Comment by the_af
3 days ago
Alien and Aliens were masterpieces, but I've been consistently disappointed by everything after.
Let's agree to ignore the awful VS Predator crossovers for a second. I'm not sure they are canon anyway, and they are obviously cash grabs and not made with the same care of even the worst Alien movies.
Alien 3, while it has a cool idea (prison planet), is a mess as a result of executive meddling (the story can be read online). And they killed Hicks and Newt... bastards!
Resurrection was awful and awfully badly acted. I like Jeunet, but this was a hard miss. It has some cool visuals at times, typical of Jeunet, but the movie itself was embarrassing.
Prometheus was atrocious. Badly acted, badly scripted (characters making the dumbest of choices at every turn, professionals who don't know their profession -- xenobiologists who pet alien snakes, geologists who get lots at the first turn -- this has been discussed countless times). And the loss of mystery... nobody needed to know more about the Engineers/Pilot aliens, that's not how good storytelling works. Aided by technology, Scott "pulled a George Lucas" and forgot the cardinal rule of scifi horror/mystery: less is more.
After this, I exercised the good sense of avoiding Covenant (the plot summary seems bad), and Romulus, and now the new TV show.
I think overall the gravest sin is that the Alien universe was meant to be sketched in the broadest strokes, and details and mystery kept, not overexplained.
I wish they had let the first two awesome movies rest in peace.
Extended universes suck.
P.S. same applies to Blade Runner. Then again, I didn't even like the sequel, so I'm sure I'll dislike the upcoming show :(
I tend to agree with your take on these movies, but I find I can enjoy some of them to a greater extent by rejecting the notion of what's "cannon".
For instance, I like the bleakness of Alien 3 opening with Newt and Hicks both dead. That doesn't spoil my enjoyment of Aliens, which ends on a triumphant note. These are different stories, and they can be treated on completely different planes. If you want, you can imagine the movies as representing alternate branching universes, where one branch led to Newt and Hicks dying in hibernation, and in some other branch that's too uninteresting to be put to film, they live happily ever after.
I also liked Blade Runner 2049, but I don't need to retroactively reevaluate the original Blade Runner in light of any of the questions that are settled in the sequel. In Ridley Scott's original film, Deckard's humanity is still open to question, regardless of what's presented in Villeneuve's version.
Of course when the sequel is complete trash, it's easy to ignore entirely. Terminator 3 being the obvious example.
While I agree that you can just mentally split the continuity and thus spare Newt from her fate, in doing so it means that the continuity after is meaningless. I did something similar with Star Trek Nemesis. It wasn't a great movie so I just rejected that Data died at the end. Everything else after is fan fiction and it's irrelevant whether there's some other android who carries his memories and returns.
I think there's a similar issue with Marvel after Thanos. Not as much that Endgame was a bad movie, just that the continuity was derailed and never grounded itself. Did Vision come back? Did Loki? Is the Fox Quicksilver canon now? Eh, who knows, the "real" state of the world has moved so much that it doesn't matter anyway.
> I think there's a similar issue with Marvel after Thanos. Not as much that Endgame was a bad movie, just that the continuity was derailed and never grounded itself. Did Vision come back? Did Loki? Is the Fox Quicksilver canon now? Eh, who knows, the "real" state of the world has moved so much that it doesn't matter anyway.
In a way, I feel like this makes it the comic-book movie that's spiritually closest to the comics.
You are right about everything from Alien 3 through Covenant. However! Romulus was pretty okay. It has some questionable plot decisions, and it's kind of soft continuity compatible with the two Prometheus-era movies. But it does work as an action-horror in the shared universe of the original films. Alien: Earth was also pretty good, it explores the setting without breaking it too badly, and it's fun with dangerous aliens that aren't THE Alien. There are some plot points that require very smart characters to be holding the idiot ball.
> And the loss of mystery... nobody needed to know more about the Engineers/Pilot aliens, that's not how good storytelling works.
Yeah, remember when the network forced Lynch and Frost to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer. Broadcast executives typically don't get it, scenarists often get too infatuated with their own worldbuilding.
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Romulus was pretty good actually. If you want great newer aliens universe play the game Alien: Isolation. It’s the best piece of media in the aliens universe since Aliens. It’s an amazing experience and blows all of the later films/shows out of the water in regards to keeping the original “vibe” of the setting.
Oh yes, Alien Isolation is quite good. I must finish it some day!