In a newsletter, I was going off on the new Alien universe proposed by Disney as a major tent pole franchise. A series on earth with Noah Hawley (Legion and Fargo Showrunner) is already planned, Disney has zero plans to tone it down and is excited about having adult IP. I joked about greenlighting Alien: Isolation and Blomkamp’s Alien 5, NOW. On the latter, James Cameron has suggested he is going to talk to Blomkamp (grain of salt).
Alien + Predator are linked (thanks Dark Horse, thanks no one else), and I don’t think I need to go over that debacle (so far). I might add those two universes started with an easter egg in Predator 2. So Easter Eggs are fair game!
In Firefly, a gun sight has the Weyland Yutani logo, and in the film they even said something to the expect about building better worlds, or a better world. The WY logo is dead center, top of the pic.
In the Buffyverse, in the show “Angel”, Weyland Yutani were “major clients of Wolfram and Hart Law Firm”.
Then, a Blade Runner writer actually confirmed that the film Soldier was a “side-quel”, especially when you look at some tattoos and some of the dialogue call-backs about police spinners and The Battle of Orion”. The Tannhauser Gate stuff is what nails it shut.
“The theory that Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner are connected has evolved from folklore to fact ever since one of Blade Runner’s screenwriters, David Peoples, said that his other film, Soldier, is a spin-off sidequel to Blade Runner”
Most importantly, Alien and Blade Runner have CRAZY ties.
This beautiful ode to the complexity and depth of masterful filmmaking down to typeset is beyond unbelievable. The author does draw back the curtain on an obvious fact… Blade Runner and Alien could only share the same universe because he used prior artwork for the later film. BUT…
In Aliens, on review of the Nostromo accident, it is obvious that Dallas worked for Tyrell Corporation. I wonder what he did?
This one goes on and on, but I think the end result is the Sulaco is both in Aliens and Blade Runner 2049 (there’s pics out there, but I don’t think it’s the best evidence). I like the Prometheus tie in with Peter Weyland obviously talking about Tyrell. This is unreal (from Prometheus bluray, remember Scott is the grandpappy here).
In the end, people are building timelines, and they’re becoming relatively solid, and not many people are screaming “non-canon”, but I’ll admit there’s a bit of fun in the Easter Eggs. However, Alien, Predator, Soldier, and Blade Runner are inextricably linked in canon type ways, so that’s good enough for me. There’s some other great articles documenting the entire sprawling “on earth” vs “off world” situation of the Replicants on Earth with Deckard, and the off world glitchy androids in Alien. And here’s a far more cinephile deep dive on the fierce elegance of the shared universe of Alien and Blade Runner through the discussion of androids.
TO END:
This is an off topic aside, but in the research, so there is so much to be excited about in film.
In thinking of that “typeset in the future” post, I was also thinking of the deep dive on the technology of the Mandalorian by American Cinematographer magazine. Let me warn you… *DEEP* dive, but maybe try to grasp the tech in the pics. Factually, this newly invented filmmaking method allowed Covid-19 production and shooting to happen during lockdown on controlled set.