Quote from: Janek on Jun 21, 2024, 12:07:38 AMHey guys, sorry if this topis had been done to death. I remember a few years ago it was a debate wether this game was to be considered canon or not. Information on the internet varies but one thing that has changed is for example on the AvP wiki page where Corporal Hicks's status is now deceased where it was a few years ago as alive. I have seen some talks of a Weyland Yutani report which cleared things up a bit. Could someone be so nice and explain?
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I hope the game is not considered canon because its story diminishes Aliens and Alien3 for me.
Functionally, all that matters is the predictive power of canon in terms of events that a director of a future movie won't be allowed to retcon or contradict.
Well, what that leaves on the table, as far as canon goes, is not very much. Alex White had a bit of insight on this from 20th century studios, and according to them, only the events of A1 and A2 are the things a future director is not allowed to violate.
So, that means A3 and A-R might not technically be canon anymore if a future director is allowed to contradict those events.
That said, I doubt a future director would be using Ripley, Hicks, or Newt due to the ages of two of the actors, and one of them is no longer involved in acting at all. So for all intents and purposes, A3 stays in the timeline anyway. As nothing is likely to ever contradict its events by including those characters, it basically stays canon by default.
The only movie on the potential chopping block functionally is A-R, as the movie was poorly received, and the unnecessary 200-year jump takes the Colonial Marines off the table. Often, studios like to pretend movies like that never happened, and if producers feel like more space marines will draw in an audience and want them to be like the ones in A2, then that producer won't care whatsoever if that contradicts the statement in A4 about how Ripley succeeded at exterminating the Aliens two-hundred years prior. It certainly hasn't stopped 20th-century studios from licensing video games that contradict that. Heck, they even licensed Dark Descent, which bought back the original Space Jockeys, as opposed to the big opaque white guys in Prometheus and Covenant. But that might also just be that they are much more lenient with video games.
My general rule is that if one needs to ask if something is canon, then it probably isn't because it is likely to be obscure enough that a future movie director or writer is allowed to contradict it.
Less stuff being canon only means there is a lot less stuff that future creatives are restricted by, so, in a way it allows them to play around with the Alien biology and show us new things, and with less rules on the aliens, it keeps them scary and unpredictable.
For a long time, years ago, fans were arguing about castes based on AVP: Extinction and putting all sorts of restrictive rules on the Alien based on that video game, but the studio isn't placing those restrictions on writers and directors, so we shouldn't assume there are inviolable rules for the alien based on something from a video game, comic, or novel.
If you like something, don't let its non-canonical status ruin your enjoyment, either. I mean, a movie is only two hours long, while there are countless other related Alien media out there that can provide many more hours of entertainment.
