Quote from: SiL on Mar 18, 2022, 10:37:20 PM
It's an Alien series and all we've got is f**king androids and characters that sound like they've walked out of a YA novel so far. What's to be excited about?
Yeah, mentioned this in the recent video we did.
Don't like to pre-judge something before watching it, but have to be honest when I say it's beginning to feel like an example of a franchise being used as a vehicle for something totally unrelated, as opposed to thinking up elements which play to the property's existing strengths.
I used the example of genetic engineering. It's extremely topical and could really sell the current day
known dangers of things like how we know the Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking out ways to target ethnicities with biological weapons. Obviously, I doubt Disney is going to want to mess with that, but it's an example and there could be references to unnamed
national entities who've been doing stuff like that.
Genetic engineering: Huge
relevance to the themes of what these films touch on. Something which wouldn't necessitate the Alien, itself, to be on screen all the time. There could be all manner of things which could be touched on with something like that, up to and including hints of archaeological finds which reference the Space Jockeys/Engineers, incomplete strands of DNA to
mysterious parasitoid organisms, etcetera. Then drive that home with subtext about genetics being an incredibly awe-inspiring weapon and force of destruction in the wrong hands, but equally a potential source of untapped healing and medical good, if used responsibly. The sort of debates which '
Jurassic Park' kicked off in the 1990s, which have never been resolved.
Use it to give emphasis for why an embryonic Weyland-Yutani (and whoever else) would be motivated to exploit stuff like that.
Why characters in the future, like Burke, would be willing to gamble everything for a future sniff at something even bigger. Dove-tail it into scenes like the one in '
Species' (extra irony points for it having a Giger link), where they create a monstrosity (unintentionally - they're trying to figure out a solution to a major threat) in a laboratory, which gets out of control:
And look at how much tension that evoked with what must have been fairly cheap special effects.
But every new piece of information keeps herding us in the direction of corporations, social justice, androids, what it means to be part of humanity... Stuff the films happened to include, in the same way as they included bitching about pay cheques and military uniforms, but those probably aren't what we'd want something like this to focus on, either.
For all I know, we might well be getting things like this - and I hope we do. But healthy scepticism is a good thing. Enough of the
fluff. The fan base needs some
relevance to give us a reason for optimism.
