It’s a good time for aliens – of the close encounters kind.
One of the greatest science fiction films of all time, and the subject of much academic debate, Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), is currently enjoying a second life on streaming television.
Alien and other filmic monsters of our childhood are making a come-back – rediscovered, rebooted and reimagined across multiple inter-textual and immersive internet enabled platforms.
The Alien prequel Prometheus (2012), also directed by Ridley Scott, is at the time of writing number one on the Australian Netflix charts.
Over on Disney, the number one film Predator: Badlands (2025) stars the sinister Weyland-Yutani Corporation and thus is also part of the expanding Alien Universe.
A television series created by Noah Hawley currently streaming on Disney, Alien: Earth (2025), is also set before the events of the original Alien (1979).
My pick of the recent releases in the Alien collection, however, is Alien: Romulus (2024), directed by Fede Álvarez.
Romulus is the seventh instalment in the Alien film series and, like James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), one of those rare sequels almost as good as the original.
The monstrous creature at the dark heart of the Alien universe, the Xenomorph, designed by artist H.R. Giger, continues to haunt out collective imagination 47 years later.
The question remains, why?
One simple reason is nostalgia – and not in the negative sense of longing for a lost past. But rather in the creative and cathartic way we return to the classic media texts that made us (individually and collectively) when we need to work through problems in the present.
There is a comfort in returning to the films which were so influential and ubiquitous during our most formative years.
In the relatively safe spaces of horror and science fiction, we can also work through, at a distance, cultural taboos and common anxieties.
Emotions and experiences which may be too confronting to be tackled elsewhere can be explored and understood in the realm of popular culture, at the level of myth, metaphor and symbolism.
It’s perhaps not surprising then that one of the best documentaries you will find on streaming television at the moment is Memory: The Origins of Alien (directed and written by Alexandre O. Philippe) and available on Stan and DocPlay.
The title ‘Memory’ refers to the original name of the Alien (1979) script, but on another level it also activates our own memories of growing up with the Alien franchise.
We learn how these mediated memories are intertextual – for us, and for the creators of the Alien film.
The documentary accordingly traces a treasure trove of earlier films, comic books and art works which inspired the late Alien script writer Dan O’Bannon.
There are other important meanings and memories lurking deep in the gendered and psychoanalytic worlds of the Alien films which help explain their enduring fascination for fans and academics alike.
In the early 1990s, the feminist film scholar Barabara Creed famously identified the Alien as a manifestation of the “monstruous-feminine”.
Creed (1993) attributed the “grotesque bodily invasions” featured in Alien (and other science fiction texts) to be related to a primal (and patriarchal) fear of female genitalia and the “all-devouring womb of the archaic mother.”
Creed was one of a number of feminist scholars of the time who found Freudian psychology useful for explaining the true powers of horror films to both frighten and fascinate us.
This feminist psychoanalytical approach to popular culture found Alien to be a rich resource for exploring the unconscious realm of repression and abjection.
Watching a truly immersive science fiction horror like Alien enables us to work through repressed fears and collective nightmares.
Who can forget the iconic scene, now part of the franchise formula, wherein the monstruous Other forcibly enters the mouth of its human host to later burst through the chest.
More than mere screen memories, these images force us to face what is deeply disgusting and terrifying and thus confront the violability of our fragile human bodies.
It may also speak to the experience of being exposed and at war with our own bodies or perhaps feeling alien-nated in other ways.
Other feminists in the 1990s saw Ripley as part of a new wave of strong action women in popular culture.
It is easy to forget now that at the time a female lead character as physically and mentally resilient as Ripley seemed revolutionary.
Today, academics have complained that the Alien franchise is losing its feminist credentials and becoming less political and progressive with each instalment.
I would suggest such criticism of Alien: Romulus (2024) is unfair and misses the point and the politics of the film.
While leading action woman Rain Carradine is younger and more vulnerable than the iconic Ripley (famously played by Sigourney Weaver), her concerns are different as a representative member of Generation Z.
Indeed, more than any other Alien, Romulus provides an insightful indictment of class and age-based discrimination as Rain and her young colleagues are essentially held captive by the exploitative ‘Weyland-Yutani’ military-industrial nightmare.
This is one of the clear moral-political messages of Romulus, that the real parasitic monster is not necessarily the Xenomorph but the futuristic Weyland-Yutani Corporation which sucks the life out of its workers before discarding them (all while pretending to care about their wellbeing and safety).
Indeed, the Weyland-Yutani slogan ‘Building Better Worlds’ appears as toxic corporate rhetoric reminiscent of any modern monolithic conglomerate.
While we learned in Alien that this abhorrent corporation planned to preserve the Alien for its weapons division at the expense of the human crew, we see more in Romulus how Weyland-Yutani is built on intergalactic mining and colonisation of other worlds.
Rain and her young friends run into the dreaded aliens because they are desperately trying to escape this bleak, hopeless life and landscape that the futuristic, amoral, and extractive Corporation has made for them.
Alien has also moved with the times in regards to the representation of artificial humans.
Ash, the android science officer in the original Alien is revealed to be a sinister and ruthless traitor.
Now that Artificial Intelligence has become part of everyday life, the synthetic humans of Romulus, Predator: Badlands and Alien Earth are mostly presented as younger, more relatable and sympathetic characters.
Indeed, the moral hero of Romulus is not so much Rain, but her adopted android brother Andy, as he turns out to be more brave, empathetic and humane than most humans.
Another warning Alien sends us from the past-future realm is about the price of imperialism – it is the human crew who pay a terrible price for Weyland-Yutani’s exploration and colonisation of new worlds.
Predator: Badlands (2025) features no Xenomorphs, yet it does track the morally bankrupt Weyland-Yutani corporation’s pursuit, capture, and exploitation of indigenous creatures of other planets.
Such pursuit of profit, power and immortality at the cost of human (and non-human) lives presents the more realistic and relevant threat of our times, especially where the most horrific treatment of Others is conducted in the name of science and rationality.
Hence, the violent lessons of Alien are as important and relevant as ever in a postfeminist, posthuman universe.
The challenge of the Alien universe is to face what is most abject – what is truly terrifying and disgusting – and to survive it with your humanity (and body) intact!
Dr Susan Hopkins Senior Lecturer in Education (Curriculum and Pedagogy) at UniSC.
Dr Hopkins is also currently an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow within the Centre for Heritage and Culture, UniSQ with research interests in gender and media studies.
Media enquiries: Please contact the Media Team media@usc.edu.au