"The Company" Can't Help Itself.

In Space Nobody Hears Your Virtue Signalling!

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“THEY’RE INSIDE!”

Yes. That’s right. The ruthless killing machines intent on wiping out any human they encounter (that’s if they don’t use them to insidiously implant their monstrous seed to create more of their kind first), those pesky Social Justice Warriors™️, have infiltrated another beloved franchise. Well, potentially anyway. This comes from a story headline which just raises a few alarm bells:

Now, I don’t really like inequality to be honest. Yeah I know, how annoyingly “woke” of me (well, I said inequality not inequity; so doesn’t really count). But when I hear things like this it has the same blood curdling effect as the breathy hiss of a Xenomorph appearing behind you.

Well okay that’s a massive exaggeration; but it doesn’t fill me with joy or confidence. We know these big media companies like to push all kinds of agendas and shoehorn in social commentary, which to be honest in the past was done in a pretty fair and useful way in my opinion, but now has become honestly just as acidic as the blood of the monsters of the piece. Well, the non-human monsters…

It’s been on the cards for a little while now that there will be a series set in the Xenomorph Universe. It’s set not too far into the future before we meet Ripley, who of course is one of the greatest most bad-ass movie characters of all time seen first in Alien (1979).

It sounds like its main focus will be on Earth showing disparities between the classes with grunts and blue-collar workers living a squalid subservient life and the elites running things.

So basically where we’re potentially headed now.

For that reason, I don’t mind at all if THAT’S the inequality they’re talking about and it can act as a warning about how things could end up. But let’s not forget who now owns the franchise…Disney. They’re essentially like “The Company” in real life, except with Mickey Mouse ears on. Will they shoehorn all manner of irrelevant and divisive politics in here? Will they go on long narratives about how capitalism leads to this kind of evil (which it surely can do) but all the while LARPing as do-gooders only concerned with entertaining and helping society and daring not mention that the dystopian futures we all too often see are a mix of Communist or Fascist style authoritarian dictatorships and Ultra Capitalists who are in allegiance with that corrupt state, one that often engages in some form of genocide?

Hopefully Disney will be pretty uninvolved with the series considering it’s a FOX property originally, but as I say, that headline is definitely hinting at a villainous primary objective here.

The thing is, the dystopian future Alien and it’s sequel were set in, were always more of a backdrop rather than the main theme. It’s just a logical potential way life could be for us in the future. You could argue “inequality” is present throughout, and, to an extent it is, but like I say…it’s secondary. The main element of the first movie is sex and reproduction in a new and horrific way breeding life to the “perfect organism” (a lot of which comes from the designs created by Giger).

There’s a reason the ship’s AI is called Mother with a uterine room dedicated to her that the crew (her children) must be inside to be able to communicate with her fully:

…there’s a reason the area of the Derelict ship on LV-426 is humid and full of eggs, like a womb:

…there’s a reason a facehugger looks like…this:

…there’s a reason you see in horrific detail the life-cycle of this alien creature and the birth of its final form:

…because it’s a sci-fi horror movie with those themes at its core.

The comics, books, and so on delve deeper into the goings on of “The Company”, also commonly referred to by its legal ident Weyland-Yutani Corporation (post UK-Japan merger), who just want to build “better worlds” and definitely know best on how to achieve that, honest!

Said goings on really are something that could come about (well, perhaps aside from Aliens existing, but who knows) given it bears all the hallmarks of things we’re seeing now - things at the expense of its workers and what would actually be good for society as a whole, them pushing on with special interests in space exploration, technology, AI & synthetics, mining for resources, pharmaceuticals, genomics, political influence - but such companies are also a cliché and common in movies set in the future. The story is still mainly about these crazy fucking aliens killing everyone; it’s called Alien/s remember!

But yes, admittedly, there is a duality of which monster is worse under the microscope in the movies too - as that article includes, in Aliens (1986) Ripley says “I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t screw each other over for a percentage.” and the human monster element is extremely interesting and in the Universe as a whole it is a big factor with storylines (mainly in other media as just mentioned) exploring more about the exploitation of Xenomorphs (as much as humans). But the thing is there’s time to flesh out these ideas in the books, comics and games…I’m just not sure how well than will translate to a TV series.

For example the TV series for Westworld had some good elements but ultimately became a twisted mess of subplots and character storylines which detracted somewhat from the actual horror of the, well, “world”. It goes the way of essentially being a soap-opera or drama just in the setting lifted from the books/movies, with the main theme taking a backseat. I just have a feeling the same could happen here.

I will of course be keen to see what they do with this series still and hopefully the interview was just paying lip-service to the current “climate” and twitter mobs who would otherwise slate it as being…oh I dunno…Xenophobic?

*badum tish*

Anyway Noah was behind the series Fargo - admittedly I’ve only seen Seasons 1 & 2 but the series is pretty cool so hopefully something good will be created. It’s worth mentioning that Ridley Scott is Executive Producer so there’s hope, despite Alien: Covenant (2017) (the sequel to the prequel Prometheus (2012) which was pretty good) being a bit naff - and not even because alleged hate crime hoax creator Jussie Smollet was in it…after all this was a pretty cool death scene:

Filming is due to begin in 2022 so let’s keep our facehugging finger-like legs crossed!