On one hand, it would kind of make sense to bring up the idea that might have served as a link between the Predator and Alien movies, but the explanation of why it didn’t happen is and isn’t that satisfying since to be certain, Ripley from Alien has always been a classic, but including time travel into these franchises almost feels like a sly cheat. It does feel as though the studio was kicking it around a bit and didn’t really like how it landed, meaning that it was ultimately nixed. But thinking that no one would care if Newt was brought into the mix because people wouldn’t remember her is a bit of faulty thinking on the part of the studio simply because Newt is one of the most memorable characters from Aliens hands down. It doesn’t matter that she was a little girl that couldn’t fight, she’d learned how to get around the xenomorphs in a way that the adults around her never did, which made her an interesting and amazing character. Her death in Alien 3 was kind of an insult since the simple act of dumping her, Hicks, and ultimately Bishop in favor of making Ripley the last woman standing is kind of understandable, but for someone that had survived around a hive of xenomorphs, drowning was just too ignominious of a death. Alien 3 might have been better had Hicks survived only to die at some point in the third movie, but things would have been very different had Newt survived. The actress that played the young girl didn’t want to come back, however, but that would have been a minor inconvenience. Still, ending the tragic tale of Ripley was almost a nice fit to the xenomorph story, but obviously that wasn’t to be since the attempt that was Alien Resurrection came into existence and mucked everything up.
But just suppose the predators somehow learned of a human that could fight against the xenomorphs, meaning Ripley, and wanted to study her and see what made this particular human different? The convoluted story that would have seen her captured by the predators, placed in the capsule that was seen in the most recent movie, The Predator, and basically turned into an ultimate weapon somehow, feels like it would have been a little too cheesy to really believe, especially since it would have to involve time travel. It’s hard to say that it would be absolutely horrible since Ripley is such a heavy favorite among many science fiction fans. After all, the woman has been through several movies, and even after dying in one of them, she was brought back in a different, stronger form. But we’ve also never heard about the ability of the predators to travel back in time since they’re more of an advanced warrior race that might not see the value in such things. Obviously there’s always room to open up the franchise to new ideas, but sometimes retconning can go way too far since it becomes a little childish. Just imagine Shane Black with the writers kicking around ideas that sound great to our 8-year old selves but when we hear them as adults we pull a sour face indicating how ridiculous it sounds. It’s not cruel to think so since this story is being marketed to adults who, despite their love of both franchises, want to see something impressive but aren’t always ready to descend to the B-route when it comes to their favorite movies.
Some might argue that Aliens hasn’t been a great franchise since the second movie and that Predator hasn’t been great since the first one. To be fair, Predators with Topher Grace wasn’t that bad, and Alien Resurrection had its moments. The latter movie suffered for a lot of reasons though, one of those being that people had to get used to an entirely different cast, much as they did in Alien 3. But the Predator movies have suffered quite a bit since Predator 2, which wasn’t absolutely horrible but did kind of lay on the cheese pretty thick since going from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Danny Glover in terms of a leading character was kind of, meh. Glover did a pretty good job to be fair, but when a creature can manhandle someone like Arnold it becomes hard to believe that someone that doesn’t have the same reputation could stand toe to toe with the same creature. Still, he did well enough, and the second movie wasn’t that bad. But from that point on, yikes. One would have thought that the most recent Predator movie would have been among the best simply because it had a great cast and a better chance at using up-to-date special effects. But seriously, someone simply wasn’t listening when it came time to tell the story. Placing Ellen Ripley or Newt in the midst of this story thanks to time travel wouldn’t have been that great of an idea and might have turned this story into a time-traveling soap opera.
Follow Us
