Australian Odeon

Like all franchises, the Alien series has a chequered history. The first two are unequivocal classics of horror (Alien) and action (Aliens) but the next two were, to put it mildly, soul-destroying. Alien 3 had an infamously troubled production, with numerous rewrites and budget overruns contributing to a muddled and ultimately boring rehash of things done better in the previous two films. Alien Resurrection really pushed the boat out weird factor-wise, ending with Ripley killing her weird xenomorph/human hybrid baby by throwing her acid blood at a space window and letting in get slowly vacuumed through the hole (this is the fourth version of that sentence, there is simply no way to recount that scene without it sounding ridiculous). For nearly fifteen years the franchise lay dormant. But there seemed to be hope when Ridley Scott was announced to direct Prometheus, a film whilst not a prequel to Alien, was said to take place in the same universe. The film's achilles heel was the story (or lack thereof). Long story short, super-vagina did it.

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Now we are just one month away from Alien:Covenant and not to sound hopelessly naïve, there is reason to be optimistic about this for one reason: John Logan. Among his many credits are Skyfall, The Aviator and (crucially) Gladiator. The man knows his way around Hollywood genre fare, managing to craft interesting narratives and compelling characters to explore them, especially when teamed with Ridley Scott. Any pretence of being an Alien film, but at the same time not an Alien film has been dropped (the title is a giveaway), which should generate much needed coherency which the aforementioned Prometheus lacked. It will also free up Scott to stop dro[pping little easter eggs relating to previous Alien films and just get on with the xenomorph killing.

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Or all this will have been for nothing and we will finally learn that the 80's are truly dead.