It's late at night and I'm not tired and want to wall about something. I just wrapped up yet another mission in Dark Descent (Which even disregarding my bias as Literally The World's Biggest Aliens Fan, is a damn solid game, go check it out if it even remotely interests you) and I'm kinda just having a moment of thinking about how this series, which I got into way before I probably should, probably saved me a lot of grief when it came to developing a healthy attitude to fandom in my formative years, and honestly has some good lessons for dealing with fandom now.
So, for context. I played AvP Extinction when I was 10. I had a great-uncle who noticed the critters I was doodling in my spare time (I loved drawing the titular ayliums, still do tbh) and he was like, 'oh, like from that movie'. World expanded, mind blown, I first watched Alien proper like a year later, gave me about half a decade of nightmares, watched basically every other movie in the franchise that came out and existed (I think Covenant is the best film in the series after Alien and Aliens, fight me), played the dickens out of every game that I could get my hands on, read every comic I could find or afford, I still have a titanic soft spot for Some Guy's Massive AvP Fuzion Homebrew, which I read an inordinate amount of (Which can still be viewed on the Wayback Machine, it's Serenadawn.com, it's a whacky ass passion project to see), developed the biggest industrial grudge of my life when Colonial Marines turned out to be the biggest disaster of my life, and more or less agree that it is a small miracle that any product in that series is even above average these days, let alone good, which has made the exceptions all the sweeter.
Anyway, having consumed more than my fair share of this stuff, I think what's important to recognize about it, like with any multimedia franchise, is that most of it is bad. Aliens just had the staggeringly poor luck of studio influence to have that happen almost immediately after producing two of the best scifi movies ever made. And even after that, it had a massive expanded universe that sprang up, of which only a handful of pieces even pretended to be in line with some kind of canon or the filmic universes. Fox was and remained a massive massive IP Slut, so they were happy to give basically anyone with an interest in using the critter, or the setting, license to go nuts.
So yea, a lot of it is trash, or at least, of minimal redeeming merit, but what I appreciate is that the setting does not demand you take it that seriously. It does not suffer from Star Wars or Star Trek's tendency to feel this need to canonize. And I think a great deal, especially in light of the Trek Reboots, and Disney's acquisition of Star Wars, about how Alien... basically never went through this process of people bemoaning the loss of a canon that no longer exists? People hate plot points, and I'm right there with them sometime. Every movie after Aliens is controversial or disliked in some way, and I agree with most of the logic, even if not the conclusions. But the meta-commentary of 'such and such thing I liked isn't real anymore' just doesn't feel anywhere near as intense as elsewhere. And with Ridley returning to helm Prometheus and write his prequels and thus having sparked this kinda new era of decent-to-good Alien media... I don't think the lack of an effective and cohesive canon had hurt it? Like at all. This is a good philosophy overall for franchise media.
I think the obsession with canon, especially amongst people who love a thing, is actually a trap that's part of that broader... issue, with media literacy and fandom culture that exists these days. Like, it's fiction, none of it is 'real', and it should be up to the viewer to ascribe what parts they feel are real and valid for them, what to take away and and enjoy and what to ignore. It's part and parcel of interacting with media in a healthy way! And there's a lot that's sad about what has happened to Star Wars in particular is how poisoned by its own need to be encyclopedic and correct has tainted its entire fandom and people's perceptions thereof.
This is an Aliens post though, not a Star Wars one, but the point is: even within its own filmic lineage, Alien is pretty unconcerned with canonicity. It has multiple radically different origins for 'how we got here' in film alone, and god help you if you try to timeline anything else. And I think that's phenomenal! It means that there's no burden of proof really needed for your headcanons. You can work out how all the works you like fit together without needing to fight against some kind of establishment. And with this being something I basically figured out before I was in high school, it amazes me to this day how this is not how most franchise media is consumed.
What actually prompted this rant is that I think the current crop of people who are making Alien media, really get that in a way you don't really see with its counterparts. I think in most circumstances what we see is probably fanservice, but... I mean, I don't understand why people go blue in the face about that either. Anyway, The Alien Tabletop and Dark Descent in particular, are absolutely loaded with things that were from the comics, just trimmed and fit to their new settings and I clearly have too many words about how seen this makes me feel. Does including the weird bodybursting virus alien from an extremely obscure and in retrospect staggeringly fetishistic comic really count as fanservice given its obscurity? Or that Aliens are psychic, a concept explored in a whole two issues? Or that they have drugged up prisoners in exosuits who go Doom Marine entire hives, which is only in one? Or god help me Xeno-Zip, which I don't have the time to explain but is one of The Most 90's things the comics ever did. While at the same time they're including things from Prometheus and Covenant, which have arisen in a totally different lineage and era, and... there's really not much clash at all, because they're all presented equally earnestly, there's no insecurity about them. They're just things that are fun ideas to use again.
What is so great about this universe, which is a direct result of the fact that the barrier for entry it has was so low, is that it can be remixed and put together with almost anything and create something interesting. Not necessarily good, of course, but even bad ideas can have sparks that catalyze something else. And just... I wish more franchise media was like that. I wish we could focus more on the things we love, or that are interesting, rather than whining things that 'contradict canon', or 'is a retcon', or just, this whole general space of negativity that seems to dominate scifi franchise fandom discourse at large.
Use these whacky worlds and do something fun with them. Love the things that you thought were cool even if some authority never gave it a golden stamp. Be willing to admit that you can like things that might not be good, and vice versa. Being a fandom cop is still being a cop, after all.
Anyway if you're here at the bottom, thanks for reading, I will not be taking questions on my ranking order of the films.
