Metroid Dread is the Prometheus to the Series’ Alien

“And also a liberal helping of Alien: Resurrection and absolutely nothing about Alien Cubed”

Ok, I promise that the title of this will make sense by the end of things here, just bear with me. This post was actually supposed to originally be a part of my review of Metroid Dread from a few weeks ago, but then that ended up being like three thousand words longer than intended, so I pushed it off until last week. Then last week I had that whole debacle with the soup, and pushed it off until this week. So here we finally are, at an article with a title that makes zero sense, but I hope that, by the end, you’ll kind of see what I mean. Think of this as a supplement to the review from two weeks ago. An appendix fit to burst, if you will. But, if you want a recap of some key words here and don’t want to read my review of the game, Metroid Dread is a recently-released Switch game, and the newest title in Nintendo’s long-running sci-fi exploration-platformer series Metroid. And I want to explain why that game is for the Metroid series what Prometheus is to the Alien series. This’ll work out and it’s got more grounding that you’d think, trust me.

Content Warning: Gore in some video links. And spoilers for Metroid Dread and most of the Alien movies!

So, to build even more context, the Alien series is, of course, referring to the franchise spawned by the seminal 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver. I think that’s pretty obvious. Everyone who’s even remotely plugged into sci-fi or horror knows about Alien, and plenty of people who aren’t into that stuff know about Alien, simply because of the ubiquitous nature of the movie’s more famous scenes, and the fact that, you know, Alien was huge when it came out. They’re still making the damn things, much to my great pleasure. Because I fucking love these movies. I love them to absolute death. I’ve seen all of them, including the weird Alien vs. Predator knock-offs, and I want more of them. I always want more of them. And I can’t believe I’ve barely ever talked about them on this site. It’s a shame that this is going to be a shorter piece because I promised myself I would stop writing enormous essays and burning myself out on this thing, since I’d love to talk more about Alien.

There are some pretty strong similarities between the Alien franchise and the Metroid franchise. Both are sci-fi horror stories with a strong reliance on atmosphere, creature design, and worldbuilding, both feature strong female leads that survive despite the odds (and tend to blow up planets behind them), both have thin, angular, dark-hued reptilian monstrosities tracking down the leads, both tend to take place inside claustrophobic, airshaft-ventilated space stations, and both have backstabbing (or at least questionable) AI computers in conversation with the leads. Literally, the list of comparisons is so long that there’s an entire wiki page about it on the Metroid fan site, and here’s a poorly-written article explaining it further. But not only that, one of the directors of the original Metroid games has gone on record saying that Alien was a pretty big inspiration to the series, and that the Metroid series even evolved in some ways that are parallel to that of the Alien franchise. In a lot of ways, Metroid is literally the closest we can get to an actually good Alien video game (except for Alien: Isolation, which is pretty damn incredible).

But what, then, makes Metroid Dread the Prometheus of the Metroid series? Well, as illustrated in the video I linked to above (and here it is again!), the first Metroid game sees Samus meet an alien creature that latches on to her head, much like the facehugger in Alien. The second Metroid game sees Samus traveling to a Metroid hive, just like Ripley does in Aliens. Super Metroid is only Alien^3, or Alien Cubed: Nine Times the Alien, by virtue of being third in line. Fuck Alien^3, I hate that movie. All my friends hate that movie. I can’t believe the same guy who did Se7en and Fight Club made that train wreck. But I love Super Metroid, and it’s more similar to the original Alien anyway, but that spot’s already taken, so we’ll just roll with it. Metroid Fusion is like the fourth Alien film, Alien: Resurrection, because of the stuff where Samus’s DNA is merged with the Metroid DNA and she becomes a Metroid-Human hybrid, just like Ripley in Alien: Resurrection. Except Metroid Fusion doesn’t have that terrifying alien-human baby thing, thankfully. Although, come to think of it, Metroid Dread kind of does have that (and real spoilers on that link, and from here on out!). Hm.

Before we complicate ourselves too much, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Metroid Dread is the fifth Metroid game, which puts it in line with Prometheus, which is the fifth Alien movie. This does not count Alien Vs. Predator or AvP Requiem, because those don’t count in any universe as Alien movies, and this doesn’t count the Metroid Prime series because that’s a different set of games. It’s confusing if you haven’t played any of the games, I know, but trust me; Metroid Dread is actually Metroid 5 and Prometheus is actually Alien 5. The fact that Prometheus is a prequel is irrelevant here; pretend that isn’t a thing. Instead, let’s look at another factor that support this hypothesis only circumstantially. So, they’re both the fifth thing in their series. Both represent a return to the series after the longest hiatus in the series’s history, with there being fifteen years between Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus and nineteen years between Metroid: Fusion and Metroid: Dread. And, finally, there are “no” actual metroids in Metroid: Dread, just as there are no “aliens” in Prometheus. By that I mean there are no true xenomorphs in Prometheus. I mean, technically there’s an almost-xenomorph right at the end of Prometheus, and there’s those weird snake things and facehuggers and the big squid, but those aren’t technically the titular Alien. And there is one metroid in Metroid Dread, except it’s Samus.

Yeah, so, at the end of Metroid Dread, right before Samus dies, she actually releases all her true Metroid power granted to her by her Metroid DNA, and turns into a metroid. Her suit gets all scaly and gross, and it’s so fucking cool. She proceeds to beat the ever-living shit out of the final boss, steals the energy from his secret flying island, and when he turns into a giant bird-monster, she shoots a laser through his head, before running back to her ship during a self-destruct sequence I almost failed the first time I played it. It’s a sick-ass ending, honestly, and I’m really glad they went all-out for it. This is, of course, more like Alien: Resurrection than it is Prometheus, what with Samus literally being a hybrid monstrosity, but I’m gonna relegate that to the back of the barrel with the other things I haven’t cherry-picked to back up this claim. Either way, point still stands; no metroids in Metroid, no aliens in Alien (Prometheus, I mean).

But what really is more meaningful to me is the comparison to be made between the game and the movie in where they stand in respect to the rest of their series. I mean this on a structural, emotional, and narrative level. Get this: both Metroid Dread and Prometheus represent a long-awaited return to form after an interim of side-stories and action romps, both revitalized the franchise (or, in Metroid Dread’s case, made the series viable for the first time ever), but both suffer from polarizing their audiences, an overzealous narrative, and paralyzing lack of uniqueness and unfulfilled potential, especially in a field that has dramatically grown since the initial introductions. This, to me, is what makes them so alike. When Prometheus first came out, people were stoked by the visuals and atmosphere, and it’s a great movie to watch, but the overly-complicated plot and heady “big questions” the movie asked weren’t all that exciting or fit for a good movie. And it’s also missing the actual Alien, so, like, what’s the point? And in a similar way, Metroid Dread is incredible in a lot of ways, namely the fact that it’s just a joy to play and has killer bosses, but it’s missing that Metroid atmosphere. The plot is too much of an exposition dump (except for the ending), it’s a pretty linear game for a series based around its expansive width, and, like Prometheus, it could have just been so much more revolutionary. Metroid Dread is kind of just a lot of the same, in a roller-coaster ride of greatest hits, much like Prometheus. Plus, there’s barely any backtracking, so, like, what’s the point?

This isn’t to say that they aren’t still great pieces of media. They’re both really important to their respective series for financial and narrative reasons, too; Prometheus introduces us to the strange origins of the alien, and Dread concludes Samus’s X-Parasite story arc. Plus, they both heavily feature evil precursor races that are responsible for the creation of each series’s respective big bad aliens, and both feature evil robots. Oh, and a side note, the EMMI in Dread even have big spikes that pop out of their face, which they use to kill Samus, just like the freaky extra mouths that the aliens have in Alien. So even the pharyngeal jaw finally gets a rep in Metroid, though the penetrative phallic imagery is still lacking.

I keep coming back to the fact that, after 20 years (or in Alien’s case, 15 years), I expected more from the big return. Metroid Dread is great an all, I love it, but there are other games around that, nowadays, I think are better examples of what a Metroid sequel should have been, especially with Nintendo’s budget. I mean, hell, even Alien: Isolation did the killer-monster-hunting-you-down better than Dread has now done, and that’s like the main gimmick of the game! I wanted more EMMI, more exploration, more options, more bosses, more metroids. And in a lot of ways, the team that made Metroid Dread did deliver this, what with tons of in-game content directed towards those who play against the game’s intended path. But most players won’t see that. And the same with Prometheus, I wanted more horror, more aliens, more Alien, more tense air vent scenes, less focus on the precursors, yadda yadda you get the idea. Both are great in their own ways, but to me, they smell of missed potential. You can kind of hold your nose over it and waft it, like a chemical in a beaker, and get that hint. I can’t avoid that feeling.

Ah, well. At the very least, we did get Alien: Covenant a few years later, which totally ruled. It’s not as great as the original, of course, but it’s much closer to what I would want out of an Alien movie than what Prometheus had. Still yet to be seen if we’ll get anything else, though. So, if the Metroid series keeps going the way the Alien series has gone, the next 2D Metroid game will be an even closer return to form, with actual metroids, even more exploration, different branching paths, and a closer, darker atmosphere, like that of Super Metroid, but it’ll still get sidetracked by weird, sometimes homoerotic, narrative tangents that don’t quite add up to much. Though maybe that’s not a bad thing. And either way, we’ve still got Metroid Prime 4 coming out eventually…? Maybe? Who knows if that’ll ever actually happen. But for now, it’s best to just be content with what I have, I suppose. I can always jump back into Dread and play the hard mode, or go back and play Super Metroid, or play the other Metroid games for the first time, just as I could binge the Alien movies again, and subsequently explore the other sci-fi horror movies out there that I haven’t seen. Maybe I’ll even try my hand at writing my own Alien movie, for shits and giggles (Ridley Scott please hire me), while at the same time I try to learn C# so I can program my own Metroidvania (Reggie Fils-Aime please hire me).

Except I’ll be skipping Alien^3 and Metroid: Other M. And I can tell you right away what those both have in common; they both suck ass. End of story.