10 Reasons You Shouldn't Get Excited About Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5

2. Aliens Ruined The Xenomorph For Everything That Followed

Aliens is one of the most distinct sequels ever made. It didn't just change the tone of the original (a la The Empire Strikes Back), but completely switched up the genre. Ridley Scott's Alien was a haunted house slasher transplanted to the post-Star Wars grimy sci-fi, but James Cameron's follow-up was full-on actioner that eked its thrills from adrenaline rather than tension. The big narrative alteration was how it regarded the xenomorphs. Instead of a perfect organism that was impossible to defeat, they became cannon fodder who found their strength in numbers. Such a potent shift worked in the film itself, but every movie (and most video games) since has struggled to deal with the two conflicting versions of the monster. When the creature became destructible and individually weak, increasingly contrived reasons had to be dreamt up to invent tension, making for ever-more ridiculous stories. Alien: Isolation is the best post-Aliens entry in the series, but to do that it had to dedicate itself solely to the first film, like Prometheus ignoring anything that came after. Blomkamp's film can't really make such bold decision, meaning it'll either have to address the power gulf between Alien's and Aliens' xenomorphs, or repeat the sins of the movies it's trying to make everyone forget.