Alien Franchise: What is On or Off the Table and Why?

Before asking - you need to study the history of the franchise. Alien and Aliens are undeniably the best films in the franchise. Gold standard. It is an indisputable truth. And guess what? They are devoid of religious themes!

The religious aspect first appears in Alien 3 - and from that moment on, the series begins to fall in quality. But I want to ask - why are you so interested in religious themes in Alien? As if this is something smart or sublime! Really? Why are you not interested in science? What - science doesn't sound clever enough?

It would be nice to see the factories and technologies of the Engineers.

ALIEN is about confronting what is strange and 'horrible' via relative perspective from the Human angle in a dark and unforgiving universe.

Bring in religion and that, the Essence, of ALIEN goes out the airlock.

As a point of 'what is ALIEN?' consider:

As a Human, you have the chance to become Chimeran via gene surgery. It's extremely risky, a 3 to 5% success rate...pas/fail...life/death.

Assuming you survive...

How would your friends and family react?

More importantly, can you handle the sudden shift to an entirely new and very ALIEN viewpoint and way of experiencing life? How hard would it be on you learning about everything your new body can do? How would you cope with a new brain structure that does NOT work based on how the Human brain works?

Can you hang onto your sanity...or would you fail and become a monster?

What if W-Y and other corporations start playing with 'Building Better People'? What would the failures of such efforts be like...how dangerous might they be?

Religion does indeed have it's place...but time has shown that it in anathema to the Essence of ALIEN.

Unless...you handle it in such a way to show it fail and collapse in the face of such a dark and unforgiving universe.

But, if one writes such...then it's mobs with torches and pitchforks at one's door.

OH yes!! More about the Engineers would be VERY welcome I think!!!

It is well within the the producers rights to put what ever religious connections - connotations into these productions; however, religion as a whole is on a decline in western republics. In some parts of the world certain religions are showing signs of increased participation. 

Dr. Shaw wears a cross and there is the whole thing of where do we come from in Prometheus....and from the producers of AC it breaks with all human ideas about religion entirely and opens the door indicating that it was alien/Engineers that created humans for some purpose in their image. 

I particularly like anything well done....so if these creatives do it correctly then I think it could be possible to have an element of religion play some kind of role in these productions...that being stated, I also believe in no way should religion become the main focus of these movies.

BWW - agreed when making these movies more about religion of any one kind where it supersedes the overall structure then I believe the audience rejects the production because they cannot relate to something they do not understand nor practice. Currently many millions of people simply do not want to participate in any ideas that they perceive being forced on them through someone else's religious dogma.

Going to yoga and meditation classes at some point in your life is different than say growing up in a Christian family....the two ideas are radically different experiences....so people who are not of any particular faith have no way to relate to characters that are depicted as having some kind of faith on screen.

BlackAnt

You make some excellent points that I fully agree with and see the basis of.

There's also the point that Faith and Religion are two seperate things. Genuine Faith is powerful, and many confuse faith with piety...when they could not be more different.

Religion...is akin to and kissing-cousin to politics. It's made by man's overwhelming desire for power/authority/control and criminal scammery.

Religion, is entirely hypocritical, and utterly nonsensical. The Abrahamic cults are the worst and exemplify my claims daily.

Religion is an insanely destructive (proven by history) atavism best left behind in the dust. It's as bad as Marxism and all it's derivations in terms of lives taken by it over history and sheer destruction brought about.

Faith...is Personal, and it's wellspring is one's soul.

Jesus spoke of Faith.

Man speaks of Religion.

They're are unconnected and indeed polar-opposites.

Faith in sci-fi...okay, sure, provided it is handled Properly, and correctly.
BUT it always becomes about RELIGION instead of Faith...and religion really has no place in sci-fi except rarely and absolutely NO place in ALIEN.

...Just my thoughts and 2 penny's worth.

Great points, all- thanks!

dk

Good topic, been enjoying the back-and-forth!

The simple answer to your question is that whilst Alien stories may have characters in who have a religious faith, the stories do not need to be themed within the context of exploring where the Dragon fits into a religious environment. 

Religion even the word is a signaller for distraction within modern cinema it makes executives nervous because much of their audience will see their belief system being interfered with whilst others who do not believe are distracted by their antagonism. It gets in the way of making a successful movie. 

Prometheus is a case in point. Part of the crew and part of the audience watching think it's about religion. It's not its about creation. What it tries to do is use the motifs of religion as a form of communication and reset what creation might be. The gifting of the catalyser to the monk-like cloaked sacrificial personality is a riff on communion. Cavalorn wrote about this years ago, over and over religion is riffed but what they discover is not religion. It's an inversion but for many who do not like allegory or do not function on symbolism, they take it literally. Oh, it's a religious story, it is not.

Prometheus is anti-religion in that Elizabeth is as hubristic as Weyland and arguably suffers more. She is not punished by God there is no God she is punished by self-flagellation.

When I wrote my extension I carried all those notions on. She finds the truth is horrific we are created by technocrats who made their own rules up who punted us. It may dawn on the reader and in a sense, in the end, Elizabeth finds out the truth, but all the myths that we create are a fragment of an entirely different truth. 

So where does Christ fit in? He doesn't his action on the cross was a wild guess where he was mostly wrong much the same as Elizabeth. Is that horrific to believers but not non-believers who knows? 

David knows the truth because he is the truth, creation is the result of a function. The purpose of creation is to make sense of the emptiness that is all.   

Mankind's view of the dragon is it's special, unique, just as in the real world we think we are special and unique. In Prometheus the movie we are an unintended consequence so why not make the dragon the same. But that was just me.

We don't have to worship anything even the dragon. 

But I think at a simple entertainment level its best to keep giving the dragon a religious context out of the equation, it subverts the fans worship of it.           

Michelle Johnston

Absolutely excellent!

I think you really nailed the key and central point about religion and such within the ALIENverse and the problems with it!!

Loved your points on Prometheus, I've never thought about it that way before!

In space no one can hear your prayer.

or

In space no one will know what you believe.

or

In space no one cares about your faith.

In Space....You Are Alone.

There are some places in the space where you are not alone.

Yes there is room for both. And more. There always has been right from the start.

Except for a character called Kane.  And an immaculate conception. And the Mother annex designed to look like a church vestibule with candles.

S.M

No Such Thing as 'immaculate Conception'.

Facehuggers are rape-machines, pure and simple...there's nothing immaculate there at all.

Roger G

i disagree...ALIEN is about the PHYSICAL...blood, flesh, and the reality of watching a crewmate get ripped open from the inside.

ALIEN...is about darkness, between the stars and in the human soul, as well as the aspects of Nature that Humans find scary. It's about coping with a galaxy that offers terrors and treasures that humans have a hard time coping with.

ALIEN is about...what is 'ALIEN'.

In space no one can help you.

About social issues I guess that it has always been reflected in alien-movies in one way or another so I don't see any reason why that can't be the case now especially with the corona-situation and that. I would rather say that it's the perfect time. You don't need to be in your face with it.

I think that you can have a balance of both, you just have to find it. Both these things seem to be a constant source for different thoughts so why not? Maybe there is even a third or fourth thing that you can inject into it? To not have a perfect answer to it seems to me to be a reason to do dig deeper into it about what can be done.

You will never satisfy everyone, there is always someone that will complain. I know that I have my complaints about everything that has come after Alien 3.

Not sure if it has been about religion in the first two movies although I guess that there are parts that could be interpreted in that way even though that wasn't the intention of the writers.

What's on the table? I guess this one:

;)

Leto:

“Alien and Aliens are undeniably the best films in the franchise. Gold standard. It is an indisputable truth.”

Not to me, I prefer Alien 3 over them, with Alien being a close second. Aliens is third on my list even though I think that it's a good movie. Maybe among fans in general Alien and Aliens are those that most people prefer and some might still be annoyed with how Alien 3 handled some things but it doesn't matter to me, 3 is still my favorite. Some people might prefer the prequels over the originals which is fine but it's not my way to look at it. In case someone prefer the prequels then let them do so.

“... why are you so interested in religious themes in Alien?”

Religion is a way it seems to try and understand our place in the universe. We see that in Alien 3 but I also think that if people get thrown into scary situations where they become afraid of death (think Alien), they they might turn to religion in a way to feel better. The religious angle wasn't obvious in Alien but it can make you think about those questions so to speak.

You don't need to be religious to find it interesting since so many have some sort of belief in God or whatever to call it. I don't think that the series started to go down-hill because of religious themes but rather from poor characters. As far as science and religion goes you can believe more or less in God or science, you can make a mix of them like saying that God created earth but that it also created an intellect for us to try to understand our existence. Maybe it depends on how much weight that you give to some super-existence and science but you can probably combine them. Not to say that it's my way of looking at it but I say that it's a possibility.

“It would be nice to see the factories and technologies of the Engineers.”

Absolutely, that would be very interesting to see in a movie. We saw Planet 4 and even though that was underwhelming to say the least we could see some of the things, like the hall of heads. I imagine that there are a lot of things that the Engineers have created. Those in Prometheus are more interesting than those in Covenant. When I'm still writing about it I guess that the Engineers are both scientifically advanced and technologically. Hopefully there will be more about those in Prometheus in a third prequel if there will be one compared to those on Planet 4. A third prequel seems unlikely but in case there will be one I hope to see the Prometheus-version. Maybe there are other Engineers that we haven't see this far? Thinking about it is interesting even though I'm not sure what they would be like.

Shout out to everyone.....anyone seen BD lately?

Sincerely hope everyone is doing the best they can in these most uncertain of times with this ???? war on humanity - the plague!!! I do not want to say the word prayer; but, I would like to extend the good intentions of health, strength, patients, peace where ever you can find it, dignity with this devil upon us all, better sleep, also better financial success, and much love....we could all use more love.

I am seven months into this as well as the rest of you...and it is with a heavy heart as well as an unperfect soul that my weaknesses find me each day....they penetrate slowly, wading into my consciousness silently to tell me, "why bother," "why does any of it matter," and the worst one of all echoing somewhere deep within - with a foul disdain inside myself is "there is just so much more darkness to come no matter what you do."

Some days are so dark for me on the inside...I look out  upon what should be bright sunny days. They are not! It is a horrible maddening black hissing sea of an endless dark tangle. A horrible vortex of dark shapes in the distance with sounds the tongues of serpents cursing the land. I dare not get close to the edge of it for fear I might fall in permanently or be seduced by the sheer weight of the true magnitude of the horrible despair of it all. 

I find no solace in any news of any kind, nor is there any levity in my dreams. The nights are long and the brightness of each day diminished.....and I wake up each new day to just another compounding nightmare which is this entire thing we are all in....but here at least, for a little bit I like to read your replies to my ramblings and find some solace in just some small recogonition....so it is with the most humble of affection that I come here looking for like minded travelers amongst the immensity of the evil of this thing. 

If anyone of you has a flashlight or can see any hope in any of this then please shine some light on it - it would be much appreciated....maybe I am just the fool and should seek false contentment as I tell myself untruths to make it easier to tell myself it is going to get better....right now though part of me just says it will never get better this is how it will be.....and this thing just keeps hunting us all waiting for each of us in the darkness just beyond.

And so down and down a very dark rabbit hole we all go. 

For me actually because of all the demonic things H.R. Giger depicted in his art....I feel it most intrinsically - almost instinctually every time I watch Alien.....for me the film is almost supernatural in a way....I know what the Alien is.....it is a horrible demon laying in wait...to tear at the flesh...to destroy man!

For me the movie always has an unholy and completely spiritual aspect....a type of demonic possession of something alive but not entirely....making it so much harder to kill. This is an inner working and introspection into my soul - the logic of my being - the clockwork of my  burdened mind.

I watched part of Alien just last week and had to turn it off....the real demon lurking outside all our doors was howling too loud.....so I just got on the computer instead.

I am surprised the parallels have not come up before...the quarantine has been broken in all our cities and been infected with this dark Spector - this killer....it keeps taking everything from all of us slowly and silently - day by day....for me there is an evilness to it all - no where to hide - no ship to even escape to....something you cannot quite see but you know it is there lurking in the darkness waiting for you to make your mistake with it.

I wish I had something more uplifting to say but I do not. This is definitely not our system....and home seems impossibly far away if we can ever get back there safely at all.

Hold my hand tightly AND DO NOT LET GO WHAT EVER YOU ALL DO! We should fight this demon together or go down trying; but, what ever we do we must not give into it for a single second nor ever let it win!

This thing is out there now waiting silently for us all!

Thoughts_Dreams

I am not going to get into an argument, I will only say 2 facts:

1) As Blackwinter-witch said - Faith and Religion are two seperate things.

2) You can't believe in science. Science reflects reality and exists regardless of your beliefs. If tomorrow you stop believing in science, science will not cease to exist. Cars won't stop, gravity will not disappear and the Sun will not go out.