Noah Hawley’s Alien prequel show is just going to skip past all that Prometheus stuff, thanks
"The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that’s just inherently less useful to me," Hawley said of the titular alien
Aux News Noah Hawley
Our condolences to Michael Fassbender and the makeup-slathered husk of Guy Pierce this week, as Fargo’s Noah Hawley has stated that he has no interest in using multiple major elements from Ridley Scott’s prequel film Prometheus in his upcoming Alien TV show.
Hawley, who’s been working on this Alien prequel of his own for a while now, was interviewed about the planned FX show by KCRW this weekend, and says that he’s had a number of conversations with Alien and Prometheus director Scott about, let’s say, focusing primarily on the Alien part of the director’s filmography while making the series. Specifically, he’s disinterested in making use of Prometheus’ sci-fi aesthetics—which, for some reason, were far glossier and more iPhone-esque than the rusty future depicted in the original Alien, despite the 2012 film being a prequel—and its big plot reveal, that the titular Xenomorphs were a freshly minted bio-weapon by those pesky human-creating Engineers, rather than the product of millennia of deadly evolution.
“Ridley and I have talked about this — and many, many elements of the show,” Hawley stated in the interview “For me, and for a lot of people, this ‘perfect life form’ — as it was described in the first film — is the product of millions of years of evolution that created this creature that may have existed for a million years out there in space. The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago, that’s just inherently less useful to me.” Also not as useful: Getting away from those “giant computer monitors, these weird keyboards” from 1979's Alien. “I prefer the retro-futurism of the first two films. And so that’s the choice I’ve made — there’s no holograms. The convenience of that beautiful Apple store technology is not available to me.”
Hawley is currently barreling toward the fifth season finale of Fargo, which airs on Tuesday night. He’s said his Alien show is currently aiming at an early 2025 release; he also acknowledged that the franchise is gearing up to be active in theaters again, too, with Fede Álvarez directing Alien: Romulus, currently slated for an August 2024 release.
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I cannot describe the relief this makes me feel.
That whole “skipping parts of back canon that I don’t like” doesn’t seem to work well. They tried it with Terminator.Star Trek fans take questionable back canon (produced officially) and even create new worthwhile canon with it, rather than just trying to leave it behind. An example: Remember “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, where the timeline was temporarily altered, leading to a “non-killed” Tasha Yar transferring from Picard’s Enterprise D and leading the Enterprise C through a time rift going back 20 years, back into battle against the Romulans.Later, we learn that Tasha had survived the battle, being captured by the Romulans, marrying a high-ranking individual and producing a daughter, Sela, who, at a very young age, turned on her mother during an escape attempted and caused her death.
Then later came Star Trek: Nemesis, where we learn of Romulans creating a clone of Picard, Shinzon, so as to do some dastardly plotting.
Problem: The clone would likely have been created while Picard was a young captain of the Stargazer. Why would the Romulans care about him? The fan-created answer: Because Tasha would talk to her daughter about this great tactician and captain of her time, Jean-Luc Picard.So the Romulans, upon picking up on this, decided to try their clone plot in order to place someone in an important position later. But in our timeline, Picard simply remained captain of the Enterprises, D and E, and as power shifted within the Romulan Empire, it was never seen as worthwhile to continue with this clone-in-high-places-plot and Shinzon was pushed into the mines, later drafted into the Dominion War and finally died during a plot of his own.
This fan-created answer appears to have been given official blessing.Moral of the story: When different producers give you scripted lemons, make canonical lemonade from them all!
Superman Returns did it too by ignoring Superman III and IV. It made sense at the time – before the MCU, and when Superman: The Movie was still widely held as the pinnacle of superhero movies – but I think the decision aged terribly. It’s so slavish to the 1978 movie in some ways, like recreating the opening title sequence and soullessly repeating lines from the original, that it failed to connect with audiences that were coming in with expectations set by early-2000’s superhero movies.But even as a continuation of the Donner/Reeve films, it’s a failure. The actors were cast as if they would go on to play their roles for a decade, but were way too young to be the same characters from the original two films (plus the five years Superman’s been away). The little changes to Superman’s costume felt like change for change’s sake and, along with the completely redesigned Daily Planet interiors and exteriors, make the movie’s world feel completely different from the original movies.And on the press tour, Bryan Singer would give conflicting answers to whether it was a sequel/continuation of Donner’s films, or its own thing. It’s not surprising he was on drugs during the making of this deeply weird ass movie.
Lavishly imitating the original Superman was a mistake for Superman Returns; ignoring III and IV were not.
Then again, I was one of, if not the only person interested in the half kryptonian kid. I didn’t care for how he was conceived, but at least the kid was one thing different from the other films.
RE: III and IV, I’d argue that the status quo at the end of II is the same as it is at the end of IV, other than the passing of Ma Kent, and she’s barely in Superman Returns. Bryan Singer also ignored anything from the first two movies that conflicted with what he wanted to do, so to me, adding the wrinkle that Returns follows II but not III and IV is completely arbitrary.And to the OP’s point, CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths mined a funny little moment from Superman III by having Routh’s Superman drop the line, “Actually that’s not the first time I’ve gone crazy and fought myself.” That’s a genuinely entertaining sequence from an otherwise shitty movie; why pretend like it didn’t happen?As for the half Kryptonian kid, I couldn’t emotionally separate him from how he was conceived, and his half Kryptonian origins were written in a way that the comic adaptation and novelization ignore it, ostensibly to keep the reveal from being spoiled. His origin is completely inconsequential to the plot, and the movie doesn’t do anything else interesting with it. Contrast that with the show Superman and Lois, which IMO is effectively mining the concept for interesting stories.I guess Lois being a mother in general was different, but eh. It didn’t make up for all the problems I had with that movie.
if Ukraine would honor the referendum in Crimea and let the Dunbas provinces hold their referendums, this war wouldn’t be happening.
Wat
Luthor’s immediate “…who is this boy’s father?” was one of the few good lines they gave him in that one. Really made him seem like the super-genius version of Luthor rather than the bumbling real-estate grifter version he was otherwise.
I think a lot of stuff hurt Superman Returns. If I had to pick its big problems:Brandon Routh wasn’t fed a very good script. Look at how much better he did as the Atom because the hacks at CW actually like comic book camp.Very little actually happens in the film. This may be a product of imitating Donner’s “normal world but with Superman” approach to the films, but Superman still DID STUFF in the 80s flicks.Much of the dramatic weight of Returns has to be carried by Kevin Spacey, and although I actually thought he was a GREAT successor to Gene Hackman, he was also Me Tooed IMMEDIATELY after the film’s release, and it’s hard to get into a movie when your Lex Luthor may be a real life sex criminal*.The decision to make Superman an absentee dad was weird. Not necessarily bad, but kind of out of character to both Lois and Clark, and I think it put a lot of people off.In line with that, there was a whole pre-credit part with Superman getting radio signals from Krypton, leaving, finding only a derelict space station, and escaping back to Earth in that ship we see, that didn’t make it into the film and instead is just awkwardly explained later. Not knowing why Superman wasn’t around saps some of the drama from the whole “superman left for a while” angle, and again, it seems weird that public figure Superman wouldn’t tell his best friend, lover, and press associate Lois Lane about his exciting trip to discover alien life BEFORE he left.* In fairness to Mr. Spacey, the charges leveled against him were retracted about a year later. In fairness to possible victims of Kevin Spacey, more equally credible accusations have emerged against him (and against close personal associates) since then.
Yeah, I kind of made myself enjoy “Returns” while I was watching it but after it was over I could never think about it without thinking “Man, that movie really did suck”. For SOOO many reasons but primarily the way overused Williams march, which ginned up every single time Superman did anything – ANYTHING. Do you know how many times the entire march is played in Donner’s film? THREE. Opening credits, helicopter rescue, closing credits. And also his costume looked like…it was made of used motor-oil stained rubber. With weirdly sized details.
[The actors] were way too young to be the same characters from the original two filmsI think that was just a case of collapsing the timeline. i.e. Superman Returns was set in the present, but the events of Superman II were pulled up to have only taken place 5-6 years prior.It’s not dissimilar to how James Bond didn’t age 40 years between 1962’s Dr. No and 2002’s Die Another Day, despite each entry in the series being contemporaneous. Or how Romero’s Dead films always take place at the time they were made, regardless where they fit into the zombie apocalypse’s internal timeline.
I’m not talking about the real-life timeline. I give Brandon Routh a pass because we’ve all accepted that Superman ages slowly, but Kate Bosworth was about 22 when she filmed Superman Returns. She’s obviously playing a Lois Lane who’s at the very least 5-6 years older than her own age, but she just wasn’t convincing to me.
Ah, okay then. I do think Bosworth was miscast, but then it’s been so long since I saw the movie that it might be unfair on her performance.I will say that an even weirder choice is that of the previous movies that “count”, it’s not the theatrical Superman II, nor is it the restored Donner Cut, but a hypothetical version of the movie that Donner might have made if he hadn’t been fired. It’s quite the… uh… bold move to make a direct sequel to a movie from 26 years earlier that didn’t actually exist.
My only quibble is that batman begins came out the year before superman returns, and Spiderman 2 the year before that. I believe those, at the time, were generally regarded as the pinnacle of superhero movies. Probably still are.
I am legally bound to make the following comment whenever Returns is brought up:The plane rescue sequence remains the best Superman action sequence ever put to film. It is fun and harrowing, using Supes’ own powers against him at times. It may be a singular silver lining in an otherwise muddled film, but it was also the closest that live action has ever gotten to perfection, aka Superman: The Animated Series.
I’m legally obligated to counter:1) Even if so, one sequence does not a good movie make. It doesn’t help that the airplane sequence happens less than halfway through the movie. The rest is a slog. Everything before it is a slog. It’s a highlight in an otherwise bogged-down film.2) I know the prevailing opinion is that it’s a great sequence. I feel that it doesn’t hold up nearly as well as the helicopter rescue from Superman: The Movie. What that sequence lacks in visual effect spectacle, it more than makes up in emotion. If you cut out the, eh-hem, “bystander” exclaiming, “Say, Jim! That’s a bad out-fit! Whoo!” then it would be a perfect sequence.The plane rescue in Returns has never done it for me because of the heavy reliance on CG. It always takes me out of the sequence when the camera lingers on a dead-eyed CG Routh watching the shuttle drift into space. That’s just my opinion though, and to be fair, I’d probably appreciate that sequence a lot more if I didn’t have such a negative opinion about the rest of the film.
RE:1. Undoubtedly a slog. I thought I was clear with singular silver lining in an otherwise muddled film. Which is frustrating specifically because it points to the kind of fun, heir-to-Donner-plus-nod-to-Timm movie it could’ve been. 2. You’ll get no flack from me about the original Christopher Reeves film. It captured a certain late 70’s filmmaking magic, embracing Preston Sturges while also being state of the art (then). I’m also a huge fan of its sequel. Clunky FX (by today’s standards) notwithstanding, the Times Square fight remains a favorite scene for me decades later. When I reference the Animated Series I’m thinking specifically of a sequence in the 3 part opening episode, in which Supes fights (I think Lex?) in a mecha suit. It and the World’s Finest team-up (he and Batman vs. Joker and Lex) are the most perfectly distilled version of this icon. I suspect (and certainly hope) that James Gunn’s version will hew closely to it.
Nothing seems to work well with Terminator past T2, then its all just wide dislike with factions of people going “well I liked it” for every new project
I think The Sarah Connor Chronicles was generally well received (even if it only got two seasons — but they were real seasons with 31 episodes in total, none of these eight episode seasons common these days).
Ignoring continuity also means acknowledging that prior installments were unpopular or crappy, which invites the question of why this installment will be better. There are definitely people who enjoy continuity for its own sake, but there’s also something amusingly cynical about saying, “Remember those movies people didn’t like? Well forget about them!”
With Terminator, though, the very concept defies the existence of canon. The whole point of the franchise is about opposing forces trying to change history to make the future more to their liking. That is going to create multiverses by definition.
Chucking this in here because it interests me and I like your comment.Mad Max tends to get squirrely with its continuity as well. To me it’s justified if you imagine these are all myths told well after the events. Mad Max as King Arthur in other words. Some stories have this part and other stories don’t and things don’t always mesh together.
IIRC the proto-Xenomorph seemed to be created by accident, yeah?
I’ll admit it’s been years since I saw Prometheus, and can’t say I have any desire to watch it again.
It seems that way, but there’s the mural in the engineers’ ship that shows something similar to the proto-xenomorph. So the one we see at the end of the movie can’t be the first of its kind. It’s all rather unclear, honestly.
Going down this rabbit-hole on the internet I’ve found a bit of backstory that was seemingly left out of Prometheus.
Apparently the Engineers were deeply religious and strongly believed in the natural cycle of sacrifice to propagate life (hence the Engineer who sacrifices themself at the start of Prometheus to bring life to Earth). When Peter Weyland confronts the Engineer demanding eternal life, the Engineer damns all of humanity to extinction for failing to understand the fundamental nature of the universe. Hence the virus intended to wipe out all life on Earth.
Seems this proto-Xenomorph (called The Deacon) is the Engineers’ “perfect being”, and so the Engineer at the end of Prometheus sacrifices themself to create the Deacon. Though without knowing all of this it just looks like an accident to me.
Damn… I hope the human race doesn’t live and die on the morality of our CEOs. But now that I see that in writing, we kind of do.
No, the proto-Alien is on purpose by the Engineers. The “real” Alien is further on purpose by an annoyed robot with daddy issues.
*alone on my island*I liked Prometheus
Alone? Prometheus?
I liked it
Oh no! Promotheus!
Me too. I’m here over on my own little island not far away, but we probably shouldn’t try to make contact because the waters are infested with haters.
I do get why people don’t like it, and personally I’m fine with this series moving on without it – the video game Alien Isolation kept the first film’s chunkier retro aesthetics and told a pretty compelling story overall so I’m okay with seeing what this show and the upcoming movie have planned even if they don’t necessarily touch on the origin/Engineers stories. Plus, I was at least able to kind of scratch that Prometheus itch by way of ‘Raised by Wolves’.
I think Prometheus is misunderstood. It’s a classic slasher flick, like Halloween. The monster is basically immortal, Shaw is the Last Girl, and every other human is dumber than a box of rocks. The problem is that most people going into it are expecting more traditional sci-fi/space horror, and are disappointed when it’s actually a slasher wearing a sci-fi mask.
“Every other human is dumber than a box of rocks”You see, that’s all I remember about Prometheus. I can’t remember what the movie was actually about. I barely remember who was in it. But to this day, I can absolutely recollect my reaction to not believing I was watching characters being that fucking stupid. I can still feel my neck straining as I was looking left and right at my friends sitting at either side of me, expecting them to be as shocked as me at the shambolic shit-show that was happening on screen.I once thought that during that screening, I shifted slightly into a parallel dimension and watched a different film to everyone else.But then I watched it again.It’s terrible.
I liked it fine but the abject stupidity of some of the characters, most notably when the oil snake appears and the dude decides to start playing with it, completely took me out of the story.
Interesting point, but I don’t think a slasher with a sci-fi mask would really be unexpected for the franchise when that is what the original movie is, just far better put together than Prometheus. Imo the problem is that it seems Ridley Scott/the writers also thought they were making serious sci-fi at times. I like slashers, but the movie felt tonally inconsistent with the shoehorned themes about religion and existentialism. If they’d embraced a pulpy/campy tone throughout, I’d have less of an issue with the dumb crew and plot devices.
I agree that it had higher ambitions than being just a slasher movie. If it is a slasher, it probably has one of the more optimistic streaks running throughout it, and it definitely wants to do some high-concept sci fi storytelling. Even OG Alien aspired to some sci fi mystery with the Space Jockey, Ash the Android and the overall Giger aesthetic.Re: Stupid Characters – I feel like this has become a blanket criticism for the movie, but wasn’t it really just that dumbass who ‘befriends’ the space snake that made a truly dumb decision? That’s just one guy!
Didn’t they also decide to all take their helmets off not long after landing on the planet? (Honestly can’t remember if that was Prometheus or Alien: Covenant.) I know people also poke fun at Charlize Theron running away from the giant rolling spaceship in the same direction it was traveling instead of veering off. Characters acting dumb isn’t necessarily a huge issue to me, but it does give it a hokier feel, which clashed with other parts of the story that it seemed we were supposed to take seriously. My main problem with Prometheus is I just didn’t find it as fun and exciting as Alien. It had potential but dragged at times and was overall uneven.
Is it possible that this is a case of a production studio taking a half-written generic sci-fi script and retconning it into an Alien movie even though it didn’t make much sense to do so?
It’s just such a weird offramp. How do we go from the xenomorph to an origin of the human species story? People didn’t sign up for an Alien prequel that poses the question of what if humans were just the results of science experiments by a superior race? And revealing that the xenomorph was also the result of their experimentation instead of just some super-scary and highly adaptable alien life form that humans had the good fortune of managing to avoid until the goings on of the first movie took away from their mystery as well while adding nothing to the core story. Prometheus provided answers to a bunch of questions no one was asking.
Plenty of people were asking who that alien was and what his back story war.
Yeah gee, why would anyone expect a slasher-esque horror movie from the Alien franchise. I mean, it’s not like the original film and third film were basically just slasher movies set in space or anything. Oh, wait… that’s exactly what they were. Which makes this “point” completely ridiculous and nonsensical. That had absolutely nothing to do with why people didn’t like Prometheus. Since, again, a significant portion of the franchise is “slasher in space,” so claiming that people didn’t expect that from an Aliens movie or would dislike an Aliens movie for that reason is completely asinine. People didn’t like it because the plot was full of holes, the entire aesthetic had changed considerably, and above all else, because it tried to over-explain things that didn’t need explaining, and in the process it both stripped away any mystery and undermined many of the very things that made Alien interesting to begin with.Like, what are you even talking about? Are you not familiar with the original film? How can someone actually try to argue that Alien fans didn’t like an Alien sequel because they didn’t understand the concept of it being a slasher movie in space?BUT great point, other than being completely wrong and uninformed and illogical.
I liked Prometheus when I saw it in the movie theater. I still like it, but I watched one of those Youtube videos where they point out a movie’s plot holes for ten minutes straight, and man does that movie have a lot of holes in it.“Raised by Wolves” was an opaque and unrewarding slice of science fiction (that I still enjoyed watching). It created an alien environment that is strange and beautiful but also comes across as barren and hollow. The rules of the world are so elastic that it might as well be fantasy. The characters are one dimensional, bordering on incoherent, the plots flimsy. It failed on so many levels that it went full circle and became unique and interesting. Which is, after all, very Prometheus
I preferred Bob
Yeah, Me Too. The Radical Engineer Who Sacrificed Himself, Essentially To Stop The Rest From Destroying The Various Life They Had Created, Not Realizing The Resulting Accelerated Mutations Would Devolve Into Essentially 2 Species, Which Combined Created The Xenomorph, Which Then Is Intelligent Enough To Spread Throughout The (Galaxy?) Anyway. Altho It Is Kind Of A Constrictive Narrative. I’m Thinking Of Crossing A Scorpion With A Cute Bunny Rabbit…Or A Species Of Poisonous Cows…
You’re not alone. I loved it too.
I liked it and Covenant for what they are – gorgeously-shot sci-fi slasher pics where hot people make extremely stupid decisions and die in messy ways as a result – but for that reason I’m also perfectly fine with (and vastly prefer) this show ignoring them entirely.
you were the only one able to get out of the way of the ship falling forward.
It’s fine on it’s own, but not as part of the Alien franchise.
Exactly. Other than the xenomorph basically coming out of the same lab as humans, there is no connective tissue to the Alien franchise.
I’m also not sure the “glossier” style of the Prometheus movies is inconsistent with the grittier look of the Alien movies. The humans in the Alien movies all have unglamorous, blue collar jobs — space tug operators, soldiers, prison guards. It’s not surprising that the places where these people work look worn, utilitarian, and outdated. And it’s not surprising that Prometheus, where the crew is engaged in a billionaire’s pet project, might have a more glamorous look.
I did too. I saw Prometheus and Covenant on airplanes over the past few years, and they were perfectly solid. Ironically, they play more like 60s/70s horror movies than Alien does – shuttling the characters between violent/creepy setpieces, while the characters act exactly as smart or stupid as needed at any moment. Scott brings a lot of panache to the whole thing.
Can you tell me what happens in Prometheus? I’ve tried to watch it literally 6 or 7 times and am always way too drunk by halfway through the film to remember any of it (this is no fault of the film’s, I am just a total loss of a human being). And I could look up a plot summary, but for some reason I just…. haven’t.
It was interesting conceptually and visually amazing. The script is where it came up short. It looks so compelling I almost desperately want it to be better but, for me, it just doesn’t get there.
Put me down as liked both but I am completely fine with everyone’s hate. I mostly agree with the criticisms but the vibe, style, Fassbender, the Engineer, the abortion machine thingee, etc. make it work for me ultimately.I also understand the TV show’s decision to ignore them but wish they didn’t have to.
Speaking of islands, I’m a huge fan of viewing Alien: Covenant not as an Alien film, but as an Island of Dr. Moreau homage. It plays much better that way.
Prometheus is a cool Sci-Fi horror movie, but the relationship to the Alien mythos feels tacked on. Would have been better as a stand alone film IMO, but it never would have gotten funded.
The idea that, on some level, it was a bioweapon created half an hour ago
Always hated this idea because it was basically just rehashing W-Y’s intended use of the xenomorph. That’s fully in line with an exploitative corporation, but making it their true nature removes all the mystery in the laziest way possible.
Thank you for putting into words the problem I couldn’t quite explain. In the original movies, Weyland-Yutani wants to exploit something borne of nature that is truly terrifying and inconceivable to what we know from earth. Of course, nature is uncontrollable and the corporation’s hubris causes so much more suffering that could have been avoidable. In the Prometheus/Alien Covenant explanation, they’re essentially just picking up a handgun they found on the street. Its so much less interesting.
Just posted something similar above – it’s the perfect biological weapon because…someone else created it to be the perfect biological weapon!
The Star Wars prequels had that annoying problem too with sleeker looking ships that don’t fit the established aesthetic of the other movies.
I was okay with that, the explanation being (if I remember correctly) that the galaxy went from an era of lovingly crafted ships with high aesthetic values to mass-produced, industrialised ships cranked out as quickly as possible. To me it doesn’t seem much different to the shift from the beautiful automobiles of 1950s America to the much more utilitarian designs of a few decades later.
Yeah, I have a lot of issues with the prequels but one of the things it got right is that technology and aesthetics don’t always advance in step with each other, and don’t always consistently move in the same direction. Of course things looked prettier during a prosperous peacetime than they did under the thumb of an oppressive regime concerned with projecting a stark and powerful image.
Heck it’s also just true in American wartime airplanes, if you look at stuff from the mid 30s like the P-26 Peashooter, it just looks like a happy brightly colored bumblebee come to life, because they didn’t need a million of them, no one was shooting them down, and they were mostly just out to run colors around. They could afford the time to make each one look pretty. Then WW2 hits and even if you think (correctly) that P-51s and P-38s are beautiful airframes, they were certainly far more utilitarian and drably colored. Like of course those N-1 starfighters from Naboo are bright yellow muscle cars, they’re the peacekeeping force of a prosperous peaceful world, they don’t need to be drab for any reason.
“To me it doesn’t seem much different to the shift from the beautiful automobiles of 1950s America to the much more utilitarian designs of a few decades later.”Yup and that was exactly Lucas’ and Doug Chiang’s stated reasoning
But that’s dumb. The aesthetic of the original trilogy is a key factor in its success.
But it’s not like all other cars disappeared? Where are the sleek looking prequel ships of two decades previous. Many of the ships in the original trilogy aren’t represented as being new ships, the Falcon for example, but rather as older vehicles. It’s not that design and tech devolved, it’s that the stuff vanished from the universe.
Those nice sleek looking ships, if any survived, are owned by really rich people by the time of the OT. Princess Leia’s get blown up offscreen on Alderaan. Every other character is either scrabbling to make a living, or hiding in a Rebel base with whatever vehicle they can get their hands on, or is a space fascist flying around in a work vehicle. The only truly “luxury” civilian craft we see is the cloud car on Bespin, and I’d argue that has something of a “sleek/art deco” look to it. Maybe Jabba’s sail barge, which might also look like that if it wasn’t on Tatooine and owned by a giant slug.In the prequels we are hanging around the capital city-planet with the people who are mostly in charge, so they mostly have nice rides to show off.
Well the Mandalorian has one for a start…
We spent most of our time in the prequels in giant cities among royalty and politicians and most of our time in the OG trilogy in deserts, swamps, tundras and forests with guerillas and outlaws. You weren’t likely to see the Millennium Falcon around Naboo’s palace for the same reason you’re not likely to see a 1993 Geo Metro puttering around Martha’s Vineyard.
Other explanation I’ve seen at least in the new canon is that Palpatine actually went for designs that were kind of worse and more labor intensive so that everyone’s livelihood was attached to the Imperial Military in some way.
Or, you know, there’s the fact that the Republic didn’t have a standing military before the Clone Wars, and so there the massive buildup would reasonably have required civilian rationing, just like in WWII. More industrial designs that required less materials and less complicated manufacturing. Or heck, even bringing older, mothballed ships back into use.
Nvm
That was by far my biggest problem with the sequels. But what we’re really talking about with that is the insane (lack of) time jump between III and IV which caused a lot of dumb problems.
The big twist is we find out the Xenomorph originated in the deadliest place in the universe: rural Minnesota.
I think you mean Australia…?
I think you mean Australia…?Spoken like someone who’s never been to rural Minnesota.
And proud of it!
The different aesthetics between the films could be explained as a status thing. The ship (and likely the crew) in Prometheus personally belonged to the owner of Weyland Yutani, so he made sure they got the flashier, sleeker stuff.
Ok, I’m spitballing, but it’s not like the differing aesthetics were the biggest problem with Prometheus anyway…
That’s always how it felt to me- the Prometheus was a state of the art research vessel, commissioned by the wealthiest person in the world for a vanity project. The Nostromo was basically the spacefaring equivalent of a beat-up old Mack truck.
That one never sat right with me. There is 30 years in universe time between Alien and Prometheus – the technological gap between the ships is waaay more than that, even allowing for the Lamborghini vs Volvo argument
Nah, it’s still jarring and having worked on a variety of commercial shipping vessels irl and watched the billionaire benefactors equivalent on ‘Below Decks’ and countless Nat Geo documentaries, I can tell you that while there may be differences in cabin comfort there’s no difference in the technology used to pilot the things.Also, at the start of Aliens, Ripley is getting hauled over the coals by a heap of fairly high-up WY executives because of the Nostromo’s destruction (42m in adjusted dollars, minus payload IIRC), so it was a bit more than just a spacefaring beat-up Mack truck
Did anyone ask Noah Hawley about Aliens; Dark Descent?
Yeah they did. He said what is that shit? The interviewer told him it was a video game with a real engaging story. Hawley said I doubt it because it is a video game. The interviewer said he liked it. Hawley told him he was a simpleton and he should “read a book sometime you fucking nerd.”
I really liked that game. I thought it pulled off “live action XCom” gameplay pretty well, and it did a good job of ramping up suspense with the different hive levels of response. A lot of my missions ended with mad dashes to the transport with my motion trackers going crazy over an incoming wave, and it was great.
I was wondering of he knew or said anything about the “cult” in the game, among other thing.
what a bad idea for a show! fargo also blows, btw. this guy is a specialist in defiling IP!
Sorry but the Prometheus and Covenant origin is way cooler/horrifying and HR Giger-ish than mundane Darwinian evolution.https://www.avpgalaxy.net/alien-movies/alien-covenant/what-happened-to-dr-elizabeth-shaw/
No. Prometheus took what was best in Alien (the sense of a vast, unknown and indifferent universe of life that doesn’t care for humans’ narrow bullshit in its quest to survive), and trashed it for sci-fi’s laziest, most arrogant trope: that humanity is the so-very-special centre of the universe. “DNA matches ours 100%”, says the scientist about a species of giant blue man, apparently unaware that not even the DNA of two humans matches exactly. It was all about us, after all. What a pile of crap.
I like Hawley and LOVE Fargo so I’m trusting him to come up with something interesting, but just the fact that it’s part of the “Alien” universe leads me to fear/believe it will not be good. That’s only because I have 35 years of history on my side, though.
“That’s only because I have 35 years of history on my side, though.”
Well, at least you’re prejudging it based on its title and not the creatives behind it.
I’ll always be befuddled (yes, BEFUDDLED) at the decision to change the scale of the Space Jockey and the Alien ship.That shit was terrifying in ALIEN.My god, I fucking hate PROMETHEUS. It’s just… stupid. In so many different ways.
After Lost, I’ve avoided everything Damon Lindelof made, whether it’s his Alien movies or The Leftovers. I just had this inkling that he was purposefully trolling his audience with his style of writing, and cackling that he’s leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that lead to nowhere while thinking, “They’ll never figure this out! I’m a genius!” There was an old Film Crit Hulk article about Prometheus, I think it was, where he summed up that kind Lindelofism as one guy pleading, “I want answers!” and the other person answering, “You can’t have them!” There’s so much bullshit in Lost that just doesn’t mean anything, and any theories you might have are pointless because they ultimately don’t matter. There’s atmosphere and worldbuilding, and then there’s saying, “I have a secret, do you wanna know? Too bad.”The fact that all the Carlton Cuse shows I’ve watched since Lost—The Strain, Bates Motel, and Colony—have mystery elements without that obnoxious teehee I know something and you don’t vibe all but confirms that it’s all the fault of that bald asshole more than anyone else. Yeah, Cuse is probably a dick, too, but at least his writing doesn’t present numerous opportunities to give answers, only to give you narrative blue balls for no reason.
Well, your loss. First, Lost was fantastic to the end. Two, Lindelof did not make any Alien movie, he was one writer in Prometheus and did what Ridley Scott wanted. Third, The Leftovers is one of the best shows of the last decade. His other shows are great too.
You’re missing out. The Leftovers and Watchmen are amazing.
There’s a lot of things that receive mass praise, very little of it is for me. If you like those shows, that’s fine, but I know his writing tendencies are extremely obnoxious to me and I refuse to put up with it anymore.
With you 100 percent.
Yeah Watchmen was fucking awesome and was actually a full series with only like 1 thing left hanging at the end.
Was Watchmen good? Yes. But the entire “Ex = Cal Abar” thing is also the ultimate example of OP’s point
If “Cobra Kai” was able to make “Karate Kid III” make sense by having Terry Silver say, “I was so high on cocaine and revenge that I was terrorizing a teenager! It sounds ridiculous just saying it!” then surely someone with some imagination could find a way to satisfyingly retcon “Prometheus” and have it fit with the original timeline.
Cobra Kai has done so ridiculously well with their material. And that includes letting Thomas Ian Griffith strut his real acting ability in several directions.
It’s a good show but the way all the adults except Amanda act is fuckin silly. I mean that explains why Silver acted that way but it’s still stupid objectively.
Just pull a St. Elsewhere and have the entire thing take place in the imagination of an autistic kid staring at a snow globe.
The Engineers and David both created their Xenos from latent genes that could also express naturally in the right environment?Some bullshit I’m sure, but probably good enough for a film. Would fit with the mural too.
I’m happy with ignoring Prometheus for now, if this does well I’m sure it will come back in later seasons. But I can’t abide hatred towards Prometheus and the same regurgitated arguments about how stupid the crew were (as stupid as John Hurt in Alien to be exact). It’s tired and they’re all based on the same Youtube video with an iota of original thinking.
I thought the characters in Prometheus were acting very stupidly long before I saw anything about it on youtube. That aside, I enjoyed it (and Covenant) as much as I could.I will concede that Kane was unwise to stick his face right in the egg (although most eggs don’t explode like that, so he had no reason to think it would, and he is an oil-refinery pilot, not a biologist). Every other character in the first two Alien films acts rationally based on what they know/expect, and don’t have to act excessively stupidly in order to make the plot happen.
Not all of us need youtube videos to form opinions for ourselves, if you can abide that.
Except John didn’t play a scientist as much as a “space trucker.”
The crew on the Prometheus were scientists, and that’s the difference.
Yeah the biologist who decided to play with the oil snake’s immediate reaction should have been “holy living fuck, get the hell out of here!”
I have less problem with them being stupid and more with them be inconsistent.The whiny cowardly scientist who did not want to be there was just happy to stick his face near an alien snake. It made no senseI have read elsewhere that either deleted scenes or in the script he and the other guy he was with got high while waiting to be rescued and that would explain why he was such an idiot then but without it being in the movie its just a major character shift
When people complain about characters making poor decisions, it’s not because they expect them to be infallible; it’s because those decisions make no sense and feel like contrivances to get the plot where it needs to be.
I suspected they were artificial when it was shown that they had acid for blood and were able to survive vacuum and stuff like that. Then when later movies showed their lifecycle I was sure. The ability to hybridize with alien hosts is a pretty big tell but even putting that aside what ecology could produce xenomorphs? How can a parasite also be an apex predator? Aside from their grisly birthing process do they even eat? They definitely seem more like biological robots than an evolved life form.
I found this post thought-provoking. I always assumed that they were alien in the truest sense – the biology that makes sense to us just didn’t apply to them. Like IIRC the aliens being colors more or less in the Color Out of Space. But the idea that they were manufactured never occurred to me.
That felt reinforced by the Weyland corp’s interest in capturing one alive to reproduce as a biological weapon. They don’t know how the hell this thing came to be, just that it could be really useful for wiping out a population. To discover that this is because it was originally designed to be a weapon was frankly kind of a letdown.
Agreed
I always thought of them something like parasitic wasps. The biggest wasps where I live, Cicada Killers, paralyze cicadas, drag them into a burrow, then lay an egg on the cicada. The larva burrows into the cicada and eats it alive. Oh, and yes, aliens eat. Ash even says in Alien that it is adapting incredibly fast considering its nutritional requirements. It’s implied it’s eating the people it’s killing. There was also a scene in the original script where not long after the alien bursts from Kane the crew finds their food stores have mostly been eaten by the alien, which explains how it grew so quickly. It made it into the novelization but the scene was never filmed for some reason. Also, in Alien 3 the alien is shown eating someone it killed. The comics and novels also mention that they can absorb nutrients directly from the atmosphere (or water if swimming) through the dorsal tubes on their backs. Enough to keep them in a state of hibernation, at minimum, until bigger prey comes along.
It’s pretty obvious that they were based on parasitic wasps (btw, those were the creatures that Darwin later claimed were responsible for his loss of faith — they make perfect sense from the viewpoint of evolution, but no benevolent creator would create such a horrific creature).That being said, that doesn’t really explain how they can have acid blood, can hybridize with creatures from other planets, and can live in vacuum, so despite their parasitic wasp similiarities, they were probably engineered.
Life on earth has evolved some pretty wacky shit. Incredibly powerful toxins that the animal itself is immune to. The stomach acids of animals like crocodiles and vultures are stronger than hydrosulfuric acid. Animals whose blood contains anti-freeze. Animals that can even survive the vacuum of space for a time. Animals that can survive crushing pressures. Evolution is pretty crazy.
The novelisation addresses the food issue even as the film ignores it. The crew discovers that the Alien has broken into the food stores and has been gorging on them. That explains how it gets so much mass within few hours from being “born”, ready to attack Brett at full size. For the movie, you could argue that they found all that out offscreen, or assigned Ash to look into it and the knowledge died with him.
Written, as all good novelizations are, by Alan Dean Foster. He always tries to fill plot holes in movies with added scenes in his novelizations.
I made a joke once that it got into the cat food. I guess I wasn’t far off.
Good point. Because I like Alien so much more than Prometheus, I’m glad Hawley is leaning towards taking inspiration from there, but as a biologist, the “perfect predator” formed by evolution thing is an bit annoying. Nature has found some really remarkable ways to survive, but there are always tradeoffs—e.g. highly potent venom takes a lot of energy and resources to produce—and predators tend to fill specialized niches that they struggle outside of.
“How can a parasite also be an apex predator?”
I mean it can be kind of – here of course with a big sci-fi touch.
But you see it even on our earth how one species from a different continent gets introduced into the eco system of an other and they push other species out or even disrupt whole food chains. And thats on the same planet! Now thing it on the scale of a whole universe.
The xenomorphs are apex predators…for us.
Maybe on their home world back then, million years ago, they weren’t more then a nuisance.
If they were, just theoretically, part of an eco system with more species that also have acid blood (it wouldn’t be acid blood for them, but just blood) and/or they can’t be used as hosts, the xenomorphs wouldn’t be more then some wasp species here.
Specialized for a small group of prey animals in a way bigger system.
Maybe even compareable to some insects here. Dangerous under some specific situations….but mostly just dangerous for other insects.
But throw them into an eco system that isn’t developed the same way and not able to defend against it…and shit hits the fan.
Noah, if you want to copy the aesthetics of the prequels you’ll blow your budget and we’re gonna cancel the project. Noah, “I like the look of the Alien movies better”
The dumb part of Prometheus wasn’t the bio-engineered Aliens or the crew’s behavior, although these were plenty stupid. The dumb part was how the ancient Architects created all life on Earth, including humans, who somehow evolved to be identical to them genetically. How exactly did that work?
The same way it worked in “The Chase” in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I feel like I’m misunderstanding your point. Humans can’t be genetically identical to engineers because they’re shorter and not blue?
They came here a billion years ago and seeded Earth with its first life, which eventually evolved into a life form exactly like them. How? Has every cell in every creature ever to live on Earth had human/Architect DNA hidden in it along with a mechanism that ensured, somehow, that after a BILLION years of evolution some of them would somehow evolve into that specific form?
I get your point now, and agree that doesn’t make a ton of sense. It’s odd though that you used the terms “genetically identical” and “exactly like” when they’re just….not.
And the Engineers’ language hasn’t changed for a billion years, and an android can extrapolate it from human languages that developed over the last several millennia.
In fairness, that one was at least hinted at by the archaeological finds on Earth, which showed that the engineers had revisited Earth in the past and interracted with multiple early human civilizations. So it would be reasonable that they had influence on the development of human language, and thus there would be base similarities to extrapolate from.
I’ll counter that the truly dumb part of Prometheus is it did away with all the life cycle rules that were very well established in the mythology of the series, and turned the whole thing into a biological haunted house of horrors (“No, *this* can kill you too!!!”). That, and why did the Engineers leave a complicated star map back to a weapons depot of all places?Add to that that the movie was ugly and cruel, and seemed to be created for the most part to show awful things happening to people/people doing awful things to each other.
More like Epimetheus!
Thank goodness that Promethius and Alien Covenant will not be part of the storyline for this. Alien & Aliens were both masterpieces. Promethius and Covenant were just a collection of supposedly highly trained crewmembers doing incredibly stupid and illogical things while taking almost no safeguards for their own protection just to get the story to Ridley’s destination.
i mean doesn’t the Predator Vs Aliens kinda blow this apart? funny how they used the same company and everything but that movie unless i am wrong made it seem aliens were around before David.
The two streams of thought here do not have to be mutually exclusive. You can have an android reverse engineer a bioweapon and you can have an ancient species that it was derived from.The ‘creators’ could just have been doing what humans have been doing in almost every Alien film, trying to harness a lethal organism for their own bio weapon. The ‘creators’ were more successful in weaponizing it but in the end couldn’t control it any better than humanity has been able to. You can have both. Perhaps Fassbender’s character reverse engineered the weapon closer to it’s original form. There was always a beauty to how the alien comes about. There is an egg, a parasite, an embryo that I imagine takes on DNA characteristics of it’s host which alters its form and function to work within the hosts own environment. Infinitely adaptable. You don’t have to jump on one band wagon or the other when the premise of the creature allows for both to be true in it’s lore.
What I find so interesting, which I haven’t seen discussed really, is that the Alien sequels basically drop the titular alien as the antagonist. David, the synthetic human, is the true villain of both Prometheus and Covenant. It’s human hubris that is our ultimate destruction, not some unknowable and ancient species. Humans create David and the Xenomorphs and that’s the horror, regardless of the aesthetic (retro-future or shiny sci-fi). I loved the prequels and I’m curious about this show, but I think Scott redefined the story and nobody seems to have noticed, because we were too focused on the Xenos.