The Alien Franchise Needs to End

[Soviet Heavy]

Allow me to adopt my most hyperbolic EternalNothingness persona: Because all this new stuff like Prometheus and Colonial Marines are making it so everyone hates the franchise now and all the old stuff will look terrible by comparison!

Okay, got that out of the way. Now for my actual reasoning.

Alien, Aliens, and to a lesser extent, Alien 3, pretty much covered everything you could feasibly do with the Xenomorph without falling into repetition. Anything else is just going to retread old ground, and has been for years now. Take a look at any Aliens FPS, even the good AVP games. The marine sections literally just play out like a Best Of montage from the films.

Prometheus managed to get so fucked up in production that it became a quasi prequel to Alien, and all it did was confuse people and annoy them with bad acting and a weird ass script.

The Aliens Vs Predator film series is pretty much dead in the water right now.

Aliens has gone the way of John Carter and the Barsoom series. It's been copied so much that there isn't anything new it can do at this point. You can point to the entire FPS genre as being inspired intensely by Aliens. And from there, hundreds of variations on the theme of guns vs monsters is born.

At this point, all an Alien product has going for it is its name. I really don't see anything groundbreaking or new coming from this franchise anymore, and anything that they do will be judged against its predecessors. And it will come up lacking.

 

[CatsPajamas]

But I was so looking forward to the Aliens musical. :/

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

At this point, all an Alien product has going for it is its name. I really don't see anything groundbreaking or new coming from this franchise anymore, and anything that they do will be judged against its predecessors. And it will come up lacking.

But that won't stop anyone from trying, because it's still cheaper and easier to shove the "Aliens" name into something to try to gin up sales from fans than it is to come up with something new and interesting.

But I was so looking forward to the Aliens musical. :/

I'm upset that now we'll probably never get our Aliens-brand cereal with marshmallow face-huggers.

 

[Vault101]

I just ignore the movies after 3

though if Alien isolation is as good as it could (or should) be then that would be awesome

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I just ignore the movies after 3

though if Alien isolation is as good as it could (or should) be then that would be awesome

You mean after two. The idiocy started with three, all due respect to Fincher, who is a fantastic director.

I'd welcome another Alien film, so long as it was the hypothetical series reboot speculated about by James Cameron and Ridley Scott before the studio decided to go with AvP instead. There's nothing wrong with the IP itself. There are still a number of ways you could build an interesting story around the Xenomorphs.

 

[DoPo]

Allow me to adopt my most hyperbolic EternalNothingness persona: Because all this new stuff like Prometheus and Colonial Marines are making it so everyone hates the franchise now and all the old stuff will look terrible by comparison!

On the contrary, I think, the old stuff is the reason people dislike the new ones. Without the contrast between the two, I doubt there really would have been as much of a backdraft.

But really, other than that, I mostly agree.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Eh, just because no one has been able to do anything interesting with the franchise for a while doesn't mean that no one will ever be able to get something good out of it again. I mean, between the possibility of books, movies, TV shows, video games, etc. someone out there has to have some kind of interesting idea.

How about a movie for the AvP franchise that explains the origins of how the predators discovered the xenomorphs, why they hunt them, and why they built off-world sites on other planets on which to hunt them. Keep the humans out of it, just have aliens. That could actually be cool and the fact that it doesn't have to be set on earth gives them a lot of leeway for cool imagery, like a dark and gory Avatar.

Or how about a TV show where a group of colonists crash-lands on a planet that's populated by the xenomorphs, and we watch as the group figures out how to survive with very little hope of rescue as the xenomorphs kill them off one by one, like an alien version of The Walking Dead, but with less retarded characters (hopefully).

There's cool things that can be done here, it's just that studios have gotten lazy with the franchise purely because they can bank on the name with no effort.

 

[Vault101]

How about a movie for the AvP franchise that explains the origins of how the predators discovered the xenomorphs, why they hunt them, and why they built off-world sites on other planets on which to hunt them. Keep the humans out of it, just have aliens. .

aisde from the fact having a full cast of Predators seems risky, (they aren't exactly designed to be endearing) people don't tend to like subtitles

unless they went with a "Valkyrie" type thing and have them speak English (ala transformers) after reminding us that they are "supposed" to be speaking...whatever language Pedators speak

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I actually really, really enjoyed Alien Resurrection. Apart from the misguided ending, it was a great way to pickup from Alien 3 and a good, dumb space romp.

I'd quite like to see a direct sequel to it if it was possible. But Sigourney's 64 now! How well does she look for her age btw?

But I was so looking forward to the Aliens musical. :/

Ha ha ha *tipshat*

 

[Therumancer]

Allow me to adopt my most hyperbolic EternalNothingness persona: Because all this new stuff like Prometheus and Colonial Marines are making it so everyone hates the franchise now and all the old stuff will look terrible by comparison!

Okay, got that out of the way. Now for my actual reasoning.

Alien, Aliens, and to a lesser extent, Alien 3, pretty much covered everything you could feasibly do with the Xenomorph without falling into repetition. Anything else is just going to retread old ground, and has been for years now. Take a look at any Aliens FPS, even the good AVP games. The marine sections literally just play out like a Best Of montage from the films.

Prometheus managed to get so fucked up in production that it became a quasi prequel to Alien, and all it did was confuse people and annoy them with bad acting and a weird ass script.

The Aliens Vs Predator film series is pretty much dead in the water right now.

Aliens has gone the way of John Carter and the Barsoom series. It's been copied so much that there isn't anything new it can do at this point. You can point to the entire FPS genre as being inspired intensely by Aliens. And from there, hundreds of variations on the theme of guns vs monsters is born.

At this point, all an Alien product has going for it is its name. I really don't see anything groundbreaking or new coming from this franchise anymore, and anything that they do will be judged against its predecessors. And it will come up lacking.

I have mixed opinions, to me the "Alien" is just a monster and like any monster there is plenty of ways it can be used. The problem to me is that the big budget productions, like games and movies, seem mostly interested in doing the whole retread thing and covering a lot of the same kinds of material. When you look at what some of the novels and comics have done you can see some interesting ideas there, but they aren't ones big budget sources want to draw from because they don't fit with the re-tread producers figure is safe territory. Even if in the end it always comes down to "Aliens Vs. Humans" there are different set ups you can use for it, giving retreads of the same concept a fresh spin. For example one of the novels I remember reading involved the idea of the aliens having glands that could be refined to make a drug called "Fire". The idea of a set up where they are a fairly known quantity, but are hunted down, yet criminals want to keep them around to harvest allows for some unique spins on how an infestation could get going.

What's more we have yet to see a film where the Alien is the hero/protagonist. We haven't yet seen how smart these things can get. A variation combining elements of say "Splice", "Species", and "Alien" together could be interesting. Say the corporation which loves it's research winds up creating clones with increasingly advanced brains to infect Aliens with so each alien and it's incubation creature becomes increasingly smarter and more self aware, leading to them eventually creating something basically human and no quite as predatory, only to predictably have the corporation want to destroy it having learned what they want to. A movie where you say retread "Alien" but say have the Alien playing "Die Hard" with the corporate stormtroopers and crew members hunting it down on some research station or ship could be interesting. Show some stuff in reverse, you know how does the heroic Alien take down the dude with the flame thrower in a confined area? How is it going to beat the colonial marines? At the end of the movie will it ever find love with the handsome scientist who wouldn't obey the kill order and is piloting the marine's ship away from the station? Hmmm that might actually lead to a romantic musical sequel.

Okay, okay, I'm not sold they could make the Alien sexy (it wouldn't look anything like the creature from spliced I don't think) but who says love has to be about physical appearance? Maybe the alien queen finding love with some cut Chippendale could be the answer to all the criticisms of the way women are cast in movies... here is a lady protagonist who is the opposite of hot and yet she still scores....

Alright well it's getting increasingly silly, but the point is that I could think of some things they could do, but they probably never will. Aliens also don't need to be the subject of their own movie. It might be interesting if in some sci-fi action movie controlled Aliens are released as a biological weapon for a scene or two, maybe even by the good guys fighting some evil invaders or something (evil species #2, meet evil species #1 who we already made our pets...). I mean it wouldn't have to be a big thing, it could just be cute to see a big battle scene where some ship with the corporate logo flies over and airdrops aliens on some people with few other references, which of course would cause fan fiction writers have a field day even if there wasn't any other thought to it being the same universe. Sort of like how "Robotech" was spliced with other anime meaning you occasionally see things in the background like Captain Harlock or the Orguss. It wasn't intended literally and it was explained why that happened, but it can be amusing for people to envision the crossovers literally (and also justify why these things didn't play more of a role) even when the series itself goes on deadpan like none of that actually happened.

 

[LaoJim]

Alien, Aliens, and to a lesser extent, Alien 3, pretty much covered everything you could feasibly do with the Xenomorph without falling into repetition. Anything else is just going to retread old ground, and has been for years now. Take a look at any Aliens FPS, even the good AVP games. The marine sections literally just play out like a Best Of montage from the films.

Aliens 3 was reportedly going to be a movie with the xenomorphs escaping and breeding on earth creating an apocalypse scenario. I imagine it as sort of a disaster movie (the first aliens films was horror, the second was action, changing genres seems to work). If they do this then I'd be interested in it. As you say, the basic one/some/many Aliens on a spaceship/station is pretty much played out.

Aliens has gone the way of John Carter and the Barsoom series. It's been copied so much that there isn't anything new it can do at this point. You can point to the entire FPS genre as being inspired intensely by Aliens. And from there, hundreds of variations on the theme of guns vs monsters is born.

The problem I've always had with Aliens in games is that in the movies the Xenos are near perfect killing machines, and that's why they are cool. Any game where you are a marine and you are killing hundreds of them feels disappointing to me. I think Dead Space did the right thing by basically copying the Aliens aesthetic but changing the baddies to be more shambling and less deadly.

 

[small]

I quite enjoyed Prometheus. And I get a special joy out of watching people freak out about how it shouldn't exist because they don't like it. Because god forbid a movie got made tangentially related to something you enjoy that you don't personally enjoy.

its funny. it was watchable to me but i know someone who actually worked on it who called it "a fucking train wreck of a film".

personally i wouldnt mind seeing telltale games having a go at an adventure game

 

[Thaluikhain]

Aliens has gone the way of John Carter and the Barsoom series. It's been copied so much that there isn't anything new it can do at this point.

There's a not bad Barsoom comic/s still being made, as it happens.

And, if it works for all the copies, why not the original?

Not, getting it to work again is not easy, but could be done. Most franchises fail before they run out of material, consistently not getting it wrong is hard.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'd welcome another Alien film, so long as it was the hypothetical series reboot speculated about by James Cameron and Ridley Scott before the studio decided to go with AvP instead. There's nothing wrong with the IP itself. There are still a number of ways you could build an interesting story around the Xenomorphs.

I don't know what this speculated reboot entailed, but with each sequel uncovering more about the Alien the less scary and interesting it became. The power of the first movie was that it left so much to your imagination, whether it be LV-426, the Derelict, the Space Jockey, or the Alien itself. And this extended to the crew as well, who had little idea what the hell was going on creating a sense of helplesness.

I know Aliens is seen as a great sequel, some would even say a better movie than the first (though certainly not me), but it was the beginning of the end for this franchise. It turned the Alien into the Xenomorph: A creature that lives in hives like bees and ants, and can be gunned down by the dozens. Bye bye Lovecraftian horror.

 

[oooooooooooooooooooooooooo]

I mostly agree, though I think I see the situation differently. I don't think Ridley Scott considers any movies other than Alien and Prometheus to be part of the universe he's working in for further films, so I think there's a good chance that anything further from him that touches on the alien won't stick to what's currently considered canon. I'm not really interested in seeing another Xenomorph universe movie though, I really just want what we are already getting, Ridely Scott exploring other parts of his universe.

 

[somonels]

I think there needs to be a distinction between two subjects. Alien isn't quite a franchise. Aliens is all about the franchise.

Prometheus is just an in-universe thing. It showed us that no, the creatures aren't a naturally evolved being, and the engineers are just lame. I don't mind what the movie didtried to do but the writing, and actors, and the religious angle, and the squeal bait, were utterly forum ban-worthy material. I enjoy it the same way as rule 34 of my childhood cartoons, and I consider it as such. Lindelof, Lindelof Lindelof.

 

[SweetShark]

if They follow the route of Alien vs Predator the Arcade game, I will f*cking piss my pants from enjoyment.
We need more fan service and less canon stories.
I am joking of course, but seriously, we need another Alien vs Predator from Capcom.
A Cyborg female ninja sound good in my awesome book.