There hasn’t been a truly great Alien movie in decades, but a 2022 streaming hit proves that Disney can deliver one. The Alien franchise has been on shaky ground since 1986’s Aliens set a high bar for the series’ sequels. Every subsequent filmmaker to put their stamp on the franchise – including Ridley Scott, the returning director of the original 1979 Alien film – has struggled to recapture the magic of the first two movies. This I.P. is the perfect vehicle for sci-fi horror, but post-Aliens sequels have gotten too bogged down in the lore to really have fun with this monster-infested intergalactic world.
Following the 21st Century Fox merger, the Alien franchise is now in the hands of Disney. The media conglomerate behind family-friendly fare like Toy Story and Frozen might not seem like the best home for a franchise renowned for its terrifying body horror and blood-soaked jump scares. But a hit streaming movie from 2022 proves that the Mouse House is actually the perfect place to get the Alien franchise back on track. Disney has some ambitious plans for the future of the Alien franchise, and their biggest streaming success of 2022 shows there’s reason to have faith in the studio’s Alien content.
Prey Shows What Disney’s Alien Movie Should Be
In 2022, Disney released a Predator prequel called Prey. Set in the Great Plains in 1719, Prey revolves around a young Comanche warrior named Naru as she comes face-to-face with a Predator during a ritualistic challenge in which she has to prove she can hunt something that can hunt her back. Prey wasn’t released in theaters, but it performed well on Hulu’s streaming charts and received widespread acclaim from critics. Now, fans are clamoring for a sequel to Prey. What Prey did for the Predator franchise is exactly what the next Alien movie needs to do for the Alien franchise.
Prey ignores all the confusing lore from the previous films, focuses on what made the original movie so great, and delivers a simple yet engaging story. It doesn’t attempt to set up a wider universe or a succession of sequels; much like the classic 1987 original, Prey is just a strong standalone story about a fierce human warrior taking on a ruthless otherworldly hunter. Fede Álvarez’s untitled Alien movie (which is going to theaters) must accomplish something similar. It needn’t concern itself with the origins of the xenomorphs; it just needs to be a spooky haunted house movie in space like the iconic original film.
The Predator & Alien Movie Franchises Have A Similar History
The Alien and Predator franchises have a similar history. They both got off to a terrific start with a classic movie that stands perfectly on its own and didn’t need any sequels. Then, over the years, their increasingly lore-heavy sequels were increasingly panned by critics as they got further and further away from the point of the franchise. The Alien series’ fifth installment, Prometheus, dedicates its entire runtime to explaining where the franchise’s iconic xenomorphs came from. Alien fans don’t need to know the mythology of how xenomorphs came to be; they just want to be frightened by their various killing sprees.
Predators set up an exciting new premise as human convicts were dropped into a hunting ground on a faraway planet and chased around by a pack of Predators. But the movie was let down by its thinly developed characters, and it didn’t do anything new with the hunting ground that wasn’t already seen in the Earth-set previous movies. The Predator had a similar problem, introducing the notion of Earth scientists experimenting on Predator DNA with nothing new to say. Just as Prey saved the Predator franchise by going back to basics, Álvarez’s Alien movie should do the same thing with the Alien franchise.
The Future Of Predator & Alien Is Exciting Again After Years
For decades, the studio executives in charge of the Alien and Predator franchises have tried to turn them into long-running series with potential for the future. There have been non-starters like Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection on the Alien side, and Predators and The Predator on the Predator side, which had a lot of promise but failed to live up to their potential. The Alien vs. Predator crossovers did no favors for either franchise. Finally, after all these years, with the possible Prey sequels and a new Alien movie and TV show on the way, the future of the Alien and Predator franchises looks bright.
