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Ridley Scott Abandons Alien Prequel
An anonymous reader writes "With Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox announcing that the much-vaunted 3D Alien prequel has now mutated into an original SF film project called Prometheus, starring Noomi Rapace, the author of this article recalls his 2007 interview with the late Dan O'Bannon, who presumably is happy about the news, wherever he is. Asked what he'd like to see happen to the xenomorph franchise, the Alien co-creator said: 'I'd like to see it stop. A horror movie's a fragile thing, and once you've gotten past the original, it isn't scary anymore. So you do a bunch of sequels to a horror movie, all they do is drain any remaining impact out of the original...it's not as effective as it would have been if you had just left it alone.'"
now sites close as soon as /. links to them.
I see hard time ahead for /., maybe they need to create their own content now?
So you do a bunch of sequels to a horror movie, all they do is drain any remaining impact out of the original
I'm sure this applies to any hit movie. I mean, the first time they made Scary Movie, it was a guilty pleasure. Now it's, well, just dull. There are few exceptions. Empire Strikes Back thematically seems better than Star Wars. The revelation of the relationship between Luke and Darth Vader was good enough to be parodied by Toy Story (was it 2 or 3?). But the Star Wars prequels? Maybe the producers should take a hint.
Okay, I admit, I loved Avatar in 3D, but everything does not need to be in 3D! Not sure I would be into an Alien 3D.
What? It is going to be Prometheus 3D? Did I just become one of the survivors from Predators or Groundhog Day?
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The prequel did not have to be exactly like the 1st one. If done correctly, it could have been good. But how many times does it work out like that? Rarely.
Can my karma get any worse than bad? Let's find out!
Actually, this is very good news. Alien and Aliens will never be bettered, fact. The rest (including A vs P) either ok or poor. Anything new will be guaranteed disappointment.
Who actually wanted to know where the xenomorphs came from? Whatever happened to imagination?
Well, does this mean they're building up a new Ripley (the character played by Sigourney Weaver in the Alien franchise)?
Larry Niven wrote a series of novels with consistent backstory, physics, and an evolution over time -- the Known Space series. J. K. Rowling knew there would be 7 Harry Potter books, and J. Michael Straczyinski (sp) planned Bablyon 5 to have a story arc over 5 seasons. Asimov intended the Foundation Trilogy as a cohesive whole; I think that his later additions to that universe, including the tie-ins to the "I Robot" universe were motivated more by publishers than by his original vision. Perhaps Dan O'Bannon never wanted to create a universe, or a self-consistent backstory... he just wanted to make a scary movie with a surprising powerful alien. The second movie also worked as a suspense/thriller, even though we knew what the aliens' abilities were.
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I'm a huge fan of the Alien franchise. I was very eager to see another alien movie with Ridley Scott and H.R. Giger involved. I didn't actually expect much out of it... But I was eager to see what we'd get.
But, let's be realistic here... After those first couple of movies, it's really been downhill.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Now, what was wrong with the old outline?
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As this graph shows, regardless of the genre, sequels are usually worse than the original.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
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Good thing they stopped at one sequel then: Aliens.
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District 9 had nothing to do with Halo. Peter Jackson was going to do a Halo movie at the time, but it fell through, so he instead created District 9, based on the short film Alive in Joburg.
Even if D9 were inspired by Halo, how does that have anything to do with TFA?
For at least a day
There's no compelling story to tell.
We can't use Lord of the Rings as an example because it' really one big film in three parts. But we can use Empire as an example. The first film told a proper story and Empire continued it. It was good drama. Same goes for Terminator 2. There was room in the universe to tell another story. But after two time travel stories, the only possible room left in that universe was to tell the story of the future war. No time travel. Just Judgement Day, John Connor putting his military together, the fight against the machines. Some people might say this is essentially a prequel since these events were already established as having happened beforehand but I think there's still room to tell an interesting story. There was certainly no need for another fucking time travel story like T3. T4 was almost the story they should have told but executed in the most ham-fisted, talentless fashion imaginable.
The Matrix, on the other hand, was a movie where a sequel was completely impossible. Neo had already won. The war was over but for the fussy details. There is simply no possible way that anyone could do a sequel of any good with that movie. You have one movie, it told the whole story. There's no room for any sort of sequel, period.
Something like Pirates, that could do with sequels. The original movie shouldn't have been any good in the first place, being based on an amusement park ride and a completely transparent excuse to make money. But it happened to be light, enjoyable fun, really fun. Kudos for them. So then they went at the sequels with a vengeance and hate-fucked every last bit of fun out of the whole thing. You could have had three nice, all ages adventure movies like Indiana Jones. Instead it was just limp, lifeless shit.
Could someone tell another good story within the aliens universe? Of course they can. The question is will they? Not likely. Every movie is put out there to make money but there's a difference between something greenlit in the hopes of making some money versus something that's now seen as a cash cow and, more importantly, something that is now a formula. They'll let you play around with first movies but once they think you have lightning in a bottle, they won't let you change a thing. Mass produce it and see if we can suck all the milk out of this teat. There will never be another good aliens movie or another good predator movie because the suits will never release enough control for it to be any good.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think most of /. would rather see Lucas locked in a room with the alien.
I'm the only person I know whose favorite Alien is 3. Everybody else hates it for one reason or another. I think it's the best one.
I was really peeved by the whole alien versus predator saga. Why cut the Alien universe to ribbons? Just for some Dark Horse - inspired shit? Now we have to assume that the Bishop that told Ripley he's the actual Bishop android designer was lying. Because that guy died on Earth hundreds of years earlier. Pissy! Frickin' piss box!
I thought Alien - Resurrected was total shit, I mean why make a goofy comic sequel to a horror movie? But it eventually became a mixed blessing when it produced an interview with Weaver who said she was up for making more Alien movies anytime the producers wanted her to. I always thought, "wow, Weaver, she's this huge-ticket actress, very prestigious, Alien is probably a stain on her career, I can't imagine how they drag her into slinking around in the muck like that..." and I finally got the chance to put it in perspective: Alien movies is where all her money comes from. How many people here rented "Gorillas in the Mist" much in the last twenty years? Anybody? And then, even later on, I realized that it was best for the fourth movie to be a comic blast, because there shouldn't have been another sequel, but it's the kind of thing that needs to be addressed, for closure. So for me, Resurrection came to embody the seal on the cap, so to speak, "there aren't going to be any more sequels".
Too bad you can't really make a prequel -- Ripley never had any contact with the species before the first movie. There's no place for it to fit. You could try to rig up some bullshit story involving an original and a clone, but you'd have to explain the clone's lifetime of memories.
Anyways, I don't see the big problem. Why do people get so miffed? Just because sequels and prequels are typically done bad doesn't mean they always have to be.
And just because some artists are perfectionist or egotistical doesn't mean you *HAVE* to "honor" their every intent for their art. Part of being a mature artist is releasing your artwork, and releasing means releasing in every sense of the word. I think the co-creator's thought that making sequels lessens the impact of the horror is self-illusionment that his horror is some kind of prima materia. It's just a flick; it's scary to anybody who hasn't seen it before, and less scary to those who have, period. There might be a point about making the Alien itself this cultural icon, making it too commonplace so that people are exposed to it before they see the film and so aren't surprised and shocked when it first appears, but they already fucked that up with the concept art appearing on the posters and every clip of the creature appearing in trailers from the very beginning. And was he really so egotistical that he thought it would become ubiquitous? That kids would be sipping Alien Blood *WITH MORE VITAMIN C* at school lunch? That we'd all kick Mario in the ass and play Alien: Platform Saga from now on? That by the time you're ten years old you're so sick of hearing about and seeing Aliens everywhere, now that you can sneak into the theatre to watch the Gala Event 1,000th Re-Showing of the original (shyeah) you don't even want to because blaggggh you puke face hugger pasta in white cheese sauce in your sleep? Puh lease.
Some people. Idealists, too. But some PEOPLE.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Godfather 2.
Come on, Back to the Future II is rated that low? Batman Returns is rated high? Yeah right.
Those links were great!
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Ridley Scott has never been one to go the route of Lucas and Spielberg who constantly rape franchises for the easy trip to the bank. You've got to hand it to the guy for wanting to make films and not cash vehicles. I'm looking forward to this, especially if Noomi Rapace is involved. Check her out in the movies based on the Millenium series.
Disco is LIFE!!!
is that they do damage to the backstory. If you've followed the series you've been given hints of a backstory by the authors/writers and your imagination fills in the rest. Prequels pull back the curtain to show you everything missing, and it usually doesn't match your expectations. Hence the Star Wars prequels and most everyone's reaction which was disappointment. Another example is the Brian Herbert Dune novels. His father had already done an excellent job writing much of the backstory and it wasn't necessary to know every single detail. There are many others like this such as the latest Star Trek film, although it at least made the attempt of rewriting history through a time travel story (albeit well worn). I now avoid prequels and reboots because they don't meet my expectations. As the previous poster above said, if you don't like them don't watch them and I take that advice to heart.
The problem with the Aliens franchise is the bad writing. Sequels are usually nothing more than a greed producer's attempt to cash on the last film's rep. If the writers don't have any more to say (and usually this would be determined by the original books/screenplay), then it's almost a sure bet the sequels will suck. All the Aliens sequels besides #2 did nothing more than copy the preceding visual elements. It's just not scary to see the same drooling lunge out of the shadows after 6 movies worth. I think #2 was so successful because it firstly added something to the storyline (i.e. the complete social structure of the Alien) and secondly did it in an original setting. All the others suffer from sequelitis. They're really doing the same thing, but trying to make it look different enough that you won't notice.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Alien was a great space horror, and the artwork - is simply a masterpiece (Giger got Oscar for that).
Sequels, while good action blockbusters, were just milking the franchise - but not even close in artistical value.
RACISM IS BAD (UNLESS IT'S AGAINST NIGERIANS, THEY'RE ALL CRIMINALS) and a plot that failed to make sense on so many RACISM IS BAD levels.
I'm sorry you were too busy being racist to understand the story.
You can't take the sky from me...
DIE Prequel DIE!
STAB!
Slash!
Burn!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Xenomorph was just about to get laid, and "Aaaaaaa..." *Cut*
The whole xenomorph porn angle is left untouched.
Right around the point where they brought the Marines on board, Alien(s) stopped being a horror movie (with the minor exception of the bit with the young girl hiding in the air ducts) and turned into an action film. What was once horror transformed even more when the Predators were introduced into the mix, and it's now 100% non-scary kick-ass action (if you like that sort of thing). True horror is not just suspenseful music and things that jump out and startle you once in a while.
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I think you missed my point. The story had a really heavy-handed 'racism is bad' message. Alien Nation managed to do this really well, for example by having black Americans repeating exactly the same 'separate but equal' slogans that were used against them just a few decades earlier, only this time against the aliens. District 9 lacked any subtlety and hammered it right into your face, to the extent that it distracted you from the plot. All of the racists were evil caricatures. There was none of the insidious racism that is far more dangerous, and the characters were completely unbelievable.
The entire message was somewhat spoiled by the fact that all through the film they used the word 'nigerian' as if it were interchangeable with 'criminal' and all of the nigerians we saw throughout were superstitious criminals (and black). A film overloaded with overtly anti-racist messages while carrying an institutionalised racist undertone may be accurate social commentary about South Africa, but that doesn't make it a good film.
Oh, and the anti-military message (soldiers are all stupid evil racists) was equally overdone. As was the anti-corporate message (CEOs are all clever, scheming, evil racists).
Somewhere in the middle was a story about the aliens trying to find enough of a chemical that's in their technology to power their ship and escape, and a lot of racism and explosions to try to distract you from the fact that this didn't even make a little tiny bit of sense (how did the shuttle get underground without anyone seeing it land? Why didn't they extract the liquid while they were on the ship, when it would have been more abundant? Why, if they have such powerful weapons, are they in some kind of ghetto in the first place?)
Compare it with something like Moon, which had no explosions at all, but managed a gripping plot with a much smaller budget and still covered the same core issue (having a group that prejudice lets you treat as subhuman).
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Or does it people itself with a culture that wallows in it?
People talk about books vs. movies. I thought some of the AvP books were great action adventure and I had several minutes of a script in my mind that would have been kick-ass. I had such high hopes, and we received such a total piece of crap. Really? Couldn't they have slipped the book publisher and author a few bucks to use that universe? Apparently not, and apparently they had their own vision, and that was probably the problem. Less competent people follow the leader.
Why didn't they extract the liquid while they were on the ship, when it would have been more abundant? Why, if they have such powerful weapons, are they in some kind of ghetto in the first place?)
They were sick and had lost their learder. Those aren't humans, they're drones, they have no initiative.
And the liquid is a hack to the genetic lock on their technology, like royal jelly, it turns a worker into a pilot, which is why exposure to it turned the guy into an alien and why they needed it to run the command module.
If you had been less busy being angry at being told that racism is bad and that the powerful exploit the weak, you might have noticed. Heck, you were shown that this message about how people are jerks wasn't limited to rich white men by having black Nigerians being just as awful in their own way, but no, you were too busy looking for flimsy excuses to hate on the movie to pay attention to important plot points like the aliens reliance on a leader caste.
Had there been no Nigerians you would have bitched and moaned that the movie was limited to South African characters, you know it.
You can't take the sky from me...
They were sick and had lost their learder. Those aren't humans, they're drones, they have no initiative.
They seemed to be displaying a lot of initiative during the film. You know, finding the fuel, powering the ship, all that stuff...
And the liquid is a hack to the genetic lock on their technology, like royal jelly, it turns a worker into a pilot
I'm pretty sure you're making that up. They put the liquid in the machine, not on the people who flew the ship. Their technology worked for all of them, not just for some pilot caste.
it turns a worker into a pilot, which is why exposure to it turned the guy into an alien
You mean just like how if a human eats royal jelly they turn into a queen bee? Yes, that made a lot of sense. Suspending disbelief is one thing, suspending basic knowledge of biology is another.
If you had been less busy being angry at being told that racism is bad and that the powerful exploit the weak, you might have noticed
A good film conveys its message in a subtle way. District 9 felt the need to bludgeon you over the head with it repeatedly. Compare it to Moon, which (as I said) conveyed exactly this message but without the need to beat you to death with it. Or even Alien Nation, which wasn't exactly a great film or series, but managed to be subtle about it.
Had there been no Nigerians you would have bitched and moaned that the movie was limited to South African characters, you know it.
What? That doesn't make any sense at all.
The basic premise of District 9 was taken completely from Alien Nation. They moved it to South Africa, where it could have been used as a subtle metaphor for apartheid, but instead just had caricature racists because the audience was assumed to be too stupid to understand any subtlety. The story of getting the magic liquid was added, but it was the bit of the film that made no sense, so they stated with a stolen premise and made it worse. Great writing.
The Nigerians were almost the only black people in the film, and the were universally portrayed as evil, spiteful, and superstitious. A film that makes such an effort to tell you that racism is bad (as if most of the audience can't work that out themselves, or even infer it from subtle hints), having all of the black people members of a criminal underclass was astonishingly hypocritical.
As I said in my original post, the ham-fisted message of the film seemed to be 'racism is bad, unless it's against Nigerians because they're all criminals'. The terms 'nigerian' and 'criminal' were used interchangeably and no one in the film seemed to notice or mind this. It was a perfect example of the kind of racism that's really harmful - where it's so institutionalised that people don't even notice it.
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"So you do a bunch of sequels to a horror movie, all they do is drain any remaining impact out of the original"
I don't like horror. Much preferred the second one.
Of course if new films become crap its because they hire talentless hacks, because they know the teenagers will watch anything.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Will they ever make a sequel to Aliens?
And also, I wonder if they could get away with mixing other 'franchises' into the Alien universe, eg. Predator(s) ?
Nah, I don't think they'd work either, in this coke-riddled hollywood era anything could happen - god imagine if they tried to do a sequel to the Matrix! or a 4th Indiana Jones film!
There is no way you could trust them not to just fill them with gratuitous CG, ridiculous storylines and a More! Bigger! Better! overload of crapness.
Nope, its really better to move on and do something original, the risks involved in the care and handling of precious movie milestones are far too high.
They were sick and had lost their learder. Those aren't humans, they're drones, they have no initiative.
They seemed to be displaying a lot of initiative during the film. You know, finding the fuel, powering the ship, all that stuff...
You're talking about the aliens as if they were all the same, you racist.
And the liquid is a hack to the genetic lock on their technology, like royal jelly, it turns a worker into a pilot
I'm pretty sure you're making that up. They put the liquid in the machine, not on the people who flew the ship. Their technology worked for all of them, not just for some pilot caste.
Then they rewrote the lock in the machine to fit the DNA of their own caste, you'll excuse me if I have the details of a flick I saw a year an a half ago a bit fuzzy.
it turns a worker into a pilot, which is why exposure to it turned the guy into an alien
You mean just like how if a human eats royal jelly they turn into a queen bee?
You mean you're stupid because your mother was a whore?
Yes, that made a lot of sense. Suspending disbelief is one thing, suspending basic knowledge of biology is another.
You do know those are made up aliens we're talking about, right? Not earth bees? We're talking about a movie where a human was turned into one of those aliens, aaaaand now you're talking as if that believing that is stupid. WTF is wrong with you?
the audience was assumed to be too stupid to understand
And in your case that was a perfectly justified assumption.
You can't take the sky from me...
You're talking about the aliens as if they were all the same, you racist.
That's, what, the fourth time you've accused me of being a racist in this thread? You said that the aliens had no initiative (i.e. you made a sweeping statement about all of them). I replied that there were lots of examples of them (i.e. individuals from the drone class - which you claim exists in spite of there being nothing in the film to back this up - demonstrated this characteristic) showing initiative. And your reply is that I'm a racist? Okay...
Then they rewrote the lock in the machine to fit the DNA of their own caste, you'll excuse me if I have the details of a flick I saw a year an a half ago a bit fuzzy.
I see. And I suppose that they were just talking about needing the liquid to power it to confuse anyone who might have been listening? And I suppose that the other bits of alien technology that worked for all of the aliens were also hacked in the same way by other 'initiative-lacking' aliens at some point off screen?
Your version of the plot might almost make sense, but it was not the one that was actually in the film.
You mean you're stupid because your mother was a whore?
I see, this is what passes for intelligent discussion on your planet?
You do know those are made up aliens we're talking about, right? Not earth bees? We're talking about a movie where a human was turned into one of those aliens, aaaaand now you're talking as if that believing that is stupid. WTF is wrong with you?
Royal jelly is the closest analogue in Earth biology to the liquid in the film (or, rather, to what you claim in spite of dialog to the contrary, the liquid was). It turns a drone into a queen. It has absolutely no effect (other than to provide some nutrients) if any other species eats it - and this is other species that evolved on the same planet and have a common evolutionary heritage.
Expecting an alien equivalent to have a similar effect on humans that it has on its own species does not make sense. It was just a contrived way of making him have to experience the other side of prejudice. Another heavy-handed, overdone way of preaching at the audience.
Like I said, compare this with how pretty much any other film that has looked at prejudice has worked. District 9 lacked any subtlety at all. It was an overly moralistic B movie. The plot was severely compromised to convey the 'racism is bad' message, and it didn't even do that very well, because it was overly preachy and ended up just making the racists into caricatures of evil, rather than believable characters - very few people disagree that comic-book villain racists are evil, but films like Alien Nation (again, not a particularly good film, but the one that District 9 stole its premise from) managed to convey the idea that racism is destructive when it comes from ordinary people.
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You're talking about the aliens as if they were all the same, you racist.
That's, what, the fourth time you've accused me of being a racist in this thread? You said that the aliens had no initiative (i.e. you made a sweeping statement about all of them).
I was answering your sweeping question about why they didn't use the weapons to fight the humans instead of selling them for catfood.
I replied that there were lots of examples of them (i.e. individuals from the drone class - which you claim exists in spite of there being nothing in the film to back this up
The drone talk I was trying to explain to you is from the movie. Dumb racist.
I see. And I suppose that they were just talking about needing the liquid to power it to confuse anyone who might have been listening?
A little kid talked of fuel, yes. A little kid explaining something to someone from another culture. That's not an omniscient narrator talking. The process was hinted at subtlety, so that many failed to get it. Like you. Hell, you're so dumb you keep not getting it even WHEN it's been explained to you with no subtlety and an earthly example.
And I suppose that the other bits of alien technology that worked for all of the aliens were also hacked in the same way by other 'initiative-lacking' aliens at some point off screen?
The tools meant for the grunts didn't need hacking by the grunts to be used by the grunts.
The command module had to be hacked by an engineer to be used by a non-pilot.
Caste system, motherfucker, do you get it?
Your version of the plot might almost make sense, but it was not the one that was actually in the film.
Oh noes! They didn't spell it out all super obvious and you missed it? BUT YOU HATE IT WHEN THEY SPELL IT OUT ALL OBVIOUS, you retarded ass.
Expecting an alien equivalent to have a similar effect on humans that it has on its own species does not make sense.
Humanoid aliens do not make sense.
Faster than light travel does not make sense.
Alien physiology compatible with our food does not make sense.
Arthropods of that size and speed do not make sense.
Communicating verbally with an alien intelligence does not make sense.
Giant city-sized hovering spaceships do not make sense.
You hate the movie for being science fiction.
Or
You hate the movie for telling you it's not ok to be racist.
So, stop being a loud racist troll, and STFU already.
You can't take the sky from me...
Ah, you're a troll. Sorry I took so long to realise that. I won't bother you again.
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