I don’t mean to be a downer lately, I really don’t. On any given day, I’m the first person to rush to the defense of sequels and spinoffs of all kinds. I’ll invariably love the latest Marvel movie, I’m eagerly awaiting The Dark Tower to hit theaters and even the new Cars movie looks like it’s going to be a ton of fun.
For the life of me, though, I have never understood studios’ fascination with prequels. More so than even the most suspect sequel, prequels never seem to work even on their own terms. Even the most ardent Star Wars fans go mum when the subject of the prequel trilogy inevitably comes up. And for God knows what reason, Sony’s actively trying to make Life — one of the absolute cinematic highlights of the year so far — into a cheap-feeling Venom prequel.
The worst offender of the lost is the Alien franchise. Although Alien: Covenant turned out to be a pretty good movie, Prometheus is easily the worst movie in a franchise that’s particularly notable for how terrible it’s historically been.
Any normal movie-goer would think that this is the end of the current run of prequels, right? We’ve met the Weyland half of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. We’ve seen the genesis of both the series’ androids and Xenomorphs. We’ve even explored the backstory of the Space Jockey corpse from the first movie.
What else is there to dredge up? The series has come full circle and is now flush against the start of the first movie.
As it turns out, however, Ridley Scott — the director of Prometheus, Alien: Covenant and Alien — is not any normal movie-goer. Despite running the well of ideas dry for any possible prequel potential, he is not ready to give up on his side-series.
The next movie in the series is Alien: Awakening, another prequel set between Prometheus and Covenant. It supposedly cannibalized what it could from Neill Blomkamp’s cancelled Alien 5, which can’t be all that much considering that it was an Aliens sequel featuring an adult Newt, battle-scarred Hicks and half-Alien Ripley.
It’s supposed to follow David’s and Dr. Shaw’s journey to the Engineer homeworld. Given that we actually see David committing genocide against the alien species and hear about what he does to Shaw after they arrive in Covenant, it seems to be the very height of a pointless movie.
But even that’s not the end of it. During an interview earlier this year, Scott said that he “can keep cranking it for another six. I’m not going to close it down again. No way.”
That’s right: six. There are going to be six more of these insipid Alien prequels that nobody so much as asked for in the first place. They couldn’t just leave well enough alone with Covenant salvaging what good ideas where leftover from Prometheus.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Alien franchise. Terrible films and all, it’s an incredibly fun franchise with what is hands down the best creature design of any movie out there. It is terrifying conceptually and absolutely nightmarish in the flesh. It’s the perfect cross section between science fiction and horror and has some of the most compelling characters to ever grace a major Hollywood franchise.
The problem with these prequels is that they utterly miss the point of the franchise they are supposedly a part of. Alien is simplicity itself: you have a singular, unstoppable alien creature that can’t be contained and a work-a-day crew of space truckers trying to survive as long as they’re able. Aliens takes the concept to its only logical extreme: what if there was more of them? For its numerous flaws, Alien 3 takes the franchise back to the basics by taking away all the space-age weaponry used in the previous movie. Even Alien Resurrection kept the camera where it counted: on the creatures.
The problem with Prometheus — with any of these prequels, really — is that they don’t realize that they’re supposed to be Alien movies. They’re high concept sci-fi, sure, but there’s nothing of the cosmic terror that defined the franchise since the 1970’s. It’s too focused on trying to answer the big questions — who are we, where did we come from, who made us, why are we here — to so much as care about the monster at the series’ heart.
Covenant was a lot of fun, sure, but it’s not what I want out of an Alien movie. I expect more from it, by which I mean less. Strip it down to what makes it tick and go from there. This isn’t the franchise with which to contemplate “why?”
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