A few weeks ago, we laid out the timeline for the Weyland-Yutani Cinematic Universe, the WYCU, and in the footnotes we mentioned the rumours of an unnamed Predator project due to come out in 2025.
And this week, that rumour was confirmed:
We have Season 4 of Deadliest Warrior coming out on June 6th. Predator:KoK is set up as an anthology movie, with three arcs, following Vikings, Samurai, and WWII US fighter pilots (in what looks to be the Pacific theatre). Interesting alternatives, and I’m really excited to see how they come to the screen.
This should land somewhere in the middle of our WYCU rewatch, so we’ll likely step back for a special episode to cover it during the middle of our chronology.
Join us online as we shout “Who… Is… Deadliest?” at the screen and online.
Heard good things, so a chance stop at my FLCBS netted me this:
Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 (2025)
…and it’s good. I like the vibe, which reminds me of the more unique titles from Marvel’s Epic or DC’s Vertigo lines from bird (which is my only real reference when it comes to comics).
The 6-issue limited series by Camp and Rodriguez suits me too. It does likely mean this will come out as a trade at some point, but I can grab the monthlies and enjoy them.
This has been on my mind for a little bit, ever since last summer when seeing Alien:Romulus in the theatre. Of course, that along with Deadpool and Wolverine led to our exploration of the Nostalgia curve. But following Romulus a discussion with a friend led to the discussion of the shared timelines of the Alien and Predator franchises, and the realization that I haven’t actually seen most of the Predator films, save for the first two, and still hadn’t gotten around to seeing the well-regarded Prey either.
I was due for re-watch, or watch in many cases.
So with learning today about Alien: Earth, a new TV series set in the Alien universe will be coming to streaming in the summer of 2025, I thought it was time to start that re-watch. However, that’s a lot of movies to get through before summer, and we’ve still got Andor season 2 and some other projects going on too.
(Yes, my media consumption occurs at a glacial pace; I get enough free time to get through maybe one or two movies a week.)
But…
What if we watched our way through the WYCU chronologically?
The WYCU is the Weyland-Yutani Cinematic Universe, of course, one of the key pieces of memetic connective tissue between the two (aside from the xenomorph skull inside the predator ship in Predator 2. It’s amazing how much inspiration comes from a little piece of throw-away set dressing.) Weyland Yutani, W-Y for short, is the interstellar megacorp behind much of the machinations of the Alien franchise, and they have their hand in the going on of the Predator-verse as well. Much like CHOAM from the Dune franchise, they’ve spread across the galaxy, and have their fingers (or talons?) in pretty much everything.
I think I’ve we’ve mentioned it in passing when talking about our EvilCorp series, a look at the MegaCorps that permeate the science fiction settings of the future, showing up in everything from present-day cyberpunk settings like Shadowrun to the aforementioned Dune 20000 years in the future.
(If I haven’t mentioned EvilCorp yet, then here’s where we started.)
But we digress: what about the WYCU chronologically? The list has been laid our by others (find a link), so we’re by no means the first, but the nice thing is with Alien: Earth set 2 years before the original 1979 Alien film, it means a chronological re-watch mostly involves the Predator franchise (and about an hour of Prometheus).
Sorry, by chronological I mean by within the continuity, not release order. This, this has some potential. There’s only 9 movies or so to “catch-up” to the continuity before Alien: Earth comes out in “summer 2025”. We can do this.
For fun, and future reference, here’s what the WCYU chronology looks like:
WCYU Chronology
Title
‘Verse
Year
Chrono Order
Prometheus *
A
2012
1
Prey
P
2022
2
Predator
P
1987
3
Predator 2
P
1990
4
Alien v Predator
X
2004
5
Alien v Predator 2: Requiem
X
2007
6
The Predator
P
2018
7
Predators
P
2010
8
Predator: Badlands***
P
2025
9
Prometheus **
A
2012
10
Alien: Covenant
A
2017
11
Alien: Earth
A
2025
12
Alien
A
1979
13
Alien: Romulus
A
2024
14
Aliens
A
1986
15
Alien3
A
1992
16
Alien: Resurrection
A
1997
17
*: the first bit of Prometheus, in the distant past **: the rest of the movie, as it appears in the main timeline ***: there's also a rumored stealth Predator movie slated for 2025 that may come out before Badlands, but we probably won't see that until it's too late
In a rare turn of events, I recently completed a video game. This happens much less often than one would think (and not counting the recent Half-Life playthroughs I mentioned a little while ago). This is partly due to time, and perhaps partly due to engagement, as the pacing of many games, once the “gameplay loop” is firmly established is some combination of slow, boring, or frustrating.
But there’s something zen-like about a good fishing game. Enter Dredge (2023):
This is a boat-based fishing game with a dark plot, where you start off with a simple boat, not a lot of memories, and a fishing village with more going on behind the scenes. The gameplay is relatively simple: sail boat, spot fish, get fish, sail back, sell fish, try not to lose your mind.
This is the dark twist behind the game: a lot of the fish are Weird, and the locals too, and the various setting elements would seem right at home in an expansion for the Arkham Horror board game. As you continue fishing to fill your hold with the various species for cash money, more and more of them start turning up wrong.
And as they get weirder and weirder, and you progress through more of the zones of the game, the story builds up as well. I really liked the different places to fish, the relative ease of following along the main storyline, and how I was able to complete the main arc of the story at about the same time as I had gotten (most) of the unlocks. It never felt too grindy, and if there was a grind, well, I was just doing some more fishing.
I guess the lesson here might be that it’s not a grind if it’s a grind that you like.
Anyhoo, the game never outstayed it’s welcome, and progress was enough to make me feel like I was moving forward, even when I was a little bit stuck. I finished it, and went back for the alternate endings, and enjoyed how they got to the finish. Bravo!
Recommended to check out if you see it on a sale. I got it off Epic, and enjoyed it a lot.
“How did we find new music back in the day?” This question was making the rounds on one of the social media sites the other day, and it got me thinking. Partly because of my own return to purchasing music directly over the past year, and partly due to our ongoing engagement with nostalgia culture (which we talked about at length last summer – see the Nostalgia Curve series).
And of course, as with all things millenial and younger on social media, “back in the day” is some combination of “before the internet” and “last century”.
Rude!
The answer is a little simpler though: papers and zines, word of mouth, and mixtapes. The print media still exists, even if it’s not nearly as influential or dominant as it was in the past (and we can get into a bit of the history of the local magazines like Vox or Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, and how they were foundational for the various scenes in the 1990s), but the mix-tape seems to have fallen largely by the wayside.
Punk-O-Rama III (1998, Epitaph records)Punk-O-Rama III (1998, Epitaph records) – Back cover and tracklist
Of course “mixtape” is a term that encapsulates the platonic ideal of what was shared. A lot of mixtapes were compilation CDs (above) and LPs (below) too. Often this was arranged by the label, to feature singles of as much of their talent as possible*, as with the Epitaph “Punk-O-Rama” series, with Volume III shown above. But pre-internet (or at least, before music on the internet became widely accessible, and 1998’s Punk-O-Rama III was right on the cusp of that), it was one of the reliable ways for a young lad to check out a lot of bands, or even just get a single you were looking for. Distribution wasn’t great “back in the day” either, and a lot of times you were stuck with that you could get your hands on.
Rock Sizzlers (1984, Polystar)Rock Sizzlers (1984, Polystar) – Back cover and tracklist
And what you could get your hands on was wildly erratic. Witness 1984’s Rock Sizzlers, from Polystar above. A mix of top 40 hits, movie soundtrack singles (Flashdance apparently being popular back then. You can tell by the inclusion of – you guessed it – Frank Stallone), some rock singles, and some pure pop. Modern English, Kiss, Soft Cell, Agnetha Faltskog, and more). That is as eclectic a mix as has every been dreamed up by the writers for a SCTV spoof sketch. Often the mixtapes would be more on theme:
Nutty Numbers (1978, Ktel)Nutty Numbers (1978, Ktel) – BC and tracklist
…such as 1978’s Nutty Numbers, by Ktel, a collection of comedy and novelty songs with a cute cartoon cover. (I may have overplayed this one more than is healthy for a young developing mind. However, I’m sure modern parents that are all too far aware of Bluey can understand.)…
Canadian Mint (1974, Ktel)Canadian Mint (1974, Ktel) – BC and tracklist
… or 1974’s Canadian Mint, also from Ktel, a collection of early seventies singles from what I imagine are Canadian artists. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure, as while I recognize BTO and Chilliwack and The Stampeders from the mandatory replays on Canadian Classic Rock Radio, many of the rest I’ve never heard of at all.
Regardless of the source, the Ktel records shown here shown at least the hints of a theme, of a selection criteria at work, and so are examples of what I like to call “commodified curation“. (We will be talking more about that in a month or so, so right now that’s a bit of a placeholder). This curatorial aspect is key, “back in the day” as it is now. One of the things lamented and lost in this era of algorithmic delivery of content tuned to your interests and needs is that “human touch”. And though this may occasionally allow for moments of serendipity and discovery, more often than not it feeds us more of the same, “variations on a theme”.
Of course when it comes to mixtapes, the actual mixtapes represented one of earlier forms of social media – shared and spreadable between friends, or traded via PO boxes and mail envelopes through addresses listed in the back of the aforementioned zines. Or perhaps the mixtapes are simply the last of the analog social media, along with the other tape traders – both VHS and Beta – of Wrestling and Anime and other more salacious content:
“White and Nerdy” (Yankovic, 2006)
Regardless, the mixtape era represent something lost, something concrete and knowable, a discrete snapshot of a time, place, theme, or choice, plucked out of the endless river of our culture, and fixed in time, as opposed to the eternal now of the digital streams.
There are signs this is changing however. We’ll follow up on this soon.
*: Which makes me think of record labels in terms of wrestling promotions, and hmm, I’m sent. I’m not going to let this analogy die. I need to dig into this one further.
