The Case for ‘Alien’ as Hollywood’s Greatest Franchise

For anyone who loves the scale and spectacle of a big studio movie, you have to accept an ugly truth: Franchises rule the roost. Original blockbusters haven’t completely gone extinct, but risk-averse executives tend to favor what they believe is closer to a sure thing. It’s a strange predicament for artists, who have to take familiar IP and find ways to get creative within that sandbox. It can work, however: Mission: Impossible has parlayed Tom Cruise’s insatiable desire to risk his life for our entertainment into some all-timer action set pieces. (This year, Cruise has been spotted dangling from a biplane; praise Xenu.) But the one franchise to rule them all has hung around for more than four decades without overstaying its welcome. I’ll give you a hint: In space, no one can hear the characters scream, but in a theater, we sure as hell know what it sounds like when one of the franchise’s signature creatures tears through human tissue.

Strap yourselves in, because it’s Alien season again. Friday marks the release of Alien: Romulus, the seventh entry in the mainline series, and one that boasts a new creative team behind the camera. (More on that later.) Whenever a beloved franchise shakes things up, there’s cause for concern among the fans that the wheels could come off. (The less said about Terminator Genisys, the better.) But for Alien, creative overhaul has long been a feature, not a bug: The franchise endures as Hollywood’s greatest because continuity within its universe matters less than filmmakers putting their own stamp on the material. Artistically, I admire its purity, and amid a wave of safe, predictable IP, you should, too.

Like some of our finest franchises (see also: Mad Max), Alien wasn’t intended to become one. Directed by Ridley Scott, the original Alien followed the crew of the Nostromo, a commercial spaceship that intercepts a distress signal from an uncharted moon before one of the crewmates is attacked by an alien parasite that, unbeknownst to everyone, lays an egg inside him. Soon after, the characters find themselves trapped aboard the ship with a Xenomorph: a sleek, ruthless predator with acid for blood that starts picking people off like a slasher villain. (Thankfully, the cat is spared.) On the whole, Alien is full of indelible moments: the chest-burster dinner scene, the jump scare in the ship’s air ducts, the android Ash (Ian Holm) turning on the crew at the behest of their employer. There’s plenty to explore under the surface, too: Alien is frequently likened to a haunted house movie in space, but the film can also be read as an allegory for sexual violence or corporate greed. (If you haven’t unionized your workplace, Alien might move the needle.)

While Alien remains the benchmark for sci-fi horror, it didn’t exactly lend itself to sequels. A lesser version of the franchise might’ve spawned follow-ups that aped Scott’s original setup, not unlike derivative slasher sequels that traffic in increasingly gruesome kills. But the brilliance of the series is how it has reflected the sensibilities of the filmmakers who’ve taken the creative baton from Scott. First up was James Cameron, who, in an incredible (and incredibly on-brand) flex, pitched 20th Century Fox his sequel idea by writing “Alien$” on a piece of paper. Per usual, Big Jim backed up his big talk: For Aliens, he upped the ante by pitting surviving heroine Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and a battalion of space marines against a whole planet’s worth of Xenomorphs.

A loud, action-packed spectacle, Aliens had more in common with war movies than with its taut, claustrophobic predecessor. (Like George Lucas when he made his original Star Wars trilogy, Cameron clearly had the Vietnam War on his mind.) But those differences allowed Aliens to be appreciated on its own terms—as an energetic crowd-pleaser whose one-liners have since become ingrained in our culture. It’s a testament to Cameron’s work that Aliens belongs in the rare category of sequels that are just as beloved as the original. (As one of Big Jim’s loyal foot soldiers, I have Aliens at the top of my personal ranking of the series.) Most importantly, by rewriting the rules for what a sequel could be, Cameron established a template that’s continued to serve the franchise well. Case in point: Aliens was followed up by Alien 3, which, even though director David Fincher infamously disavowed the film, can still be admired as a dour mood piece about the human condition.

Unsurprisingly, fans weren’t too keen on Alien 3 unceremoniously killing off Ripley’s surrogate nuclear family, Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Newt (Carrie Henn). (As it turns out, neither was Cameron.) But Alien 3’s nihilistic nature is precisely what makes it a worthy Alien sequel; it marched to the beat of its own drum. That extends to Alien 3’s treatment of Ripley, who learns that a Xenomorph Queen is gestating inside her and, rather than let the sinister conglomerate that doomed her original crew get their hands on a prized asset, opts to sacrifice herself in the film’s climax. In that respect, Alien 3 was The Last Jedi before The Last Jedi, imploring its audience to let the past die so that the franchise could move in a new direction.

Of course, just as The Rise of Skywalker tried to undo what The Last Jedi set up, Alien 3’s follow-up Alien Resurrection dared to mess with a good thing. Set 200 years after the events of Alien 3, Resurrection lives up to its title by cloning Ripley, whose body is used by military scientists to breed a Xenomorph Queen that hatches its own eggs, before—and you’re not going to believe this—the aliens escape their enclosures. Directed by French auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet and written by, of all people, Joss Whedon, the sequel proved to be, if you’ll excuse the pun, alienating—hell, even Jeunet and Whedon don’t see eye to eye about it.

Whereas Alien 3 was all doom and gloom, Resurrection gleefully embraced a campier tone. (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Ripley hoop.) But just because Resurrection refused to take itself too seriously doesn’t mean the movie lacked substance when it mattered. In keeping with the franchise’s tradition of exploring body autonomy, Resurrection ends with Ripley effectively aborting the Xenomorph-human hybrid spawned from her DNA. The hybrid’s bizarre appearance might leave it open to ridicule by irony-poisoned viewers, but I found the look of anguish in its final moments genuinely affecting.

To this day, Resurrection is, and will likely remain, the final outing in the franchise starring Weaver. It’s a weird place to end Ripley’s journey, but since then, the 21st century has seen some of the best and worst that Alien has to offer. On paper, the Alien Vs. Predator crossover films sound rad as hell; in execution, they were an abomination. (I prefer not to count the crossovers as part of the canon; feel free to do the same.) Thankfully, after decades of other filmmakers playing in his sandbox, Scott returned to the franchise for the one-two punch of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Here, the Xenomorphs take a back seat to Scott’s philosophical ponderings about the origins of mankind and what happens when creators come into conflict with their creations.

Again, it didn’t sit well with everyone when the franchise threw a thematic curveball; Prometheus, in particular, has been ridiculed for the stupid decisions made by its characters. But in my view, those criticisms miss the forest for the trees: Humanity’s hubris is supposed to be its undoing. The beings that created humans, known as Engineers, were intent on wiping us out for a reason. (Given what we’re actually doing to our planet, I don’t blame them.) But the real masterstroke of Prometheus and Covenant was the foregrounding of David (Michael Fassbender), an android who turns against mankind before playing God himself with the Xenomorphs. Bar Ripley, David is the best character in the franchise: an insidious, complex figure who manages to be both Frankenstein’s monster and Frankenstein himself. Fassbender has never been better—especially when he does the fingering.

In a just world, Scott would’ve been allowed to finish the saga he was carving out with David as its centerpiece. Sadly, Covenant’s underperformance at the box office, coupled with Disney’s acquisition of the studio formerly known as 20th Century Fox, put an end to those plans. Which brings us to Romulus: Now, the keys to the franchise have been passed to director Fede Álvarez and his longtime screenwriting collaborator, Rodo Sayagues. For anyone unfamiliar with Álvarez’s work, I’m pleased to report that he’s an absolute sicko. His feature film debut was the 2013 remake of Evil Dead, a gnarly gorefest that used 50,000 (!) gallons of fake blood in its climax. Álvarez followed that up with Don’t Breathe, which has permanently ruined turkey basters for anyone who’s seen it (if you know, you know). Actress Isabela Merced boasted that there’s a scene so “disgusting” in Romulus that everyone watching the footage on set had to look away. The trailer is nasty as fuck and more than a little suggestive in its imagery. I’m locked in.

For what it’s worth, Scott has also given Romulus his seal of approval—and he’s not one to mince words if a filmmaker doesn’t meet his expectations. That doesn’t guarantee fans will be on board with Romulus, but it does appear to signal that Alien remains a rare breed of IP. In an entertainment landscape dominated by franchises, we should celebrate a series that gives artists the space to put so much of themselves into the work: a cinematic canvas where the only prerequisite is the most terrifying life-form in the universe ripping people apart. Long may it continue. I’ll see you at the movies, my fellow sickos.