Despite the fact that there is an entire spin-off franchise dedicated to Alien’s Xenomorphs and Predator’s Yautja not getting along, the latest installment in the Predator series proves that the two actually do agree on one thing: the dark future of humanity.
Upon the origins of both franchises, there was no reason to think that Alien and Predator was a shared universe, that is, until Predator 2, which included a Xenomorph skull among a Predator’s other trophies–an easter egg that laid the groundwork for a potential crossover. The idea wouldn’t be paid-off in full until the 2004 film Alien vs Predator (which is fitting, given both franchises began as movies themselves). With the launch of a film franchise alongside long-standing extended universe lore (including books, comics, and video games), Alien and Predator essentially became one big franchise rather than two distinctly separate ones. The truth was, though, that they were always separate, and only had the occasional crossover that was mostly done for fun–something that seemingly remains true with the current state of Alien and Predator comics. However, while they may be separate universes, Alien and Predator do seem to have eerily similar future landscapes for the human race.
In Predator #5 by Ed Brisson and Kev Walker, Theta–who has been hunting Predators across the cosmos for over a decade–has been captured by a company called Astar, which was able to track her down because she possessed stolen technology owned by the company. While Theta was in the care of/being held by the Astar crew, the captain learned of her tragic past and how it related to the Predator species. When Theta was just a child, she and her parents were members of a botanist colony on an alien planet before a Predator arrived and slaughtered everyone except her. That colony was funded by Astar, so when Theta stole her parents’ ship and used it to hunt Predators for 15 years, all the information on the creatures and the worlds she visited that was gather and stored within the ship’s memory banks was technically owned by Astar–and given the company’s current pursuits and the competition present in that particular field, this information is especially valuable.
Humans are Intergalactic Colonizers Owned by Large Companies in Alien and Predator
This issue of Predator shows that humans in this universe are no different from the ones in the Alien universe. Since the very beginning of Alien, it was well established that companies were investing in space travel in order to mine and build colonies on far-off worlds (primarily Weyland-Yutani). With Predator, though, fans never got a clear look at how humans would use space-travel, if they would ever get there at all within the continuity of the franchise. In almost every Predator movie, the alien hunters always come to Earth (or collect people from Earth) and it is usually set in the current time period of the movie’s release. The 1987 Predator movie takes place in 1987, same with the 2010 and 2018 versions. Here, however, fans are introduced to a Predator universe that throws them into the not-too-distant future of the 2050s where humans are essentially the same as they were in Alien: intergalactic colonizers whose lives are totally owned by large companies.
Alien has always painted a clear picture as to why this is a pretty grim future for humanity as it not only paints humans as villains on a cosmic scale (as terraforming/mining planets isn’t exactly harmless to the indigenous life there), but it takes away their free will and hands it over to companies that essentially control every aspect of their lives–and now, fans know that humanity’s future within Predator is exactly the same.