“In Cinemas No One Is Hearing The Audience Scream” their anguish over yet another botched film in the Alien franchise…

I had been very excited about seeing the latest film in the Alien franchise, “Alien: Romulus”, after seeing a short trailer and the theatrical release poster. It looked like the film was going to be everything we want from an Alien story: scary, gritty, exciting, realistic….

… but I could not have been more disappointed if it had “starred” Ridley Scott in a torso-only creature suit, running around the set and growling in moments of attempted tension.

By analogy, here’s my main problem with Alien: Romulus…

S (s) + O2 (g)→ SO2 (g)
= a chemical formula (for the combustion of sulphur)

and so…

Alien + Aliens + Alien Resurrection + Prometheus + Alien: Covenant + little imagination or new ideas → Alien: Romulus
= a very dull, formulaic story

The problem is that what Fox, Disney and director Fede Álvarez seemed to believe would be an amazing story, respecting all the tropes of the previous Alien films, just became a lot of blah, blah, blah:

• Rain Carradine running around a dark ship with flashing lights to escape the monster – a blah blah rehash of Ripley in Alien.
• Pregnant Kay Harrison giving birth to a monster after being injected with black goo – a blah blah rehash of Prometheus.
• The monster that Kay Harrison gives birth to looking like an anaemic semi-human – a blah blah rehash of Resurrection.
• Introduction of a new self-aiming Pulse Rifle – a blah blah weapon, and why weren’t the marines using it in Aliens? And why were these Aliens afraid of it?
• A working against the good-guys android called Rook – a blah blah reference to Ash in Alien.
• Characters trying to get “cryo fuel” for sleep pods – a blah blah rehash of Alien.

… it just goes on and on.

My suggestion is for Fox / Disney to throw out all of the screenwriters they have working on the Alien franchise. Each iteration that they are producing is devaluing the overall value of this series.

Instead, they should pay attention to the exciting and innovative stories that are being published as fiction. The writers of these books have excellent ideas with great potential to enrich the movie franchise. Here are three great examples:

Alien: Out of the Shadows – Miners on LV-178 discover the ruins of an ancient civilization deep underground. Ripley’s shuttle, the Narcissus from Alien, picks up a distress call from the miners and she has to help them survive attacks from the Xenomorphs. What really makes this book is the interjections from an AI version of Ash, who is still trying to complete his mission.

Alien: The Cold Forge – Weyland-Yutani are breeding Xenomorphs in a deep space laboratory called the Cold Forge, hoping to turn them into bio-weapons. Then a saboteur releases Xenomorphs from containment, setting them loose aboard the station.

Aliens: Phalanx – I’m not going to spoiler zone this one with any form of summary. It’s a great piece of imagination from Scott Sigler and highly recommended.

There are more than enough new ideas being generated in books like these to energise a whole range of exciting films. So come on Fox / Disney, give us the films we deserve, not this formulaic dross.

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