The Alien franchise has made some interesting pivots in recent years. Ridley Scott‘s prequel films have largely been abandoned, Alien: Romulus attempted to bridge the gap between the first and second installments, and Alien: Earth has served as an interesting franchise departure by bringing the xenomorph to television (and Earth, too). While all of these films have departed from the Sigourney Weaver-led originals in some form, only one franchise installment has proven that Ellen Ripley can remain at the center without actually being present — if you’ve never given Alien: Isolation a shot, this interquel video game is ripe for adaptation.
‘Alien: Isolation’ Is a Terrifying ‘Alien’ Prequel That Should Be the Basis for the Franchise on Television
Released back in 2014, the survival horror sci-fi game follows Amanda Ripley (Andrea Deck), the daughter of the franchise’s main heroine who has long wondered what became of her mother and the Nostromo. Set fifteen years after the events of Alien, Amanda is offered the chance at closure by Weyland-Yutani, sending her to the Sevastopol space station where the flight recorder from her mother’s mission resides. But when Amanda is separated from the rest of the crew, it isn’t long before things go from bad to worse. Unsurprisingly, another xenomorph is on the loose, and with barely any power to keep the lights on, the dark and eerie corridors of the space station become breeding grounds for jump scares and alien antics. Of course, if you thought that a xenomorph was the only threat here in Isolation, you’d be wrong, because there are several synthetic threats as well, in the form of the Sevastopol‘s murderous android inhabitants.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Amanda Ripley is a worthy successor to her mother’s mantle. She’s resourceful, determined, and quite strong-willed, though she wrestles with the uncertainty and grief that come with losing her mother so young. There’s a heroic streak in her, as she’s willing to help others and even sacrifice herself if necessary to keep others alive, though she remains capable in her own survival skills, willing to lie in wait while chaos occurs around her. In many ways, it’s her mother’s absence that has made them so much alike, forcing Amanda to grow up without Ripley watching over her and, as eventually revealed in Aliens, living a full life in the time that Ripley was trapped among the stars. Since it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever get a Sigourney Weaver-led Alien movie again — and we wouldn’t want her to be recast either — the best way to continue with the Ripley line going forward would be a straightforward Alien: Isolation adaptation.
To Make ‘Alien’ Scary Again, ‘Alien: Isolation’ Has the Answer
Now, we know what you’re thinking. Why adapt the video game when you could just tell a new story with Amanda at the center? That’s a fair point. But the folks at Creative Assembly hit sci-fi/horror gold here with Isolation, perfectly recapturing the look, feel, and overall atmosphere of the original Alien film by leaning into Scott’s overtly horror elements and generating an air of mystery. Not only is Amanda a great protagonist who deserves to return to the franchise at some point in the future, but Isolation is the sort of story that could truly bridge the narrative gap between Alien and Aliens in a way that Romulus just couldn’t. By stringing the story out into eight episodes, similar to what’s been done with Alien: Earth, horror fans and sci-fi aficionados alike would rejoice at the bold return to form that an Isolation adaptation could provide — there’s a reason Alien: Isolation 2 is currently in the works.
The Alien franchise has largely suffered from the same problems that The Terminator series had following Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Just like T2 prompted every subsequent sequel to try and recapture that action magic, so too did James Cameron‘s Aliens change things by transitioning the franchise away from sci-fi/horror to sci-fi/action. Since then, Scott’s Prometheus peppered in layers of philosophical commentary that have shifted it yet again, touching all recent installments like Earth. Romulus was the biggest return to form thus far, though Isolation could revive all that horror the franchise has yet to recover. Sure, cutscenes from Isolation were already used to create Alien: Isolation — The Digital Series, but that doesn’t mean that Amanda’s story couldn’t be front-and-center of another live-action continuation, especially if it’s made-for-streaming or television.
