Remaking Alien? Oh fuck off.

Rumour has it that they’re going to ‘reboot’ Alien. I don’t mind them remaking any film that maybe contained germ of a good idea without perhaps realising it’s potential. Or something where iconic characters can be revisited without pissing on the chips of the source material: Batman, Star Trek and James Bond have all been re-imagined (ugh!) in this way with varying degrees of success of late.

But Alien? ALIEN?

Come on – that film is fucking flawless and just *does not* need remaking. As pointed out on CHUD, the Alien films can be set just about anywhere in the galaxy and even Ripley has proved to be an expendable character – meaning the protaganists and contexts available to the franchise are practically infinite. The joy of the original Alien is that it is not a film about an Alien. It’s a film about half a dozen unarmed space miners who happen to be being hunted by an alien.

Like Jaws, so much of the film’s atmosphere rests on the barely-there nature of the threat (we don’t even see the whole fucking thing until Ripley blasts it out the door) and the interplay of the characters. The simmering divide over union rules between Yaphet Kotto and Tom Skerrit, the contrasting versions of femininity presented  in the forms of Ripley and Lambert, the creepy logic of Ash all create a living, breathing, dysfunctional community that even under mortal threat still can’t protect itself from the hell unleashed on LV426.

You just know that if they do revisit the opening chapter of the franchise that the crew will be younger, better-looking, less blue-collar and about as interesting as processed cheese. The alien’s appearance won’t be shrouded by the ship’s architecture and strobing lights and steam, but will be leaping everywhere in its patently CGI form.

I so fucking hope that they don’t do this. But if they do, I hope everyone involved winds up on the wrong end of a Xenomorphs’ prehensile mouth parts.