Alien: Resurrection's Newborn was a crushing disappointment, but that is all the more reason for an upcoming Alien sequel to offer a scarier take on the Xenomorph/human hybrid concept. Released in 1979, director Ridley Scott’s Alien is a sci-fi horror masterpiece that succeeded thanks to its simple, ingenious premise. Pitched as a “haunted house in space” movie, the original Alien combined the intergalactic thrills of Star Wars with the creature feature setup of Jaws to create a perfect mashup.
However, while Alien was a huge success upon release, the movie very nearly went off the rails during production. One early director considered for the project proposed using a shaved orangutan as the titular Alien, and early drafts included bizarre touches like revealing that fully grown Xenomorphs were worldly scholars and only their pupal stage was the relentless killing machine seen in the movie. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and these misguided ideas were abandoned, but the series nonetheless repeatedly struggled to reinvent the Xenomorph after the first film’s blockbuster successes.
For the first sequel, the answer was simple - add an “s” to the title, The Terminator director James Cameron made the Xenomorph scarier by multiplying the eponymous threat. Where the first film saw Ripley face off against a single alien, in Aliens she was dumped inside a hive full of them. However, Cameron’s sequel didn’t stop there, also introducing the less mobile but far larger Alien Queen as a more dangerous monster. Part of what made the following entry Alien 3’s return to pure horror so disappointing for fans and critics alike was a failure to one-up this concept, with the movie returning to the original lone Xenomorph. Soon after, the next movie, 1997’s Alien: Resurrection, proved with its embarrassing “Newborn” that sometimes no new monster was better than a bad one. However, while the Newborn didn’t exactly receive a positive response, the prequel Alien: Covenant proved that the idea of a human/Xenomorph hybrid could be creepy and nauseatingly inspired, meaning the series would do well to revisit this idea in its next installment.
Alien: Resurrection’s Newborn Was A Letdown
After promising a villain even more formidable than the original Xenomorph itself, Alien: Resurrection let viewers down with what looked like an overcooked golem. There were a lot of problems with Alien: Resurrection and with an uneven story, a lack of engaging characters, and no one for viewers to really root for, it is unfair to claim the sequel’s new monster was entirely responsible for the movie being a letdown. However, while the Newborn was not the only issue, the highly-hyped monster was the biggest disappointment in the outing as followers of the Alien franchise had long wondered what a human/Xenomorph hybrid might look like. The Newborn was a crushing, unwieldy disaster, a lumbering beast that barely managed to move independently where the original Xenomorph was a lithe, sprightly, and agile killer. The franchise can doubtless do better through a combination of CGI and practical FX nowadays, and much like viewers deserve a better Predalien hybrid than what Alien Vs Predator: Requiem offered, the human/Xenomorph combination is a concept that deserves to be revisited and done justice this time around.
Alien: Covenant Teased The Human/Xenomorph Hybrid
With all of David’s eerie Neomorphs on display and the revelation that he killed Elizabeth Shaw to create a hybrid creature, the appearance of a human/Xenomorph cross seemed inevitable in 2017's Alien: Covenant. However, the sequel failed to provide one (presumably to avoid recreating the Newborn), meaning the stage is still set for the series to offer a more effective human/Xenomorph genetic mashup in its next outing. The earliest drafts of Alien: Covenant did see Prometheus’ Shaw turned into a gruesome human Xenomorph, and while a sequel need not use this specific creature design (although it is quite effective), this is further proof the people behind the franchise knows the hybrid would make for an interesting, inherently tragic, but terrifying monster. Meanwhile, the bleak ending of prequel Covenant left the amoral android David with a ship full of humans to experiment on - perfect fodder for the unseen hybrid, judging by the way he already built an army of Neomorphs on a largely abandoned planet.
A Human/Xenomorph Hybrid Fits The Series’ Story
Since the original Alien, the series has made it clear the Weyland-Yutani Corporation cares more about engineering bioweapons than the lives of its staff, and Aliens even added Carter Burke to clarify that the company intentionally sacrifices human lives to gain access to Xenomorph specimens. Creating a human/Xenomorph cross is exactly the sort of short-sighted move the corporation would make to create weapons that are cheaper and easier to manufacture (since they’d now need fewer Xenomorphs) - only to then be shocked when this killer hybrid ends up breaking loose and going on a rampage. The franchise has consistently used the Corporation to comment on the amoral practice of building bioweapons for profit, and one effective way to exemplify how evil this is would be to depict them intentionally turning humans into Xenomorphs to save on production costs and test their effectiveness in combat.
Not only would this bring the Weyland-Yutani Corporation back into focus after the last Alien installment mostly featured David as its villain, but this plot would also bring the Xenomorph to Earth, which is a blockbuster concept the series has toyed with without ever fully committing to. Seeing the Xenomorph wreak havoc on Earth could make up for the missed opportunity of Alien Vs Predator: Requiem (which limited its action to one small town), and a story of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation attempting to create a human/Xenomorph hybrid would be the clearest path to making this happen. The Alien series has always leaped on the opportunity to create a more terrifying villain, and mixing human DNA with the Xenomorph’s killer instincts could create an appropriately unique combination that would rip away any lingering memories fans have of the misconceived Newborn of Alien: Resurrection.