Alien fans! How would you go about rescuing the Alien franchise?

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**Mr Morden**

I liked the idea that they took useful aspects of their hosts to make them different dependant on the DNA they obtained.

So the dog form Alien in A3 was different to the human form Alien and the Predator form alien

And then you have the ones in the Stormwatch finalie where they infect superpowered people and gain powers from the dead powered hosts!

**flamingkillamajig**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So, basically imagine Elon Musk taking the Ancient Aliens Documentary Scientists on an expedition to find Space El Dorado?

Am I the only one that thinks that sounds like the pitch for a comedy. It'd be a totally different genre of film then ofc.

**Lance845**

Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
Without promethius the space jockeys tech and civilization still lays undiscovered. There is a huge story there with large lumbering biotech elephantine men.

The jockeys themselves are alien enough and potentially terrifying. Its not a bug monster hunting you. Its a hyper intelligent race thats happy to put you on a disection table and see what makes you tick.

Imo, there is a way to "rescue" Prometheus/Covenant. . . We don't exactly know where/when on the timeline they start off, only that they are "before" the first Alien film. . . . So, to "fix" the mistakes of those 2 movies, you start off where Covenant ends: David, a lunatic robot has made off with Engineer tech on a colony ship. . . . Have the engineers show back up with their own bioweapon again, on the planet where David has landed, but this time, you have Xenomorph vs. David's pets, and by the end of it the horror of what they've wrought leads to a ship escaping, with a crash landing on a barren/uninhabitable planet right before the credits. Based on various opening scenes in Prometheus, the "bio-weapon" is a bit like Kali - in that it is both creator and destruction, depending on use. David's theft and corruption of this stuff is a grave threat to Engineers, but as they have previously been set up as "evil", they need to enact an over the top solution to the problem.

Of course, part of the terrible nature of the xenomorphs is that they cannot be controlled. . . One of the major elements of Resurrection (or was it 3?) was that they had them in prison cells and were trying to learn how to control these ultimate predators. I also think one of the enduring "facts" prior to Prometheus, is that ALL xenomorphs look the "same" wherever they've been encountered. . . And frankly, having the Engineers work their space-magic to create an over the top version of their creation virus specifically to counter a bastardized version of their creation virus ought to lead to the "one xenomorph" appearance, and I think it would make far more sense than the idiocy we see in Alien v. Predator.

Unfortunetly, the derelict ship on lv-426 has the pilot fused to his chair and fossilized. But Promethius and Covenant take place like... 100 years before alien. Not long enough for anything to happen and have that ship crash land. Remember also that WY KNOWS about the derelict ship before the Nostromo gets there. They are off course, and as they find out later WY sent them there. No matter how you slice it the time line is all fethed.

**Overread**

Honestly it just doesn't tie in well at all. Even the director got all "well its not really a prequel its just sort of similar" before it came out. Which I think suggests he realised (somewhat late?) that the story just didn't mesh well with the original series at all.

Thing is I think it also takes some of the alien inflence out of the picture by making it all the result of bumbling humans. Before we assumed that the ship had crashed purely from Xenos activity of perhaps several different species. What led it to crash; who the creature in the seat was; what was going on etc.. was all a mystery.

Were the a biological weapon that went wrong; were they prisoners; was it an infested ship being taken over; was the space jockey even part of the species at some stage; heck based on the ships very organic design was it an Alien ship or a fully corrupted one. In Resurrection we get one scene where Ripley falls into what looks like a bed of infestation that moves under her. We also saw tunnels made in Alien 2 around the hive. Alien 2 and 4 also showed that aliens were quite a lot smarter than simple hunting instinct. We are presented with the idea that, if left to their own devices for long enough, they could master technology (perhaps taking over other races or even their own). It's something that gets left behind a lot because most Alien stories don't have the hive lasting all that long before its discovered and destroyed (sometimes taking its attackers with it).

**Lance845**

Nothing that happens in Alien Resurrection can be taken as actual alien behavior or normal alien biology. Those aliens were human/alien hybrids that had vast differences in their biology and capabilities because of the part of them that was Ripley from the cloning process. Including who knows what kinds of mutations that resulted in gak that was neither alien nor human inherently.

**Manchu**

The only thing that Prometheus/Covenant really imposes on the franchise is the existence of the Engineers. Everything else is speculative.

**LordofHats**

Manchu wrote:
The only thing that Prometheus/Covenant really imposes on the franchise is the existence of the Engineers. Everything else is speculative.

I think Manchu does have a point here.

As disappointed as I am in Prometheus as a film, it did have worthwhile ideas for a franchise film. It's probably worth salvaging its good points cause it did have them. Covenant on the other hand was mostly garbage, but Covenant also had no real ideas whatsoever except the burning passion to produce the world's most drawn out auto-robotic flute scene

**Prestor Jon**

LordofHats wrote:
Manchu wrote:
The only thing that Prometheus/Covenant really imposes on the franchise is the existence of the Engineers. Everything else is speculative.

I think Manchu does have a point here.

As disappointed as I am in Prometheus as a film, it did have worthwhile ideas for a franchise film. It's probably worth salvaging its good points cause it did have them. Covenant on the other hand was mostly garbage, but Covenant also had no real ideas whatsoever except the burning passion to produce the world's most drawn out auto-robotic flute scene

I think the biggest flaw in both of those films is that neither is a story that needed to be told. We’ve known about the Engineers since the first film we don’t need them to be explained further, same goes for the xenomorphs. I think Scott and the Alien universe would have been better off focusing on interesting stories within the Alien universe instead of trying to tell revealing stories. We didn’t learn a whole lot about the xenomorphs or the Engineers in the first 4 films and that didn’t prevent them from being enjoyable and enriching the universe of the films. The setting is very interesting and popular and fertile ground for captivating stories. It reminds me of Star Wars. I think SW benefited far more from The Mandalorian than it did from the sequel trilogy. The Alien universe would reap similar benefits from a similar treatment.

**Manchu**

Neither movie is about the Engineers or xenomorphs; they’re both about David.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The Alien universe would reap similar benefits from a similar treatment.

Have you seen these?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdZugR0wc7bM3KbeVySz4Xv2QuFKQFGXD

**A Town Called Malus**

Manchu wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The Alien universe would reap similar benefits from a similar treatment.
Have you seen these?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdZugR0wc7bM3KbeVySz4Xv2QuFKQFGXD

Those are great and also demonstrate that the Alien is not spent as a force of horror as long as it is done right.

**Pacific**

Mr Morden wrote:
Go back and make the original DH Aliens: Earth War following on directly from Aliens and ignore eveything that came after it - especially Promethius just for the sheer unending stupidity of the scientists

Then make the original Predator Graphic novel and tie it in to Predators.

I had read that a script was written which followed the premise of Earth War - had gone on some years where Hicks is a washed out security guard, Newt is in a mental asylum. Some mad fool is trying to bring Aliens to earth, the two get wind of it and try to stop him. But, it didn't feature Ripley and Fox were convinced that the franchise hung on Sigourney Weaver, so the script got shelved.

It's actually not a bad read (I haven't read the graphic novel) and I like to imagine that that was the true story of what happened, rather than the film they released as Alien 3