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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.'"
Now just sign up James Cameron to do the movie after *that* and we'll be good.
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The real question is can they make a decent movie without trying way, way too hard to link it to characters in the prior sequels? I'll burn the theater down if "young Ripley" is somehow involved (though it may be worth the speculation as to how much botox it took to get Sigourney Weaver's skin 1979-tight).
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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.
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That's silly... we all know nuking them from orbit is the only way to be sure.
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).
This.
In the Alien franchise, only one character matters. It is big, black and has acid for blood.
There is no need to look for a way to bring Ripley into it, especially if it involves time travel, memory loss, or cloning again.
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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.
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Is "Alien vs. Predator" and "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem" part of the canon? Will it be for this prequel?
I was going to ask the same thing. I've not seen it, and have no real desire to do so, but according to Wikipedia, Alien vs. Predator was intentionally a prequel to Alien (and a sequel to Predator) and deliberately took some effort- and altered its own setting- to avoid a situation where the events in Alien would be rendered implausible if not impossible. (Primarily, they couldn't set it in a city because everyone would then have been aware of the existence of the aliens before Alien took place).
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You seem to forget that Alien predated Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and most of the other "classic horror" movies:
Alien (1979)
Friday the 13th (1980)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Only Halloween (1978) predates Alien, and by a short enough period that I think it's safe to say that Alien was well underway before Halloween hit the theater.
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If they make AvP non-canon, then maybe they can do the same with Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection.
completely off-topic - but if they could make her look rather appealing in Galaxy Quest (1999, 20 year after the first Alien movie), then I'm sure they shouldn't have any problems now - a mere 10 years later.
This is hollywood, people. Push comes to shove, they scan her face, digitally de-age it, and slap it on a stand-in actor.
That said - I do second the hope that they will not be trying to tie into characters of the 'future' movies; how would they have known about those characters?
Tying into the existing storyline, however, would actually be rather nice.. though getting away with that without opening up giant plot issues in the 'later' movies seems rather tough.
Except everything but for the eggs in stasis. How did that happen?
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"Out of the fifties 'B' Science-Fiction monster movies, this easily ranks as the best. It's most notable as the film that ALIEN is an unaccredited remake of, thus giving it a certain historical significance."
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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
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