Once upon a time, there were things I could trust with absolute certainty: Cadbury’s Cream Eggs and the Alien franchise. These weren’t just products but trustworthy institutions in an unreliable world of constant change. They offered experiences I cherished—moments of joy, wonder, and anticipation that I assumed would last forever. But alas, the world doesn’t work that way. Disappointment waits in the wings, often when you least expect it.

The first betrayal came in a foil wrapper: Cadbury’s Cream Eggs. Since childhood, I’ve loved their thick chocolate shells and gooey insides. The Cream Egg wasn’t just a snack; it was a ritual. Each bite left me wondering about the genius behind it. Who were Cadbury’s taste scientists? And could I, one day, join their secret chocolate-tasting panel?

Then, in 2015, disaster struck. In a distant boardroom, guided by cost-cutting spreadsheets, Cadbury tampered with The Formula: the chocolate shell was switched from Dairy Milk to a "standard cocoa mix," and the eggs were ruined. The chocolate tasted cheap, the filling less indulgent. A near-spiritual bliss was replaced by tongue-souring, stomach-churning revulsion—all for marginal cost savings and negligible profits!

If Cadbury’s Cream Eggs were one great disappointment, the second—and nearly its equal—was the decline of the Alien franchise. For years, I sat in cinemas expecting greatness. From the tension of Alien to the thrills of Aliens, the series delivered awe, horror, and boundless wonder. And best of all, endless conjecture: Where did the aliens come from? What birthed such horrifying perfection?

The beauty of those questions was that they had no answers—or at least, none we were given. The not-knowing was part of the thrill. It made Alien feel vast and unknowable, a world far greater than the sum of its parts. And then, along came Ridley Scott with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

The less said about those films, the better. But, twenty years of clinging onto your seats, covering your eyes, packing the nappies, and waiting to be gobsmacked by awe, wonder, and horror were obliterated in two long, intellectually unsustainable, creatively myopic, viciously stupid prequels. It’s almost too painful to discuss. But let’s push on.

I still remember seeing Alien in 1979. Like everyone in that darkened theatre, I was transfixed. Ridley Scott, then a fiercely ambitious director, paired with H.R. Giger’s haunting designs to redefine science fiction. Projected on a sweeping Scope screen and paired with Dolby Stereo’s eerie whispers and mechanical groans, Alien was a visceral symphony of cosmic terror and mystery.

Giger’s biomechanical horrors, Goldsmith’s unsettling score, and the Nostromo’s claustrophobic hum combined to immerse viewers in a cold, uncaring universe. Anamorphic lenses enhanced the oppressive corridors and the alien ship’s haunting scale, while practical effects and Dolby sound enveloped audiences in dread and awe, confronting them with humanity’s insignificance.

Alien’s success lay in its refusal to explain. In 1979, it revolutionised science fiction by embracing mystery over exposition. The fossilised and elephantine Space Jockey hinted at a civilisation so ancient it dwarfed humanity. The Xenomorph embodied the universe’s cold indifference. Scott left everything unexplained, and that was its genius.

Scott’s restraint made Alien a masterpiece, trusting audiences to feel the weight of the unknown without over-explaining. As Robert McKee writes in Story, “The audience is a sensitive, intelligent entity, capable of grasping the depth of a narrative without needing every thread tied off.” Alien thrived in the tension between what it showed and what it withheld.

After the appalling laziness of Prometheus (2012) and the intellectually frazzled Alien: Covenant (2017), the series had fallen into the grip of soulless studio machinery. Scripts passed through risk-averse committees, neutered by fear of bold risks, resulting in a product driven by consensus and nostalgia. Once a beacon of originality, Alien was reduced to a formula: explain the inexplicable, diminish the vast, and render the terrifying familiar. Ridley Scott, once a master of mystery, became obsessed with answers. The derelict ship? A vessel for the Engineers, humanity’s creators. The Xenomorph? No longer a force of nature, but the handiwork of David—an android, a rogue Tesla prototype.

This obsession shrank the once-boundless Alien universe into something disappointingly small, a human-centric tale of ambition and hubris. By tying the Xenomorph to David and reducing the Engineers to flawed versions of ourselves, Scott fatally diminished the awe and terror at the heart of Alien. It was no longer an unknowable cosmic horror but a reflection of our fears—a mirror too small for the vastness the franchise once promised.

This diminishing is painfully evident in Alien: Romulus. Though commercially successful, it feels like a well-worn amusement park ride: thrilling but predictable. You know the speed, the drops, the twists. It delivers precisely what you expect, but nothing more. There’s no sense of wonder, no engagement with more profound questions. Romulus coasts when it should challenge, its recycled thrills leaving the audience in the same safe loop of scream, run, hide, repeat.

The tragedy is that Alien should be more than this. We live in a world driven by curiosity. NASA and space agencies scour the stars, analyse Martian soil, and dissect every signal from the cosmos in search of answers. So why should Alien cling to tired narratives where the unknown is something to be eradicated rather than explored? Why populate the franchise with characters who lack curiosity, intelligence, or the tools to engage with the alien—humans doomed by stupidity, not courage?

Imagine a film in which the crew sent to face the alien is composed of scientists, explorers, and thinkers—equipped to survive and engage with the Xenomorph as something more than a monster. Even if they still end up gored, limbless, and impregnated with alien eggs, the journey could still thrill, enriched by curiosity and intelligence. The conflict would remain layered with wonder and meaning, delivering a story that challenges and surprises rather than pandering to the lowest denominator of fear.

Other storytellers have already shown us what’s possible. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness explored gender and society through a profoundly alien lens. Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 treated language as a technology that shapes and reflects thought. Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels framed alien species as peers and moral counterpoints, not mere antagonists. More recently, Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti and Tade Thompson’s Rosewater blended African perspectives with nuanced portrayals of extraterrestrial life. These works prove that fear need not preclude curiosity, nor does conflict exclude engagement.

With Dune, Denis Villeneuve has shown that a modern filmmaker can balance intellectual depth with epic spectacle. This is precisely the direction Alien needs: a course correction guided by sophistication, curiosity, and Kubrickian rigour. It’s time for Alien to reclaim its place as a genre-defining narrative that sees the alien not as a monster but as a challenge to our assumptions about life, intelligence, and survival.

The Xenomorph can still terrify, and the splatter fests can still thrill, but isn’t it time for the Alien series to evolve? Let’s look to the stars not for reflections of ourselves but for something greater—something that reminds us of humanity’s smallness in a vast, uncaring universe. Perhaps then, the terror of Alien could feel sublime once more.