This post contains massive Alien: Romulus spoilers.

“I’m not going to go after the women in the audience. I’m going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs.”

So declared Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon in the 2002 documentary The Alien Saga, and no one can say he failed. The most famous moment in Alien involved Kane (John Hurt) giving violent birth after a facehugger forced itself inside him. Although later contributors would leave aside the male focus, pregnancy metaphors continued to drive Alien‘s sequels and prequels. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) finds a surrogate daughter in Aliens, gives birth to a xenomorph in Alien 3, and destroys her offspring in Alien Resurrection. When Alien director Ridley Scott returned to the franchise with Prometheus, he included an abortion scene in which Elizabeth Shaw...