Ridley Scott Abandons Alien Prequel

An anonymous reader writes "With Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox announcing that the much-vaunted 3D Alien prequel has now mutated into an original SF film project called Prometheus, starring Noomi Rapace, the author of this article recalls his 2007 interview with the late Dan O'Bannon, who presumably is happy about the news, wherever he is. Asked what he'd like to see happen to the xenomorph franchise, the Alien co-creator said: 'I'd like to see it stop. A horror movie's a fragile thing, and once you've gotten past the original, it isn't scary anymore. So you do a bunch of sequels to a horror movie, all they do is drain any remaining impact out of the original...it's not as effective as it would have been if you had just left it alone.'"

Good news

[calzakk]

Actually, this is very good news. Alien and Aliens will never be bettered, fact. The rest (including A vs P) either ok or poor. Anything new will be guaranteed disappointment.

Who actually wanted to know where the xenomorphs came from? Whatever happened to imagination?

Re:Applies to all movies

[drinkypoo]

I don't think that I really agree. Nobody is forcing you to watch the sequels or prequels. I still haven't seen Alien 3, even though I've liked all the other ones. I just treat them as different movies rather than different parts of the same movie and I win.

Creating a movie vs. creating a franchise

[TreeInMyCube]

Larry Niven wrote a series of novels with consistent backstory, physics, and an evolution over time -- the Known Space series. J. K. Rowling knew there would be 7 Harry Potter books, and J. Michael Straczyinski (sp) planned Bablyon 5 to have a story arc over 5 seasons. Asimov intended the Foundation Trilogy as a cohesive whole; I think that his later additions to that universe, including the tie-ins to the "I Robot" universe were motivated more by publishers than by his original vision. Perhaps Dan O'Bannon never wanted to create a universe, or a self-consistent backstory... he just wanted to make a scary movie with a surprising powerful alien. The second movie also worked as a suspense/thriller, even though we knew what the aliens' abilities were.

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Re:Good news

[Barny]

The original Alien was horror, true suspenseful horror. The reason it worked, despite a lack of modern special effects was that they didn't show too much, they let your imagination fill in the blanks as only a good horror story will.

The human imagination can still come up with things a hundred times more scary than special effects can achieve, if only because they are tailored to that persons one fears. This is doubly so these days when pretty much every kind of scary thing has been shown to us on the big screen with crazy high definition special effects, anything new either has to be so picture perfect its not funny (see district 9) or, as with alien, leave us jumping in our seats at some perceived scary part.

Another good example is the ear cutting scene (or lack thereof) in reservoir dogs.

Re:Applies to all movies

[TheLink]

The first movie might have been a horror movie, but I'd classify the other ones as "action thrillers". In my opinion future movies could still succeed as action thrillers even though it'll be hard to do a new horror movie based on aliens (since a part of horror is in the unknown, and the aliens and their limits are now mostly known).

Re:Applies to all movies

[Dogtanian]

I think that Aliens was a far better movie than Alien.

I agree- or rather, I'd say that personally I much preferred Aliens to Alien. I initially put that down to having seen Aliens first (possibly spoiling some of the surprise and effect of the original), but when I later heard Alien described as a "horror movie in space", I realised that that was also the reason. Horror movies just don't work for me, however much I'd like them to.

That said, I also wouldn't class it as a horror movie

Which is probably why I enjoyed it better though...

more of a really intense action movie.

...I'm not really that much into action movies either, but I still enjoyed it! Anyway, Aliens probably worked and felt fresh because they *weren't* trying to copy the original or out-do it, but managed to keep its spirit while doing something different.

Alien 3 was dull though, and while Alien Resurrection was somewhat more enjoyable, its French "comic book" feel clashed with the more realistic style of the original films, mitigated only slightly by the time that was meant to have passed between them.

Re:the problem with sequels

[itsdapead]

The Matrix, on the other hand, was a movie where a sequel was completely impossible. Neo had already won. The war was over but for the fussy details.

I don't think that's the problem. The problem was that a major factor in The Matrix's success was the look and atmosphere of the film. There hadn't been anything like it at all in mainstream western cinema - but by the time the sequels hit the streets, "bullet time" and extreme martial arts had become cliches.

Its the same reason that there should never be a sequel to Blade Runner - the plot of which was nothing to write home about, but it completely re-defined the look of on-screen SF. (I'd pay to see a "straight" re-make of the novel, but I doubt it would be commercially viable).