10 Recent Movie Moments Everybody Was Waiting For
6. Ellen Ripley's Daughter - Alien: Romulus
When Alien: Romulus released 45 years after Alien in 1979, like with many chapters in a franchise coming so long after the original, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to connect the two with a familial link.
Given the specific timeframe of the film, being set in between the events of Alien and Aliens, and with Ellen Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) daughter, Amanda already having led the Alien: Isolation video game, it made sense to think that this is exactly who Cailee Spaeny would have been portraying.
Such a tie back to the original is probably the easiest way for a film to try and evoke and take advantage of nostalgia, but Romulus avoided such a tactic, introducing Spaeny instead as Rain Carradine, a character with absolutely no prior connections to the Alien franchise, and it was refreshing.
The film wasn't completely free of cheap fan service, as it arguably went too far in this regard with the posthumous inclusion of Ian Holm as Rook. However, at the very least it was led by an original character that needed no ties back to anyone else to make her relevant and compelling. Unfortunately, not every film can resist this temptation, as will be seen later in this list.