Would you welcome a film where EVERYONE dies?

[Local Trouble]

Maybe The Thing?  We don't know if it's dead, but MacReady and Childs are doomed if they're both still human.  That's the happy ending.

If either one of them isn't human, any investigative team will retrieve their bodies and then the entire world is likely doomed.  Everyone dies and the monster wins.

[SiL]

That sort of ambiguity doesn't fit the thread brief, though.

I'm sure there are other examples, but the only thing leaping to mind is

Spoiler

Cabin in the Woods

[close]

[Local Trouble]

Well, since The Thing is part of John Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy," I always surmised that he intended for us to think that the world is f**ked.  Just like In the Mouth of Madness and Prince of Darkness.

[SiL]

Yeah, but the thread is everyone actually dead, only the Alien/Predator alive. Not everyone most probably f**ked.

That said I'd be down for that kind of ambiguous ending in an AvP movie, similar to the Duel comic. Does the Predator gank the marine immediately after the story's over? Does the marine give the Predator his bandana as a souvenir and fly away? Who knows.

Not sure how it would work in Alien unless you wanted to play on "is the person infected or not".

[Corporal Hicks]

I'm not sure I could go for every single entity dying at the end. I guess it'd depend on the exact execution and situation, but I love me some bleakness. Loved how punishing Covenant's end was, and how unfair Alien 3's start was. It really would depend on how it's all pulled off? Was the goal to stop a specific ship, or an Alien hive, or some such? If the goal is accomplished by everyone dying...sure, why not.

Also -

I'm sure it would please many of the hipster edgelords, but I imagine it would feel very unsatisfying to a mass audience.

I fully acknowledge this point. It might be something better suited to the side materials.

[Local Trouble]

Can the aliens really "win" without dooming themselves?  Parasites don't do very well without hosts.

[Corporal Hicks]

Granted, there was still one recent catch, but Aliens showed what happens when they win - they hibernate and wait for the next chance. We don't know if the adults do actually die out, or the eggs naturally expire. Otherwise it just seems to be hunker down and wait for more - unless the Space Jockey's show up to collect their weapons/terraforming engines. 

[Immortan Jonesy]

I think everyone can die in a third and final prequel directly linked to Alien.

[Nightmare Asylum]

I think everyone can die in a third and final prequel directly linked to Alien.

Well, maybe Daniels survives...

Spoiler

[close]

[TC]

Beneath the Planet of the Apes. All dead. Everyone.

That is, until the next film. LOL

TC

[Kurai]

There are lots of people alive at the end of A3 and no Aliens.

The Alien films have never had depressing endings until Covenant, and that film is hardly the most popular in the series.

I don't get where the idea comes from that the Alien franchise is dark and miserable through and through. The first four films always had the heroes overcome adversity in the end. Even in the EU downer endings are rare.

I find myself on the opposite side of this fence and really struggle to see it the way you see it. 

The heroes have never overcome adversity.
Suppressed it? Sure. But not overcome it.

Alien:
Entire crew killed bar one who barely escaped with severe PTSD.

Aliens:
Survivor of previous film is lost in space for 50 odd years, outliving and missing her daughter's entire life.

On Acheron, a little girl watches as one by one everyone she ever knew and loved is killed or replaced by murderous killing machines.

Ripley is dragged back into the realm her PTSD originates from and is forced to face down all of the horrors of Acheron. She watches as all of the supposedly invincible marines are cut down or dragged away.

In the end; only she, two other survivors and a broken android manage to escape, because they couldn't win. Their mission a failure and more destruction which would have to be explained eventually if they get back to Earth.

Alien 3:
Dead, they're all dead. Okay, can I go now?
The little girl she tried so hard to save, dead.
The awesome marine she had begun to bond with, dead.

The android? Thrown in the f-ing trash.
And where is she? A god damn prison, and she's filled with the growing seed of the sick monster that raped her while she slept.

She can't win. The Alien will always be there following her, whether physically or as a manifestation of the unimaginable emotional scars she must have etched into her.
And so... She kills herself to remove herself from the fight altogether, taking her latest daughter to the grave with her.

Alien - Resurrection:
But they can't even let her have that.
They rip and tear shreds of her soul out of the afterlife and begin the process of shoving the scraps into broken and twisted vessels before getting what they want from her.
She is then caged and treated like a pet dog.

She is once more a mother, and is once more forced to end the life of her children for the good of mankind.
Still, I'd say this is the least Nihilistic of the main series. Everyone on the Auriga was some kind of bad, and there's at least some cause for optimism.

Prometheus:
All but two survive, with one of them being an Android head.
Shaw loses the love of her life.
She is forced to give herself an abortion, which would be mindnumbingly traumatic even if it wasn't a tentacle rape monster inside of her.
And in the end it was for nothing. Nothing she wanted to achieve was achieved and...

Alien - Covenant:
She was God damn murdered by the android who goes on to take over a colony ship which he can do whatever he wants with.

The Alien franchise is dark and miserable, it's about an inhuman rapist that doesn't care about gender or species. What it can't rape, it kills, and once you touch it: you and everyone around you are doomed.

[judge death]

A whole new cast and no ripley, and the movie being real dark atmosphere like alien 3 and brutal and not holding back on the body horror and having the xenomorphs as perfect killing machines where the human cast are trying to survive and with a story with some dark twists which ends up everyone dying but in doing so they maybe saved others from being killed by the xenos: Maybe the human cast was pioneers and got surprised by an hidden alien hive and they sacrifice themself so they could send a warning signal to the coming colony ship.

Hell yes I would sign up for it in a heartbeat

[marrerom]

I feel like we already got a film where everyone died in the form of Alien Covenant. It was so dark, and I loved it.

[SiL]

The heroes have never overcome adversity.
Suppressed it? Sure. But not overcome it.

Alien:
Entire crew killed bar one who barely escaped with severe PTSD.

The Alien is dead. Adversity overcome.

Aliens:
In the end; only she, two other survivors and a broken android manage to escape, because they couldn't win. Their mission a failure and more destruction which would have to be explained eventually if they get back to Earth.

Their mission was a success, if a pyrrhic one. They determined the source of the transmission failure and rescued as many colonists as they could. Aliens destroyed in the process. Adversity overcome.

Alien 3:
And so... She kills herself to remove herself from the fight altogether, taking her latest daughter to the grave with her.

She kills herself to end the fight and prevent others from taking it up, not remove herself from it. She tries to remove herself from it earlier; Dillon doesn't let her. She kills herself as an at of defiance, not defeat. The Alien is gone and the Company has nothing -- unless a single soggy prisoner is a suitable consolation prize for the weapon division. Adversity overcome.

Alien - Resurrection:
She is once more a mother, and is once more forced to end the life of her children for the good of mankind.

And in doing so finally faces the possibility of a future free of the Alien. Aliens destroyed, research destroyed, fringe military element destroyed -- adversity overcome.

Prometheus:
She is forced to give herself an abortion, which would be mindnumbingly traumatic even if it wasn't a tentacle rape monster inside of her.
And in the end it was for nothing. Nothing she wanted to achieve was achieved and...

Shaw ends the movie with the same naive optimism she started with. Her faith has persevered -- adversity overcome.

Nihilism is about giving up your moral or religious convictions in the face of an uncaring universe. The Alien franchise consistently shows people upholding their moral and religious principals in spite of an uncaring universe. The Alien franchise is a rebuttal of nihilism, not an endorsement, much like Fight Club is a rebuttal of toxic masculinity, not a raving review.

[SM]