FOX missing the opportunity

StarTrek's Roddenbury wrote humanism-inspired scripts that dealth with
topical themes like racism, war mongering and so forth. The underlying
mythology of the series 'to boldly go where no one has gone before', to
study, etcetera was a recipie for a huge franchise of books, series,
films that are still with us.

Alien was a reworked version of 'Dark Star', a master's thesis by a
student at UCLA. The first film was brilliant and to quote from the
Quadrilolgy interviews "set the standard higher" for Sci-Fic films. The
followup 2nd, 3rd, and 4th films have failed to develop and build on the
socio-political themes in the first. Specifically, big corporations will
mislead others, and put people in grave danger simply to make a buck.
They will sacrifice people's lives to get possession of a possible
military weapon. This is a topical theme, something that could be built
upon.

Perhaps an intergalactic governing council, or even just an Earth based
council could be lobbied by Ripley and her clan, Newt, and the team
leader who was killed off in Aliens. They could start a movement to try
and make corporations more responsible, and operate under more stringent
rules. There could be Earth scenes of a strong female character with
child not unlike that in Terminator 2.

I don't know exactly how to build on this theme, I'm not a screen
writer. It just occurs to me that too much effort in the followup films
has been spent on Alien effects, with little development of the
socio-political themes that could give the series more intellectual
interest, legs, and a larger following (and franchise).
Matthew

On Sun, 04 Jan 2004 14:42:12 -0500, Matthew wrote:

> Alien was a reworked version of 'Dark Star'

Other than being set on a spaceship with an alien on board, they are
*completely* different. I never understood how Alien was meant to be
anything other than vague 'inspiration' from Dark Star.

> The followup 2nd, 3rd, and 4th films have failed to develop and build on
> the socio-political themes in the first.

....but then you say...

> Specifically, big corporations will mislead others, and put people in
> grave danger simply to make a buck. They will sacrifice people's lives
> to get possession of a possible military weapon.

....which contradicts that, because...

> This is a topical theme, something that could be built upon.

....this *is* the socio-political theme that the follow-ups built upon!

> Perhaps an intergalactic governing council, or even just an Earth based
> council could be lobbied by Ripley and her clan, Newt, and the team
> leader who was killed off in Aliens.

That would be stretching it, considering that Newt and Apone(?) were
killed off.

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