Alien: Romulus Must Avoid A Big Problem That Hurt Ridley Scott's Prequels

Although Alien: Romulus looks promising, the new sequel could still fall victim to a problem that plagued Ridley Scott’s prequels. The Alien franchise has not released a new movie since 2017’s Alien: Covenant. The second of two prequels directed by original Alien director Ridley Scott, Alien: Covenant followed the story of its predecessor, 2012’s Prometheus. However, the sequel earned the ire of critics and fans alike by killing Prometheus’s heroine offscreen and making the franchise’s backstory more convoluted. This may account for its box office underperformance, with Alien: Covenant making only $240 million on a budget of $111 million.

In August 2024, the upcoming Alien: Romulus will hope to reignite interest in the series. Set between Alien and Aliens, this standalone movie will be directed by Don’t Breathe helmer Fede Álvarez. Not much is known about the sequel’s plot save for the fact that Alien: Romulus will take place on a remote planet and focus on a young group of characters encountering Xenomorphs in this inhospitable terrain. While this setup sounds like it could yield a promising return to the franchise’s roots, Alien: Romulus may still fall victim to the same issue that hurt both of Scott’s earlier prequels.

Alien: Romulus Should Avoid Over-Explaining The Franchise's Mythology

Since Alien: Romulus is set between Alien and Aliens, there could be a temptation to fully explain what happened during that time. Thanks to its place in the Alien franchise chronology, viewers might expect Alien: Romulus to touch on many unanswered questions like what the fallout of the Nostromo disaster was, whether Weyland-Yutani covered up the event, and many other lingering mysteries. However, trying to flatten the franchise’s unknowable history into a straightforward timeline was the biggest pitfall that doomed Scott's prequels. Both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant attempted to explain where the Xenomorph and humanity came from, to their detriment.

Prometheus’s opening scenes made it clear that Scott wanted to tell a sprawling, expansive story that spanned thousands of years. However, this was at odds with the claustrophobic intensity of the original Alien. Even the comparatively large-scale action of Aliens was nowhere near as ambitious as Alien: Covenant, which featured a scene wherein Michael Fassbender’s killer android David wiped out an entire planet’s population by using Xenomorphs as a bioweapon. These events were so complex, ambitious, and ultimately irrelevant that it was no surprise when the showrunner of the upcoming Alien TV spinoff confirmed Scott’s prequels were retconned from its story.

Alien: Romulus Needs To Carve Out Its Own Place In The Timeline

Alien: Romulus must avoid the mistake that Scott’s prequels made. Like Alvarez’s earlier Evil Dead reboot, Alien: Romulus should focus on being a great standalone film set in the Alien universe that isn't reliant on existing movies instead of referencing these earlier hits. Rather than trying to provide a backstory for the Xenomorph, Alien: Romulus should instead return to the stripped-back horror of the original movie. That 1979 hit became a success precisely because of how much the enigmatic movie’s many mysteries were left ambiguous, and Alien: Romulus can repeat its success if the upcoming sequel refuses to over-explain the franchise’s knotty, inconsistent world-building.