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The real villain of the Alien franchise was always Weyland-Yutani - not the Xenomorphs
Unchecked corporate greed and incompetence make for dangerous bedfellows.
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When your sci-fi franchise includes a giant carnivorous bug that wants to eat and/or impregnate you, it would appear to be the easy pick for the villain of said franchise. However, good sci-fi usually presents something beyond the obvious, and Alien, with its multiple sequels, prequels, and spin-offs, lays out a strong case that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – and the unchecked, irresponsible capitalism they represent – is in fact the real monster of the Alien franchise, engaging in the kind of corporate greed and employee mistreatment that would make Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk blush with envy.
Exhibit A: Alien (1979)
You don’t have to look far to see how the Weyland-Yutani Corporation serves as the main antagonist of the Alien films. The very first one was pretty blatant in its criticism of the company – they come out and say that they consider the entire crew expendable in their pursuit of that sweet, sweet perpetual growth.
Upon learning of the existence of an unkillable space monster, Weyland-Yutani (or "The Company," as it's more often referred to in the first movie) sees the potential for profit from… something? It isn’t entirely clear how they intend to profit from bringing the Xenomorph back to Earth, but that doesn’t stop them from ordering the android they’ve implanted as the Nostromo’s science officer, Ash, to put the crew at risk by bringing the creature back home. The message is quite clear here – the potential for theoretical profit is more important than the real lives of some pesky employees.
Exhibit B: Aliens (1986)
The events on the Nostromo could be chalked up as a lack of oversight by Weyland-Yutani were it not for the fact that they try to do the exact same thing in the following film, Aliens. This time, they send a crew of Colonial Marines to investigate a colony that has potentially fallen victim to the Xenomorph creatures. Knowing the danger the creatures pose and that they are potentially unkillable, Weyland-Yutani still sees some sort of potential profit to be had.
Again, the movie is not subtle in this accusation. Carter Burke, a representative of Weyland-Yutani, is revealed to be responsible for the current outbreak of Xenomorphs that killed the entire colony of humans. He ordered the colony to investigate the site where the Nostromo first encountered the creatures, intending to use the eggs to create bioweapons. He is so desperate to succeed that he attempts to have Ripley and Newt impregnated by the creatures to sneak them through customs on Earth – knowing it will kill them in the process. This is not just corporate greed gone wild, it is a prime example of corporate stupidity in action; repeating the same mistakes over and over until maybe they can squeak a few extra points of profit.
Exhibit C: Alien 3 (1992)
The oft-maligned third entry in the Alien franchise might not be as good as the original, but that hasn’t stopped Weyland-Yutani from, once again, proving that they will sacrifice any number of human lives to further their corporate interests. After their first two attempts to weaponize the universe’s most efficient killing machines failed spectacularly, they tried to do the same thing, showing about as much remorse for the loss of life they have caused as the Xenomorphs themselves. This time it is a prison colony that is sacrificed to continue their perpetual profits, resulting in hundreds of deaths.
Once again, representatives of Weyland-Yutani are hoping to turn the aliens into biological weapons. Once again, it is unclear how they intend to do this aside, but they are willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. It is telling that Ripley, who has an Alien Queen embryo growing in her by the end of the film, has so little trust in Weyland-Yutani that she throws herself into a vat of molten lead to kill the embryo despite their assurances that they will totally not try to weaponize it this time.
For the purposes of brevity, we'll only mention in passing the prequel duology, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, which pretty definitively place the Weyland Corporation - years before its merger with Yutani, notably - at the center of the mythology of the entire series, and the creation of the Xenomorph as a species.(Whether or not those movies are core canon or not is also worth noting, given that they contradict with the Aliens vs. Predator movies; you can read more about that here.)
So, sure: it is easy to see the Xenomorph, with its phallic double-mouth and murder-spikes, as the bad guy of the Alien franchise, but that is clearly not the case. Weyland-Yutani, in their mindless pursuit of an uptick in profits, creates larger and larger death tolls as they attempt to bring an alien embryo back to Earth – knowing full well that doing so could (and probably will) doom the planet once it inevitably escapes their confinement.
We know the pursuit of profit drives companies to do weird things, but at least we can rest easy knowing that the exploits of Weyland-Yutani are safe in the realm of fiction. It isn’t like any real company would knowingly damage the ecosystem or environment of their planet, potentially causing irreparable harm to it, all for the sake of making their stock market index go up, right?
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