XENOMORPH SAD (Movies My Way)
Aliens (1986) is genius.
For many, Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is the original masterpiece, but for me, it all started with Aliens, one of the very first movies I watched on VHS back when I wasn’t even a teen.
It stayed with me for all these decades, and I had no idea why — until I started writing screenplays and actually studying existing movies to learn how they were constructed and why and how they worked.
This is not the place to detail why I consider Aliens genius, and since many before me have said what needed to be said on the matter, I’m sure if you’re reading this, you’re privy to all of that already.
Instead, I’d like to talk about the sequels: the troubled Alien 3 (1992), the weird but enjoyable Alien Resurrection (1997), and, of course, the beautiful if pointless Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017.)
And about how all the sequels failed to continue the two original stories in a satisfying way.
Alien 3 boldly dismissed the core value that Aliens worked so hard to establish — by killing off Dwayne Hicks and Rebecca (Newt), and doing so off-screen before the story even started.
The franchise aficionados will recall that saving Newt, the daughter surrogate for Ellen Ripley, was the whole point of Ripley’s struggle. In the fight of two mothers, Ripley and the Alien Queen, each was going to great lengths to keep their progeny alive and well. Ripley showed immense courage — and put her alien encounter PTSD to rest — in the final standoff when she jettisoned the Queen into space.
That mother-child relationship in the face of existential threat was the heart of Aliens, was what made the film and its female protagonist so special even against the background of a great predecessor.
Another foundational idea with Aliens was threat escalation. We found out that the organism from Alien wasn’t a one-off. This here was an autonomous collective life form that could colonize worlds, converting inhabitants into hosts for their newborns.
Alien 3 ditched Newt, and it ditched threat escalation. The reasons for those decisions are nebulous, but most probably have to do with filmmaking by a committee, and these capers rarely, if ever, end well.
Unfortunately, even with those sacrifices, the film didn’t work as a whole. It was a complete mess, from start to finish, even despite the brilliant David Fincher directing.
It ended with Ripley’s death. Which I could get behind… if only that death was for a greater cause than containing the same old alien threat yet again.
Yes, it was in character, and yes, Ripley did the right thing, but in the grand scheme of things, it mattered little.
Alien Resurrection came along to show exactly why. This brilliantly designed, from the visual standpoint, film made Ripley’s death in Alien 3 irrelevant by repeatedly cloning her and then using the one functioning clone to continue experimentation on Xenomorph DNA. All with the express purpose of weaponizing the life form.
It’s weird to have to say this, but after Cameron’s Aliens, Resurrection is the most watchable of the sequels, despite the amazing visuals of Scott’s Prometheus and Covenant.
Ripley gives birth to a human-alien hybrid, which she has to kill before the crashing ship reaches the Earth. (And that was, by mistake, the closest the franchise ever got to placing Xenos in our midst.) It’s an interesting reversal of the character’s stance on progeny, but it’s not nearly as heartbreaking as the constant battle to save Newt in Aliens or as Newt’s off-screen death in Alien 3.
After all, Ripley’s “son” is a hostile organism.
Needless to say, neither Alien 3 nor Resurrection generated as much viewer excitement as Alien or Aliens. Ultimately, both are forgettable no matter how much effort went into creating them.
Things were quiet for a while, until Prometheus hit the screens 15 years later. Personally, I had high hopes for it because say what you will, Ridley Scott was and remains one of the greatest artists and storytellers of our day.
He has proven himself so many times, it almost hurts that Prometheus was not one of those times. Setting out to find and explain the origins of the Xenomorphs was a lapse in judgment on maestro’s side (unless, of course, he had no choice but to follow the studio’s drift, in which case… dudes, I’m sorry, but you should’ve reconsidered.)
The reason I’m saying this is, the Xenomorphs are a perfect Lovecraftian monster, a cosmic horror beyond human comprehension, impenetrable by human logic, unconventional by any standards. When you encounter such horror, you don’t emerge unscathed and you can never can fully grasp what was it that you encountered.
Trying to retcon the origins of Xenomorphs was a sure way to shoot yourself in the foot. Resurrection was the last movie of the franchise to have anything to do with the Lovecraftian nature of the beast. After that, it went downhill.
Engineers, black goo, alien hybrids, incomplete plot… all shot stunningly, of course… who cares?
But because Prometheus fared reasonably in the box office, a sequel was in order, and that was Alien: Covenant. Again, beautifully shot and still drawing in audiences hung up to see how the story ends, Covenant had seemingly less to do with alien life form than any of the previous movies.
For all its glory and philosophical subtext, it never gets very far even though it takes the roads less traveled and tries to do more of original instead of continuing the great backstory Alien and Aliens set up.
The franchise got boring without getting repetitive — a feat, but I feel certain sadness it’s going down that route at all. Which brings me to —
A potential Alien/s reboot that discards everything after Aliens (1986.)
Yes, this is a thing nowadays. The terrible Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) did exactly this; it discarded everything after Terminator 2 (1991.) Granted, it stepped on the same landmine as Alien 3 by disposing of the young John Connor to clear the way for the plot (I dare you to call this a “story.” I double dare you.)
My reboot, however, doesn’t have to be terrible (yeah, I know, I know — that’s what all screenwriters tell themselves.)
I’ll start where Aliens left off: with the Queen dying, dumped through an airlock into space. And I’m not killing any major character just yet. (Note, I’ll be omitting certain glue details that make this an integral whole.)
Looking back at the two cogs that made Aliens tick — escalation and “family” values — I would like to continue the trends, since the layers of the story uncovered by James Cameron have not been exhausted.
First of all, in Aliens, the crew of the Nostromo correctly predicts that eggs must come from somewhere, a big insect mama. In fact, one of the drafts of Aliens has Bishop explaining the structure of an ant colony where the female queen, the source of all new eggs, is catered to by drones: she’s literally bursting with eggs, and so has limited mobility.
Xenomorphs are obviously insectoid and have a hive-like organization. Which, if we go one step further, begs the question: who fertilizes the female?
With insects, most reproduction systems require males to supply sperm to fertilize the eggs. Even though the queen-mother could store the sperm for long-term fertilization.
And the queen-mother is the center of a colony’s life. But hey, you know what? Ripley just murdered her over her own child.
And so while Ripley, Newt, and Hicks travel safely back home, unbeknownst to them, the death of the Alien Queen has sent a surge through the hive that has awakened KING XENO from his millennia-long sleep.
Escalation! King Xeno is one big-ass creature, and it is much scarier than the Queen (I have actual designs, not going into that here.) And if he ever meets Ripley, he’ll be sure to want to off her, her progeny, and any member of her species that happens to be nearby.
[A note on the survival capabilities of the Xenomorphs. With the Queen dead, how does a hive carry on? Well, King Xeno’s extremities feature reserve pods that store queen eggs. So he can restart production once he finds a suitable environment.]
Long story short, Ripley, Newt, and Hicks end up on Earth. 30 years have passed since the events of Aliens — because, you know, we need to account for the actors getting older, and I would hate to live to see anyone else play Ripley or Hicks (Newt is a different story), and would hate even more to see them CGI-ed Tarkin-style.
Now, for that other cog, the family values. The subject of Aliens was motherhood, and it carries on into Aliens My Way. The Earth has been slowly dying, raped by corporations, and all the littering and climate change have decreased birth rates drastically.
In particular, Newt is clinically infertile.
At the same time, outside of Weyland-Yutani Corporation (WYC), now run by the original founder’s granddaughters Kim Weyland and Eri Yutani, the role of women has been diminished to Kinder, Küche, Kirche. In general, men dominate the world obsessively even in the face of extinction.
As a result, neither Ripley nor Newt have a decent job, and Hicks has since separated and is flying commercial aviation.
Life on Earth is anything but what they all have imagined. Ripley stays in shape (think Sarah Connor mental institution routine), but mostly the situation looks bleak. She tries to make herself useful by being overprotective of Newt who’s now a grown woman and does not really need this.
One day, Ripley wakes up from a nightmare. She hasn’t had nightmares for 25+ years, and this one dream makes her uneasy.
An unexpected job offer comes in — research assistance positions in ReproTech, a company knee-deep in trying to restore human fertility — for both Ripley and Newt.
The offer promises an awesome package — ReproTech is on an island. Great weather, best food, and an opportunity to fix Newt’s disorder.
Ripley’s danger sense warns her not to go, but for Newt, she agrees to try the interview and see how things go.
When they arrive at ReproTech, they find a military-grade fortified perimeter with automatic cannons and an army of guards: this advanced genetic lab complex looks more like a prison than the relaxed facility in Alien 3.
They see a modern gunship arrive, The Golden Arrow, and out walk two women accompanied by a bevy of armed females.
When Ripley is taken to her interview, she meets the two. They turn out to be Kim Weyland and Eri Yutani.
Weyland and Yutani explain that the Earth is doomed. There are other worlds, but conditions are harsh everywhere. To build better worlds, WYC needs more people, more fertile females, shorter gestation cycles. To solve this puzzle, WYC has decided to glean genetic tricks found in the most adaptable of species: the Xenomorph.
To that end, they have sent a humongous unmanned freighter ship FIDANZA to pick up the hive off CALPAMOS, a planet in the same system as LV-426 and LV-223. (The hive had shown on the scans made by Sulaco while in the system.)
(Yes, the very hive with the grumpy King Xeno.)
Fidanza should be arriving shortly and it will land at ReproTech.
Because Ripley has had first-hand experience with the Xenos, WYC offers her a position on the research team. The pitch is: You will mother a new world and a new humankind. For thousands of years females have been neglected, but now we’re the last hope.
Understandably, Ripley is furious. When will you guys learn anything?
In response, Weyland and Yutani show her the new weapons specifically designed to combat the potential Xeno threat. And to gain her trust, they 1) run scans on Newt and find her condition treatable; and 2) they give her a handgun.
Weyland goes: “WYC standard issue. I want you to have it. Only security and top-level personnel are allowed to carry weapons on this island. We run this planet. If you think people managing the complexity haven’t thought of everything, and you can do better, shoot me right now. I hope you will consider working with me instead.”
Ripley takes the gun, but not the offer. She tries to reach Hicks, but he’s probably on a flight, working. She leaves a message.
And when Fidanza arrives, it doesn’t land. It crashes into ReproTech.
Naturally, all hell breaks loose: it’s raining not cats and dogs, but countless Xenomorph warriors. Taking over the facility in no time.
The King Xeno awes Weyland and Yutani; and when he clocks Ripley, a healthy swath of Warriors converges to get her. Weyland, Yutani, their assistant Lance, the Wolfpack (Kim and Eri’s personal guards), Ripley and Newt now have to get out of the complex before the Xenos shred them.
On the way out, Ripley and Newt get separated and they make it almost all the way to the landing pad where The Golden Arrow is parked, but the Warriors pin them down. Ripley is about to shoot both Newt and herself when the gunship’s cannons come online and blast Xenos. Reveal, it’s being operated by Dwayne Hicks who got Ripley’s message after all and then managed to sneak on the island and steal the ship.
Once aboard, they contact General Rutherford, Hicks’ old-time CO in the Marine Corps, deliver the bad news and ask for an atomic strike on ReproTech.
Rutherford cannot do that without a direct order from WYC. Ripley goes back into the complex to help out Weyland and Yutani and bring them aboard. Newt argues she must go also since she’s not a kid anymore, but Ripley won’t have any of that. Newt orders Hicks to track Ripley’s heat signature.
This strand here indicates Newt finally coming into her own power and contesting Ripley’s position of Goddess. Newt must become the Younger Goddess to take Ripley’s helm in the future.
The facility is overrun. Infrastructure down. Interference from exploding equipment so serious, Ripley loses contact with Hicks and Newt.
Meanwhile, the Xenos are building a nest down at the reactor core and are snatching all lifeforms from the labs, including ocean dwellers and aerial species.
Ripley blasts aliens left and right using prototype weapons from aboard The Golden Arrow as she’s looking for Weyland and Yutani. Shellshocked.
It’s hardly a battlefield, everybody’s dying around her.
We see King Xeno burrowing. Warriors supply him with live organisms gift-wrapped in the goo. And he starts unloading egg reserves from his extremity pods. Plants eggs near the reactor to accelerate gestation.
Ripley finds the WYC party in a pinch, under attack by a slew of Warriors, and surprises the Xenos by blasting them away.
She tries to convince Weyland and Yutani to nuke the island. Simply escaping doesn’t cut it. She has the upper hand since she’s taken The Golden Arrow, and they reluctantly agree, but precious time has been lost, and King Xeno is on to them, getting closer by the second.
Lance, the assistant to Weyland and Yutani, guides them out using his phenomenal memory and sharpshooting skills. (You know where I’m going with this, right?)
The party barely avoids King Xeno’s wrath. The creature’s personal grudge with Ripley becomes apparent. King Xeno is the archetypical male monster dominating females.
The party boards the Golden Arrow and takes off immediately as another wave of Warriors swarms onto the pad. The ship soars. King Xeno roars and then dashes madly back to his burrow. Hicks punches it.
Weyland and Yutani contact General Rutherford, requesting a twenty kiloton nuke, but Ripley interrupts asking if the explosion will reach all the way down into the structure of the island. Rutherford tells her they have a similar piercing charge, but the residual EMP wave will roll thousand of kilometers out. Jets will fall out of the skies. Ships will be dead in the water. Submarine crews will die.
They can’t detonate immediately. They need to get away. Although Ripley argues the sacrifice should be made. But she’s alone. Even Newt opposes her.
Meanwhile, Lance courts Newt. His genetic makeup makes it trivial for him to adapt to her needs, thus creating an image of the matching male.
The Golden Arrow makes a high-speed run to Rutherford’s military base and rendezvous with the General. Who now calls the strike. Remote sensing equipment detects motion outside the island just before the strike. Which must be impossible because of the sentry cannons on the perimeter.
And yet, hundreds of thousands of white dots spread out from ground zero. But then it stops. (We don’t know it yet, but the xenos are playing dead.)
Ripley has had enough of this shit. She forces Weyland and Yutani to prime an Iceland lifter for dust-off. Where ten thousand fertile females have been living in anticipation of the launch. Ripley’s party is going to be on the lifter.
Newt has a romantic moment with Lance. Weyland and Yutani do the same with their business projections. Ripley and Hicks commiserate over the time lost. Rutherford thousand-yard-stares into post-nuke reports.
And as they all go to sleep…
…thousands of white dots stop playing dead and head for all continents.
The tide has arrived.
Frantic reports come in. Humankind is a couple of gestations away from vanishing forever. And that’s… maybe 12–15 hours.
The party watches the feeds from around the world as the tide rolls over our culture. The only way it stops is when it’s out of hosts.
A decision needs to be made. Allied Command orders mass evacuation. But by the time the order comes through, WYC ships the world over are held down by an invisible force (gooey stuff.)
And to make matters worse… The Xenos arrive at Rutherford’s military base. Amphibian creatures with gestations wildly accelerated by the reactor core and the residual radiation from the blast; insect-whale hybrids that smash through everything.
A battle ensues. An epic set-piece that will only be eclipsed by the final show-down. At this point we’re somewhere around the middle of the film, and our main characters leave in The Golden Arrow as Rutherford and his regiments stay behind to take part in the unsurvivable massacre.
The world is in the chitin grip of death. Internal conflicts tear the crew apart.
Abandoning Earth is now the only option, but that’s also a tall order as the invasion has spread everywhere. Somehow, they must figure a way to launch the lifter with fertile females and restart humankind elsewhere.
Field reports show the Xenos proliferating at the rate that’d make StarCraft jealous. Tens of thousands of eggs are being spotted on locations around the world. There must be multiple new Alien Queens.
The thought of this makes Newt nauseated… (it’s either that or a potential indication of her rapidly developing pregnancy.)
King Xeno isn’t dead either. Reports of the creature make the hair stand on ends. It seems to be indestructible.
Coordinating battle missions around the world is futile. The hive mind run by King Xeno is beyond the planet’s military might.
Lance is outed as an artificial person. (Of course. What’s an Alien/s franchise movie without one.) Weyland and Yutani tell Ripley that of the whole crew of The Golden Arrow, he’s the most valuable since his memory holds the backups of all ReproTech’s research both on fertility and on weapons.
Ripley also realizes that King Xeno is specifically after her; somehow the creature knows she’s murdered his Queen.
Gradually, communication with the world is being silenced. Infestation overruns resistance. There’s no choice but to speed The Golden Arrow to the lifter and try and get if off the ground.
The launchpad near an active volcano Hekla is swarming with tens of thousands of Warriors. King Xeno and a few Queens are there. The ship held in place with goo.
The remainders of the military that are still mobile join Ripley’s party in the final battle to take back the lifter. The all-out battle is cut short when King Xeno orders Warriors to attack the lifter.
The Golden Arrow sounds cease-fire. But it’s too late. Burrows explode with hundreds of thousands of more Xenos. The situation is hopeless.
Hicks, Weyland, and Yutani die priming Hekla to erupt with all its might. Ripley, Newt, and Lance are the only ones left alive after the fact.
Ripley can now negotiate safe passage for the lifter.
But she knows King Xeno isn’t letting her go.
She draws the King away and detonates Hekla, dying before the monster gets to her. The lava flow drowns the Queens, the King, and the Warriors just as Newt and Lance have managed to free the lifter from the goo.
They’re finally off the ground. But humans on Earth are now the hunted underground insects, scared to see the light of another day. Newt broadcasts instructions on how to survive by hiding from the monsters that now run the Earth.
Some time has passed. We find Newt on a long-range ship, holding a positive pregnancy test. As the ship heads out to colonize another world; Lance and the fertile females deep in stasis.
She downloads Lance’s memory to ship’s computer to find out that leaving Earth in the aftermath of an alien incursion was in fact a scenario analysed and planned for by the WYC prediction team.
The plan says: 1. Set up a colony. 2. Proliferate. 3. Construct weapons. 4. Wipe out the incursion. (Thus hinting at a sequel.)
Once again, I’ve intentionally left out quite a bit of detail, in particular lots of significant stuff related to the subject matter of the film, but this thing is too long as is, and I have to stop here.
But… what about the title, I hear you ask. Why, Alien Tide, of course.
One last thing before we part. The dream cast.
Sigourney Weaver as Ripley. — Michael Biehn as Dwayne Hicks. — Kate Rooney Mara as Newt. — Mark Ruffalo as General Rutherford. — Olivia Williams as Kim Weyland. — Lucy Liu as Eri Yutani. — Joseph-Gordon Levitt as Lance.
Oh yeah, and Vin Diesel as King Xeno.
— and that’s all I have to say about that.
