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Canon-Strike II: Alien

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    Canon-Strike II: Alien

    The Alien franchise followed a very straight forward canon line for a while, four films that narratively followed each other regardless of the tonal shifts between them. But for a long time, an easter egg in the second Predator movie had fuelled fans hopes of seeing the series merge with one another and that ultimately came to happen in two later movies.

    The VS entries were considered canon for a while despite some contradictions and they also showed Weyland at the start of the timeline for the films. This changed though when Ridley Scott returned to helm Prometheus that gave the series a replacement backstory for the first encounters with the creatures that took an increasingly deviated turn in the most recent entry Covenant. That's all not counting non-movie media's course corrections.

    Then there's the almost ran, Alien 5 that was going to restrict the canon to the first two entries for its tale to follow up on. Now dormant from poor management, the series has course corrected almost three times and will no doubt return in some form some day.



    Which approach to the series canon do you prefer and what went right and wrong along the way?

    #2
    Alien Isolation got right what Prometheus and Covenant got wrong. In my mind i dismiss those two films and only conciser Alien Isolation as new Canon. I don't actually have a big problem with Alien 3 or Resurrection. They both have a claustrophobic grungy feel to them which draws you in. Aliens remains one of my favorite movies, easily in my top 10.

    I haven't read those book, so I can't comment, but I want to now.

    Canon in my mind:

    Alien
    Alien Isolation
    Aliens
    Alien 3
    Alien Resurrection

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      #3
      I don't recognise half the stuff in that image. The Crossing? River of Pain?

      I see this as a bad franchise, now. I just feel the horse has been beaten until loooong after it has stopped breathing. The first two are excellent, everything else is four or five rungs of the ladder below at best. Prometheus is among the worst sci-fi movies I've ever seen with such a large budget (visually it had some gorgeous elements, but everything else was just bad).

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        #4
        Despite Weaver's involvement the best canon is probably Alien>Aliens>Alien 3

        Alien 3's lesser elements for me more lie with the tone coming off the previous film but the concept is sound enough on its own. Resurrection is pretty much the definition of making a sequel for sequels sake whilst the AvP films lack execution or ambition. Prometheus, it's alright enough of a watch but just a very flaccid experience, Covenant is a massive missed opportunity - Probably the closest in places to the style of the first two but blows every opportunity.

        The planned Alien 5 made the right sounds but much like recent seqboot plans for old films, keeping the series low budget horror focused would have always been best rather than having big budget sci-fi ambitions - the same mistake Predator makes.

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          #5
          For me, I think Alien and Aliens are the only good ones. Not sure now if canon is even a thing to consider because I don't get to decide what is and what isn't but, in terms of rewatches, I will only ever go back to those first two. It's not like some of the others are without merit (Prometheus in parts has some of the best visuals I have seen in years) but they are sooooooooo far below those first two movies. And it kicked right in with Alien 3 which I felt was a very poor movie and my feelings on it were only slightly rescued years later when I saw the director's cut and found a new respect for whoever managed to edit that into a half watchable film. And from there, there was just nothing to offer.

          I think the approach of Prometheus was great - make a whole new movie set in the same universe about different people and different challenges. It just turned out to be an absolutely stupid movie. Covenant then got stuck trying to be two separate things to two different audiences and ended up with little - not hitting the lows of the worst of Prometheus but having no highs either.

          But to this day, I feel that Alien is one of the best movies ever made. It is incredible on every level. And Aliens managed to deliver a sequel with a different approach and it went all out and it worked. Those two movies will always be classics.

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            #6
            I'm sure there's another example somewhere but it feels like Alien is one of the most prominent examples where a studio has had such a lack of a clue when it comes to managing the canon, makes it hard for viewers to invest

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              #7
              I don't hugely blame them. Some things can only be done once. Alien was lightning in a bottle being a horror and a scifi with elements that could have been B-movie rubbish and yet so high level to a point where it could stand among serious cinema classics. There wasn't going to be 6 sequels to that which could repeat it. Couldn't happen. Aliens was lightning in a bottle in throwing action and a queen on top in a way that didn't feel like it had entirely jumped the shark. That wasn't going to be repeated either. Both films are amazing in the fact that they worked at all, not in the fact that the sequels to them were poor. They all should have been poor. If anything, that we got two great movies out of it is something to be celebrated.

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                #8
                True, Aliens is probably the biggest accomplishment of the series and will forever be a textbook example of how to get a sequel right. Alien is a great film, but at its heart is a conventional horror film underneath all the sci-fi dressing. To take that and go where they did was a hell of a hail mary from both Cameron and the studio when the temptation to knock out a similar economical horror led film must have been strong

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
                  I'm sure there's another example somewhere but it feels like Alien is one of the most prominent examples where a studio has had such a lack of a clue when it comes to managing the canon, makes it hard for viewers to invest
                  Yeah, I think both the Alien and Predator franchise have a similar problem in this regard.

                  The good thing about both, from a storytelling perspective, is that you never have to reboot them. With them involving transient characters (aliens or predators) who, within reason, can kinda show up anywhere, in any era, you could always do a new movie using them. You could have a Predator hunt down a group of soldiers during the American civil war. You could have an Alien loose in a 1950s hospital during a virus outbreak. You could have a predator tangle with a group of arctic explorers. You could have an Alien on a modern-day aircraft carrier.

                  The problem, however, is that movie studios like franchises to offer a repeatable formula which they can crank out to print money. This "loose connection" approach above is problematic because it doesn't present a formula; some of these movies could be great and some could be terrible.

                  A modern example is Dr. Strange, which I really liked, but it was probably the most formulaic Marvel movie. Every beat in that movie was predictable a mile off, and it came off a bit like running through a checklist. I think it worked but if Marvel do 2-3 more of those, it might become a problem for them. But the point is that Marvel have cracked this.

                  This wasn't an issue when those franchises started, but it became a problem in the 90s when sequels to anything but the most major of movies (or low-cost, high-yield comedies) became normalised. Alien Resurrection, to me, was kind-of like an attempt to produce a formulaic rework of Aliens. It didn't work, and the franchise has been lost ever since.

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                    #10
                    The worst thing about Resurrection was that if it had been made before Ripley was killed off (thereby removing the weak super-Ripley arc) and done in a more Aliens darker tone there'd be the meat on its bones to potentially do a worthwhile sequel there. One were actually get to see Weyland carry out some of its intended plans for the Aliens

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                      #11
                      One question I've always had...If they can build synthetic Humans, why not Synthetic Xenomorphs?

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Cassius_Smoke View Post
                        One question I've always had...If they can build synthetic Humans, why not Synthetic Xenomorphs?
                        That's the whole point of Alien Resurrection. They've looked at cloning Xenomorphs but it hasn't worked, so they're looking at whether they can produce them via other means. The books went into this a bit more, how WY wants the Xenomorphs because they are an example of bio-engineering that is way beyond Earth's, amd their bodies contain chemicals and enzymes that could be powerful tools and weapons if researched.

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                          #13
                          Alien and Aliens are stone-cold classics, of that there is no dispute.

                          Alien3 has some interesting ideas, but is pretty boring, which is a almost as criminal as killing off Hicks and Newt in the first five minutes, liberally urinating over the preceding film.

                          Resurrection is a pretty average sci-fi film with the director of The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen shoehorning stuff in that doesn't fit.

                          Prometheus is pretty to look at, but a stupid, nonsensical film full of supposed genius scientists doing ridiculous things.
                          Aside from running in a straight line from rolling ships, doing pull-ups after major surgery, letting an infected man onboard the ship, taking helmets off on alien planets, scanning for viruses and declaring nothing found on a planet of never-before-seen creatures and people going bonkers really quicky, here's what these "professional" "scientists" do:
                          Archaeologist picks up an alien skull, thousand of years old, and just chucking it in a sack, rather than carefully excavating it. Obviously, they drop the bag. Archaeologist, who study historical artefacts to understand past civilisations, is upset there's nobody alive.
                          Geologist claims he's in it for the money, like it's some rockstar profession. Maps out the entire underground tunnel system. Gets lost.
                          Biologist finds phallus snake, calls it a she, doesn't back away when it rears to strike, tries to kill it. Gets killed.

                          Then Covenant came along and made those scientist guys look like geniuses!
                          You couldn't even tell who was supposed to be a scientist. They were just red shirts.
                          They endangered the mission because they heard "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
                          Characters actually say "I'm off for a whizz, I'll be right back" and "I'm going to freshen up, I'll be right back".

                          Urgh, it just depresses me that they've pissed away a great franchise after the first two.
                          To me, Alien and Aliens are canon, everything else is fan-fiction.

                          The true Alien 3 film would be Ripley and Hicks taking Newt to a theme park on Earth and they surprise her by saying they're getting married and they'd like to legally adopt her. They give her a gift to celebrate, but it's an alien egg! The egg bursts open but a cute puppy is inside and it was just a hilarious joke and they laugh as the camera fades to black with the viewer knowing everything is going to be just fine.
                          FIN

                          I did laugh re-reading the revolting animal stories in the original Prometheus thread!

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                            #14
                            I don't know if Blomkamp would have been right for Alien 5 but if Disney ever decides to revisit the franchise hopefully it's something more in tune with the first two, bringing back soldiers who are much less likely to be questioned on their decisions but still capable enough to fight back

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