What next for the Alien?

[Toby Frost]

My first answer would be "Please stop", but assuming that this doesn't happen, and the Company still wants to get a percentage out of the Alien, what should happen next?

I find the Alien world odd, because after the first two films, the best stuff seems to be spin-offs rater than sequels. The Alien: Isolation computer game, the Technical Manual and the recent role-playing game seem much better to me than Resurrection, Prometheus or Covenant. I've not seen the AVP films, but they don't sound great. The revelations in Prometheus and Covenant weren't very interesting, and the story of David playing God didn't really grip me either. If anything, they just took the mysteriousness of the setting away.

So where should the setting go? The risk is that it just does the same thing, over and again, with diminishing results, in a succession of similar films. A crew goes to a planet, makes a discovery that's meant to be awe-inspiring, and then gets picked off. The Company betrays/abandons them, and a robot helps the Alien (or, in a surprise twist, doesn't). This sounds as if the setting is small. But if you don't follow that plot, it's no smaller than, say, Firefly or The Expanse.

If Alien has to continue, I would like to see it become a TV series, perhaps rather like The Haunting of Hill House. I think Netflix or the like could do a good job of it. We could see life on the frontier; characters would have time and space to develop fully; we could see more of the Company than just the inevitable betrayal, perhaps with different factions. And then, when the inevitable killings began, we'd care about the characters more, and there'd be more to fight for.

 

[HareBrain]

Alien vs British Space Empire.

Pitch it, Toby. PITCH IT!!!!

 

[Vince W]

Given today's predisposition for dystopian fiction the easiest option is to have an Alien outbreak on Earth as Ripley feared. This is low hanging fruit. The problem is the aliens are pretty one dimensional. Capture, infect, kill, repeat. There's only so many ways to spin this.

 

[CupofJoe]

I'd like to have seen an AvP based on the first AvP Graphic Novel. It was wonderfully cinematic as a story and set in an earth-like Western environ so it would have been easy[ish] to film.
But in reality, the Alien/Xenomorph is a great villain, but can't maintain a franchise. And I don't need to see more of the background and filler.
Let it die away from the screen.

 

[Dave]

There was a Kzin story set in Larry Niven's known space universe written by Hal Colebatch called The Colonel's Tiger. In that story, a British Army officer meets a Kzin in India, Northwest Frontier, in 1878.
(It is a good story, which you can read here: Man Kzin Wars VII-A Darker Geometry by created by Larry Niven - Baen Books )

You could have a similar story in which a single lost Alien is discovered in a historical setting. However, I'm now thinking that it would end up being very similar to the first two Predator films.

Otherwise, I would agree with @Vince W that any 'Aliens on Earth' film would to be one dimensional and all over rather quickly.

 

[Vince W]

There was a Kzin story set in Larry Niven's known space universe written by Hal Colebatch called The Colonel's Tiger. In that story, a British Army officer meets a Kzin in India, Northwest Frontier, in 1878.
(It is a good story, which you can read here: Man Kzin Wars VII-A Darker Geometry by created by Larry Niven - Baen Books )

You could have a similar story in which a single lost Alien is discovered in a historical setting. However, I'm now thinking that it would end up being very similar to the first two Predator films.

Otherwise, I would agree with @Vince W that any 'Aliens on Earth' film would to be one dimensional and all over rather quickly.

The Man-Kzin Wars! There's a series begging to be developed for television.

 

[Toby Frost]

Apparently there are several comics in which a Predator shows up in historical wars. The Alien is like the Thing: as @Vince W says, they just reproduce and kill. I think any successful story would have to be based on humans, and would have to use it very sparingly.

The Space Captain Smith world didn't have Aliens (copyright lawyers are merciless beings, after all) but God Emperor of Didcot did involve a Procturan Black Ripper, which crawled in through the ventilation shafts and took up residence behind the fridge, before Smith called in the exterminators to get it out with ant powder and a landmine, IIRC.

 

[.matthew.]

I seem to recall one of the spin-offs for Starship Troopers had the bugs wired up with electronics to control them (military intelligence operation).

People try to do that in a lab of aliens and then bam, something gets loose, Alien sequel accomplished

 

[Vince W]

I seem to recall one of the spin-offs for Starship Troopers had the bugs wired up with electronics to control them (military intelligence operation).

People try to do that in a lab of aliens and then bam, something gets loose, Alien sequel accomplished

They were trying to do that in Alien Resurrection. That didn't work out so well.

I agree with @Toby Frost, any Alien story needs to be focused on humans. The problem is, even with aliens used only as a background element, the story will be unrelentingly grim most of the time.

 

[Toby Frost]

I imagine that it would be rather like Outland, with the company trying to exploit the workers, and people trying to fight back. I could see it being very blue-collar, with the marines being called in to break up strikes and the like. There would be a lot of hard work and heavy machinery, and the whole thing would probably be rather like a Bruce Springsteen album in space. Which might be quite good, really.

 

[BAYLOR]

My first answer would be "Please stop", but assuming that this doesn't happen, and the Company still wants to get a percentage out of the Alien, what should happen next?

I find the Alien world odd, because after the first two films, the best stuff seems to be spin-offs rater than sequels. The Alien: Isolation computer game, the Technical Manual and the recent role-playing game seem much better to me than Resurrection, Prometheus or Covenant. I've not seen the AVP films, but they don't sound great. The revelations in Prometheus and Covenant weren't very interesting, and the story of David playing God didn't really grip me either. If anything, they just took the mysteriousness of the setting away.

So where should the setting go? The risk is that it just does the same thing, over and again, with diminishing results, in a succession of similar films. A crew goes to a planet, makes a discovery that's meant to be awe-inspiring, and then gets picked off. The Company betrays/abandons them, and a robot helps the Alien (or, in a surprise twist, doesn't). This sounds as if the setting is small. But if you don't follow that plot, it's no smaller than, say, Firefly or The Expanse.

If Alien has to continue, I would like to see it become a TV series, perhaps rather like The Haunting of Hill House. I think Netflix or the like could do a good job of it. We could see life on the frontier; characters would have time and space to develop fully; we could see more of the Company than just the inevitable betrayal, perhaps with different factions. And then, when the inevitable killings began, we'd care about the characters more, and there'd be more to fight for.

A tv series set in the universe could be quite interesting . Im not a great fan the last two films by Scott but sone he's introduced the engineers , I like to the show up from time but not have all of them be the bad guys and on occasional, storylines with the Predators could be interesting.

 

[Vince W]

I imagine that it would be rather like Outland, with the company trying to exploit the workers, and people trying to fight back. I could see it being very blue-collar, with the marines being called in to break up strikes and the like. There would be a lot of hard work and heavy machinery, and the whole thing would probably be rather like a Bruce Springsteen album in space. Which might be quite good, really.

A story like that could be quite good.

I wonder if a story about a marine company that trained to fight the aliens but never seems to find them could work? It would a bit of a farce really.

 

[.matthew.]

A story like that could be quite good.

I wonder if a story about a marine company that trained to fight the aliens but never seems to find them could work? It would a bit of a farce really.

A Vietnam style war film vs the aliens?

 

[Vladd67]

I see an Alien RPG has been produced, apparently, it's a tense game.

 

[Vince W]

A Vietnam style war film vs the aliens?

I was thinking closer to Dad's Army.

 

[.matthew.]

I was thinking closer to Dad's Army.

"Don't tell him your name, Ripley"

 

[Vladd67]

A story like that could be quite good.

I wonder if a story about a marine company that trained to fight the aliens but never seems to find them could work? It would a bit of a farce really.

A bit like the Trumpton Fire Brigade.

 

[Vince W]

A bit like the Trumpton Fire Brigade.

Only if it's done the same way.

 

[BAYLOR]

How about a tv series revolving around a retirement home populated by elderly Xenos reminiscing about their experiences dealing with humans.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'm in two minds about how the Alien would talk. Possibly like an angry old man from New York: "So I'm up in the vents, mindin' my own business, and this crazy broad comes in with a flamethrower and I'm like 'Hey! I'm lurkin' here!'"

On the other hand, I expect all its anecdotes would be rather repetitive, so it might sound something like Alyson Hannigan in American Pie: "And this one time, on the spaceship, I was hiding in a duct, and these people came, and I ate them, and it was so funny! And this one time, on the spaceship, I was hiding in the shadows, and these people came, and I ate them too! And this one time..."

A bit like the Trumpton Fire Brigade.

Hicks, Hicks, Hudson, Dietrich, Apone, Wiezbowski and Frost! (Damn, that's niche.)