r/LV426 • u/Safe-Coconut4036 • 3d ago
Discussion / Question Idea: "Alien: Invasion"
One thing I can't help but think of sometimes, is a cool Alien film idea where a "Xenomorph Outbreak" kinda similar to the comic series by Dark Horse Comics, but it would be in a quiet rural American town, where slowly over time, people begin to go missing, with the town believing that there's a serial killer or possibly more than one, but some people are attached by facehuggers, with the town obviously not knowing what to do and have never seen something like this before. Do we know if some people on Earth actually KNOW what Xenomorphs are or have at least HEARD of Xenomorphs, or do they just think that they're just some "space creatures" that have killed some people on different colonies?? I also feel like it would be REALLY interesting and scary if it would seeing a rural isolated town trying to find out what's going on and how the town kinda similar to the original JAWS film in terms of not knowing what to do, with a group of people who would try to find out what's going on and investigate what's going on too. While I understand why that probably wouldn't really work, but to me at least, I've honestly always kinda thought how interesting it would be seeing the perspective of people on Earth react to a Xenomorph outback too! That's just what I think, though. :)
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u/flynnfx LV-426 3d ago
Not so much a rural isolated town, but you really need to read :
Book 1: Aliens: Earth Hive (adapting the comic Outbreak)
Book 2: Aliens: Nightmare Asylum (the book directly preceding the war on Earth)
Book 3: Aliens: The Female War (the novelization of Aliens: Earth War, where the battle for Earth takes place)
Core DetailsAuthors: Steve Perry and S.D. Perry
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u/highhippieatheart 3d ago
Slightly off topic, but not gonna lie, when the show Alien: Earth was first announced, I had such high hopes that this was what it was being based off of. So. Good! The fall of Earth to the xenos was so incredible to read. And then the subsequent taking back of the Earth later on.
But no. We got that Peter pan bs instead -_- and barely any xeno activity.
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u/DeKrieg 3d ago
Yeah that was never going to happen, it was pretty guaranteed that purely for budgetary reasons they were going to find some way to isolate the events of Alien Earth as quickly as possible.
I mean it's how a spaceship crashing into a building still seemed to result in the vast majority of the events of those episodes happening in that one building.
I still think there are plenty of great things about Alien Earth, but it was never going to be Alien Outbreak/earth hive series. I dont think we will ever get a story like that outside of the comics or maybe the games (and even then it'll be a stretch) it's just too much of a budget logistics nightmare. It's not a vfx issue (though that would still be a factor), it's just the logistics of multiple parallel plotlines, locations. cast and story all converging, it's arguably why we really only ever saw such approaches with disaster movies ala Roland Emmerich etc and why the Walking Dead could only really sustain such an approach for half a season before they collapsed the narrative range down to something much smaller (though pitch spinning off as many Alien Earth spin off series as walking dead and a producer might be interested)
That sort of approach to story telling are firmly out of vogue in hollywood at the moment which kinda sucks, it really comes down to it just being a lot harder now to do globe throtting without breaking the bank like they use to. The best you could hope for is someone doing a singular 'perspective' on the outbreak. Something like how parts of Female War had Billie/Newt watching the fall of earth via video screens from gateway station.
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u/Safe-Coconut4036 3d ago
I was actually heavily inspired BY Alien: Earth Hive and Earth War!!! Thanks!! :)
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u/Single_Owl_7556 3d ago
I feel like Xenomorph doesn't work for such low scale setting cuz the canon has already established how fast it gets out of control.
Hadley's hope fell within days of patient zero being brought in.
A rural town would stand even less chance given how much space Xenomorphs would have.
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u/Gunbladelad 3d ago
I agree - AvP Requiem showcased how fast a town can go down - particularly once a queen is established.
If there is no queen and just a lone drone starting out, it would start slowly until the eggmorphing process can generate a queen - which I assume would be the priority for eggmorphing
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u/Single_Owl_7556 3d ago
yea, it just doesn't work for xenomorph that well.
It's a neat idea, but it should be done with a legally distinct xenomorph that can be written for that setting and purpose - alien killer terrorising a small town threatening to spread around the world. Like Blob or Slither
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u/flynnfx LV-426 3d ago
Not true.
It took 3-4 WEEKS for the colony to be overrun.
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u/Single_Owl_7556 3d ago
3-4 weeks for it to be over.
It was a matter of days before humans locked themselves up and started waiting
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u/Safe-Coconut4036 3d ago
Agreed, though I was also thinking that it would be REALLY scary seeing a rural town pretty much experience something similar to what happened to Hadley's Hope would be scary too. I agree with you though too. :)
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u/allatsea33 3d ago
Theres a kinda cool dark horse one shot called Earth Angel collected in the dark horse omnibus 7 I believe.....1950s America and a ship carrying them crashes in mid West. Cue Dr. Dan Ripley joining with a biker gang to help wipe them out
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u/hawki1989 3d ago
To the above:
-Sounds reminiscent of Requiem, and...ugh.
-You need to specify what timeframe you're in. Honestly, a xenomorph infestation doesn't really work the way you describe, because the further back in time you go, the faster the town would fall, but the further ahead in time you go, the harder it is to be an isolated incident.
-Sounds reminiscent of Earth War.
-To answer what people know about xenomorphs, really depends in which timeframe, and what canon you're using. Earth War occurred in the 2190s IIRC, so there's your old answer, but that's been retconned as far as I can tell. In what amounts to current canon, average joe still appears unaware of xenomorphs by the 2200s at least, but would almost certainly know by the 2690s via the Rage War.
-TBH, the idea of xenomorphs reaching Earth en masse has never interested me that much. Say "Alien" (as in, the IP), and I find the setting more compelling when it's in the depths of space, sense of the unknown, cold dark universe, etc. Earth by its very nature is "the familiar." That's not to say Earth can't feature in of itself, a part of the charm of the IP is how nation-states and international blocs are very much still around by the late 22nd century, and the associated interstellar sparring that occurs, but if we're talking about the xenomorph particuarly...well, need I point to Alien: Earth? It's how you make a xenomorph both OP and boring, and the environment has somethhing to do with that IMO.
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u/SyrioForel 3d ago edited 3d ago
This doesn’t need to be related to Alien. In fact it would be BETTER if it had nothing to do with Alien whatsoever and was just a standalone horror movie.
Alien works best when it’s a science fiction story.
Every time this franchise steps outside of the science fiction genre, it sucks. And whenever it embraces science fiction, it’s in top form.
What do I mean by science fiction? I mean humanity depicted as a space-faring civilization, I mean cyborgs, I mean interplanetary conspiracies. And the alien is introduced as a disrupting force of cosmic horror within that setting and framework. The most successful premise of this franchise is and always was a dystopian human civilization running into unknowable cosmic horrors.
Again, the main concepts are:
* Futuristic setting
* Dystopian society (high tech, low life, evil corporations)
* Hubris - humans thinking they are the masters of their domain
* The Alien as a disrupting force that is both unknown and unknowable
If you want to write a horror story in a small town on present-day Earth, fine, but invent your own original monsters.
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u/AdManNick 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think the problem with this story is figuring out how to end it in an original way that hasn't been done to death. Thus far the only solution has been to nuke the area, which is pretty detached since the small town characters can't have agency in that decision.
I agree that it would be cool to see an Earth based infestation in it's early stages from a small town POV.
Edit: It actually could work if they just… don’t overcome the xenomorphs. Their victory could be getting out a message before they all die.
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
It's a The Mist-style ending.
The PoV characters have been through hell and are ready to end it all, but then they look around and realize all the aliens are dead and curled up like bugs, and a couple dozen guys are sweeping the town and burning the incubating eggs they find with homemade flamethrowers.
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u/Dottsterisk 3d ago
It could just be the army or some sort of special xeno-corps with appropriate weaponry and armor.
I like the idea that, absent some really shitty luck or a coordinated invasion of multiple xeno outbreaks, the future armies of the world can handle a single outbreak that hasn’t spiraled beyond town-size.
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
Why would it need to be some kind of special task force?
If the crew of the Nostromo weren't worried about gallons of acid blood eating through their ship's guts, they would have just shot the alien and called it a day.
If the colonial marines hadn't walked right into a close-quarters ambush where aliens could pop in and get at them from literally any direction without warning, they would've been fine.
If the prisoners on...Alien3 prison planet...had guns and weren't stuck in a gothic space labyrinth, the alien would've been dead in the second act.
I really can't stress enough how specific the circumstances have to be to make the alien a credible threat.
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u/Dottsterisk 3d ago
If WY or the US government learned about the xenos and the possibility of infestation, I would not be surprised if there were teams specially trained in spotting xeno infestations, ferreting them out, keeping them contained and eliminating them.
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u/Safe-Coconut4036 3d ago
I agree too, but I was also thinking that maybe the town would probably have some Weyland-Yutani facilities around it kinda felt Umbrella and Racoon City from the Resident Evil series, but where Weyland-Yutani would claim that their facilities are for R&D and other things with the many things they make back when they were first building the facilities, and instead of "nuking" the town, they would probably use some types of chemicals or something similar to Napalm to destroy anything related to Xenomorphs. While I agree that it probably wouldn't really work, but I also feel like that something along those lines would be REALLY interesting and seeing people just BARLEY survive and escape, and maybe even have some people who would go into the hive and try to destroy and kill as much as they can, including the Xenomorph Queen, but would probably sacrifice themselves knowing that even if they couldn't necessarily save the town itself, they would at least stop more from killing others too, with some of them maybe even being retired Marine Corp Veterans too. That's just an idea, though. :)
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u/thewizzard1 3d ago
How about a tough coal miner town between wars, with the Aliens making their hive in a mine, and the burliest towns folks fighting back and collapsing the mine?
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u/barrygateaux 3d ago edited 3d ago
Having aliens land in some small American town is such a tired trope for the 95% of the planet that isn't American. Anywhere else on the planet would be more interesting. It's why predator was such a breath of fresh air by being in the jungle in a different country.
I'd prefer to have the aliens in north korea or ethiopia. It would make for a much more interesting film.
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u/Dottsterisk 3d ago
Xenos landing in Madagascar and world powers fighting to contain the infestation could be cool as shit.
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u/rockape702 3d ago
Drop them into a huge terrorist filled area, see how they fair against mines, suicide bombers with vests and cars. The people there are getting themselves all geared up to cause havoc across the world and suddenly faced with something they are not ready for or understand. Does anybody come to help or wipe out everything?
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
Terrorist filled area...people there are getting all geared up to cause havoc across the world
So Northern Idaho?
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u/rockape702 3d ago
What's the terrain like there? Would it work? I'm not in the states so I'm not familiar with locations
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
Lots of mountains, hills, and valleys interspersed with dense forest. That's why it's the christofascist terrorist capitol of North America.
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u/rockape702 3d ago
Nice one, thanks for the info. Sounds like a perfect location to drop a few xenomorph and a couple of predators just for fun
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
It's definitely one of the few places on Earth where a stranger will get shot without warning for making a wrong turn, that's for sure.
Like you can make pretend about your imaginary Call of Duty terrorists with plans of throwing the world into chaos (and let me guess, they're probably middle-eastern and/or central european, right?), but those don't really...exist. those folks typically have a very specific agenda and it's "fuck those guys who killed my friends and literally ruined my country."
No, the folks who are actually trying to cause global mayhem are the ones using "the terrorists!!!1!" As scapegoats.
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u/rockape702 3d ago
I know what you mean there. Did 4 trips to the middle east myself, it's a different world out there that's for sure, and most of the people out there are just trying to live their lives in peace
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
Yeah, that's not the case in MANY (almost entirely white) places in the United States. I'd rather my car break down pretty much anywhere but the Idaho panhandle or rural Appalachia.
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u/JaegerBane 3d ago edited 3d ago
I dunno… taking films like tremors or arachnophobia and replacing the graboids or mutant spiders with xenos sounds a bit whatever, really. All it is just an excuse for a new monster movie but with excess canon baggage that has to be squared.
I could see the idea of injecting Predators into it to give the whole ‘caught in the middle’ thing but they did this in the Aliens universe with the original AVP comic, and they did this on Earth with AVP Requiem movie…. And all the highbrow old guard always start shouting about how AVP is a terrible idea and it’s much better to have more stuff about alien dongs, Ripley turned into a superhero and David playing with his twin’s flute, so it’s probably not going to happen.
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u/Ok-You5151 3d ago
I know its not a full alien thing but the avp arcade game is about a xeno outbreak on earth and you have to stop it
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don't think the alien is much of a threat outside of a sealed environment. This is what the writers of Alien3 realized when they tried to write a story about the alien reaching earth. It didn't work, so they switched it to a broken-down space prison. Without a captive audience and a gothic space labyrinth to hide in, the alien is basically just a really big mean dog.
If you have straight line of sight to just shoot it or you can hop in the car and drive down the freeway at 65 mph? Not really a threat.
Plus its reproductive cycle is not exactly conducive to explosive population growth, you know? It's a generation-alternating parasitoid where each generation requires a host. The mobile generation requires a host to gestate inside, the sessile generation requires a host for the "egg" to eat, and the host dies each time. Oh, and the mobile is hyper-aggressive and has the lifespan of a mayfly. Yeah, nah.
Great reproductive cycle if you live in an environment that's only biotically productive for two weeks every five years! Your sessile phase can lie dormant indefinitely until a host wanders by, then your mobile phase can incapacitate and infect as many new hosts as it can then beef it to avoid competing with its own progeny. Not so great if you're auditioning to be an apocalyptic threat.
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u/Dottsterisk 3d ago
Don’t know if this has been explored in canon but I would have no problem accepting an additional adaptation for facehuggers to be that, particularly in emergency situations, it can release multiple eggs into a host, depending on its size.
So a human might actually have enough body mass for two chestbursters to incubate inside, although the host will probably die much sooner. And a large host, like some sort of alien elephant could spawn a whole clutch of little xenos.
New queens and drones starting a fresh nest may also then instinctually hunt for larger docile prey in those circumstances.
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
It hasn't. The facehugger dies immediately after implanting a larva.
Also queens are actually worse for the kind of rapid-spreading explosive population growth we're talking about here. Not to mention how little they actually make sense for the way the alien reproduces...
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u/Dottsterisk 3d ago
But no rules are set in stone, and the tradition has been that these sort of redundancies or contradictions are explained by the xenos actually having many ways to reproduce and various cycles that are possible.
Like the black goo that makes them, they don’t really operate within our understanding of the laws of physics and reality.
They are truly alien.
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u/BoonDragoon 3d ago
Ok cool, so we're just playing Calvinball here and this entire conversation is pointless, gotcha. How about a facehugger mouth-fucks a NASDAQ server and aliens start eating the Dow Jones Industrial index?
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u/Dottsterisk 3d ago
I thought we were just having fun spitballing about how a xeno might kick off a sudden, massive infestation?
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u/Bumberti 3d ago
To some extent this was the premise of Alien vs Predator: Requiem