James Cameron, Who Is Trying to Make Another Terminator, Isn’t Sure We Need Alien: Covenant

Jill Pantozzi | January 27th, 2017

Look. I’m not head over heels for what’s going on with the Alien franchise right now but James Cameron should not be throwing stones in that glass house of his.

I mentioned briefly in Nerdy News on Monday that the director was starting work on rebooting the Terminator franchise. Cameron directed and wrote the first two films and since then we’ve gotten Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genisys, and the excellent Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles television series. Back in 2013 there was news of another TV show in the works from Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz that would have tied into Genisys. There’s been no movement on that and it’s probably because the film didn’t go over well.

Do I blame Cameron for trying to get the rights back and try for another great Terminator project? No. But I do find it odd he’d go on record saying things about the Alien franchise that many could say about Terminator.

Vulture asked the director for his thoughts on Ridley Scott’s upcoming Alien: Covenant and he went ahead and lumped Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, and Prometheus in with it:

The franchise has kind of wandered all over the map. Ridley [Scott] did the first film, and he inspired an entire generation of filmmakers and science-fiction fans with that one movie and there have been so many films that stylistically have derived from it, including my own Aliens, which was the legitimate sequel and, I think, the proper heir to his film. I sort of did it as a fanboy. I wanted to honor his film, but also say what I needed to say. After that, I don’t take any responsibility.

I don’t think it’s worked out terribly well. I think we’ve moved on beyond it. It’s like, okay, we’ve got it, we’ve got the whole Freudian biomechanoid meme. I’ve seen it in 100 horror films since. I think both of those films stand at a certain point in time, as a reference point. But is there any validity to doing another one now? I don’t know. Maybe. Let’s see, jury’s out. Let’s see what Ridley comes up with. Let me just add to that — and don’t cut this part off, please — I will stand in line for any Ridley Scott movie, even a not-so-great one, because he is such an artist, he’s such a filmmaker. I always learn from him. And what he does with going back to his own franchise would be fascinating.

Opinions on all of these films aside, “any validity to doing another one” is the kind of sentiment we see around a lot of nostalgia projects. “Do we really need this?” is usually the more frequent phrase to which of course I reply, “Well, we don’t really need any movie.” They’re made because people want to make them, people think they can make money, and sometimes a combination of both.

Speaking of which, besides Scott’s new film, Neill Blomkamp was working on his own Alien project I was actually pretty excited about. Scott himself seemed to throw it off track because he wanted to dive back into that world with specific things he wanted to accomplish first but it looks now like it may be done for. A fan asked Blomkamp for an update on Twitter and he said the chances of it happening were “slim.”

@jamesportella slim

— Иeill Blomkamp (@NeillBlomkamp) January 21, 2017

Cameron, who had apparently read Blomkamp’s script, told io9 last year “I think it works gangbusters. He shared it with me, and I think it’s a very strong script and he could go make it tomorrow. I don’t know anything about the production, and I don’t know what Ridley [Scott]’s doing. But hopefully there’ll be room for both of them. Like parallel universes.”

We shall see what the giants decide next.