On the Subject of Crossovers....

So, crossovers. It seems to be the order of the day with Hollywood recently, what with The Avengers and the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie, and old Franchises seem to be getting revived left and right. The New Star Trek was pretty good attempt at breathing new life into a property that (you'd think) had been beaten to death up until then (and then was promptly beaten to death, but with lens flares). Apparently Star Wars will be seeing some of that in the next two years or so (though I remain skeptical that it'll be anything worth seeing, but I'll have to wait and see). 

Even though Disney made John Carter, which was in my opinion the best Space Opera ever filmed (Yes, better than any of the six Star Wars films. No, don't worry, I have the pitchforks and torches here at my house, just swing by whenever you feel like it's angry mobbin' time), I can't see them doing SW right. The original films had a dark edge to them, and the effects of the time are not only good-looking now but also essentially on the same level as another film of the 1970s. 

Alien. 

Both have the gritty, worn-out looking spacecrafts, both have the spacefarers depicted as seedy, uneducated workers barely scraping out a living (space smugglers and gangsters in Star Wars, Space truckers and miners in Alien), and across the franchise, both have their fair share of horrible, bloodthirsty killing machines (The eponymous parasites of Aliens and the many assorted creatures of Star Wars, such as the Sarlacc and the Sand-Folk).

Putting aside the disastrous AvP franchise, with started with a bland attempt at a cash-in and was then followed with a painful attempt to cash-in on the previous cash-in, I think the best candidate for a crossover movie would be the Alien franchise, since those creatures can be loosed just about anywhere and make for some interesting scenarios.

One that really sticks with me is: what if it was crossed with another series where the setting was a vast, interstellar empire? Think about it: give the villains of that Civilization (like, say, the Sith, or the Klingons, or the Bene Gesserit) access to Xenomorph eggs, have them begin infestations to conquer their universe, planet-by planet, and watch the full-scale slaughter and suffering, which is what puts asses in the seats, goddamnit. 

So, while many crossovers that deserve to be made don't, and many more that don't deserve to be made do, I thought maybe it'd be cool to pitch the series-blend I've wanted for a while that will never come to be. This is my idea of how an Aliens/Star Wars crossover movie might go, and hopefully, some of you get a kick out of it. If nothing else, it'd sure make a quick buck off a Helluva lotta 12-year-olds, were it ever made. 

A special thanks, by-the-by, to Wookiepedia, because I am not familiar enough with the Star Wars 'Verse to know all of these creatures and planets by name, and writing 'that giant lizard-monster from Return of the Jedi fights that white goat-ape from Empire Strikes Back' doesn't sound as cool on paper as it does in my head (I don't know if I should be ashamed or proud I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars but that's a post for another day). 

So, here it goes: 

Star Wars: The Xenomorph Scourge

or Aliens vs. Jedi for the comedically inclined.

So, picture this: A Sith Witch who spends her life torturing/subjugating the most vicious creatures in the Galaxy (she weeds them out through combat, so we can get a scene of a Rancor fighting a Wampa FINALLY) is growing angry. She tries to use her assorted horrible creatures to take down the Jedi, wherever she encounters them; but of course the Force is too great for them to be of any use; as if Storm troopers weren't inefficient enough already. 

So, what does she do? She seeks out a Smuggler, of course, who has the market cornered on dangerous creatures, and who may or may not be a distant relative of Han Solo. Or maybe IS Solo, years before he met Luke and became a more morally-inclined individual. This is the Han who shot first, so marketing dangerous creatures for a quick buck isn't a terribly unlikely endeavor for a man who regularly kills bounty hunters without a shred of remorse. 

He tips her off to a kind of particularly nasty beast that can render an entire planet uninhabitable in days or, sometimes, even hours; a species so deadly he keeps only one specimen: An egg in frozen Carbonite. 

He trades it off to her for a metric fuck-ton of credits, and maybe there's a shootout in which he and Chewie escape her (I'd think a Sith Witch wouldn't be above trying to kill them so that nobody else finds out about her up-coming army of death-monsters). 

She unfreezes the egg and leaves it with a Rancor.....which is then impregnated by a Facehugger. 

Soon it dies, and when the Witch thinks this is the end she sends some cronies in to carry it off - who are then slaughtered by a monstrous, armored Chestburster, since the Xenomorphs take after whatever creature they've hatched from. 

As it grows, she looses it on bigger and bigger foes, which it brings down without breaking a sweat through its exoskeleton. When it IS injured, its acid blood prevents whatever's unfortunate enough to have injured it from taking it any further. 

Seeing her opportunity to become the not only kill off the Jedi but also conquer the Galaxy, she leaves an egg on a transport heading to a secret Jedi academy on Dagobah. Maybe Obi-Wan or Yoda is teaching there. Soon it impregnates somebody on the transport. One of the young Jedi aboard senses "something dark grows within him", and before long a fully-grown Xeno is out mauling them and generally causing unpleasantness. Acid doesn't cauterize, so Light-Sabers are useless; soon all or most of them are dead.

Of course, it crashes, and a lone survivor tells the academy of what's happening as the Xeno hides in the swamps and begins to lay eggs of its own. 

Soon a full-on outbreak is occurring. We could have a scene where one Jedi uses the force to hurl a Xeno up against the wall, and it explodes in acid; killing some nearby youths. Maybe some of the Xenos are force-resistant (they were born from Jedi, after all), and a maze for training is a perfect place for them to hide. They go about snatching away person after person while the unarmed Jedi inside the maze try to figure out what's going on. Maybe eventually the Sith Witch sets down on the planet with some Xeno-Rancors to take down those select few who have survived.....

Yeah, it'd be pretty cool even if it was goofy as Hell. At the end of the day, that's still a decent time-killer, I think. A thought excercise for two franchises well past their prime - no matter what promises are made about the new Star Wars Trilogy, I won't be convinced until I see them, and the combination of AvP and Prometheus has killed any of my interest in the future of Aliens. It's just a nice idea, and there are some great possibilities for both character and action sequences in a fantasy AvJ movie. 

But who knows. I'm sure plenty of people dreamed about a Batman vs. Superman movie for a looooooooooong time and figured it'd never happen. So, you never know, one day a theater full of teenagers might look back and see one very happy 90-year-old in the back of the theater...