While not a traditional “dystopia”, the Alien franchise presents the technological mega-corporation “Weyland-Yutani” as the overarching true antagonists of the franchise, with the movies focusing on their repeated endangerment and mistreatment of their workers in a high-tech, advanced society.
Alien presents its advanced technology through a retro-futuristic filter, being the 70s’ idea of what the future of technology would look like. However, while their view on the future is old, it still represents technologies that we pursue today, such as spaceflight and robotics. This can most obviously be seen in its spaceships, which make the feat of interstellar travel trivial, as they’re typically operated and staffed by blue-collar employees likened to “space truckers”. This shows an integration of futuristic technology into the hands of the average person, occupying them with relatively normal people as opposed to the rigorously trained astronauts we have today.
Weyland-Yutani also produces androids dubbed “Synthetics” which are nearly indiscernible from humans, creating tension between humans and their robotic counterparts. These synthetics can be assigned to obey Weyland-Yutani’s direct will, making them unwilling mouthpieces for the corporation itself– sort of like the company-owned AI modules that have been springing up recently, given physical form. While the more obvious conflict in the movie is between the Aliens and the ship-workers, these workers are often put into these situations in the first place due to the greed and carelessness of Weyland-Yutani– the Xenomorphs are merely a symptom of a greater issue. Workers’ lives are often cast aside for lofty scientific endeavors, such as investigating strange alien eggs for the aimless pursuit of information. It reminds me a lot of real life, where we make these technological advancements, like AI generation and self-driving cars, just to prove we can, despite the fact we probably shouldn’t, as they often impact and even endanger the average person’s livelihood negatively.
One of the most direct examples of this is through Prometheus, the black sheep of the Alien franchise, released in the early 2010s by original director Ridley Scott. Prometheus’ premise revolves around Peter Weyland (the Weyland in Weyland-Yutani) directing an assortment of workers and scientists to travel to an unknown planet, due to clues of a “higher power”, or a creator of humanity, left in cave paintings. While this does end up being the case, the film acknowledges that it was quite an out-there theory. This emphasizes Weyland’s lack of care for his employees, sending them light years out into space based on what’s essentially a conspiracy theory. Long story short, though, this team of Weyland-Yutani employees discovers an Engineer, a member of an alien race that created humanity…. who then proceeds to go crazy and viciously murder almost every member of the crew.
This film received a mixed reception for a number of valid reasons, mostly for its strange, convoluted plot, but I find that it exemplifies a lot of the Alien franchise’s larger themes: a billionaire tech mogul basically leads a team of innocent employees to death in search of a “truth” that winds up killing them, just because they can. I feel as though we see this sort of careless behavior a lot with the tech moguls we have in real life– needless endangerment of civilians, in pursuit of advancements that are better off not made.