There seem to be two types of Alien fans in the world. In one camp, there are people who love the slow, ineffable terror of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien,” and who appreciate the series as a particularly well-made atmospheric monster movie. This camp loves seeing unstoppable monsters stalking and killing human meat, simply because they are an aggressive, chaos-driven predator. In the other camp, there are people who love the smashing, high-octane action of James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, “Aliens.” This movie features overconfident marines armed with machine guns that can blow up monsters.
Since then, the “Alien” series has been torn between these two concepts, with half of the “Alien” sequels being oriented towards the undefined evils of the cosmos, and the other half being more action/combat oriented. All the debates surrounding the “Alien” franchise seem to boil down to this fundamental schism.
Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp is clearly in the “action” camp. In 2015, Blomkamp announced that he was working on an “Alien” film that would ignore the events of all “Alien” sequels made since 1986. His new film would essentially be “Aliens 2,” telling a more action-packed story. The project received a lot of attention and Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron announced in 2016 that they would indeed be interested in helping Blomkamp with his project. He has released many tantalizing concept art. Unfortunately, the project was repeatedly stalled, facing delay after delay. The film was officially declared dead in 2022.
The AVPGalaxyNews site recently attended a screening of Alien in France, with Weaver in attendance. When asked why “Aliens 2” never happened, Weaver speculated that it was only because Ridley Scott wanted to regain control of the series, effectively killing all ancillary projects. Scott then directed “Alien: Covenant” in 2017.
Ridley Scott wanted his aliens back
Weaver remembers seeing Blomkamp’s concept art and being genuinely excited about the project. At that point, Blomkamp had already directed his Oscar-nominated film “District 9” and had just finished his robot-centric action film “Chappie.” Weaver was in “Chappie,” so she was excited about his skills and style. Blomkamp was in fine form in 2015, proving he could handle strange monsters, complex machines, and big budgets with equal aplomb.
But “Alien” wasn’t his property. Indeed, when Blomkamp started talking about his own “Alien” project, Ridley Scott started getting territorial. Scott had directed the Alien prequel “Prometheus” in 2012, so he was already reclaiming the series from the “Aliens” action fan camp. This, it seems, included Blomkamp. As Weaver said:
“I think like many of us I was a big admirer of Neill. His film was so striking and I worked with him on a film called [“Chappie”]. And I loved working with Neill. And he had this idea to bring back Ripley and Newt. It was a wonderful storyline and unfortunately, that’s when Ridley Scott decided to be very possessive about the series and really delved into its prequels. And so I think it was a disaster for this project. We could never… I think actually Neil just gave up and he’s so talented. I wish him all the best.”
The project died on the vine and Blomkamp didn’t want to make another film until “Demonic” in 2021. As mentioned, Scott directed “Alien: Covenant” in 2017. Disney, however, purchased the “Alien” films when they bought Fox in 2017, so the new “Alien” films are all being made without direct input from Blomkamp or Scott. Whoever wins, they both lost.
