 1987, Henn won the Saturn Award for "Best Performance by a Younger Actor/Actress". She was also nominated for the Young Artist Awards that same year.

What is Alien: Romulus' storyline? ›

In “Romulus,” Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny), her android “brother” Andy (David Jonsson) and friends plan to escape their cosmic mining colony run by Weyland-Yutani – still the worst corporation ever – and venture to a new planetary home.

How to watch Alien: Romulus? ›

Additionally, you can check Alien: Romulus the movie is available on popular streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video, as they often offer a wide selection of movies and TV shows. Mark your calendars for July 25th, as that's when 'Alien: Romulus' will be available on Disney+.

Who is the rook in Alien: Romulus? ›

Alien: Romulus (2024) - Ian Holm as Rook (facial and vocal reference) - IMDb.

How do Xenomorphs impregnate humans? ›

Stage II: Facehugger

A Facehugger is the second stage in the creature's life cycle. As its name suggests, it attaches to a victim's face, and its sole purpose is to impregnate them orally with the beginnings of a Xenomorph embryo.

How do Xenomorphs reproduce without hosts? ›

Adult xenomorphs are capable of creating their own reproductive egg ('ovamorph') by embedding their prey into an organic substance that (in theory) metabolically reacts to merge host-parasite genetic material.

What are the babies in Alien called? ›

The Newborn, was a human-Xenomorph hybrid that was birthed by the Cloned Queen. The Newborn emerged as a byproduct of cloning experiments conducted by scientists of the United Systems Military.

What is the baby in Prometheus? ›

A Deacon was the result of Charles Holloway having "sexual-relations" with Elizabeth Shaw while infected with A0-3959x. 91 – 15, causing Shaw to later give birth to the Trilobite which impregnated the last Engineer with Deacon.

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