Species II (1998)

Species II arrives in 1998 as the second installment of a franchise that was never in danger of being mistaken for a moral project. Peter Medak takes the reins and delivers a creature feature in which an astronaut returns from Mars carrying alien DNA, impregnates women who die in the delivery room, and spawns a brood of hybrids in his father's shed. The film earned a nine percent approval rating and twenty-six million dollars worldwide. Audiences handed it a C. There is no mystery here to solve.

On the cultural ledger, the picture is a near-total blank. There is no romantic subtext between women, no climate anxiety, no critique of the wealthy, no celebration of bodies as they are, no neurodivergent interiority, no rewriting of the historical record, and no sermonizing of any kind. The film is not interested in instructing anyone. It is interested in prosthetics, gore, and the sight of Natasha Henstridge in a state of undress. Medak admitted discomfort with the nudity and defended it as necessary to the story, which is the sort of defense that has never once been offered in good faith.

The single faint flicker of contemporary sensibility is the casting of Mykelti Williamson as Dennis Gamble, a role written to replace Forest Whitaker's character from the original after Whitaker proved unavailable. Gamble is a competent military man who exists to be infected and then to donate his sickle cell trait as a weapon. His race is never mentioned. He is a plot device with a pulse. This is not representation in any meaningful sense; it is a staffing decision. The film closes with a pregnant Eve in an ambulance and a promise of more. Some legacies refuse to die, and the Species franchise is one of them.