10 Reasons There Are Only 2 And A Half Good Alien Movies

8. Technology Goes Backwards

A great deal of Alien’s atmosphere comes down to its clunky, imperfect technology, from CRT monitors to flickering lights and static-filled radio transmissions. While some of this can be ascribed to the technology level of the 1970s, it is also a deliberate analogy to the idea of a ‘haunted house in space’, where the Nostromo is just as shabby and run-down as a decaying ghost-filled mansion.

Skip forward (and back, kind of) to Prometheus and the latest offering, Alien: Covenant. Suddenly spaceships are run by holographic displays instead of coffee-stained keyboards. The Prometheus is somehow advanced enough to boast a whole hidden wing and a !*$% pool table, along with a magical healing robot booth thing that would have been pretty damned useful in the first three movies. And yet Prometheus is a prequel, set before Alien, and so technology seems to have gone backwards in the intervening time.