Too much explanation risks spoiling ‘Alien’ fear
The original Alien film taught me that in space no one can hear you scream. A couple of days ago I learned for myself that in a very crowded bus, during peak hour traffic, everyone can very much hear you mutter, “Whaaaa the fuuuu?”.
This was an immediate and involuntary reaction to this news I’d just read on Twitter, ‘Ridley Scott has an idea to work Ripley into his Alien prequels’. Whaaaa the fuuuu?
Sorry, I just did it again. I can’t help it. As far as ideas go this can only be labelled a bad one. I’d go as far as to call it the second-worst idea the 79-year-old director has had in regards to the direction he thinks the Alien franchise should head.
His numero uno bad idea is every aspect of his Alien prequels, 2012’s boring Prometheus and this year’s odd-hybrid sequel Alien: Covenant.
I wouldn’t say that A:C is a bad film, it’s more that it’s not a good film. The attempt to graft two very different films into one is not entirely successful. You end up with the wannabe cerebral elements of the former awkwardly nestling up to the action-horror the early Alien films are celebrated for.
That a director in his twilight years would want to use his art to examine big ideas of religion, creationism and existentialism is not entirely surprising.
But — and someone get Sir Mix-ALot on the phone because this is a big but — is Alien really the best place to be exploring these sorts of ideas? Spoiler alert: Hell no. At its core Alien is a monster movie. Because it’s in space it gets lumped in with sci-fi, but it’s not.