There’s a lot to love about the original Alien. That movie has set the blueprint for so much of what modern horror and sci-fi movies do today. In the current landscape of films the Alien franchise is still popular, however, it does not carry the same weight that it once did. Part of this has to do with the more recent entries in the series trying too hard to explain the mysteries of the original films. Ironically, these films miss the point of the elements that made the original so great in the first place. There is hope on the horizon though with the upcoming entries into the stable of Alien entertainment now that the franchise has changed hands from Fox to Disney. FX’s upcoming Alien series could be just the thing that the franchise needs.
The network is known for making complex, mind-bending shows based on pre-existing properties. They’re one of the best networks for premier television shows currently, and their track record indicates that the new series is already in the best hands possible. While time will tell if this new Alien show is actually a success or not, should it stick the landing it’s possible it can correct the missteps of recent films in the canon like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant for a number of reasons.
Before diving into the last two films of the series, it’s important to get a quick reminder of the layout of how the Alien franchise has unfolded. After the first film, Alien, there was its sequel, Aliens. Where Alien was a haunting vision of a futuristic survival horror movie, Aliens was its more bombastic, action-heavy younger sibling. What made both of these movies great though was their focus more on a specific brand of body horror. The Xenomorph, essentially the mascot of the Alien franchise, was so effective not solely because of how it looked, but because of how it operated. This creature gains the upper hand by incubating within the human body at the expense of its human hosts. This is one of the key ways in which the franchise’s unique blend of horrors works so well on people and creeps into the viewer’s imagination.
Take for example in the first Alien movie. The audience is scared by the unknown more than they are anything else. The location of the Xenomorphs and their eggs is located on an unknown ship on the foreign and unknown planet of LV-426. The crew is called down there by an unknown distress signal to investigate. The horror ramps up when the crew finds the eggs on the ship that is stranded on this planet for unknown reasons. There’s a pilot on the ship that they encounter that appears to have perished for unknown reasons. From here they are forced to contend with an unknown creature that has wrapped its way around one of their crew members’ faces and necks. They have no way of removing this creature as it has acidic blood and will not let go, leading to uncertainty about whether or not he can survive.
The audience is then lulled into a false sense of security and led to believe that the crew member who was latched on to by this creature has dodged a bullet and is going to survive. The creature lets go, he awakens, and the crew sits down together to enjoy a lovely breakfast. Or so they think. Without warning, the crew member who was in the coma induced by the facehugger begins to cough violently, and to the surprise of everyone in the room a new creature bursts from his chest.
Fans know the names of these creatures now because the franchise has been fleshed out by future entries and filled in such details for fans. Audiences at the time had no idea what was going on though, and it freaked them out more because they didn’t know. This is just one example, but the fear of the unknown and the invasion of foreign entities into the human body are the biggest drivers of fear for the original movie. This plays into natural human fears of invasions of other countries and even of things like rape, as the human host is forcefully impregnated and used as a disposable incubation chamber. Aliens mostly still has this fear because while it does give new answers like the fact that Xenomorphs have a queen, it doesn’t over-explain to the point of familiarity like Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection.
Prometheus, in fairness, gets the body horror aspect right, but where it strays from the path of excellence is in its need to overly flesh out the past of Xenomorphs. The audience is given more primitive forms of Xenomorphs, which operate almost exactly like the originals. It also introduces strange forms of bacteria that have slightly different effects on human hosts, all of which are still deadly. The movie tries to use the fear instilled in audiences in the original Alien by having the protagonist of this film impregnated, but instead of a surprise, horrifying birth, the viewer must endure a brutal forced removal of this creature from a medical machine. By trying to explain earlier versions of the Xenomorph it has to deal with audience expectations and in doing so is less surprising. It’s more familiar and ends up taking an action-heavy approach.
This is where Alien: Covenant also gets into trouble. The movie plays out almost like a remake of the original Alien, but with every aspect made more bombastic and heavy on the action. The movie starts with a crew on a ship much like the original, but also has an explosion. There’s a suspicious android, but he’s extra evil. The final sequence where our hero has to fight against the Xenomorph on a moving ship involves her swinging around on a tethered cord, literal machine guns blazing.
The new Alien television series can correct these mistakes. If it simply focuses on having a compelling mystery it’s got a solid chance of pleasing fans. It doesn’t need to answer every question it presents, it just needs to keep the audience on its toes and shock them to succeed as the original film did. Fans everywhere are hopeful that FX can stick the landing.
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