What James Cameron Thinks of the Unending Alien Franchise

Visionary filmmaker James Cameron is ocean-deep at work in Atlantis Rising, a National Geographic documentary that will resurrect the memory and all sorts of intriguing possibilties about the mythic city in the minds of millions of viewers. But it seems he is not that enthused about the awakening of a continuing epic that he himself helped propagate: the Alien franchise.

Despite the huge interest surrounding the next installment, Alien: Covenant, Cameron believes that it's about high time that the film series gets some needed rest. After all the movies that had come after his sequel and the original 1979 movie by Ridley Scott, the series had pretty much exhausted anything that can be said about the alien xenomorph and its horrific effect on the humans it attacks.

In an interview with Vulture, Cameron says:

"I don't think it's worked out terribly well. I think we've moved on beyond it. It's like, okay, we've got it, we've got the whole Freudian biomechanoid meme. I've seen it in 100 horror films since. I think both of those films stand at a certain point in time, as a reference point. But is there any validity to doing another one now? I don't know. Maybe. Let's see, jury's out. Let's see what Ridley comes up with."

At the same time, he affirms his respect for collegue and friend Scott who is putting a fresh spin on the saga with Alien: Covenant, the upcoming sequel to his prequel Prometheus.

"I will stand in line for any Ridley Scott movie, even a not-so-great one, because he is such an artist, he's such a filmmaker. I always learn from him. And what he does with going back to his own franchise would be fascinating."

It's a healthy perspective to maintain. Cameron himself is "going back" to his own franchise, the Terminator series. And despite his decades of absence and other directors' mangling of his main idea through terrible sequels, fans are more than willing to give the ultimate showdown between man and intelligent machines one more try.

Alien: Covenant will premiere on May 19, 2017.