Dear Hollywood, The New Alien Movie Makes No Goddamn Sense

If you count the two Alien vs. Predator films, there are currently more Alien movies than Star Warses. Having grown up watching both series, never would I have guessed that the champion shark-jumper would be the one that didn't include Muppet backpack training.

And now we're getting yet another canon-bending sequel, this time from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, who promises to somehow bring back all your favorite characters who unceremoniously died in Alien 3.

Don't get me wrong: I'm 110 percent for a Neill Blomkamp Alien movie -- but between this and 2012's Prometheus, there seems to be an urge to "fix" the consistency of a franchise that has been nothing but dramatic tonal transitions from a stylistically diverse group of directors and writers. Hell, the climax of Alien was a suspenseful nightmare, whereas the climax of Aliens was a Casket Match involving futuristic power tools.

And now, Blomkamp claims that while his film will have the heretofore dead Ripley and Hicks, it somehow won't "undo" the films where Ripley and Hicks are dead -- further sending this franchise into a confusing web of storylines. Like kids trying to Krazy Glue their mother's vase, every attempt so far to undo the deaths in Alien 3 has just made everything stupider.

That's why I'm about to do the impossible and heroically propose a way to save the entire Alien canon once and for all ... Alien vs. Predator included.

Let's start with Prometheus and the revelation that not only was human life created by behemoth alien gods called Engineers, but humanity was almost snuffed out when these same genetic architects constructed a virus to wipe us out because -- according to Ridley Scott himself -- Jesus Christ happened to be one of these muscular, white space monsters.

So, according to the Alien timeline -- it was all the way back around Bowflex-Christ's death that the Engineers first attempted to wipe out humanity, but they got sidetracked when the virus went bananas on their own docked ships -- causing one of them to go into hypersleep for thousands of years.

Upon being awoken by humans at the end of Prometheus, this jabroni hulk immediately goes on a Jason X-style murder campaign before attempting to re-deliver the virus, only to have his doomsday ship get got by Idris Elba.

At the end of Prometheus, we find out the virus is what created the Aliens. This also raises the question, "If the Engineers consider humans such a monumental shart, then why didn't they try to send another virus in the thousands of years between these events?"

The easy answer is that they did. Presumably sometime after A.D. 40 ...

That's from the first Alien vs. Predator film, when the characters learn that Predators have been using Earth for their Alien hunting excursions since the Mayans -- which would easily put them around A.D. 100 and onward. It also means that Prometheus 2 could bridge the two franchises with a single sentence explanation that the Engineers did send another virus back, and that virus evolved into an Earth-born Alien species that presumably lasted until the end of Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, which took place in 2004.

Remember that shit? It ends with the Earth Aliens being wiped out with a nuke, and the co-creator of Weyland-Yutani being given a Predator blaster.

And according to the Prometheus timeline, 2004 was when Peter Weyland began his career -- eventually conquering space travel, solving global warming, and curing cancer. When combined with the AvP timeline, that would mean that all of the world's big technological breakthroughs would coincide with his partnering company obtaining extraterrestrial technology.

Meanwhile -- there's two Mr. Weylands to deal with: Charles Weyland (who is played by Lance Henriksen and dies in AvP) and Peter Weyland (who is played by Guy Pearce in Bad Grandpa makeup in Prometheus). Peter is 14 years old in 2004, easily making him Charles' son -- and completely answering the question as to why the company's synthetic Bishop (also played by Lance Henriksen in Aliens) would look like his late father. It's like the two timelines are meant to complement each other.

But how could Blomkamp's new film exist in two different timelines? How can Ripley and Hicks be both dead and not dead? And if Predators are indeed a part of his movie's canon, where the hell have they been?

Let's look at that Mayan picture again ...

Now here's the exact same type of ship from behind in 2004:

What kind of culture is so technologically stagnant that they use the exact same technology thousands of years apart? Feel free to think about it for a second while I post this picture of Doc Brown ...

Yes, I'm serious -- stop making that face. After all, what's more likely: that the Predators keep the same exact model of transport for eons or that they've somehow harnessed the power to jump through time. If you can accept that Jesus Christ was a big beluga man, then you can accept this.

And just like the above mentioned Doc Brown chalkboard fiasco -- what if by doing so they accidentally created two timelines where Hicks somehow survives? Maybe that nuclear explosion on LV-426 at the end of Aliens got the Predators' attention (we all know how much Predators love nukes) and Ripley and Hicks' ship bumbled its way into some Predator-induced time rift while they were in cryosleep. This would perfectly coincide with the upcoming Shane Black Predator film, which has been called a "really inventive sequel" to the series.

Next question: What does every Neill Blomkamp film have in common? Each one involves some kind of sci-fi pariah being teamed up with a human until one of them makes a sacrifice to save the day -- right? Am I right? District 9 has Wikus give up his humanity for a hideous prawn alien, Elysium has mech-suit Damon die for his hot nurse friend. So if Blomkamp is making an Alien film, doesn't it make sense for one of the characters to be some kind of disgusting monster that a human learns to see eye-to-eye with?

Look -- if you've read this far then there's no turning back. You're a part of this now. We're not here today to debate quality but rather to attempt to realistically bring together a narratively impossible canon for the fuck of it. I think I did my part -- now someone call Sigourney Weaver and let's get this over with.

If you or someone you trust knows Ridley Scott, please contact Dave on Twitter. If you are Ridley Scott, get out your checkbook, because this fucker ain't complimentary.