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

7. We've Seen Alien Retcons Before (And It Rarely Ends Well)

Although the likes of X-Men and Star Trek have only recently got in on the act, Alien's been rewriting its continuity for decades. Both Alien 3 and Resurrection bent the ending of the previous film to continue the story, and ever since then franchise restarts have played free-and-loose with the canon; Alien Vs. Predator half reworked the origins of Weyland-Yutani and humanities first run-in with the xenomorph, while Prometheus treated every movie that came after Ridley Scott's original with contempt. So really, the promised reworking of the story (whatever it ends up being) isn't anything that groundbreaking within the series; protracted justification for more adventures dates back to Aliens, if you're being particularly critical. Which all makes what Blomkamp's proposing all the less unique and, if anything, more typical of the series. In fact, there's already been a high profile retcon of Alien 3, with video game Aliens: Colonial Marines resurrecting Hicks and putting the player on a damaged Sulaco. Of course, that game's problems go far beyond the plot, but it shows that giving the fans the new angle they want isn't always going to guarantee a solid new entry.