Sequel Saturday: The Return of Ripley, by Mat Bradley-Tschirgi
Timing can be a funny thing. On the Sequelcast, my film franchise podcast in the Battleship Pretension Fleet, I covered the Alien films not too long ago. Now Variety reports that director Neill Blomkamp (Chappie) is developing a new Alien film for 20th Century Fox.
At first glance, this appears to be not very exciting. After all, the Alien franchise has mutated over the years from one into three distinct franchises- the original detailing the exploits of Ellen Ripley’s struggles against the slimy beastie, a modern “monster mash” of sorts with Alien vs. Predator, and the more recent prequel series started with Prometheus. This is a franchise that has been beaten like a dead xenomorph again and again and again.
Things get a bit more exciting when you look at concept art that Blomkamp posted a few months ago on Instagram. If he intends to create a movie based on the sketches, Alien 5 would hearken back to James Cameron’s Aliens. The plot would have Ripley (The original or a clone? Is this an interquel between Aliens and Alien 3?) visiting the headquarters of Weyland-Yutani, the corporation responsible for sending innocent engineers and marines out on covert missions to bring live alien specimens back to their labs. Hicks appears scarred and battle-damaged. My favorite of the sketches is Ripley in what appears to be a space jockey or xenomorph helmet.
In a recent interview for MTV promoting Chappie, Sigourney Weaver mentions the sketches and that she’d be open for doing an Alien sequel if Blomkamp was director. Even more interesting is the tidbit that she has no desire for a sequel picking up where Alien: Resurrection left off- “We just left it at such a creepy place, sort of stranded above Earth. I was quite happy to move on to other things, and I didn’t want to go to Earth.”
While I adore aspects of the Alien series, I don’t think we need another film about Ripley. The right time for another Ripley story would have been a few years after Alien: Resurrection to round out that particular dangling thread. I don’t want to see a franchise I love turn into a sci-fi Expendables.
By the way, Mat, I couldn’t disagree with you more. The ONLY Alien movies I wanna see are ones with Ripley.
– David
Too much time has passed. Maybe this will surprise me and be the Rocky Balboa of the Alien series.
i don’t need Ripley to enjoy an Aliens movie, but i do need a central character(s) as strong and likeable as Ripley. And by Strong i don’t mean “ass-kicking”. I liked Rapace and her character, somewhat, in Prometheus, but i didn’t feel invested in her search for…what? Her origins? Oh, she’s barren? Great. She tells us in the clumsiest way possible, by guilt-tripping her husband with a cheap shot remark. She went looking for trouble, and found it. She was not a bystander victim of her company’s malfeasance, who just wanted to keep sleeping ’til she got home.