Over the years, the Alien franchise has made some controversial and messy choices, but one massive theory presents the opportunity for these mistakes to be glossed over completely. Imagine if all the Alien movies after 1986’s successful Aliens had, in fact, been a dream – the figment of the imaginations of the four surviving members of James Cameron’s sequel to the original Alien movie. The theory suggests that Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant were the dreams of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn), Bishop (Lance Henriksen), and Newt (Carrie Henn).
After escaping from the Xenomorph Queen at the end of Aliens, Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop enter hyper-sleep for their return trip to Earth. The opening moments of 1992’s Alien 3 swiftly killed off Hicks and Newt, but a theory posed on Reddit suggests this never actually took place. In the theory, Alien 3 is Ripley’s dream while in hyper-sleep, or rather nightmare, as she loses her family in the most brutal fashion, leaving her alone while her worst nightmare of being impregnated by a Xenomorph and meeting the creator of the Bishop android, who she seldom trusted, comes true.
Released in 1997, Alien: Resurrection focuses on a group of mercenaries who are working alongside military scientists to breed new Xenomorphs and clone Ripley. This military-centric storyline could have easily been the dream of Hicks during his hyper-sleep after Aliens. Hicks was the only surviving Colonial Marine who formed a close bond with Ripley, so it would make sense that he would imagine her being revived in his dream. For the android Bishop’s dream, however, there would be far less focus on military and armies, but more on technology and other androids, including David (Michael Fassbender) from 2012’s Prometheus.
David took center-stage in Prometheus as an early android who forms an obsession with finding the Engineers and studying their weapons. In his dreams, it makes sense that Bishop would try to find answers to the questions of who created us and where did the Xenomorphs come from. Both Bishop and David end up completely dismembered, too. The only other survivor in Aliens was the young Newt, the sole survivor of the human colony on LV-426, so it makes sense that her dream would center on a colony ship being attacked by Xenomorphs, just as she and her family were.
At the end of both Aliens and Alien: Covenant, the successful fights against the Xenomorphs ultimately make no difference. In Aliens, the creatures wait while the survivors go into hyper-sleep, while it’s David who stashes embryos among the colonists in Covenant, meaning the creatures will get everyone eventually. Newt is clearly intelligent enough to know this. This theory, despite its flaws, helps to explain some of the more controversial and polarizing events in Aliens’ sequels, while keeping the more successful story of Alien: Romulus, which takes us back to the time period of Alien and Aliens, separate.
What do you make of the idea that every Alien movie after Aliens could be the survivors’ dreams? Let us know in the comments!
The post You’ll Never Watch These Alien Movies The Same Way After Reading This Shocking Theory appeared first on ComicBook.com.
