When you think about the Alien film franchise and The Last of Us games and TV series, you probably don’t see any similarities at all. And why would you? One is a slowburn, cross-country journey about the end of the world with fungus people. The other is…The Last of Us. Wakka wakka wakka, funny joke. At any rate, both are creature horror with sci-fi bits but that’s where the comparisons likely stop. But if you’re a filmmaker like Fede Alvarez, you might have used one to inspire the other, as the filmmaker shared that The Last of Us: Part II did indeed inspire Alien: Romulus.
On Twitter, the Evil Dead director responded to a follower’s question about whether or not he’d played TLOU2. Alvarez shared he was playing the game whilst writing Alien: Romulus and took direct inspiration from it for one of his characters.
“The story of a pregnant Dina made me think of having the character of Kay be pregnant too. Then I cast Isabella Merced to play Kay…. A year later she gets cast to play Dina on the HBO show…. True story.”
That’s less life imitating art but art imitating art, really. The utter happenstance of Isabella Merced playing Kay in Romulus only for HBO to cast her has the analogous character in The Last of Us is super fascinating. In the game, and series, Dina is Ellie’s girlfriend who bears the brunt of the latter’s quest for vengeance.
But that isn’t the only fun parallel. Another Twitter person noticed a visual similarity between the character of Lev in TLOU2 and Navarro in Romulus. Both people of Asian descent with shaved heads. Alvarez confirmed this, too, in gif format.
So the moral of the story: play video games. Thank you.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
