Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel 336
brumgrunt writes "After three decades of speculation, original Alien director Ridley Scott has signed on to the new Fox sequel. 'Nothing is known about the set-up of the new movie, except that chronologically it precedes the plight of the Nostromo. Since it's obviously going to involve the human race [...] Writer Jon Spaihts successfully pitched to Fox and Scott Free Productions, and is working on the script.'"
Who cares about the humans (Score:5, Interesting)
I want the story of the ship the Nostromo found.
Is AVP/AVPR canon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is "Alien vs. Predator" and "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem" part of the canon? Will it be for this prequel?
*crosses fingers* (Score:3, Interesting)
I so hope he can pull this off, unfortunately horror/action directors don't seem to age as well as suspense/noir/drama directors do.
OFCS saved me from the latest Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Transformer and Terminator fiascoes, this may be another one I'll have to miss...but I hope not. Ridley Scott may be old, but he has an eye for quality, and he has clout. Here's hoping he can nail this, and give us a proper Alien trilogy (prequel, original, and Aliens of course).
*NOTE TO FOX - please put the money down and hire a talented writer and editor!*
(my other hand has fingers crossed for James Cameron and Avatar)
Pilot / Space Jockey (Score:5, Interesting)
I sure hope they throw a bit at the Pilot/Space Jockey [wikia.com] subplot.
There's lots already proposed for that item's existence in the story, and I'd be happy with almost any of them.
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Story Should Make Sense (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes, after seeing the original Alien in an evening movie showing without knowing what it was really about ahead of time, I left the bathroom light on that night afterwards just in case. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
I first saw this movie when I was entirely too young to be watching such things. It was on TV one night and I was watching it with my father. Unfortunately, my mother decided it was time for bed right about the time Ripley was setting the ship to self-destruct. The last thing I saw, before going to bed, was Ripley stumbling across the Alien as she fled for the lifeboat.
I had horrible nightmares that night.
The first thing I asked my father, upon waking the next morning, was whether they had killed the Alien or not.
That movie continued to haunt my dreams... I eventually decided that wrapping a blanket over my head like a hood would somehow keep the facehuggers from getting a good grip, and started sleeping that way. To this day I feel most comfortable with a blanket looped over my head like a hood.
Interestingly enough, I have since grown to absolutely love both the Alien movies and HR Giger's artwork.
Re:Opening for more Giger? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:5, Interesting)
The Nostromo was diverted to the planet where they found the Xenomorph because someone in the company knew it was there. How they knew has not been explained in the films, to date. Presumably there was some prior contact that was covered up. The AvP series showed how the company could know that the aliens existed, but no reason to know where they could be found.
There are few options:
One: the company didn't know about the alien beacon in advance, and the whole android with recovery orders and crew expendable stuff was just standing standard procedure, in case they got lucky. Its plausible I think, but means there can be no prequel.
Two: The company knew the aliens existed by previously merely detecting/analyzing the beacon, then they might divert the Nostromo with the intention of picking whatever they find up. It would make sense, even to the subterfuge of planting Ash with extra orders to recover it, and diverting the ship so it picks up the beacon forcing the crew to respond (per their contract to respond to distress calls) allowing the company to get a 'free expedition' out the crew.
That all works, but would make a boring prequel movie. Some remote station or passing ship detect an alien beacon, and don't investigate it.
Three: The company knew the aliens existed, previously investigated, and had already lost an expedition trying to recover it, perhaps they got some reports and know something about the aliens, perhaps they got nothing at all... the expedition just vanished without a trace. Either way it doesn't follow that they'd divert a fully loaded and ridiculously expensive refinery ship to the planet for a 2nd attempt.
That would be like Spain deliberately diverting a fully loaded treasure ship to investigate a new island where a previous expedition had already been lost. I just don't see it happening. The Nostromo was ridiculously valuable; they might gamble it on it on an expedition where no real exceptional risks could be assessed, but it just doesn't make sense to gamble an expensive treasure ship, with an unqualified crew -- if they already knew that they'd lost an expedition.
as perhaps a related story (Score:4, Interesting)
robert rodriguez is producing a new predator movie, called predators (like alien is to aliens?). perhaps on the predator home planet, again, completely ignoring the whole avp bullshit
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40865 [aintitcool.com]
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40879 [aintitcool.com]
additionally, the director will be some hotshot hungarian horror director named nimrod antal. aintitcool had an interveiw with rodriguez about the project:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41590 [aintitcool.com]
Re:Sheer number of memorialbe quotes (Score:3, Interesting)
Each actor's name is a link so
shows 339 individual spoken lines. There's a horizontal rule (width=30%) after each block of dialog and
shows 102 HRs. Each of those numbers may be a bit off (I see at least one other HR on the page; there might be other name links as well)--sometimes you need manual labor, not code, to get exact answers to annoying questions like this.
Re:Swell... (Score:3, Interesting)
When I saw it in the theater, there were scenes where I could not watch it -- I had to cover my eyes. Even when it was on TV, I still did that years later. (Specifically, the scene where Dallas is crawling through the ducts and the alien attacks.)
What made Alien so different from previous monster movies is the alien was so fast. Before Alien filmakers thought it heightened the suspense to show the monster slowly approaching the victims. Ridley Scott realized that if the alien moves quickly, the danger is increased because you are never safe; it can get you at any time.
That's not the only groundbreaking part of the movie. (Spoiler alert!)
Remember when Ripley set the Nostromo to self destruct, but then the alien is blocking her path to the escape pod, so she goes back to cancel the self destruct. How many times have we seen this before? It is such a cliche. So it was astounding when the timer ran down and she could not stop it! I've never seen that before. And I can't think of many movies that have done that since.
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:3, Interesting)
Ripley: Did you ever ship out with Ash before?
Dallas: I went out five times with another Science Officer. They replaced him two days before we left Thedus with Ash. Hm?
Ripley: I don't trust him.
Dallas: I don't trust anybody.
It seems pretty clear that Ash and the orders to pick up the xenomorph were specific and deliberate. Mother had Ash's orders. It can be assumed Mother was programmed to treat the signal as a distress call and wake the crew.
If we assume locations in the movie correspond to the same named locations in reality, dialogue indicates FTL travel is possible, but that the distances involved are still isolating in terms of communication. Long-range FTL communication may not exist, at least for a long-haul tug like the Nostromo, and it may not be feasible to send a "message in an FTL bottle"--engines might not scale down (the Narcissus didn't seem capable).
I prefer to think that they were relativistic but not yet FTL. The societal implications are just so more interesting that way: long-haul truckers dealing with future shock on each round trip and just plain outliving generations of their relatives left behind learn to not form long ties and care only about themselves. Only crews sticking together over multiple hauls may get close knit. Not even the events in Aliens require FTL travel, but the events in Alien^3 seem to require both FTL communication and travel. And, well, anyone doing lots of space travel at relativistic speeds is going to miss a lot of history and technological advancement. I'd hate to see FTL be required in a prequel.
I think some Company employee at Thedus who was up on Company history was going through ship communication logs, saw the warning and recognized the life-cycle described therein as matching records from AVP-era and, seeking promotion, changed the crew assignments of the Nostromo and reprogrammed Mother to retrieve the alien and deliver it to his bosses back at Earth. His career either ended or he covered it up when word got back that the Nostromo was lost.
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:3, Interesting)
- A Company ship runs into xenomorphs in similar circumstances to Alien or Aliens
- 90 minutes of panicky firefights in badly-lit environments
- The survivors take off and nuke the planet from orbit (this being the only way to be sure)
- The Company covers it all up
- Ominous ending ties events to the derelict ship on LV-426
- Roll credits
Re:Swell... (Score:3, Interesting)
Better living through chemistry.
Re:only on slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Only on slashdot is the moderation system so broken that you can get modded as +1 Funny and -1 Overrated and actually lose something.
Feature, not a bug. Funny trolls are still trolls.