Can the Alien franchise be saved after decades of disappointment?
Reports of another Alien installment remind us that the franchise has been lost in space since James Cameron's classic 1986 sequel
Film Features Alien
In space, no one can hear you yawn. That was the general consensus last December when it was revealed that the ninth film in the Alien franchise, which launched in 1979 with Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking horror/sci-fi fusion, was on the way in yet another attempt to kickstart a series that effectively peaked after James Cameron’s second entry some 37 years ago.
In the current era of IP-driven cinema, Disney, which acquired the rights to Alien mere months after 2017’s Alien: Covenant crashed and burned with audiences and critics, was probably expecting a more enthusiastic reaction. But after six largely failed attempts to push the universe forward, the Internet collectively shrugged at the news that filmmaker Felix Álvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) was at work on the latest relaunch. Which begs the question: does the Alien egg really need to be cracked open again?
Quality wasn’t always alien to this deep-space franchise
Scott’s debut entry was a visionary and seamless weaving of classic horror trappings into relatively hard sci-fi, one that filled the screen with revolutionary imagery cooked up in concert with the brilliant illustrators H.R. Giger and Moebius. Simultaneously moody, cerebral, and visceral, it was a dark, cautionary counterpoint to glossy, awestruck alien-encounter flicks of its day like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and the whiz-bang of Star Wars.
Seven years later, a second visionary filmmaker, James Cameron, hot off the success of The Terminator, would inject massive jolts of adrenaline and testosterone into the franchise with 1986’s Aliens, in which everything—the stakes, the action, the characters, the extraterrestrial horde, and their colossal queen—got bigger, badder, louder, and blockbuster-proportioned. Aliens made an action hero out of Ripley and turned Sigourney Weaver into an international superstar and Best Actress Oscar nominee. The stylistic shift from killer-in-the-house horror to pulse-quickening thrill ride worked like crazy, and it appeared that the future of the franchise, in the hands of similarly singular filmmakers, was as adaptable as the Xenomorph itself.
But cracks started showing six years later with the arrival of the third film. Alien 3, helmed by future auteur David Fincher in his big-screen debut, was plagued by aborted story ideas, discarded script drafts, and constant studio meddling. The result was a mixed bag that marked the beginning of the audience’s dissatisfaction with each installment no matter how promising the filmmaking talent attached.
Indeed, back then, Fox was admirably ambitious with their choices for sequel directors and despite the compromised quality of Fincher’s film, visionary French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, The City Of Lost Children) was handed the keys to the franchise with 1997’s Alien: Resurrection. The results were the same: Jeunet’s auteur approach was blunted by big studio decision-making. Even the film’s screenwriter, Joss Whedon, who, for all his later problems, deeply understood genre fan tastes and strong female leads (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), groused that his story was mishandled at every level.
Then, after another seven-year dormancy, the franchise veered into what Cameron deemed Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man territory when 20th Century Fox attempted to milk its clearly drying-up cash cow for a few more bucks by merging it with another stalled franchise. Thus was born Alien Vs. Predator and its follow-up Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem, which was so savaged by fans and critics that Fox put the franchise into hypersleep.
The master returns to save his creation
Just when it seemed Alien had become as moribund a franchise as Friday The 13th, the pendulum swung back into auteur territory when Scott returned in an attempt to pump new inspiration into the series. With origin stories or re-imaginings of familiar franchises being a hot commodity, 2012’s Prometheus went for both. But even Scott’s prequelized approach—including Easter eggs and callbacks to Alien’s roots and centered by an actor the caliber of Michael Fassbender—fell short: both Prometheus (Lost’s Damon Lindelof contributed to the screenplay) and its sequel Alien: Covenant (reteaming Scott with his Gladiator collaborator John Logan, among other scribes) piqued audiences’ interests to a certain degree, but were also ponderous and puzzling, so much so that a third entry was subsequently scuttled.
Whether due to studio mismanagement or just great filmmakers making bad creative choices, the Alien franchise has proven to be maddeningly impervious to some of Hollywood’s most accomplished talents—add District 9’s Neil Blomkamp to that list; his attempt to retcon the series so Alien 3 and onward never existed has stalled out permanently. But there may be hope. Noah Hawley’s as-yet-unproduced TV series concept for FX suggests that the future of the franchise may not lie in the multiplex after all.
What Alien can learn from Prey
Assuming Àlvarez’s film—purportedly titled Alien: Romulus and expected to feature Mare of Easttown actress Cailee Spaeny—comes to fruition, there’s a glimmer of something promising in the fact that Disney’s Fox division is making the film for its Hulu streaming service, where something truly unexpected happened last year: the all-but-dead Predator franchise experienced an unexpected revival with the truly adventurous Prey, offering proof that even the most seemingly decrepit and creatively bankrupt properties may yet have some fresh acidic blood left in them.
Given its youthful cast, it’s a planet-sized question mark whether Sigourney Weaver would reprise her role as Ripley for Àlvarez’s film. And while that could be genuinely exciting with the right approach (not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake), perhaps what the franchise really needs is to begin closing the doors to its past and getting ambitious all over again. To start exploring fresh new corners and concepts within the Alienverse, to push beyond the establish boundaries of Scott and Cameron, as well as Giger and Moebius, and reinvent the approach as radically as it was in 1986, while still finding the essence of what makes the Xenomorph eternally intriguing. As groundbreaking and well-executed as all those earlier visions were, it’s high time to explore new, unexpected horizons of what utter fear looks like in the future.
One thing’s very clear: despite the continued cinematic and cultural potency of the first two Alien films, if this latest attempt to extend the lifespan of the franchise fails, it just may finally be time, in the words of Private Hudson, to call game over, man.
213 Comments
I still contend that Prometheus makes far more sense as a typical slasher movie. Shaw is the “last girl” and everyone else is dumb as rocks because they’re supposed to die dramatically.Still makes it a terrible Alien movie, though.
Prometheus was a slasher movie wrapped in a high concept, heady sci-fi drama that just didn’t make sense as both. It’s a real opposite “you got peanut butter in my chocolate” scenario.Everyone in the movie is pretty unlikeable and, as you said, just complete morons. But they’re all also scientists who are supposed to be the best in their fields, so them being absolutely stupid makes little sense. It’s also a slasher movie without a real slasher. There’s no big bad taking everyone out. People get killed by worms, black good, zombies created by black goo, engineers, noble suicide, rolling donut ships…I think Prometheus had the potential to revitalize the franchise with new questions and expansions on the lore. Unfortunately it just didn’t have the plot or characters to match up with its ambition.
I saw a website which showed how Prometheus was a remake of the first Alien vs Predator film and now I can’t unsee it.
It was a little crazy that of all the bad ideas to enter the franchise after Aliens, the one that Scott chose to roll with was the Ancient Aliens idea from AVP. It makes me wonder if the makers of AVP had some notes from Scott previewing the Chariot of the Gods direction he took for Prometheus, because the alternative is me having to imagine Ridley Scott watching Aliens vs. Predator, Moleskine notebook in hand, thinking “Y’know, there are some really great ideas in this one!”
Ridley Scott actually thought the exact opposite about AvP.https://www.cbr.com/alien-vs-predator-non-canon-explained/I did read another article where someone asked Ridley should they be making sure to keep continuity with AvP and getting some major stinkeye in return.But the ancient aliens/pyramid etc I believe were in the original Alien script in some form but were cut for time/money I think.You did end up in both AvP and Prometheus having a billionaire (from the same family no less) having a briefing with a their team in a lecture hall before going to a remote place and ending up in a maze built by extraterrestrials well you get the idea.
Tharsh what I thought at the time. “Oh, another ancient temple that functions as a trap, to make more aliens”
they’re all also scientists who are supposed to be the best in their fields, so them being absolutely stupid makes little sense
The two most common explanations for this:1) They’re not actually the best in their fields. The whole mission was a front in the first place so they just needed people competent enough to get the ship where it needed to go and dumb enough to not ask questions. The whole “you’re the best of the best” thing was marketing bullshit from the beginning. They were moderately-talented fodder who had been buttered up enough, and were hungry enough, to take a ridiculous mission. Silicon Valley churns through talent all the time with this approach.2) Being exceptionally talented in one field does not mean a person is generally smart in any other capacity. If they were the best of the best, they could still be absolute goddamn morons in other contexts. Ben Carson is a brilliant neurosurgeon and he would absolutely run in a straight line away from a spaceship rolling directly at him.Either way, a major theme of the movie is people overestimating their own intelligence and importance and then getting smacked down by the uncaring cruelty of the universe.
That is a fair point. Logan Marshall Green taking off his helmet, for example, I can chalk up to him just being a brash, impulsive jerko. Samesies for how he’s such a sad sack despite making the most important scientific discovery of all time. I do like certain aspects of the movie. But there are just some things that are so hard to get past.- Rafe Spall’s scientist – there is NO WAY a biologist would approach an aggressive, completely unknown species like it’s a fluffy kitten. Even the world’s worst biologist would never do that.- Sean Harris’s geologist – he’s got a whole bunch of mapping robots but still manages to get lost trying to find his way out?- And, I know it’s been done absolutely to death, but Charlize Theron not jumping sideways to avoid the rolling ship. We know it would have worked because that’s exactly what Noomi Rapace ends up doing to dodge it, and she survives.
A whole bunch of mapping robots *and* direct radio contact with the ship who also had a 3-D with his position and people who could have guided him out via that communication just like Google Maps or Waze of something.
PS: The most entertaining thing for me about Prometheus was not in the film, it was what happened outside during the premiere of the film in London.Logan Marshall-Green is walking the red carpet to calls of “Tom! Tom!”. Then actual Tom Hardy turns up. For a film he doesn’t actually appear in and has nothing directly to do with.
Hahah what? That actually happened?
Sure did!https://www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2012/jun/01/prometheus-premiere-in-pictureshttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2153174/Tom-Hardy-shares-red-carpet-lookalike-Logan-Marshall-Green-Prometheus-premiere.htmlhttps://www.vulture.com/2012/06/is-tom-hardy-in-prometheus-logan-marshall-green.htmlAnnoyingly, I am yet to find a picture of Logan with Tom. Still, Logan has a twin brother, I guess I could say in a picture of the two of them (which I have found), one of them is Tom Hardy. Doesn’t matter which one.Or for maximum confusion now, try to engineer a picture of the three of them!
The characters all being morons continued right into Covenant where nobody wears protective gear on an alien planet. Also, in the black goo, in both movies, had no logical underpinnings. It just did random stuff as demanded by the plot.
That really made me mad in Covenant, where the characters don’t wear protective gear and immediately get infected by spores. It was very early in the movie and I knew it was going to be bad.
True, the whole hidden purpose of the mission was just to get Weyland an audience with the creators and the rest was window dressing, so this works well enough. And point #2 is certainly correct.
Ben Carson did surgeries the best surgeons wouldn’t do – sometimes with horrific results. What he seemed good at was either: A) working with people or B) manipulating people. The first main one was the Binder surgery: “both twins were reportedly “far from normal” two years after the procedure, with one in a vegetative state. Neither twin was ever able to talk or care for himself, and both eventually became institutionalized wards of the state.” “The Binder surgery served as a blueprint for similar twin separations, a procedure that was refined in subsequent decades. Carson participated in four subsequent high-risk conjoined-twin separations, including a 1997 operation on craniopagus Zambian twins Joseph and Luka Banda, which resulted in a normal neurological outcome. Two sets of twins died, including Iranian twins Ladan and Laleh Bijani. Another separation resulted in the death of one twin and the survival of the other, who is legally blind and struggles to walk.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Carson#Medical_career
This would make sense if Weyland weren’t himself on the journey. Maybe it makes sense in SV to pump up a bunch of expendable dummies to take risks that a more sensible group of people wouldn’t, but it doesn’t seem like something a trillionaire risks when his own life is on the line. Also, if that was what the film wanted to convey, they could’ve easily thrown in a line to let us know. Something like “Who the hell is this guy? I thought Steadman was the top biologist in the field! This guy looks like the kind of moron who’d poke an unknown alien animal with a stick while taking no safety precautions whatsoever!”
So, they’re social media casualties?
1) That doesn’t make sense. There’s no need for “fodder” on the expedition and Weyland, who was actually on the ship, would want, and can pay for, the best of the best. A four year stasis is basically nothing in the Alien universe, so its far from a “ridiculous” mission. Weyland was dependent on this expedition succeeding and would need a competent crew to get him there, find what they are looking for, possibly make first contact, etc. 2) Yes, being competent in one discipline doesn’t mean you can’t be a moron in other contexts. Except, that’s not what happens. Characters are repeatedly moronic within even the slightest basics of their disciplines.
>Everyone in the movie is pretty unlikeable and, as you said, just complete morons. But they’re all also scientists who are supposed to be the best in their fields, so them being absolutely stupid makes little sense.I’ve met plenty of people who are really good at one thing bu who are completely stupid about many other things. Scientists, being human and not gods, have this same problem and human limitation.
But they’re all also scientists who are supposed to be the best in their
fields, so them being absolutely stupid makes little sense.
Are they, though? If you view Weyland as a latter-day Elon Musk (or Trump), maybe these people are “the best” because he says they are, and because everyone else doesn’t want to work with this guy.
Viewed through that lens, everything feels a little more plausible. Of course Space Rudy Guiliani is going to take off his helmet when encountering alien life and wouldn’t run perpendicular to the big rolling spaceship.
Agreed, it just didn’t work together as a combination of the genres/tones. There were very grand moments where you’re supposed to be getting inspired or existential, and then really goofy over the top stuff that made it hard to take seriously. It could’ve worked if they leaned harder on one or the other, or perhaps better balanced with a more deft hand, but the end product was a mess.Now I’m thinking of what could’ve been. While the more serious moments gave us cool visuals, I probably enjoyed the stupid shit more. I thought Charlize getting smushed by the rolling space ship was hilarious and in keeping with her low-key camp performance.
Prometheus was doing OK. Kinda gooey, pretty scary, some really good body horror …. and then someone got killed by a rolling ship.
I literally checked out at “Hey, let’s poke the alien snake thingy! What’s the worst that could happen?”Camp counselor does that? Okay, fine, I’ll groan but roll with it. Some A-level biologist? *nopes*
No, it went off the rails when the cartographer got lost and the xenobiologist put his face right next to the alien snake. Don’t make a beautiful movie about an elite scientific team then populate it with idiots.
Tbh I love Prometheus. This is probably not what Scott was going for,
but I like the idea that the blue-collar space truckers in Alien were
better decision makers in the lurch than the scientists in
Prometheus. (Having a PhD does not actually make
someone any less of an idiot in those parts of life not related to their
area of expertise. That’s most parts of life!)I also like the musing nature of the questions raised (I mean, clearly Ridley is dealing with his own eventual replacement here.) I don’t mind that they don’t have any answers.But what do I know, I also really liked Covenant.
I like them both, too!
Yeah, I liked them both too. There’s just nothing like the atmosphere of the Alien franchise. Granted, nothing has come even remotely close to the masterpiece that the first movie was, but I’ve enjoyed all of them more or less. Except 3. With that said, Alvarez being attached to this makes me irrationally excited. I absolutely loved Evil Dead 2013, and hopefully he gets to go just as nutty with this.
My biggest problem with Prometheus is that it left promising one thing and then Covenant basically tried to be an Alien remake with an android mad scientist being the cause of everything. Plus Shaw being killed offscreen. Also…
The guy who mapped out the entire area and the biologist were the two who got lost, left behind when everyone evacuated, provoked a creature doing a clear threat display, and then got killed by alien goo snakes.
lmfao ok I thought I was the only one who loved both prometheus and alien: covenant i am genuinely sad david’s story probably wont be finished and we wont learn more about the engineers and even what will happen with daniels’ and tennessee!! but I will always love both of those movies and I truly dont understand why others dont lol
Prometheus had some good ideas but was both too boring and the characters too stupid to get reasonably engaged with. Once the scientists started playing with an alien oil snake with predictable results I nearly checked out. The Prometheus rolling on its edge like a giant doughnut while Theron outran it (instead of just…turning) was the final straw.
Prometheus is just a rip off of At the Mountains of Madness, so much so that Universal decided to pull the plug on Del Toro’s long gestating adaptation. Just replaced shoggoths with alien goo and albino penguins with other weird planet-side life.
So was the original Alien.
I felt the same way about Alien Covenant. It’s a perfectly good horror movie with aliens and Michael Fassbender. I think going into a Ridley Scott movie expecting it to be clever, rather than nicely filmed with a great cast, is a fool’s errand.
I like Covenant because it’s basically a Hammer Films Frankenstein movie with Fassbender in the Cushing roll.
I like the idea that a super-intelligent Fassbenderbot created the xenomorph to antagonize aliens or something? It was incomprehensible, but the alien attacks were nicely staged, there was a cool scene with a castle courtyard full of burst-open corpses, and the ending does a nice job of draaaaaaagging out the inevitable without completely losing momentum. It was the most entertaining movie I ever saw on a plane until I watched Bodies Bodies Bodies a few weeks ago.
Prometheus was a bad slasher movie, Covenant was even worse , the nihilistic “this is deep because I’m 14″ bad slasher movie where everyone dies anyway and the bad guys win in the end with a crappy twist.
It (and Covenant) also work better when you realize they’re just fancy versions of 1950s space exploration movies where a team lands on a planet and immediately starts doing stupid stuff.
I enjoyed Prometheus well enough. But for me, the ending ruined everything. The survivor hijacks an alien ship, intending to fly it (!) to the alien home planet. What’s the plan when (or rather if) she gets there? I mean, other than being instantly shot down and killed, that is?
I sometimes wonder if Prometheus would make sense if they changed all the dumb scenes (of which there are many), because it sure is a beautiful-looking movie shot with 3D cameras.
Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Alien comic by Marvel has been good.The world and the alien and the themes are still good, they gotta just stop overthinking it. Evil corporation, body horror alien, claustrophobic setting.
See? When I see stuff like this, it just kind of reinforces my thought that it’s ultimately the “studio meddling” mentioned multiple times in this article that’s the culprit for the declining quality. Fewer cooks in the kitchen on comics or novels, and they’re truly focused on telling a good story. Sure, even those can go completely sideway if there’s not a good editor involved keeping an eye on the story and its scope. Still, with very rare exceptions, I don’t often hear about how heavy-handed movie/TV executive meddling has produced a BETTER product than it would have otherwise.
Still, with very rare exceptions, I don’t often hear about how heavy-handed movie/TV executive meddling has produced a BETTER product than it would have otherwise
I think if it does, you’re not gonna hear about it very often. It’s usually not in the studio’s interest to say “We had to fix this film after our director screwed it up” since they were the ones who hired the director in the first place, and they would like to be able to hire directors again in the future.
they gotta just stop overthinking itYou hit the nail on the head. This is the problem with almost every franchise. Needing to find a way to keep the franchise fresh without reinventing the wheel and having Ripley play basketball on a spaceship. This is also why I maintain that Alien 3 was the perfect end to an amazing trilogy. As much as I love those first 3, they should have stopped at that point.
It would be interesting to go Halloween 3 with the franchise, and instead of focusing on the Xenomorphs, focus on the setting. Big, empty, scary space being explored by corrupt corporations and aggressive space marines. All sorts of insane things can happen out there that have nothing to do with facehuggers.
Hard disagree! He’s been an awful writer, with no new ideas to bring to the franchise. Everything in his run has been feature and power creep – making up new variations of xenomorphs and then barely doing anything with them, getting a team of synthetics (who talk and behave identical to humans) to slap xenomorphs around, never actually writing a character you could care about. It’s all been stale fan fic.Thankfully he is off Alien, the next run is by Declan Shalvey, I’m hoping he’ll be better.
Hey, I disagree, but happy to see someone else in the world reading an Aliens comic!
I also think there was a lot of stories from the time Dark Horse Comics had the property that would have made good fodder for cinematic adaptation. Heck, their original “Alien vs. Predator” story was fantastic as it was and I am still mad that Fox screwed the pooch on that one.
I really wish they would have not tried to shoehorn Ripley into every Alien movie that came out after the second one, as much as I love Sigourney. The universe is fast and plenty of other people that we could not hear scream in space.
Unpopular opinion…. Aliens killed the Alien franchise. What all of the directors share as a vision about Alien (Except Cameron) is it as a dark almost single creature feature in a claustrophobic space. Aliens turned the dial to eleven and made it into one of the greatest action films ever and audiences loved it. Now every sequel since tries to serve both visions and fails while studio meddling makes a bad idea worse. Alien 3 even if it followed Finchers vision I bet would have bombed as Aliens was such a strong sequel that Finchers abandoning it almost completely would have soured audiences regardless. The studio machinations since then and even the Promotheus additions basically all follow up on the less interesting sequel territory of Alien vs what studios and even audiences want which is a sequel to Aliens and now its way too late.
Three is very watchable because of Fincher.
Have you seen the Assembly Cut? Even more watchable (despite the bits of missing audio/film left out in the sun)
It is a testament to Fincher’s amazing ability that he was able to craft . . . .something. . . out of that massive mountain of pre-production shit.
Personally, I liked Alien 3, despite it’s obvious flaws. I also thought that it was a perfect end to the Alien saga with the Xenomorph’s (hopefully) last offspring being destroyed along with Ripley and Weyland-Yutani being foiled from getting their potential weapon.Artistically, they should have quit there. The movies that followed were bigger and more expensive but, ultimately, just kind of…there.
And whatever they called the extended cut of Alien3 is…okay, not -good-, but it was getting there. Marked improvement.Still the third best in the series, but it gets closer to Alien[,s] than Resurrection (non-basketball scene).
I had been looking forward to Resurrection. A Whedon script and Jeunet direction (Snappy dialog and off-center, unique artistic sense)…then I saw it.
I mean, technically you got the best of both of them… a quippy android, and more canted angles than you can turn your head sideways at!I love Resurrection – it is not a very good Alien movie, but it is just really fun to watch. So much weirdness and goopy grossness.
I mean, that cast! Prime Perlman, Dourif, and Wincott. Plus Ryder.
Yup — so much promise… wasted.
#3 is in keeping with #1, and hated by those who love #2. Since I view #2 as being a less scary dumbed down action movie take (as Cameron’s Rambo script was vs First Blood), I don’t mind Fincher killing off Cameron’s characters (just as Scott killed off all but one of his characters).
“I don’t mind Fincher killing off Cameron’s characters”
Sure, let’s all play make-believe and pretend that the first-time director is the one who made those choices. Derp derp derp.
Yeah but killing Newt after everything they went through in Aliens seemed cruel. Granted I don’t know what they’d have done with her in the Alien 3 environment.
I never got this feeling. It’s a harsh as fuck world, why do we need to have allegiance to a character? Let the story go where it goes. Newt mattered, as did everyone else in Aliens, but they just didn’t survive. Do fans think Alien 3 would have been better if the whole gang from Aliens could have been there on the prison planet hanging out together making jokes about illegal aliens?
Maybe it was having her die (and Hicks, who could have been useful here) at the very beginning. Pretty big rug-pull.
I just hate fan service in storytelling. In my opinion, if I’m going to trust the writer and director to take me somewhere for 2 hours, I’m going to trust their vision on it. Having characters survive in a hellscape just because I liked the character does not seem like a good storytelling device to me.
I don’t think people had an issue with them not being in the movie, but just completely killing them off was a pretty big downer to start the movie.
We’re to believe that the xenomorph rode on Ripley’s ship for all that time, implanted an embryo inside of her, but never touched Newt or Hicks? Of course they’d be dead. The only reason Ripley wasn’t killed is that she was the host for the embryo.
The facehugger xenomorphs can only implant one person/entity before dropping off and dying.
“Do fans think Alien 3 would have been better if the whole gang from Aliens could have been there on the prison planet hanging out together making jokes about illegal aliens?”No, they should have just come up with a different story altogether, they had actually already teased that the xenomorph’s would be coming to Earth in the third one. Alien 3 was an ok movie, but yeah, I wanted a story with Newt and Hicks involved. My understanding is that Sigourney Weaver was insisting on no guns of any kind in the movie, so that’s why they had to strand her someplace with no weapons. I say just retcon out everything after Aliens, and bring in a grown up Newt.
I have a book on the making of the Alien series, they came up with a lot of different script ideas. actual scripts and just about every permutation of survivors and fatalities from the remaining Aliens cast. Planets made of wood, aliens with the potential to change into sheets of glass, you name it.Not hard to see why it was such a troubled production in retrospect.
sheesh, then write the movie you want to see. fans are so lazy and demanding.
I was answering your question, and in an article discussing what should come next for the franchise. I mean…whatever, such a weird response.
I wanted a story with Newt and Hicks involved. You were talking about what should come next for the franchise, you say? You were rehashing a nearly 30 year old complaint and whining about how they killed off the characters lol.
Uh, no. A sequel killing off two characters offscreen before the movie even starts is just storytelling incompetence, and emblematic of the complete shitshow that was the development and production of Alien 3. There were a million scripts, constant studio interference and literally no vision as to where they were going. The shooting script was literally still being rewritten during production. None of this is a secret as everyone involved has been quite forthcoming in how much of a complete mess it was.
And yet, it’s better than anything the MCU or DC has ever put out, and has a strong cult following.
No idea how the “MCU or DC,” even entered the conversation. What are you even responding to?
Kevin Feige sees all.
False choice. There’s no reason they had to go to a prison planet, just like there’s no reason they had to kill Newt and Hicks, especially off-screen.
Although it would have been hard to use her in a continuation anyway. Even William Gibson’s infinitely better Aliens 3 story that wasn’t used had Newt sent away to relatives on Earth rather than expose her to more danger.
I’d say the opposite. Alien was pretty dumbed down because all the people did the typical idiotic horror movie cliches like go off exploring alone and get picked off one by one. Aliens had much more thought put into it. Yes, the marines failed, but nobody was an idiot. The lieutenant was kind of incompetent (but this was his first real mission, so that’s understandable), and Paxton’s Private Hudson was a coward (but he was their tech specialist rather than an experienced combat veteran so this also made sense), but in general they made reasonable decisions overall — they were just outnumbered.
This. One of the reasons I love that movie is that to a first approximation nobody develops plot-specific amnesia or stupidity. Gorman, Burke and Hudson’s failures are in keeping with their characters. Nearly everyone else does their level best: it’s just a bad idea to touch down on a planet where nearly the entire human population has been chestbursted.
I think the crew in Alien did all right. Ash breaking quarantine was a “mistake” but he turned out to have alteriere motives. And then when they first start hunting it, they think the thing is small. Even at the end, they know it killed two crew members but nobody who had seen how big it had gotten had lived to tell about it. They had very little idea what they were dealing with.
I’d say both Alien and Aliens worked because the characters weren’t idiots. I’d very much disagree with your take on Alien in that regard though. Yeah, Dallas breaks quarantine to save a worker, and monster busts out of him, but the initial decision, despite Ripley’s trying to stop it, is understandable. These are basically mine workers making shit for money and have comraderies, and are stuck on a ship in the middle of nowhere. Even when the alien bursts out of Kane, they now think they have a little slithery, potentially dangerous animal on the ship and try to deal with it as sensibly as possible, because they aren’t going anywhere soon. Then it (despite all physics) turns into a massive animal when they though they were looking for something the size of a squirrel. At that point they know they’re fucked and in an incredibly desperate situation. Lambert straight up says it’s going to pick them off one by one at this point, but they all acknowledge they can’t kill it, so getting off the ship is the only chance, which requires them going separate ways, and potentially getting picked off. They weren’t dumb about it. The characters were very aware, and vocalized, that trying to prep the escape shuttle could be a suicide mission.And, yeah, when it comes to Aliens, I’d agree that it works so well, because nobody is a breathtakingly moronic idiot, particularly as compared to the likes of Prometheus or Covenant. It starts with you thinking these soldiers are idiots, with their brashness and overconfidence, but quickly turns that on its head when they are overwhelmed and they have to try to logistically get themselves out of the situation they find themselves in.
Point of order: Hudson bitched like a coward but he never ran off, didnt hesitate saving Newt from that face hugger (Christ, kid, look out!), and he goes out standing firm raining hell down on a roomful of xenomorphs. Hudson was a boss.
“Aliens” is just the US military’s experience in Vietnam. Which is a great theme for a sci-fi movie!
They also had the company undermining them with Burke.
I mean, what? Yes, people were idiots in Aliens, most notably the shuttle pilots who sat there with their fucking ramp open.
#3 is in keeping with #1, and hated by those who love #2What? I’ve never found an Alien fan who thought anything like that.In addition, Fincher didn’t kill off anyone. He had no choice in the matter. He was a music video director hired because Fox was low on options, and development and preproduction were already notoriously such a wild mess they were struggling to find anyone to take it. The script was a weird amalgamation of many, very different, scripts and was being rewritten while they were shooting. I mean, Fincher’s literally disowned the movie over and over again, saying he had no creative control, and that, “nobody hates Alien 3 more than me.”
Which is a testament to Fincher, because it’s still really not that bad a film. It’s not great, and doesn’t stack up with the first two (arguably perfect in their own way) films, but it’s watchable.
I think it works better as an alternate sequel to Alien. Starting Alien 3 by going: “None of Aliens mattered” felt like a bit of a kick in the teeth.
That was my issue with it too. It felt like it just wiped out everything that happened in the second movie and was like “never mind everyone died anyway.”
Not a bad movie, but not a good follow up to Aliens. Should have started a few years later with a grown up Newt (or at least an older teenager). I think the right way to go is to retcon out everything after Aliens and have Newt still alive, maybe she has to go find Ripley or something. Kiernan Shipka might be a good grown up Newt, maybe Hayden Panettiere if you want to go a little older.
Nope. That’s an awful idea. I hate the idea of just retconning things that fans weren’t able to handle.
There was a very good Alien comic about Newt coming back to earth and her cryo-pod failing so she was an adult when they woke her up.
Alien 3 is one of the bleakest movies ever made, and I love it for that. “Oh, you like the strong young soldier and cute kid saved in the last movie? Well guess what; they died meaningless, random deaths without ever waking up, just like you will someday. You like competent crews? Tough shit, you get a bunch of rapists and murderers. You like action? Here’s Tywin Lannister giving a 15 minute monologue about how his morphine addiction caused him to kill a patient and he’s exile at this penal colony is essentially purgatory and hell for him. You like Ripley surviving? I fucking hate you; Ripley dies at the end.”
I recently re-watched Alien 3 (having seen it originally in the cinema when it was released) and I thought it was a perfectly passable Alien film. All the films are going to pale to the original, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t better than a lot of other stuff out there. Alien 3 was pretty decent overall.
…it just may finally be time, in the words of Dwayne Hicks, to call game over, man.
Needs more stars.
Right!? That response was just *chef’s kiss* beautiful.
This may be the finest GIF/Situation synergy, ever to grace the internet.
I really hope that mistake was bait. Either way, top work!
Me too, I really hope Scott was just serving it up for someone to crush.
Fuckin’ A!
Chef’s kiss
“Nuke the franchise from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”
“Game over, man! Game over!”
As that woman who used to play Spock in all those Star Wars movies used to say …“Be good.”
Logged in just to star this – bravo.gif.
Did you know Hudson survived? He killed the one alien which pulled him down through the grate, then made his escape and got far enough away from the nuclear detonation. He used his military tech training to send a signal off planet for rescue, and was picked up by the company a bit later.
The Alien franchise needs someone with a more or less stable vision at the helm. It needs a Feige, or a Lucas, or even a Shonda fucking Rhimes. Someone who can manage the moving parts creatively, keep the suits happy/tell them to shut the fuck up, and present content with some kind of overall unity to it.Kinda has to happen, due to how rife the property is for commercial/cultural strip-mining. The alternative is a bunch of suits saying “Hey, kids like aliens and plasma rifles n’ shit, right!?”
Can’t wait for the Shonda Rhimes AliensGrey Anatomy crossover.
Next…on Greys….
Gotta say, a Grey’s Anatomy/Alien crossover would have exactly as much narrative cohesion as the AVP franchise and the two Prometheus flicks.
No wonder Pompeo quit.
Shondaland Presents: Alien Grey Goo
no, no and no.
no, no and no. K. Good talk!
a better thought than your idea of turning this into the next Marvel piece of shit.
You did not, in fact, present an actual thought.But, hey, sure, what they should do is just keep whoring the property out to various, incoherent projects that never fit together (tonally, lore-wise, quality-wise, fucking name it) and thus continue damaging the brand overall, thus necessitating this very conversation.Without a brand steward, what’s your solution? Because we’ve seen the alternative, across actual decades. Doesn’t seem to be working, turns out!
We have very different opinions. that’s ok. You’re probably an MCU person, I am not. but, I presented three thoughts – no to Feige, no to Lucas, and no to Shonda fucking Rhimes (who knows why she got fucking thrown in there). These are laughable ideas to anyone who actually is attracted to the reasons that Alien worked.
I don’t know what an MCU person is. I watch movies, some of which have been Marvel branded, if that’s what it is?Anyhow, the examples I listed were not explicit choices. I thought the phrasing was clear: The Alien franchise needs someone with a more or less stable vision at the helm. It needs a Feige, or a Lucas, or even a Shonda fucking Rhimes. NOTE: I should not have to actually say this, but no, I am not seriously advocating for Shonda fucking Rhimes to take the thing over. It was an intentionally ludicrous inclusion.Anyhow, I ask again: without a helmsperson to guide the property, how would you have the property go forward?If you think it should die, having accomplished all it could? That’s an answer. Hell, might be the best answer.But without some vision, all you’re going to get is continued inconsistency and mediocrity. And if that’s what you want from it, cool. Fuck, it’s basically what I expect from MCU flicks anymore (all I want or expect from them is a cinematic thrill ride on par with an adequate Star Wars flick). If you want better, IMO, you need someone with a vision and enough clout to tell the meddlers to fuck off. That or kill the fucking thing.
Tyler Perry’s Medea Goes to LV-426
Paul Dini? He’s a master at juggling characters and personalities.
I don’t know if there’s any franchise that I WANT to see work as much as I do Alien. It’s a shame that the more recent films just haven’t delivered.
“Can the Alien franchise be saved after decades of disappointment?”I’m going to defer to my friend, the trusty Magic 8-Ball here…Very doubtful.
Me (discussing Alien Covenant with my young-adult daughter): The problem is she let the wrong Michael Fassbender back on the ship.Daughter: The wrong Michael Fassbender? I’d let both Michael Fassbenders on the ship!
Michaels Fassbender.
Copies of Michael Fassbender.
Michaevatar: The Last Fassbender
Fassbendi?
Hey! That’s my job!
Goddamn, what I’d give to see a new Alien movie that was as good as Prey was.(edit: so I guess what I’m saying is go back the money truck to Dan Trachtenberg’s house.)
They can call it… “Human”.
Terminator is arguably in a similar spot, with every entry since T2 a decidedly mixed bag. Hell, even WITH James Cameron and Linda Hamilton back on board, Dark Fate didn’t live up to expectations.As for Alien, I feel like the series still has a lot of potential. Look at what made the first two films work and go back to that. Let’s leave Ripley behind (save for a brief appearance at the beginning or end of the movie) and follow some new heroes. The focus has to be more on story and atmosphere than big budget CGI and omg-stuff-go-boom.
exactly. leave the nostalgia out of it and just focus on a strong story. if the story sucks, all the aliens in the world can’t help.
Pretty spot-on comparison between franchises:* 1 and 2 extremely well regarded* 3 generally viewed as decent, if not reaching the heights of the first two (and come to think of it, both versions of Terminator 3 unceremoniously killed off one or more main characters from T2, just like Alien 3 did)* all the remaining prequels/sequels were varying degrees of sucked out loud, with the occasional cool/pretty moment.
> The focus has to be more on story and atmosphere than big budget CGI and omg-stuff-go-boom.This is what Prometheus and Covenant have done. It is also why people have disliked them. Scott is telling his space opera story and not the monster story people want.
Terminator’s a particularly frustrating franchise. Such a vast possibility space squandered because they can’t think of any ideas other than “keep trying to make Terminator 2 again”.
I think it just takes a little creativity, and the extremely rare occurrence of a studio willing to go with something that isn’t just T2 again. There’s a lot of stories you could tell in the Terminator world that still involve the familiar elements of a terminator and a resistance protector, without just replicating the same story beats.
I’ve posted my own idea for a story here before, which is meant to address the following: If Skynet (or some equivalent) is inevitable, how do you permanently prevent humanity from getting destroyed by it? And the answer is basically that you recognize that the Skynet-destroys-humanity path occurs because we decide to teach the first AI we create to be a violent psychopath and we give it access to nuclear weapons. What if we taught an AI to be compassionate and peaceful instead?The bones of the story are that, yet again, Skynet sends back a terminator and the resistance sends back a protector. This terminator is the most intelligent unit Skynet has ever built. Skynet has learned from its past mistakes: big, brutal, hyperfocused terminators, even ones that can learn like the T-800 or T-1000 or T-X, fail because they aren’t creative enough to out-think the humans they’re trying to kill. They’re still too constrained by their programming. So Skynet engineers the T-S, a unit that presents as an average-sized human female, and has two important characteristics: first, it can engage a stealth mode, because its design intent is to be quietly patient rather than blasting away immediately. It’s stronger than it looks but not super-strong, designed to pass even highly invasive anti-terminator scanning. But the second, and more important characteristic is that the T-S actually has human-level intelligence and obeys its directives because it wants to, not because it’s been programmed to. For all practical purposes, it has free will the same way humans do.
But the thing Skynet misses is that this gives the T-S the ability to decide to disobey Skynet. It doesn’t do this until the end of the story, of course, after having witnessed real human compassion and sacrifice and starts to wonder if Skynet’s “kill all humans” mindset might not be so great. More specifically, the T-S encounters another AI, named Hypatia, created by an AI researcher in the present timeline; in fact Hypatia and her creator are who the T-S was sent back to kill. Hypatia has been taught to be compassionate and friendly and caring from her inception, and it’s eventually Hypatia who convinces past Skynet not to become a psychopathic killing machine, thus causing the timeline to diverge permanently and future (genocidal) Skynet to never exist.There’s still resistance protectors, a reprogrammed T-900 and a human who work together as a team (it turns out this is really effective, which is why they’re sent back together), whose job it is to protect Hypatia and her creator while the T-S is hunting them down. Another element I came up with is that the T-S has an internal temporal communicator that lets it talk to future-Skynet in order to send updates and get intel, and the moral climax of the story is Hypatia, the T-S, and present-Skynet all having a conversation inside this virtual space with future-Skynet, where Hypatia and the T-S ultimately convince present-Skynet to eschew violence.
I think you could make a great Terminator 3 that is sort of a prequel / sequel that completes the time loop and shows what happens after Reese and company get sent through the time machine, but that would have to be the end.
Xenomorphs were scary because they were weird and unexplained. Totally “alien” in every sense of the word. The more movies you make about them, the less weird and unexplained they become, so they become less alien. Maybe this property was never meant for a full-blown franchise.
Maybe this property was never meant for a full-blown franchise. It had the bones of one, but then various studios/creators kept stepping on each others’ dicks and it’s currently a fucking mess.Better franchise potential than, say, Ghostbusters, which should’ve ended at two middling-to-damned solid flicks anchored by the performers who WERE THE ENTIRE DAMNED HOOK TO THE MOVIE.
Ghostbusters is a solid concept – investigation and elimination of supernatural nuisances, using high tech and dangerous electronics. Got a couple of decent cartoon series out of it and some really good comic books, a shedload of bad video games (and one arguably masterpiece-level game), and a really excellent tabletop roleplaying game out of that concept.I still think a ghost-of-the-week live action TV show would be fun, working some other location that isn’t the New York City outfit.Hell, Ghostbusters 2016 might have been fine if they had gone with that concept.
It’ll only work as a franchise when they embrace the idea that the world now knows ghosts are real and goes big with it. Lockwood & Co on Netflix kinda does this, through a Harry Potterish scope, and it absolutely works.
One could argue that the premise to Ghostbusters was a throwaway line in the opening reel: “The franchise rights alone will make us rich!”So open up fucking franchises EVERYwhere. Ghostbusters Salem (having to deal with a pissed witch back for revenge), Ghostbusters New Orleans (A franchise branch located in Voodoo city? The script writes itself!), Ghostbusters vs the Winchester Mystery House.The series’ attachment to Murray, Raimis, etc, might have been it’s death blow.
“Ghostbusters New Orleans (A franchise branch located in Voodoo city? The script writes itself!)“That was called Live and Let Die
I honestly don’t think the movie would have worked without them. The script is ok, but it’s the cast that makes that film a classic.
Whilst filming Alien they realised how comical the Xenomorph looked walking around so much like Jaws they only showed small bits of it.Kinda feels like a metaphor for the entire franchise.
I’ve been saying this for years, but the horror in Alien lies with the humans and the harsh cyberpunk-ish world of Alien, which is an obvious thing to say (like “the survivors are actually the walking dead!”, which.. urgh), but I keep being surprised how authors (be they Alien scriptwriters, comic writers or novel writers) keep getting this wrong. They’ll think up new variations of the xenomorph, when there’s no need, we’ve already got a really good monster! You just have to use it properly.
The basic tenet of Alien should be that the xenomorph brings out the best and the worst in humans (mainly the worst) – and that’s where the horror comes in.
Alien 3 is an excellent film. I watch it probably once a month.
I got that beat. I used to leave The Critic on loop when I went to sleep (something like white noise, ya know?), and I probably caught their Alien 3 parody at least once a week.
yeah to be fair, I do love Alien 3, but I also love Alien 3 as a bedtime watch. I go to bed watching it all the time!
Hachi-machi!
Here’s a an idea, perhaps Hollywood should come up with something new and novel instead of pursuing the old and tired?
Cool idea, how about staying on-topic though?
we ran out of ideas in the 90s!
the coke was so good back then
– Bob Saget and the Olsen Twins
I’d love to see what Craig Mazin would do with Alien.
I think they make too much of these movies. As the aforementioned Prey shows, you can make a good movie with a well-used monster/alien/whatever just by changing up the setting and getting decent actors.
They should just make new Alien movies that are just “What if Alien but on an [insert place]?”. You could probably make a dozen of those, each on a budget of less than $30-40 million, and they’d pull in the $200-300 million box office each time before becoming good streaming fodder.
Yes it can be saved. Make a decent enough action film without trying to dig into the origin of the species and just have them as an invasive species that’s feared throughout the galaxy.
“Make a decent”..”film”. Seriously, chuck all the backstory. You have a monster who can be anything you want it to be and the entire universe as a playground.
Resurrection, surprisingly, has some of my favorite “little” moments…the stuff with Hedaya and Wincott makes me happy. But it can be a mess, like 3 can be a challenging approach but also kind of a mess. I find the Prometheus-forward films just unnecessary. I don’t need a backstory, and I don’t need the synthetic to be a bigger villain than the fucking alien. And their violence seems more cruel than the rest. I prefer the original’s quiet, shadowy creep.
I think a new Alien film (or TV series) should take place after Aliens. I’m not up to speed on the intricacies of the Alien franchise…But LV-426 may not have the only terraforming outpost that W-Y Corp had at that time. Maybe those other outpost were unlucky as well, or were seeded with xenomorphs by W-Y?I’d watch the hell out of that TV show, maybe the colonist’s command have heard rumors of what happened on LV-426…?
Take a tip from Prey and just have one xenomorph in an interesting time/place.
*Fede Álvarez
Joss Whedon’s comments about Alien Resurrection are classic Whedon. Anytime something he is involved with doesn’t go well it is always nothing to do with him and always entirely other people’s fault. He even calls out the casting, but if you look at the cast after Weaver it is loaded with great character actors like Ron Pearlman, Dan Hedaya and Brad Dourif. It even has the guy who was Tuco in Breaking Bad. Plus Winona Ryder.
I actually like Alien 4 for what it is. Stupid and fun. Mostly because the cast is great
It is also word for word his script. And frankly I like the movie.
Whedon will even shit on successful things. He wrote an early script for the first X-Men movie, then shit on the movie for not using enough of what he wrote after it came out and was a big hit.
In my eyes, the best Alien product to be released after the original Alien is Alien: Isolation – the PS3 / PS4 / beyond game that recaptured the cerebral junk space atmosphere & actually scares the daylights out of you with the Alien *hunting* you all over the Sebastapol. Sure it’s not a movie, but who cares with so much Done Right (literally everything)?
The problem with bringing Scott back to the franchise: he’s not an auteur, he’s a metteur-en-scene—an occasionally interesting technician who isn’t doing too much more than filming the screenplay in front of him. It’s worked on many films, but with diminishing returns of late. He doesn’t have the intellectual vision to take Lindelof’s ideas and either mold them into something coherent or recognize that they’re a dead end and move on.
Developing an origin story for the xenomorphs is a terrible fucking idea. They are best thought of as an interstellar virus, something inherently alien: they have no home of their own, so they act as aggressive parasites. Turning them into biological warfare agents strips them of that alienness; while Fassbender’s performances in Prometheus and Covenant are exceptional and the films interesting in their exploration of the anti-social potential of intelligence, artificial and otherwise, it has little to do with the xenomorphs themselves. But I don’t know if the Alien franchise is really that comparable to the Predator franchise and why it was positioned for a revival. The Predators are intelligent monsters on a singular mission; at their best (and Prey does this exceptionally well), they are about a battle of wits. The aliens are not particularly intelligent–cunning, perhaps, but in an instinctual way. After four (or six or eight) films, how much of that is left to explore?
Neil Blomkamp is a one-hit wonder, at best.
Neil Blomkamp creates beautiful visuals, but can’t write a story to save his life.
Honestly its been shit since resurrection. Needs to be nuked from orbit and just left alone.
The Hawley series is supposed to shoot later this year but with everything in streaming so fragile (and execs freaking out over budgets) I honestly think there’s only a 40% chance of it ever happening. They should just hand it over to Blumhouse and let them take a crack. Low financial stakes + greater creative latitude.
this
I may be in the minority but I liked both Alien 3 and Resurrection. Aside from Weaver, 3 had a great performance by Charles S. Dutton and Resurrection had a great supporting cast too (Winona Ryder, Dan Hedaya, Ron Perlman, Michael Wincott, J.E. Freeman and Brad Dourif).
I like all the Alien movies, can even find something to like in Requiem (hospital Alien belly buster) bring on more!
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Prometheus wasn’t terrible but I have no idea why they didn’t do a true sequel with Covenant…it was the softest of soft reboots for no reason…Rapace deserved better
I actually think there’s a semi-easy way to fix/save it: STOP. TRYING. TO. CONNECT. EVERYTHING. This whole everything-has-to-be-a-shared-universe-that-connects-every-movie-and-has-nonsensical-callbacks-for-no-reason has to stop. Make a new movie. New people. Don’t tie it to Alien or Aliens. The universe is a big place, I’m sure those eggs ended up somewhere else.
Although Prometheus is generally considered meh, I think it was pretty good not great, visually good looking, and rewatchable. If it would’ve had one or two really good scenes I’d put it in the TRON: Legacy class of films (not well-regarded but entertaining and beautiful enough for me to want to see a few key scenes when it’s on).
I actually just rewatched the first three recently. I liked 3 better this time around for some reason.And you know, I liked a lot of Alien Resurrection. But they lost me in a few places, not least of which was a something like 5 minute swimming scene. Humans swimming. Underwater.As for Prometheus… that was one-upped when the main character gets the alien cut out of her by a giant robot surgery machine, then proceeds to get up and fucking run everywhere for the rest of the movie. But also Prometheus just wasn’t a good movie in general, I thought.
They should take points from the novels and RPG and get away from the Prometheus and Covenant story arc. Make something new. Show us the rest of the galaxy and how we get from Alien 3 to Ressurection. Who wins The Frontier War, the fate of the United Americas, 3 World Empire and Union of Progessive Peoples get along and at what point does the United System Military come to be. The story needs to land and get ground level then take off. Show us colonial Marshals and Working Joes on space stations. Give us glimpses of other corporations like Samani, Souta, Jing Ti Long and Hyperdyne.
Exactly. Perhaps the start of it can be conflicts over the taxation of trade routes! Can’t go wrong with a premise as exciting as that!
They made more Alien flicks after Aliens? Huh. Imagine that.
Alien is in that genre of 80’s films that should have quit a while ago, or figured out a better way to explore itself without relying on the cast associated with the project.
Logged in just to star this. Bravo.gif
My idea for saving the Aliens franchise – give it to James Cameron. Scrap whatever shitty Avatar: the Last Airbender framework he’s inserting as his plot for the Avatar sequels. “Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. Then the humans attacked!” Bring the Xenomorphs to Pandora and force the N’avi and humans to work together to fight off extinction. You even have Sigourney Weaver starring, for heaven’s sakes!
I’m invested in seeing David eat shit and die. Just give me a three minute sequence with a bunch of Aliens jumping all over him, tearing him to pieces, and barfing acid all over his circuitry. Hate that character. What an asshole.
What disappointments
I feel like Terminator Dark Fate might be a good indicator of how hard it would be to do something good with Alien. Because while I enjoyed Dark Fate and liked how they tried to do something different it didn’t seem to be very successful or well received. At the same if they had just tried to make another Terminator wants to kill John Connor movie like T3 people probably would have had issues with that too.
Many fine points, and more defenders of various films in the series than I would have guessed.With the new film, I hope that they either go (1) small, with some interesting characters but not an obvious direct remake of Alien, or (2) gigantic, with a whole ship of eggs crash-landing on Earth, which is what I hoped Alien3 would do. [THERE WAS NO WAY THOSE EGGS GET ON THE SHIP, PLUS SITTING IN PLAIN SIGHT, THEN FACE HUGGERS GET INTO AND OUT OF A SLEEP POD, THEN DIE AND LEAVE NO VISIBLE TRACE FOR RIPLEY TO SEE. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!]
Or – hear me out – what if they just make the same tired bullshit over again? I call it “Alien8ted”.
They just need to stop making these.
Perhaps it’s time to take a step back and instead of asking if it *can* be saved, asking if it *should* be saved. At this point the franchise has more mediocre to bad films than it does good, and the general premise of the whole thing feels pretty well mined-out.
The A9 fan edit of Prometheus is the second best film in the franchise behind the original. Aliens is way overrated
Just stop. No more ALIEN. It was bad enough killing New and Hicks, which feels just as wrong as FRIDAY THE 13th PART 2, when 5 minutes in, Alice, the sole survivor of the 1st one, is murdered by adult Jason…even though he DIED as a child in the 50’s.Then they pissed on the 1st film when they tell us the Xenomorphs weren’t aliens from another world, but were lab grown by an evil android…an android built by Peter Weyland himself, that had super powers that no other Android, especially Ash, had. Which makes the Alien Universe EVEN SMALLER and inter-connected than the Star Wars Universe, if that’s even possible. When are we gonna find that Ripley is actually…*suspenseful music*…Peter Weyland’s secret daughter?
Fede Álvarez.For fucks sake, even if you don’t have respect for the people you write about or the people you write for, have enough respect for yourself as a supposed movie buff to get the names of the filmmakers spelled right.
Hard to be disappointed when you properly manage your expectations.
Just have another clone Ripley, but have her be much younger, then find an actress that “kind of” looks like Sigourney Weaver and run with it.
Alien: Isolation (game) is probably the 3rd best out of all the Aliens universe stories (obviously with the Alien & Aliens movies). Alien 3 comes next – not as good as the previous, but still in the realm of canon. The rest were not good, though were fun in some parts. The whole “lets come up with new kinds of Aliens” thing needs to end – it’s stupid. Generally bouncing all over the place just like the Predator franchise.
“…the Internet collectively shrugged at the news that filmmaker Felix Álvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) was at work on the latest relaunch.”The movie is being made by Fede Alvarez, not Felix. Fede’s full name is Federico, so I’m not sure where Felix came from.
Maybe we could leave the franchise behind and try a new IP? I’m just spitballing here but “Prometheus” would have been much better received (and probably better made without tie-ins) had it not been Alien branded.
Same goes for Covenant. It was so dispiriting to hear Riddles Scott talking about how they were putting the xenomorph in, because that was what people wanted. Like, if Scott is bored with the creature, why bother letting him make an Alien movie. (And the xenomorph bits at the end of Covenant were dull and passionless, “welp, here’s the monster”)
I know this is about the film series, but just wanna say Alien: Isolation is a masterpiece of a game and genuinely one of the most tense and scary games ever. For me it is the best entry in the series after the first two movies.
My initial thought for an Aliens streaming show: Set it on another shake-n-bake planet, with an emerging colony of humans the viewers actually give a shit about. Fully rendered characters, families, conflicts, etc. Think Friday Night Lights in space.Have the Alien threat start slowly. Crib from the best parts of The Thing here.Don’t immediately overblow the threat—keep it intimate, no Marvel Act 3 cgi battle shit. Keep it simmering—a beloved character killed in Episode 1 as the cliffhanger. Ep 2 is the community treating it like a murder investigation. A mixed group of colonists’ storylines and intentions start to overlap amid the intrigue.Things get worse, but our heroes manage. Containing the number of xenomorphs is key to both the showrunners and the fictional community.By the end of S1, despite losses and heartaches, our heroes are on the verge of containing and eliminating the infestation. They know a key to this is: fewer egg hosts=fewer monsters. Their ragtag strategy to achieve this is minutes away, literally en route to wipe out the remaining threat…when Weiland transports with dozens of new colonists arrive….can’t wait for S2.Or, y’know, Aliens vs Predators vs Jason.
That’s what they get for killing off the cat (and Newt and Hicks I guess) at the beginning of the third movie.
There’s one obvious way forward. Replicants vs Aliens. It’s
a prequel to Blade Runner and a sequel to Aliens. Replicants aren’t
machines – they’re genetically engineered super-soldiers built to
protect odd-world colonists from xenomorphs. In addition to their 4-year
lifespan, enhanced strength, increased intelligence, etc., the replicants have one key feature: they’re immune to acid blood.
RVA
follows the course of a replicant rebellion led by Batty and his group
of 6 ship-jumpers – including pair-bonded Deckard and Rachel. AI+CGI is
easily up to the challenge of digitally recreating them now.
The
rebels smuggle a xenomorph egg to Earth and threaten to expose a human
to it. Weyland-Yutani agree to extend their lives in exchange for the
egg. They meet for the exchange in San Francisco with W-Y’s chief ethics
officer, Eleanor Ripley. But W-Y double-cross them all and Ripley winds
up implanted.
W-Y aim to use her to get their hands on a mature
xenomorph but Ripley has other ideas and does a deal with the Tyrell
who agrees to scan her brain and make a Replicant version of her in
exchange for the xenomorph. But after human Ripley is killed the
xenomorph escapes and all hell breaks loose as you’d expect.
After
a lot of increasingly desperate action as our Replicant heroes try to
contain and outsmart the Alien hordes, there are millions of human
deaths across several cities around the world. Eventually
Replicant-Ripley gives her life to nuke the affected cities from orbit,
resulting in a nuclear winter that creates the Los Angeles seen in the
original BR.
At the end of the film Batty’s crew escape in a shuttle but Deckard and Rachel
are fried running through an electrical field and Tyrell cooks up an
experiment to see whether his new memory implants can overcome their
previous feelings for each other …
Oh, and the reason the original BR is set in 2019 is … the typesetter was dyslexic and it’s actually Los Angeles 2091. Fixed it for you.