Slashdot Mirror
H.R. Giger Returns To the Alien Franchise
An anonymous reader writes "Great news for Alien franchise purists, as conceptual artist H.R. Giger has been confirmed as a contributor to the prequel that Ridley Scott is set to begin shooting in February. The originator of the 'xenomorph' design, Giger was left out of James Cameron's Aliens (1986), since Cameron only needed a new 'Alien queen' design, and had come up with that himself. This article features the Swiss TV broadcast where Giger's wife broke the news, and a full gallery of Giger's conceptual work for Alien."
Prequels of played out franchises mostly blow chunks. Mostly.
Indeed, they do. And after the horror that was Alien: Resurrection and the absolute mediocrity of the two AvP movies, I was not expecting much out of this prequel.
But they've got Ridley Scott directing, and now H.R. Giger is on-board as well... A couple steps in the right direction.
It may not turn out to be absolutely horrible.
Maybe.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I know that resentment rides high on Slashdot over Lucas' prequel efforts, but Ridley Scott is a Director/Producer of a whole other calibre. Franky, I'm hard pressed to name a bad film by Scott... sure, some movies such as Kingdom of Heaven and Hannibal come to mind, but they were very watchable and had many redeeming qualities beyond just action and effects. Also keep in mind that Scott is responsible for both Alien and Blade Runner, two of most memorable and defining sci-fi efforts in cinematic history, and he did them back to back. And most importantly, Scott's entire portfolio is very diverse in genre and subject matter. Unlike Lucas, he is a truly imaginative and gifted director and not one to take up a project to make a buck or milk a franchise.
Personally, I see lots of potential for these prequels to be nothing short of fantastic. The telling of the story of the Space Jockey and the origins of the Xeno-Morph has all sorts of potential, as does the telling of the 1st encounter and discovery of the Xeno-Morph by Weyland-Yutani. These stories aren't those of a true prequel in the Star Wars sense, those were stories that closely followed an existing story arc around a small set of characters. Here, we have a whole other set of stories only loosely related to the stories we already know.
So give Scott some slack, you know you're going to see these movies in the theatre no matter what the reviews say and you know that with Scott at the helm, there will be a decent plot and story line and that the visuals and world will be stunning and engaging.