Look, we’re all intrigued with whatever Neill Blomkamp’s doing with his "Alien" redo/reboot/reimagining/recalibration, whatever it actually is, but the plot may have thickened a little. To recap briefly, Blomkamp recently confirmed that Sigourney Weaver would be in his “Alien” movie, that it would give the Ripley character a “proper” concluding story, and that the film would be “genetic sibling” of only the first two ‘Alien’ movies.
Many either speculated or took that as confirmation that Blomkamp would be disregarding the narrative plot lines of “Alien 3” and “Alien Resurrection.” After all, his own concept art seemed to suggest the same — it featured a younger Ripley and Corporal Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn) in what looked like a new or alternate storyline.
But as Blomkamp does more “Chappie” press and everyone clamors to know about “Alien,” well, more fragments of information are getting out there. “I want to make a film that’s connected to ‘Alien’ and ‘Aliens,’ that’s my goal,” he said to Allocine in France. “I’m not trying to undo ‘Alien 3’ and ‘Alien Resurrection,’ I just want it to be connected to ‘Alien 1’ and ‘2.’”
So he’s not undoing or disregarding films 3 and 4? Well, technically, he’d kind of have to if he is indeed including Biehn’s character. In the end of James Cameron’s “Aliens” Ripley, Newt, and Hicks go into a hypersleep as they return to Earth. But as the events of David Fincher’s “Alien 3” illustrate, Ripley’s ship crash lands on another planet and she is the only survivor. To get nerdy about things, if Blomkamp’s film is actively connected to the events of “Alien” and “Aliens,” it must exist in some kind of parallel storytelling universe where Ripley and Hicks have further adventures beyond the James Cameron film. Or something like that anyhow.
Maybe Blomkamp’s being polite and doesn’t want to dump on Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s subsequent and poorly received sequels. This was our reading of the concept art in the first place given that it features a young Weaver and that Biehn is still alive; some kind of new universe that uses the events of films one and two to pivot off in a similar direction. That’s likely what he’s saying anyhow, but who knows. Right now Blomkamp’s got “Chappie” to focus on and he’s keeping it vague. We shall see…
