Teasing The Alien – A 45 Year Journey

With the release of the first teaser trailer for the upcoming Alien: Romulus by Fede Alvarez, viewers have the opportunity to get a first glimpse of what to expect on the 16^th of August. Being the 7^th film in the franchise and with the director hinting that it will have elements from all of the previous Alien films so far, it’s only natural that Alien: Romulus will be compared to its former instalments.

There are a few misconceptions that tend to arise whenever the first trailers for new films in the franchise are released. From misleading elements to falsely attributed audio queues, by comparing the first teaser trailers of the past and present, from each film, we may be able to grasp a better understanding of what we can expect from Alien: Romulus in a few months, what has changed to keep up with the times, and if anything has always stayed the same. For some of the community, those first impressions they felt from the trailers are just as memorable as the films are.

The original Alien teaser starts out in pitch black space, rushing past white specks, presumably starlight whilst haunting ethereal sounds are rising with the wind before the camera pans over a harsh, pale, terrestrial landscape. The infamous title starts to assemble, one straight line at a time, symmetrically from the center letter “I” making sure that first time viewers had no idea that the film’s title was being spelt out in front of them until it was complete.

The trailer switches to closeup shots of the unused Alien textured chicken egg from it’s very first poster which was made before the marketing team had creature visuals available to them. The closeup resembles our cratered Moon, another baren and harsh landscape. An ever-intensifying rhythmic pulsation creeps up on the viewer while visually surrounded by harsh shadows. The now legendary haunting siren starts becoming noticeable when the egg cracks. It will prove to be such an iconic and closely associated sound effect with the Alien franchise, that it will appear in multiple sequel teasers. Finally, by the end of the trailer, the most famous phrase in all of the franchise appears: “In space no one can hear you scream.”

The Aliens teaser is a lot less abstract than the original as we get to see footage from the film right from the start. It starts with a title reveal in a different font. Like in the original, the first to appear is the letter “I”, though this time as a glowing slit that widens, and the rest of the title quickly following afterwards. Next the viewers see an other worldly landscape, just like in the Alien 1979 teaser, the main difference being that this time around the actual footage was from the film itself. Then the trailer commences with the marines gearing up followed by quite an extensive amount different scenes.

Not a shy amount of LV-426, Ripley in the Power Loader, the Hive, Facehuggers, adult Aliens, the Queen herself and even Drake’s and Hudson’s final moments were visible during the rest of the footage. Something that maybe today would be classified as quite a spoiler filled trailer. In terms of the audio, the scenes play out in silence with only the disturbing soundtrack building the tension up until the end which was directly a callback to the first full length trailer for Alien that was released after the teaser, which was also extremely filled with spoilers.

The first and last thing the viewers hear is an Alien screech during the title reveal, specifically – Big Chap’s screams as it was being gassed by Ripley on the Narcissus. The soundscape uses the opening track from Alien, later transforming it in the same pulsing accompanied by the haunting sirens that the viewers are familiar from the 1979 teaser. The famous narration of “This time it’s war.” didn’t appear until the first full Aliens trailer where all of the sound effects were inserted and its own soundtrack was used.

The Alien 3 teaser trailer may be one of the most controversial in the franchise. It is designed to be ambiguous and evocative of the first trailer for the original 1979 Alien. Just like its predecessor, it starts in the blackness of space, surrounded by pinpoint stars, though which are not zooming past like they do in the original. The camera takes the viewer to what seems to be a similarly cracked landscape, but is in fact the egg with a much rougher texture than last time.

Unlike in Alien where the egg was a limitation of the marketing department not knowing what the final creature designs would be, the success of that first poster and teaser trailer had been so widespread, that the cracked egg had become a visual icon related to the franchise, giving the Alien 3 teaser a reason to use it in a nostalgic manner. Alien 3 is also closer to Alien with its focus on a single creature against the mostly defenseless protagonist, than it is to the action-terror of multiple creatures in Aliens. The title reveal is also conceptualized in the same style as the original. A narrator during the teaser even mentions the 1979 Alien, whilst ignoring the 1986 film.

On the other hand, there are subtle references to Aliens as well. The trailer soundtrack is from the opening of the 1986 film (just like Aliens used the opening track from Alien’s soundtrack in its teaser) and the narrator voice over until then only appears in the later Aliens trailer. The very last line from the narrator also suggests a continuation of the sequel, along with the Alien cubed title design implying more creatures or a greater threat approaching.

As a subversion of the original Alien tagline, “…on Earth everyone can hear you scream.”, it is simple, effective and unforgettable because of the huge implications such a statement carries. Unfortunately, the teaser promised one thing, but delivered something completely else. The production issues, the fixed release date, the constantly changing scripts and directors not only impacted the film itself, but the marketing department as well. They were pushed by the studio into making a teaser trailer before it was even completely decided what the story was going to be about.

The difference between the teasers from Alien and Alien 3 is that even though both have elements that were not in the final films, the purely marketing textured chicken egg from Alien was shot in a way that was in line with the tone of the film. A simple, yet creatively shot prop that didn’t promise a lot, but delivered so much more in the final film. With Alien 3, the opposite situation happened. Nobody by that point thought the textured egg was going to appear in the film, everyone understood it was just a callback. That one final line promised too much and didn’t deliver on the expectation it had set. The trailer was teasing a film of a completely different tone, one that was never filmed.

The Alien: Resurrection teaser trailer also starts with a shot of the vast darkness of space with intermittent pinpoints of stars as a familiar sight. The difference being that the first half of the trailer has a chilling rendition of “Twinkle, twinkle little star”, perhaps as a reference to Ripley singing “You are my lucky star” at the end of the first Alien film. The teaser, similarly to the Aliens version, is a lot closer to a fully fledged trailer, than the abstract teasers for Alien and Alien 3 were. Even though the trailer for Alien: Resurrection shows a lot of footage from the film, it is arguably a lot less filled with spoilers than the Aliens teaser was.

In this one, the viewers don’t get to see the Queen, or the Newborn at all. None of the character deaths are shown either, though a clearer view of the adult Alien is more visible in this teaser than in any of the other ones before it. The style of the trailer is very much evocative of the Aliens tense action, as opposed to the horror of Alien. Alien: Resurrection’s teaser demonstrates a mix of old and new elements. There is no narrator or tagline in this rendition, yet it sticks to a mostly sound effect silent track like the teaser of Aliens and the full trailer of Alien does. Only the music compliments the visuals, but unfortunately this is the first instance of an Alien teaser that doesn’t have the iconic siren noise. The usage of an existing well-known song will also be revisited in the teaser for Alien: Covenant.

The second half of the trailer has a bombastic action theme that could fool viewers into believing that it’s a theme from Aliens which would make sense since all of the previous trailers have used the tracks of their predecessors for their first teaser. Some may even believe that it is just a theme from the corresponding film itself, when it is in fact the track Code Red from the company Immediate Music that specializes in making tracks for trailers. The title reveal is also a bit different. Appearing only at the end with a different style of fading into frame, it’s accompanied by the tagline “Witness the resurrection”.

After a 15-year hiatus, another standalone film in the franchise appeared in the form of Prometheus. After the Alien vs. Predator crossover films had relatively underperformed, the community was excited for the return of Ridley Scott, especially since it was finally confirmed that Prometheus was indeed going to be a part of the Alien universe.

The first teaser trailer leans in heavily towards the connections to Alien. The first thing viewers see leverages the well-known anticipation of the fact that Ridley Scott was returning to sci-fi. The teaser presents quite the hybridization of famous Alien trailer tropes, yet since a lot of time had passed since the last standalone Alien film, new elements are present that reflect the style of trailers in the 2010s. There’s a continuation of silent visuals with only the soundtrack present, and in this instance, some dialogue. Viewers hear frantic snippets of worried pleas from the main protagonist of the film, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw as scenes from the film start playing out with the main title being slowly revealed in the now traditional style from center vertical lines, symmetrically outwards.

Again, the famous siren scream is used as another means of tying the film with the preexisting franchise. The difference being that the soundtrack this time is a lot denser, has more layers and focuses on electronic sounds along with powerful basses which is quite common in modern era trailers. Since almost two decades have passed from the last time a trailer used the iconic siren, specifically in Alien 3, sometimes the Prometheus teaser is understandably, but wrongfully assumed to be the first instance of the sound effect. At the end of the teaser, the audience is met with the grim tagline “They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end.”

Surprisingly, not counting the final action piece with the rolling Juggernaut, the teaser shows less spoilers than you would expect with so much footage. Holloway’s deteriorating condition and Fifield’s helmet getting burnt by acid is visible, though the smoke from the helmet hides Fifield’s identity in the teaser. None of the bestial creatures are shown. What is presented though, is the Engineer’s helmet and the Last Engineer in full humanoid form approaching the chair in the control room as it rises up from the ground. Maybe a significant spoiler, but on the other hand, in the film itself, the Engineers are shown from the very opening scenes, before even the human characters are.

Nonetheless, an atmosphere of thrilling horror is conveyed, one that somewhat misrepresents the actual tone of the final film. For this reason, many fans were disappointed when Prometheus aired, instantly making the teaser trailer infamous for its controversial misdirection. Only the Alien 3 teaser can maybe be considered more loathed in the community for its outlandish premise that didn’t represent the final product at all.

On the other hand, the Prometheus teaser suggested a very back to basics approach while showing footage from the film itself which made people believe they can’t possibly be in for a situation like Alien 3. Yet expectations that the marketing department themselves were setting up with an abundance of promotional material, along with the misleading tone of the prequel teaser trailer led to the fact that parts of the community were harsher on the film than they might have been if the marketing was a lot clearer from the start.

The Alien: Covenant teaser starts in a unique way, with an extended look at a pivotal, extremely intense story moment, where we witness the first character death and leadup to the first creature birth. After which, the trailer emphasizes that this is a film by Ridley Scott, before transitioning to the first scene of David’s eye, a callback to the opening eye shot from the original Blade Runner. That, along with the start of the soundtrack, firmly communicates to the viewers that this film’s about David’s story. The silent visuals are abandoned as well as the haunting siren. Instead, over the full audio-visuals of the scenes, a haunting cover of Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy by AURORA plays.

There’s no tagline and the title reveal’s at the very end with a slimmed down version of fully formed letters fading into existence which is yet another unexpected trait it shares with the teaser for Alien: Resurrection. The egg along with Oram’s kiss of death from the Facehugger is clearly shown, as well as Ricks’ death with a glimpse of the adult Alien form behind a glass shower wall. On the other hand, new creatures for the film, the Neomorphs, were kept relatively hidden except for a brief glimpse of the juvenile version when Faris shoots at it in the lander. Besides Aliens, all of the first teasers were successful in not revealing their new creature variations too much.

The teaser trailer for the latest film in the franchise as of the time of writing, has been released for Alien: Romulus. The opening shot is of the spaceship Corbelan IV (another already traditional reference to the works of Joseph Conrad) traveling through space towards, what we now known as, the Renaissance station, illuminated by surrounding rings from a planet. The beginning starts in the same vein as did the teasers for Scott’s prequels and as a lot of modern era trailers do, stating that this film is from Fede Alvarez, along with name dropping his previous films – Don’t Breathe and Evil Dead.

The trailer emphasizes the dark atmosphere of the worn-out practical sets. As is visible in the teaser, there are sections of the station that look like they were taken from the wall panels of Alien, corridors from both Alien and Aliens and even hallways from Alien: Isolation where a recognizable flair is thrown. Speaking of which, at the beginning of the teaser when the audience hears panicked dialogue from what is presumed to be our main cast, banging and dropping from the air ducts can be heard that has similarities to the sound effects from Alien: Isolation.

In the very first few seconds alone, the viewers can hear Facehuggers skittering, what sounds like flesh being ripped apart by the creatures, and a mixture of Alien hisses with the noticeable example of the high-pitched screech from Aliens. Like with Alien: Covenant, the trailer uses the full combination of audio-visuals for the demonstrated scenes, but with the return of the siren scream. The soundtrack is similar to the Prometheus teaser, with emphasis on the bass and percussion. The difference is that the Prometheus trailer has the siren effect a lot more pronounced along with the pulsating electronic hums which the Alien: Romulus teaser lacks.

The more orange lighting has kinship with certain scenes in Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection. As far as spoilers go, no obvious death scenes are shown in the trailer. Facehuggers are prominent in the teaser though, darker in color, swarming towards a group of survivors, which is in itself a unique visual for the films. The darker, more brown color may be a reference to the Alien 3 Queen Facehugger, while the swarm could be referencing a cover of the comic Aliens: Berserker\Frenzy and certain panels from the comic Aliens: Defiance.

At the very end there is a quick shot of the adult Alien before it attacks. With the confirmation of metallic teeth and a more classical silhouette, could this be a comeback of the biomechanical Alien? Has the teaser showed us all of the creatures or are more variations still in hiding? Will the film stay true to the dread inducing atmosphere that the trailer has suggested or will this be another case of marketing misdirection? Only time will tell.