Aliens: The Strangely Broken Sci-Fi/Horror Franchise
In all sci-fi/horror entertainment, no franchise is more worthy of the title “greatest” Aliens. The struggle against a parasitic lifeform, hindered by continual corporate/personal greed, is truly a landmark achievement in storytelling, showcasing heroes like Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley that triumph despite the odds, fate, and those who’d willingly destroy existence in their lust for power. It’s these elements that made Alien, a film that brought suspense to unheard of levels, and Aliens, a flawless sequel that took a great concept and made it even better, a duology that redefined the genre in a manner that’s affected movie/TV/games to this day.
However, from then on, the franchise
found itself targeted by a horrible Hollywood trend: milking a cash cow. A pair
of sequels, another of spin-offs, and still another of prequels took what
should’ve been a short and sweet pairing of movies and ruined them. Clumsy
research and inconsistent storylines gutted the franchise, making further
progress highly doubtful…absent a complete revamp, that is. To understand this,
let’s go through the inconsistencies I mentioned, although these are just those
I’ve picked up on; if I miss any, please forgive me. Warning: major spoilers
are coming for who haven’t seen the franchise, and I apologize, but they’re
necessary to understand my point…and that’s speaking as a fan who’s watched
every title in the series.
First off, Alien 3. In this
film, Ripley is supposedly impregnated by an egg found on a landing strut of
the dropship that plucked her and the other survivors off LV-426 at the end of Aliens…but
where did it come from? The Alien Queen wasn’t carrying one with her when she
emerged on the Sulaco; she couldn’t have brought one anyway, since those
in her chamber were fire-bombed by Ripley, as was her egg sac, the latter of
which she’d detached from to chase her. Furthermore, regarding the sac, if she
needed it to gestate eggs, then she couldn’t have laid it. No egg is visible on
the strut throughout the final battle scene, ruling out the potential for it
being picked up when the ship was knocked into a debris pile before flying
away, and there wasn’t any on the platform when the crash occurred, either.
Another possibility, some might argue, is the evil android from prequels Prometheus
and Alien: Covenant might’ve put it aboard to signal his old bosses at
Weyland-Yutani, but that doesn’t work either. Again, where did the egg come
from? In Alien: Resurrection, United Systems Military clones Ripley back
to life to resurrect the species, implying one thing: the crashed alien ship
where the eggs were first found in Alien was destroyed by the LV-426
colony explosion. Therefore, no other eggs existed to plant. It also explains
why the corporate team headed to Fury after the fire signal on the Sulaco
instead of directly to LV-426 and the ship—it was their last chance to get the creature.
Another pair of quick points: the
face-hugger which impregnated Ripley and her gestation. In literally every
other film in the franchise, the former dies after infecting one host, without
fail, so how did this one somehow infect two: Ripley and a dog? As for the
latter element, again in literally every other film in the franchise, once an
infected person awakes from the coma the face-hugger puts them in, the embryo
emerges within minutes. How come Ripley’s took so long?
Now we get into the heart of the
matter: the prequels and the Alien v. Predator crossover. These seem
good on their face, but the sheer level of inconsistencies here are
breathtaking. First off, the latter films hint that the Predators have had
access to the Aliens for probably millennia, given the hieroglyphs in the
Antarctic temple from the first film in that spin-off, and the resulting use of
captured Predator tech (from both that film and its sequel) leads to the merger
of Bishop Weyland’s company with the Yutani Corporation—the pairing that later
becomes the franchise’s primary villains. But this doesn’t match the events of
the prequels, which hint that a mysterious alien race, far in the future, based
on unexplained hatred of humanity, created a bioweapon to use against us. This
concoction is later used by said evil android, courtesy of genetic research to
create the franchise’s title creatures…years after using their own weapon to
wipe them out. Thus, how could the Alien v. Predator timeline even
exist? The prequels only mucked things up further from there. If everyone in
the mysterious race that created the bioweapon was wiped out far in the future,
like Covenant hinted, how did one of them supposedly escape with an
entire ship full of eggs and crash land on LV-426 so long ago its body was
“fossilized”, as Alien related? Fossilization takes millions of years
FYI, making the original timeline untenable. Moreover, if they hated us so
much, why did the pilot of the ship send out a signal that warned others to
stay away versus tried to learn victims in?
In conclusion, the franchise set a new bar for its genre, but should’ve stopped any sequels as of Aliens, and any attempt at a prequel should’ve featured far better research on the part of the writers. This is something I felt compelled to write as someone whose loved this series since first watching the second film long ago, especially when the storyline deserves far better than it got than this level of dilution. Hopefully, this can serve as a lesson to others looking to up the ante on a classic: it’s better to take the time to get it right rather than wing it and hope something works.
Andrew Nickerson
Andrew Nickerson is originally from Massachusetts, and is a lifelong reader. He has a BA in History (English minor) from UMASS Lowell and JD from Mass. School of Law. He's self-published a novella on Amazon, and printed 1 article apiece on Polygon, Anime Herald, and Pipeline Artists, 3 more on Ariel Chart, 2 articles and 2 short stories on Academy of Heart and Mind, a short story in Evening Street Review's 2022 Winter Edition, an article in the August 2023 edition of "Alice Says Go F*** Yourself" online magazine, another article in NewMyths' September issue, a short story in Bindweed's Winter 2023 issue, and recently printed another article in Encephalon Literary Magazine's Spring 2024 edition.