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Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel
brumgrunt writes "After three decades of speculation, original Alien director Ridley Scott has signed on to the new Fox sequel. 'Nothing is known about the set-up of the new movie, except that chronologically it precedes the plight of the Nostromo. Since it's obviously going to involve the human race [...] Writer Jon Spaihts successfully pitched to Fox and Scott Free Productions, and is working on the script.'"
they mostly come at night... mostly
At least I had a few years without Xenomorphs showing up in my nightmare.
(IIRC, the nightmares involved having a pulse rifle that ran out of ammo.)
I want the story of the ship the Nostromo found.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Now just sign up James Cameron to do the movie after *that* and we'll be good.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
Is "Alien vs. Predator" and "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem" part of the canon? Will it be for this prequel?
IMDB currently lists him having FOURTEEN projects "in development". So either he spends barely any time at all on any of them (and they all suck) or this movie will not come out until sometime in the 2020's (and we will all be dead from swine flu).
"I don't know if you've been keeping score... But we're getting our asses kicked, here!" I love it and can't wait.
When will we get Alien vs Predator vs Terminator vs Kindergarton Cop?
If this one goes through, it cannot be allowed to suck. If the franchise takes any more abuse, it'll end up applying for asylum in Iceland. Then they'll give to to Bjork for Christmas and we're all f***ed.
I so hope he can pull this off, unfortunately horror/action directors don't seem to age as well as suspense/noir/drama directors do.
OFCS saved me from the latest Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Transformer and Terminator fiascoes, this may be another one I'll have to miss...but I hope not. Ridley Scott may be old, but he has an eye for quality, and he has clout. Here's hoping he can nail this, and give us a proper Alien trilogy (prequel, original, and Aliens of course).
*NOTE TO FOX - please put the money down and hire a talented writer and editor!*
(my other hand has fingers crossed for James Cameron and Avatar)
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I sure hope they throw a bit at the Pilot/Space Jockey subplot.
There's lots already proposed for that item's existence in the story, and I'd be happy with almost any of them.
Meh -- after Titanic I lost all my faith in James Cameron. I don't want to let him near the Alien franchise again, Ridley Scott has yet to let me down, though. I always thought Alien was better, anyway, but that is just my opinion.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I just browsed IMDB's memorable quotes section for "Aliens" - It seems that most of the character's scripts are in there!
There must be close to 115 quotes in the section - that's got to be some sort of record.
(I lost count after ~100. I dont know Perl so could someone be so kind as to count the number of section breaks in the HTML?)
...you "illiterati"!
This story should make sense because the original story directly implied prior knowledge of the Alien organism prior to its "discovery" in the movie--although why anyone thought it needed "protecting" is beyond me. It always seemed quite capable of protecting itself.
Best alien joke: The cartoon of the Imperial Storm Trooper with a face-grabber on its face saying, "I hate being the one to have to walk Lord Darth Vader's pet."
And yes, after seeing the original Alien in an evening movie showing without knowing what it was really about ahead of time, I left the bathroom light on that night afterwards just in case. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
the 1986 'aliens' is what made my heart thump and want to be a space marine.
funny, it made me want to be an alien...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Since it's obviously going to involve the human race [...] Writer Jon Spaihts successfully pitched to Fox
So...it was successfully pitched to Fox because...it will involve the human race? Only Fox greenlights movies involving humans? Or do they always greenlight movies involving humans?
While his style is well-known, there is possibly still something more to ask of him that would tie the movies together outside of any simple plotline.
If he could be commissioned for something new, using some of the erotic or torture pieces as a haunting/dream-like "infection" plot device, he might be able to really breath some new visual life into the series.
Giger was given ample room to express himself in the original, but sadly was not credited as much as he should have been for the derivative works of the monsters. This could be a great way to welcome him back, although I've read that he can be a bit eccentric to work with (The Ghost Train ordeal).
Will they try doing something good (creative)
or yet another AvP filler ?
There was rumors that Alien5 was going for Alien2-quality. So now we
wont get that :(
Perhaps they aim for Alien1-quality?
Either way, 97% chance they will fail and the poor audience will suffer the cost.
I remember a time when they did movies because they had something
important to tell us. And something new to show us.
Though Aliens was fun, Alien is far superior a film since it was a true Sci-Fi/Horror experience. If they can recapture that slow, moody fear of the first film, I'm in! But the second I see explosion after explosion and excessive gunplay in any trailer, I'm out.
Can't the franchise just die after the horrible efforts done by Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien Resurrection and David Fincher's Aliens 3? I think these films ruined Aliens forever. And After the first sequel the direction and feel of the franchise went in a massively different direction from Ridley Scott's version.
James Cameron's Aliens was fun but Ridley Scott's Alien has so much atmosphere to it. But Ridley Scott's version, while more artistic and interesting was not the box office smash that Aliens was.
Perhaps there is some way to recover the franchise, but I suspect your average movie-goer will be pissed at Scott's attempts at a prequel because it will likely not be anything like a film done by James Cameron, which is what people have come to expect from Aliens.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The first half of Alien was a well-produced space story with interesting character interactions and nice effects. But the second half devolved into a very typical Friday-the-13th scenario, in which the characters wander off one by one into the spooky darkness and get killed. The main departure from convention was that the sole survivor wasn't a shy female virgin. Harry Dean Stanton even did the classic horror movie death maneuver: walk into a dark room, look up at the ceiling while slowly turning around, and end up backing into the monster. This director was hailed as a genius? Come on.
Not necessarily. In the film, they use hypersleep - suspended animation - because even at whatever multiple of the speed of light the ships move at, trips still take months. (Script says they're near Zeta II Reticuli, 39 light years from Earth, and they still have ten months to go.) If they can transmit data faster than ships move (or unmanned ships can move faster) then mobilizing a specialist team might take more time than they want to spend, when they can divert a freighter going by anyway.
The novelization (non-canon, but working from the shooting script) had Ash saying that the beacon had a fairly detailed warning, so the Company may well have known that parasitic aliens were there. No biggie, let the crew get infected and the ship return on autopilot.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Now that she is no longer employed could this be her new gig?
The first movie was about a single alien, the second was about about many aliens. If this is a prequel, it will have to be about the egg of that first alien before it hatched.
"Hey, what's that?"
"I dunno, man, but it looks pretty strange."
"I've got a bad feeling about this..."
(spooky music)
The company received the signal and they decoded it. The subterfuge is that they send the Nostromo in to investigate an UNIDENTIFIED distress signal when they full well knew that it was instead a warning.
The book of the movie, you should read it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
robert rodriguez is producing a new predator movie, called predators (like alien is to aliens?). perhaps on the predator home planet, again, completely ignoring the whole avp bullshit
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40865
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40879
additionally, the director will be some hotshot hungarian horror director named nimrod antal. aintitcool had an interveiw with rodriguez about the project:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41590
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
On slashdot, everyone can hear you quote the WRONG MOVIE!
This is ALIEN, not ALIENS.
To get you started:
It's a robot. Cowboyneal is a god damn robot.
Bones are bent outward, like he exploded from inside.
Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Meaow. Here Jonesy.
Open the door!
I can't do that dave... oops wrong movie (this line not the previous one).
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
to find a dog, you merely open the closest door, and it will inevitably smack and disturb a sleeping dog
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i have an inside track on the ideas they are basing the prequel on, and it harkens back to classic themes in shockingly new and original ways, not at all feeling like some high school sophomore clicked around a bit on wikipedia and retread tired, stale ideas
for example, the story of the alien in the prequel will revolve around important rules that one should never break, which of course get inevitably broken:
1. don't get the alien wet, or it immediately reproduces more of its kind asexually by budding from its back
3. keep the alien away from bright lights... especially sunlight. this will kill it
4. and don't ever feed the alien after midnight
i think this is a brilliant and entirely original idea
furthermore, the movie will start with a crashed ship full of religious pilgrims, a stowaway, a dangerous criminal, etc. the alien hunts them all down relentlessly one by one whenever the planet falls into eclipse and darkness. but the fearless criminal has special surgically altered eyes that allows him to see in pitch black, so he turns the tables and hunts the alien instead
again, a brilliant and entirely original idea from hollywood for the alien prequel!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I tend to agree that aliens is more an action movie than a horror. However, with the current fetish with making movies after games, wouldn't it be cool if James Cameron directed a Warhammer40k movie? Those are the true space marines. Hell, you can make it even resemble aliens by letting those space marines fight the Tyranids on a remote planet or something.
I just pray that Uwe Bolle doesn't direct a movie based on the warhammer universe. It would suck. Hard.
Why wait for another Aliens movie? Grab your copy of Tremulous and get going! Pronto!
My nightmares involve not being able to pounce away from a chainsuit fast enough.
I knew that some humor-resistant nerds will pop up and complain the I forgot THAT villian from some obscure sci-fi TV series from 1918 --- this is after all slashdot.
But just 4 minutes to this complaint after my post leaves me impressed.
and as a sidenote Cylons are not really evil since the sixes and eights have sex with humans.
Not a great movie, mind you, but a great idea... :)
No not really a great idea. So expect it to come out in 2011.
ok there is a blatant tie in for weyland yutani / colonies in firefly / serenity - 1st episode the cannon that is fired at the battle of serenity - the HUD has a weyland yutani logo in it for chrissake - there is so much more to this universe than has been explored
i love to swim, but any large deep body of water i find myself in the middle of, and that jaws opening sequence fills my head
like you, i saw it at an age i really shouldn't have
although, fear of large fish is pretty primal, so i don't know how much of my reaction is the innate, or psychological damage from the movie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The original Alien is still the best by a long shot.
While they're at it, they could make Alien and Aliens non-canon and just start anew!
They could choose to completely ignore everything that's ever come before without any explanation whatsoever (hello Batman Begins)
Or maybe they could do some time travel thing and claim it's now an alternate universe (hi Star Trek)
Better yet, they could make it -seem- like it should be canon, but make it so utterly different from the other movies to the point of being confusing and having to leave the theater thinking "Well.. it had an Alien.. and they mentioned the Nostromo.. I *guess* that makes it canon?" (howdy, Terminator 4)
So many options when you're trying to re-boot/re-imagine/re-fuck-up a franchise.
Here's a thought.. maybe they could ditch the whole Alien idea and use their newfound funding to just make a kick-ass *relevant* movie. That way nobody can whine about how it killed their childhood memories, and if it ends up being -good-, they can actually pat themselves on the back instead of realizing that most people only saw it 'cos they liked the original (first two) movies.
is a comment like this modded as insightful rather than funny
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The problem with your idea is that it requires originality, which is something Hollywood simply doesn't have. They're just not any good at coming up with something totally new and making a kick-ass movie about it. They have had successes with this in the distant past, such as with Alien, The Terminator (1), etc., but these were all 25-30+ years ago. For some reason, they seem to be incapable of making totally new stories now, and have to revive old ones by making not sequels (like they used to do), but prequels.
And even when they do come up with something new and successful, it's usually an adaptation of a novel, such as Lord of the Rings.
So these days, since movies are expensive to make and risky, studios try to avoid risk by taking a story that's tried-and-true (Batman, Star Trek, Terminator, etc.) and making yet another version of it. Some of these are actually pretty good; I liked Christopher Nolan's Batman movies far more than any of those which preceded it. His were realistic and dark, the others were cartoonish and silly. JJ Abrahm's Star Trek was a pretty good retake on the series, considering many of the previous movies were downright terrible (ST:TMP, Star Trek V, Generations), but it probably would have been nice if that effort had been put into something totally new and fresh. I haven't seen T4 yet, though I'd like to, but T3 was also downright terrible.
You know, I loved the first two movies, and would have liked the series to progress as it seemed it should - 3 would have the Alien actually brought back to a space station around Earth, then 4 could be them getting TO Earth.
But the point I wanted to make is that the next sequel should have someone stumble on the Alien's home planet - where they originally are from. Think about it - they are communal, live in a colony and can build a new one with a single individual, like some of our insects. They cooperate, can withstand very hostile environments. They have eggs that can do the same and lie dormant for long periods of time. They have lightning speed, hide really well, and have acid for blood.
Now think about the world that could produce such a creature, with all those defenses. The Aliens.... are not even CLOSE to the top of the food chain. Imagine what horrors you would find on the world that produced them....
THAT's the movie I want to see.
alien was basically "big bug in space". they had the thing's life cycle thought out in terms of egg->parasite->adult. it was really the first scifi movie where the monster wasn't a one dimensional big baddie, but a whole well-thought out three dimensional (biologically speaking) xenomorph, where the biological cycle itself was truly alien
and yet NOT alien. fear of spiders, snakes, sharks, is innate and natural. and bugs usually elicit some sort of ancient biological horror because of what they represent in terms of threat to survival. heck, the alien's life cycle really is the same as plenty of parasitical insects on earth, like the tse-tse fly. so alien also plugged into this whole ancient psychological hate/ fear of parasites and insects, just like jaws did to great effect when it plugged into fear of big fish in the water (which came out what, 2 years before?). i guess they naturally extended that to big snake with anaconda, arachnophobia, etc, but obviously to not as great success
then of course along came aliens, which bucked the odds of the sequel being worse than the original, and it did by basically expanding upon the biological notions in the first movie: well, if alien is just a big bug in space, lets give them a social insect like a hive of wasps or a colony of ants. complete of course with the queen, and her giant alien egg laying apparatus. so again, its totally alien, yet at the same time totally familiar and natural to anyone who has given even a cursory interest in the happenings of social insects, which basically describes human experience in any rural/ suburban community, not to mention probaby hardwired into our psychology as a threat, again, from millions of years of exposure
finally, in aliens, they had the primal biological notion of species versus species vying for survival of its offspring, perhaps the most primal directive besides sex. with alien queen going up against ripley, where both motivations are the same: alien queen enraged at the death of her offspring, ripley protecting her (adopted) human child. complete with the line "get away from her you bitch!": its basically a catfight, something you would see on the serengeti: female lioness versus female hyena
because in nature, as well as human society, no masculine rage can possibly be matched by the female's rage at protecting her offsping. its incredibly primal, incredibly biological, and incredibly powerful as a movie plot device, because its so real
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... rename the original 1979 film to "Alien: A New Hope."
Edith Keeler Must Die
Still watches Alien/Aliens/Alien3/Alien4 at least 2-3 times a year, This makes me happy. It's nice to give it back to someone who actually fucking understands the movies and what they are. I'm hoping it turns out great answers some questions, and even poses some new ones.
Here's hoping I can add a 5th movie to the yearly watching list.
oogly boogly!
she didnt have those big fake boobs during the nightmare scene in Aliens; it was that scene that convinced her to get them. They did wonders for her in Galaxy Quest.
he only had one thing to say:
The money comes at night...money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
On Slashdot no on can hear you scream!
make that LV-426...lol
Anyone care to post a link?
I failed to google one =(
Maybe because I'm still scarred from the Star Wars Prequels. Though I'd pay to watch Jar Jar get killed by one of em.
It's obvious from later movies that the company wanted the aliens to get technology to create bio-weapons, clone them as super-solders or something else along those lines.
It could be argued that the value of the defense contracts outweighed the potential loss of the Nostromo. Or instead of defense contracts they needed the aliens to suppress brewing rebellions potentially threatening very large profit sources.
As far as sending the Nostromo itself, the need for alien technology could have been time-sensitive and they couldn't afford decades of delay while another recovery crew was sent from Earth.
I just wondered if anybody else noticed that graphics from the spinner flight control system in Blade Runner were reused in the escape pod in Alien.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
miaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuv!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I fear this is simply Ridley wanting to make a quick buck, he's not getting any younger. Had he passionately believed in creating a franchise out of Alien, I don't believe he would've walked away from it so quickly, nor would he have waited 30 years to pick the reigns out of the cesspit. Reality is the series, that should never have been, has hit rock bottom and the suits, that control Genericwood, offered Ridley sufficient lewt to commit him to wiping the slate clean, so they can milk it a bit longer. It's hugely depressing that even a talent such as Ridley Scott can't escape the "Sequel, Prequel or Reboot" bubble they've got going on, but I digress...
As much as I adore Cameron's film (it's in my top 10), it didn't do anything to add to the original work and departed from the original's artistic vision completely. For all intents and purposes Aliens didn't need Alien. Cameron could have done the same film, with really quite minor changes under it's own banner (and probably wished he had when Alien 3 came along and torpedoed *his* plans for the series, he didn't try to hide his rage either). Indeed, Aliens was simply the result of him wanting to do a big budget war film, but being unable to get funding to do it and Fox wanting to milk the success of Alien (concieved as a one-off). Hitching up his idea to Fox's moneytrain was the result
Cameron was decent enough not to openly shit all over Scott's work, but he never really intended to follow with the original vision. Aliens was all about him hi-jacking the brand, for his own purposes (for better or worse). He sidelined Giger completely, despite Giger being keen to get involved, having been a key creative element on the original (his involvement went beyond scultping the Alien). Cameron redesigned the xenomorphs and invented the new queen and hive, without consulting Giger. He threw the whole bio-mechanical vision Giger had drawn up for Alien out the window, the "perfect biomechanical stalker" xenomorph went out of the window infavor of "hivemind bug/fodder", Ripley also changed, a lot, etc.
I won't bother to go into Alien 3 and the abomination that was Ressurection, but they pretty much cement the fact that Alien, the franchise, is pretty much whatever the active director/writer/studios wants it to be, and thus as a series is worthless. Put simply: Unless films (or books, for that matter) are designed, from the outset, to be a series, with a well defined roadmap and the original creative team involved at some level, they really shouldn't get follow ups, particularly not gravedigs decades later. As to wanting to know what how the derelict came to be, etc, whatever happend to having a bit of imagination?
I'm sure most people have theories as to how events unfolded. This prequel won't reveal the "absolute truth", just some hack's interpretation of what happened, crafted to flog tickets, rather than being what makes sense, or originally intended (original writers aren't involved). For those that lack imagination (the shame): The Dark Horse comics/novels, which had some input from the original writers, dealt with the "Space Jockey" issue decades ago. Their interpretation is no less legit than whatever they cook up for this, imo. 'Canon' means jackshit when a franchise has no firm base and is made up on the fly, by whoever happens to get their dirty fingers on the IP.
Basic human mechanics explain the success and failure of these films.
1. "Alien". --The alien was a grand mystery, a freaky horror show. It was scary and 'alien' and that was what drew us in and thrilled audiences. We are frightened of things we cannot understand and at the same time drawn toward those things in order to understand them. Basic human survival circuitry in action translated into a box-office success.
2. "Aliens". --Okay. Now we get it. We understand the basic biology of the "monster" and we're not scared anymore. Well, we're a little scared, but actually, we're also sort of pissed off that we got our asses handed to us the first time and that we screamed like little girls. Fuckin' aliens. I'd like to see how those ugly bastards would stand up against us in a REAL fight, like with grenades and machine guns. (Classic, "Who would win? Spider Man or the Hulk?") Yet again, basic human wiring turned into box-office dollars. (The answer, it turns out is, "We'd stand up remarkably well." --That's why Cameron had to handicap the marines so severely. It really was just a bug hunt gone wrong.)
3. "Who Cares?" It's just pest control at this point. Not that interesting. Might as well be, "Snakes on a Plane."
4. "Who Cares Part II". See above.
5. Bleh. Society has moved on. You're going to have to come up with a new kind of monster if you want to scare/impress audiences today. Nobody has the guts or the brains to do that apparently. --Though that Torchwood production, "Children of Earth", was surprisingly solid. Made me feel kind of sick, but then so did "Alien".
-FL
Fuck Ridley Scott!
I always wanted to see Jonesey as a kitten!
And Sigourney!
Is she goonna look like.. butch young?
But it's JonesyI wanna see. Damn! I wanna see that kitten!
And Alien? Yo momma is ugly. An' eats big people!
.
- aqk
F U
Does this mean we'll see the origins of the Space Jockey? (And maybe some Predators can be thrown in too for equal measure, hehehe...)
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Hudson: "17 days? Hey man, I don't wanna rain on your parade, but we're not gonna last 17 hours. Those things are gonna come in here just like they did before...and they're gonna come in here..."
Ripley: "Hudson!"
Hudson: "...and they're gonna come in here, and they're gonna get us!"
Ripley: "Hudson! This little girl lasted longer than that, with no weapons and no training."
Hudson: "Why don't you put her in charge?!"
Maybe the Predators put those eggs on the SJ ship? Hmm. Would be interesting to see.
My question.... we had the Pedators weapon... yet hundreds of years in the future we were still shooting bullets?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I'll tell you why this is going to suck. Because when Alien and Aliens came out, visual effects were raw and relatively unused compared to today. People went in the theatre expecting something cheesy but got blown away by the coolness of it all. Now, people go in knowing to expect high-end CGI. It's the same feeling I have for G.I. Joe. The point was made that people are poo-pooing GI Joe when few people outside the studio have seen it. True but what I see in the trailer is bullsh*t physics. It's the same reason I think that all comic-book-turned-movies suck. Show me something I could believe actually happens.
The A v. P books are pretty good. I had such a vision in my mind of what an A v. P movie could be like and the actual products were such steaming piles of dog shit, I can't think of a greater contrast. I think there can be life left in the series but it better be good to wash away the stink of some of the later attempts.
the thing > ailen
I had been hoping for this I figure it's high time the ALIEN visited the Dentist ?!?!?!
The Rippley character could be the HOT dental assistent !!!
The ALIEN is hatched out in an millitary lab, Ripply takes him to the base dentist when he develops his first tooth ache.
First the denist breaks all his human designed tools on the ALIENS teeth.
Ripply has sex with the ALIEN !!
The dentist locks down the ALIEN and pulls out a government issue prototype plasma laser, the ALIEN struggles ...
Ripply gets HOT and has sex with the ALIEN !
The dentist discovers the ALIEN has more teath in it's URANIS and starts working there ...
Ripply gets REALLY EXCITED and has sex with the ALIEN ...
IMHO 'Alien' without Giger's vision would be just another scary teen movie with at most one lousy sequel.
I don't know if Hollywood (or even the whole history of Cinema) has ever seen a better Concept Designer. Look up Giger's works, they extend beyond the Big Bang. Look at the space and spaces, the female deities of death, their copulations with the unnamed and unspeakable. The colourless colours. The silence of aeons. The waves of emptiness. The void in the vastness. Just looking at his works and attempting to describe them will make a poet out of you. A dark poet that is, in the vein of Poe and Lovecraft and Bradbury.
We were very lucky that Alien was done in 1979. Today it would be totally illegal to produce such a movie: it addresses peoples' and societies' dark side, the unconscious buried both in each living cell and in the collective (un)consciousness, this making it equivalent to terrorism.
The Alien prequel will have to be "legal", "politically correct" and "viable". So don't be surprised if you see a love story plot in it: the producers always reserve the right to make it appealing to your significant other (reminds you of anything?).
So that's how they cut the power. They're not just animals.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump