New ALIENS short movies released to celebrate franchise's 40th anniversary

The Aliens franchise is turning 40 this year and Fox (and new corporate overlords Disney) are celebrating that fact to the hilt, although it's fair to say that the last few movies in the franchise have not exactly set the world on fire.

In an interesting and commendable movie, Fox have allowed several film-makers to shoot some new, live-action short films set in the Aliens setting. The first two, Containment and Specimen, have already been released and four more are on the way.

They are surprisingly quite good, probably the best additions to the live-action Aliens mythos since at least Alien 3 was released in 1992. The short length suits the creeping horror of the franchise a lot better, and allows them to experiment with tone a bit.

With Fox having been gobbled up by Disney, it appears that plans to make further movies in the Prometheus/Covenant sub-series are on hold. It'll be interesting to see if there are plans to take the franchise somewhere fresher in the future, but these short films indicate that maybe there's life in the old facehugger yet.