Age Of Destruction: Archive

Time for a new #UnsolicitedScreenplay treatment. This time: The opening minutes of the next installment in the Alien series. #AlienV

Fade in: A field of stars. They do not twinkle, because we are in space, but they ripple slightly, from tape stretch. #AlienV

Cut to: Another starfield, but now a fraction of the globe of a planet invades the screen from the right, with glacial slowness. #AlienV

The planet is sludge grey, rust brown, black, dirty white. Light glints lazily off terminal seas. A gritty storm spins. It is Earth. #AlienV

Cut: Now Earth fills the screen. Before it, a space station like a nightmare of Mir, drifts downscreen. It tumbles slowly as it does #AlienV

There is music now, where before there was only the Silent Space Rumble before. It is the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. #AlienV

Inside the station: The interior a rotting steel cathedral, long abandoned. A montage of disuse, cracked plastic, discarded pinups. #AlienV

And now the uproar of inrushing air; garbage scurries into corners and shadows cringe back from the first flickering lights. #AlienV

Montage: Illuminated buttons light up on control consoles. Tape squeals. Beeps beep. Stenciled letters: DOCKING BAY 1. #AlienV

Doors crack open, gear back. Pistons retract. Light spills in. 6 figures in robes - no 7, there’s a smaller one between them - enter #AlienV

The 6 figures all have breathing apparatus, masks and air hoses emerging from their cowls. The 7th does not. They proceed. #AlienV

A dark vaulted cavern. The only light comes from the Earth below, which fills a window. But there’s a silhouette between it and us. #AlienV

The massed chorus of the Lacrimosa builds. Each vocalist sings softly, but together they generate a cataclysmic sound. #AlienV

The lights in the cavern snap on. A flight of broad stairs climbs towards the window. At the top, glowing white, is a stasis chamber #AlienV

The stasis chamber is a hypersleep pod. A frozen dream. A shining glass prison for body and soul. The figures file into shot. #AlienV

The smaller one kneels at the foot of the stairs and throws back her hood. It is ANNALEE CALL. Or, at least, a CALL. An android. #AlienV

The rest of the delegation split into two ranks of three and ascend the stairs on either side of CALL. She prays, whispering. #AlienV

They surround the pod, dark draped figures. Funerial. Now we can see the inhabitant thru the foggy glass. It is ELLEN RIPLEY. #AlienV

Behind RIPLEY, the Earth turns. Antarctica wheels past and, for a moment, frames her head in a ragged, icy halo. #AlienV

The pallbearers lift RIPLEY’s pod. Inside, she is motionless, illuminated. The chorus has almost reached its crescendo, when we cut- #AlienV

Down. McMurdo City. A girl in a parking lot smoking a cigarette looks up as a star streaks to the horizon. The music falls silent. #AlienV

Under her fur coat, you can see a threadlike pink bikini and the pneumatic, Californicated body of strippers everywhere #AlienV

But her skin is shiny and pitch black, like patent leather, and where her face should be there is only a smooth domed skull. #AlienV

She flicks the butt away, trailing sparks. Behind her, a neon sign flashes English and the dense triangular script of Xenotongue. #AlienV

Elsewhere: Dogs bark. Newspapers tumble in the Antarctic wind and catch against chainlink fences. Gloomy buildings huddle together. #AlienV

A procession, on a grubby, icy street. CALL leads, followed by RIPLEY’s casket on a humming antigrav sled, shepherded by the others. #AlienV

As CALL advances into the camera, we see one of her arms raised to hold a pendant. Her arm is fire-damaged, plastic slightly melted. #AlienV

It is a scrap of metal, bent and hammered into a cross. Stamped into the horizontal, preserved: A long serial number, then: NOSTROMO #AlienV

CALL closes on the camera, blocking it completely. The screen is black. Then a word: ALIEN. Then: ALIEN: V. Then: ALIEN: VENERATION. #AlienV