The next Alien film (Alien: Romulus?) begins production this week on March 9th and is being helmed by director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe, the 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot.) The film will follow “a group of young people on a distant world, who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” The cast includes (among others) Cailee Spaeny, Archie Renaux, & Isabela Merced.
That vague premise makes it sound more like an unintentional comedy. A group of tik tokers go to a distant world to do the xenomorph challenge. A group of young people throw the ultimate party on another world desperate to lose their virginity only for the xenomorph to crash. A group of young people shooting a reality show on a distant world, must survive confronting the xenomorph. Love On A Distant World. Survivor Alien World. The Amazing Race On A Distant World. Real Housewives On A Distant World. If they want to continue this franchise there are better ways than just doing the old Jurassic Park formula.
I wonder if we’ll see any of the following:
-Xenomorph petting zoo
-Toxic waste smoothies
-Musical helmets — when the music stops, whoever doesn’t have a helmet has to inhale the toxic air (which seems breathable at first).
-All cartographers must have their maps taken away. They must also be blindfolded and dosed with 180-proof methanol, so they don’t have an unfair advantage.
-Fire extinguisher roulette — a single extinguisher somewhere on the ship contains napalm instead of fire suppressant (to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day).
-Vending machines filled with creepy black goo that turns your kidneys and pancreas into chestbursters. (There was a mixup at the food paste factory — shit happens, I suppose.)
-All androids are factory rejects whose ethics chips were accidentally swapped with hunter-killer targeting modules. (The most amoral and bloodthirsty among them is designated the ship’s chief ethics officer.)
What’s frustrating about the Alien franchise is that it doesn’t feel completely spent and exhausted the same way that, say, Terminator is. There’s some fantastic work going in the extended Alien universe in the last decade, with the Alien: Isolation video game and the surprisingly fantastic tabletop RPG series from Free League, as well as those short films from a couple of years ago that were surprisingly decent.
I think there is still the possibility of getting a really good new film or a streamer out of this franchise. Just to set expectations, this is a standalone film. Given Alvarez is in the director’s chair, it’s likely a mid-budget back-to-basics horror flick. It’s separate from the continuation of Prometheus and Covenant. I’d love to see a direct sequel to Alien that ignores everything else. No Queen, instead we go with the “Alien uses humans to make eggs” idea that was cut from Alien. Go in a weirder direction, with more body horror. A single alien chest bursts from a civilian on a ship/colony and has the chance to morph someone into an egg before the crew kills the first alien. Then, the crew slowly starts disappearing one by one to the point they don’t trust anyone until the final few survivors have to survive a full horde of aliens without the ability to nuke them from space/have modern weapons. New characters dealing with xenomorphs (or even new monsters) in new situations. Alvarez turned the Evil Dead remake into its own film, so there’s a fair chance that he pulls off the same. Back-to-basics worked for Prey, so it can work here. Deepen the shadows, background the world-building, and let the atmosphere do the heavy lifting.