The Alien franchise has been many things over the years, practically reinventing itself with each release while still retaining the core of what made it so popular. And Kevin Smith has now efficiently summed up what’s to be expected from each of its installments.
His tweet declares how each of the Xenomorph’s outings can be considered at a basic level, demonstrating the various genres the series has touched on over the years.
ALIEN is a horror film.
ALIENS is an action movie.
ALIEN 3 is an art film.
ALIEN RESURRECTION is the @YogaHosers of their franchise. https://t.co/zrZTQYHgFS— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) April 6, 2021
He is, of course, also poking fun at the somewhat less than stellar reception received by Yoga Hosers, it, like Alien Resurrection, being a film that was hotly anticipated by fans but seen and enjoyed by virtually nobody. That said, some people (myself included) absolutely loved the daft tale of teenage girls battling Satanists, Canadian Nazis and bratwurst homunculi, and will go to bat for it at the slightest provocation.
Smith was responding to a tweet from Elle Hunt, a writer for UK broadsheet The Guardian, who queried whether Alien qualifies as a horror movie. Her reasoning is it should be considered a sci-fi since horror can’t take place in space, as the former genre’s settings render redundant the latter’s predication on fear of the unknown, as everything about outer space is unfamiliar to humans.
This is, of course, utter nonsense. Alien is a sci-fi and a horror movie and it’s in no way contradictory to state this, as films are perfectly capable of being more than one thing at the same time, despite what’s claimed by yet more reductive disregard of horror espoused by journalists who know little of the genre. I’ll stop before this turns into a 2000 word diatribe.
Even if you weren’t particularly impressed by Yoga Hosers, it still has moments that are objectively good filmmaking, also kind of like Alien Resurrection. And despite being a surreal comedy with action and fantastical elements, it’s also something of a horror movie. Like Alien is.
