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

4. ...And This Idea Isn't That Novel Anyway

The Alien 3 that eventually made it to cinemas was a dreary retread of the first film, only with a bunch of explicit moral musings to punctuate the action. But before the prison planet and bald Ripley, there were lots of different early versions that almost got made. The most well known had Ripley crash landing on a wooden monastery planet, noteworthy only because it'd have probably been worse than the finished film. However, a more exciting idea saw the action move to Earth, with the xenomorph finally in the company's hands and Hicks forced to stop them making an army of perfect organisms. It was the natural progression of the series, finally going all in on Weyland-Yutani's evil, which makes the finished film and its disregard for the anti-capitalist subtext all the more jarring. What's noticeable from a modern perspective is that it shares a lot of broad notes to what Blomkamp is currently cooking up. That's not saying the director is lifting from the original late-eighties pitch, but that the idea that's got everyone fan-boying over Twitter isn't all that novel, or even new.