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.'"
oblig. (Score:3, Funny)
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They don't only come at night. They mostly come at night...mostly.
Re:oblig. (Score:4, Informative)
You're kidding, right? You do know that after the first film, Ridley had nothing to do with the Alien series?
Um... are you referring to Black Hawk Down, in which the people who died/survived in the film are the ones who died/survived in real life?
Swell... (Score:2)
At least I had a few years without Xenomorphs showing up in my nightmare.
(IIRC, the nightmares involved having a pulse rifle that ran out of ammo.)
Re:Swell... (Score:5, Funny)
At least I had a few years without Xenomorphs showing up in my nightmare.
(IIRC, the nightmares involved having a pulse rifle that ran out of ammo.)
Funny, I would have thought the most recent ones would have involved Jean-Pierre Jeunet directing another movie. :)
Re:Swell... (Score:5, Funny)
At least I had a few years without Xenomorphs showing up in my nightmare.
(IIRC, the nightmares involved having a pulse rifle that ran out of ammo.)
Funny, I would have thought the most recent ones would have involved Jean-Pierre Jeunet directing another movie. :)
Why do you think my clip was empty???
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That's silly... we all know nuking them from orbit is the only way to be sure.
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That's silly... we all know nuking them from orbit is the only way to be sure.
Heh... in the small number of my nightmares involving nukes, they were never part of the solution.
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Better living through chemistry.
Re:Swell... (Score:5, Funny)
I've been prepping my sons (3.5 years and 7 months) for their first viewing of Alien/Aliens since birth by grabbing their entire face with my hand. They think its funny... at least for now.
Re:Swell... (Score:5, Funny)
I've been prepping my sons (3.5 years and 7 months) for their first viewing of Alien/Aliens since birth by grabbing their entire face with my hand. They think its funny... at least for now.
I hope you're done having kids. Because if you ever explain that that the baby will come out of mommy's belly...
Re:Swell... (Score:5, Funny)
I hope you're done having kids. Because if you ever explain that that the baby will come out of mommy's belly...
Shit, my sister and I were both c-sections and the scar was ginormous. Being a Christian household, we weren't told that much about the birds and the bees but I did happen to see Alien one night when trying to catch a rerun of Fraggle Rock on HBO late at night and put two and two together... Gave me creepy visions of my little baby sister bursting out of the tummy, all blood and gnashing teeth.
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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
Who cares about the humans (Score:5, Interesting)
I want the story of the ship the Nostromo found.
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Thanks you just ruined that movie for me, whenever it's made.
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:4, Insightful)
Except everything but for the eggs in stasis. How did that happen?
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I heard they were going to do that, but they couldn't get Rosanne Barr to play the lead roll.
Modded Flamebait huh? Guess there is a loyal following of Rosanne fans on Slashdot, who knew?
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They are everywhere.
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:4, Insightful)
This.
In the Alien franchise, only one character matters. It is big, black and has acid for blood.
There is no need to look for a way to bring Ripley into it, especially if it involves time travel, memory loss, or cloning again.
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Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:5, Funny)
Dude! How can we get Samuel L. Jackson involved? ("I am so m-f'ing sick of these m-f'ing aliens on this m-f'ing spaceship!")
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completely off-topic - but if they could make her look rather appealing in Galaxy Quest (1999, 20 year after the first Alien movie), then I'm sure they shouldn't have any problems now - a mere 10 years later.
This is hollywood, people. Push comes to shove, they scan her face, digitally de-age it, and slap it on a stand-in actor.
That said - I do second the hope that they will not be trying to tie into characters of the 'future' movies; how would they have known about those characters?
Tying into the existing
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I'm wondering how there can be a prequel that does not tell the story of the ship the Nostromo found?
btw, regarding your sig. As an owner of a black cat I have found that the easiest way to find one in the dark is to look for the blackest spot of black in the blackness.
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:5, Interesting)
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And what exactly crewed the original ship? I thought, after the AvP movies, that the original ship was the Predator ship that had the bizarro Alien/Predator hybrid. That would kind of make sense, but I would think that the Predators cohorts would have hunted it down and killed off the critters in that ship.
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And what exactly crewed the original ship?
Space Jockeys [wikipedia.org]. A film about them would be awesome.
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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.
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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
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Specialized team? Not necessarily (Score:3, Informative)
Not necessarily. In the film, they use hypersleep - suspended animation - because even at whatever multiple of the speed of light the ships move at, trips still take months. (Script [dailyscript.com] says they're near Zeta II Reticuli, 39 light years from Earth, and they still have ten months to go.) If they can transmit data faster than ships move (or unmanned ships can move faster) then mobilizing a specialis
Re:Specialized team? Not necessarily (Score:4, Informative)
At the time of Alien the planet wasn't being terraformed. The events of Alien and Aliens were seperated by nearly 60 years, Ripley having been suspended in hypersleep between them.
No, the distress beacon was coming from the crashed alien ship that was infected by xenomorphs.
The freighter was sent in with the mission of investigating whatever the beacon was. The company possibly already knew about the beacon and what it meant though the official story on the Nostromo was that they were just investigating a mysterious distress beacon.
The android from Alien (the science officer) was trying to get someone infected and returned to earth. However the android from Aliens (Bishop) wasn't, rather it was a company man (human) that was actively trying to get humans infected and back to earth.
Re:Who cares about the humans (Score:5, Informative)
As the owner of a couple cats, I can say that the easiest way to find any cat in the dark is to simply walk around until they run in front of you, and you either step on them or trip on them.
additionally (Score:4, Funny)
to find a dog, you merely open the closest door, and it will inevitably smack and disturb a sleeping dog
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- 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
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I want the story of the ship the Nostromo found.
There is a few Darkhorse comics that touch on this and actually I was wondering if they predate aliens.
Basically, humans get stranded on a planet full of Xenomorphs and at the last moment when they are surrounded by a sea of Aliens, one of the pilots show up with this gun that basically vaporizes all of of the Xenomorphs.
They try to thank the pilot but being the emotionless being that it is, it just floated by to the ship without saying a word.
Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now just sign up James Cameron to do the movie after *that* and we'll be good.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
amen to that. 1979's 'alien' is good, but the 1986 'aliens' is what made my heart thump and want to be a space marine.
GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER!
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amen to that. 1979's 'alien' is good, but the 1986 'aliens' is what made my heart thump and want to be a space marine.
GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER!
Somebody wake up Hicks.
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Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean, "*They* cut the power"? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
Is this going to be a stand-up film, sir, or another bug hunt?
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Good film (Score:2)
funny, it made me want to be an alien...
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
amen to that. 1979's 'alien' is good, but the 1986 'aliens' is what made my heart thump and want to be a space marine.
GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER!
They're almost two entirely different genres...
I love both movies, but comparing them just isn't fair.
Alien is tense, claustrophobic, suspenseful... You've got a single creature stalking and killing the crew of the ship, one by one. It's more of a traditional stalker/slasher movie in that respect.
Aliens is fast-paced, action-filled, loud, intense... Piles of aliens popping out of corners, getting mowed down, ripping people apart. Despite the fact that some of it is downright terrifying, it's more of an action movie than a horror film.
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Alien is a suspense/thriller.
Aliens is an action movie.
Alien3 was a drama.
Alien4 was a bad comedy.
i liked the biological overtones (Score:3, Insightful)
alien was basically "big bug in space". they had the thing's life cycle thought out in terms of egg->parasite->adult. it was really the first scifi movie where the monster wasn't a one dimensional big baddie, but a whole well-thought out three dimensional (biologically speaking) xenomorph, where the biological cycle itself was truly alien
and yet NOT alien. fear of spiders, snakes, sharks, is innate and natural. and bugs usually elicit some sort of ancient biological horror because of what they represe
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
All the space marines in that movie died. Do you still want to be one? Me, I'd rather be a little girl.
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Really?
I wanted to be a sniveling weasel working for a gigantic corporation and doing anything, including murder, to get ahead at my career. Then to star in a boring sitcom with Helen Hunt.
I'll never let go!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
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People kick Titanic all the time, but I still like it. Maybe it is not for everyone, but I popped in the DVD the other night and watched it all the way through. In fact, I put down the laptop to watch it. That's a lot better treatment than I give a lot of what I get out of the Redbox.
In short, Titanic is still, to this day, better than a lot of what Hollywood presently puts out.
Back to topic, yes, get Mr Cameron on the project, pretty please.
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Yes, it wasn't in fact an iceberg which sank the Titanic, but an alien craft which was frozen in the permafrost, was knocked onto the deck of the Titanic during the collision. This caused the alien occupants of the craft to defrost and become conscious again. Upon leaving their craft, they acid-drooled their way onto the lower decks and then attempted to burrow their way out of the ship. This in fact caused the ship to sink and forced the aliens to go back into cryo-sleep. A future salvage mission accidentl
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That actually IS a great idea for a movie!
Aliens go to the titanic, mess up the timeline, marines go back in time to kill them all, and then have to decide to sink the ship themselves, to preserve history. With the wreck at the bottom of the ocean, little changes.
Not a great movie, mind you, but a great idea... :)
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?
Re:Is AVP/AVPR canon? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is AVP/AVPR canon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is "Alien vs. Predator" and "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem" part of the canon? Will it be for this prequel?
I was going to ask the same thing. I've not seen it, and have no real desire to do so, but according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Alien vs. Predator was intentionally a prequel to Alien (and a sequel to Predator) and deliberately took some effort- and altered its own setting- to avoid a situation where the events in Alien would be rendered implausible if not impossible. (Primarily, they couldn't set it in a city because everyone would then have been aware of the existence of the aliens before Alien took place).
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]
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If they make AvP non-canon, then maybe they can do the same with Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection.
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You forgot Daleks. And Cylons.
Yeah, may not be so great. (Score:4, Informative)
IMDB currently lists him having FOURTEEN projects "in development". So either he spends barely any time at all on any of them (and they all suck) or this movie will not come out until sometime in the 2020's (and we will all be dead from swine flu).
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"Aliens versus Swine Flu"?
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That'd be more of a sequel to "Aliens versus Bacteria" though (aka "The War of the Worlds")
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I'd say that's rather impressive. But a couple of those projects are repeated three times (Battle Angel and Avatar), so that brings the total down to eleven. There is a whole pipeline from script-writing, auditioning, actual filming, visual effects, compositing and editing, so he might not be involved in all those stages. I would imagine he would concentrate on the visual effects.
Sweet (Score:2, Funny)
*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.
Sheer number of memorialbe quotes (Score:2)
I just browsed IMDB's memorable quotes section for "Aliens" - It seems that most of the character's scripts are in there!
There must be close to 115 quotes in the section - that's got to be some sort of record.
(I lost count after ~100. I dont know Perl so could someone be so kind as to count the number of section breaks in the HTML?)
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How about you just wget it and use grep?
Oh noes you may have to learn something.
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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 quest
Story Should Make Sense (Score:4, Funny)
Best alien joke: The cartoon of the Imperial Storm Trooper with a face-grabber on its face saying, "I hate being the one to have to walk Lord Darth Vader's pet."
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.
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although why anyone thought it needed "protecting" is beyond me
Depends on what you mean by protecting. Protecting in the sense of a trade secret makes sense. Weyland-Yutani didn't want anyone else poaching their Xenomorphs, after all...
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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 Ali
ummm (Score:5, Funny)
So...it was successfully pitched to Fox because...it will involve the human race? Only Fox greenlights movies involving humans? Or do they always greenlight movies involving humans?
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I thought the same thing... why is one implying the other? What the hell is the "[...]" that makes the two connect. Maybe Jon Spaihts loves writing about humans?
I bought a dog today [...] North Korea test launched a missle!
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Well, to FOX employees, humans are as exotic, as the Alien is to us.
-- Glen Beck
Opening for more Giger? (Score:4, Insightful)
While his style is well-known, there is possibly still something more to ask of him that would tie the movies together outside of any simple plotline.
If he could be commissioned for something new, using some of the erotic or torture pieces as a haunting/dream-like "infection" plot device, he might be able to really breath some new visual life into the series.
Giger was given ample room to express himself in the original, but sadly was not credited as much as he should have been for the derivative works of the monsters. This could be a great way to welcome him back, although I've read that he can be a bit eccentric to work with (The Ghost Train ordeal).
Re:Opening for more Giger? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Opening for more Giger? (Score:5, Insightful)
this sounds great. Maybe make it something like the Star Wars Christmas special except replace the Wookies with Aliens.
only on slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
is a comment like this modded as insightful rather than funny
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Only on slashdot is the moderation system so broken that you can get modded as +1 Funny and -1 Overrated and actually lose something.
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(Sorry, I had to do it)
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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.
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Aliens 3 and Alien Resurrection (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't the franchise just die after the horrible efforts done by Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien Resurrection and David Fincher's Aliens 3? I think these films ruined Aliens forever. And After the first sequel the direction and feel of the franchise went in a massively different direction from Ridley Scott's version.
James Cameron's Aliens was fun but Ridley Scott's Alien has so much atmosphere to it. But Ridley Scott's version, while more artistic and interesting was not the box office smash that Aliens was.
Perhaps there is some way to recover the franchise, but I suspect your average movie-goer will be pissed at Scott's attempts at a prequel because it will likely not be anything like a film done by James Cameron, which is what people have come to expect from Aliens.
Prequel (Score:3, Funny)
The first movie was about a single alien, the second was about about many aliens. If this is a prequel, it will have to be about the egg of that first alien before it hatched.
"Hey, what's that?"
"I dunno, man, but it looks pretty strange."
"I've got a bad feeling about this..."
(spooky music)
Re:Prequel (Score:4, Funny)
If this is a prequel, it will have to be about the egg of that first alien before it hatched.
What came first, the alien or the egg?
nobody should worry (Score:5, Funny)
i have an inside track on the ideas they are basing the prequel on, and it harkens back to classic themes in shockingly new and original ways, not at all feeling like some high school sophomore clicked around a bit on wikipedia and retread tired, stale ideas
for example, the story of the alien in the prequel will revolve around important rules that one should never break, which of course get inevitably broken:
1. don't get the alien wet, or it immediately reproduces more of its kind asexually by budding from its back
3. keep the alien away from bright lights... especially sunlight. this will kill it
4. and don't ever feed the alien after midnight
i think this is a brilliant and entirely original idea
furthermore, the movie will start with a crashed ship full of religious pilgrims, a stowaway, a dangerous criminal, etc. the alien hunts them all down relentlessly one by one whenever the planet falls into eclipse and darkness. but the fearless criminal has special surgically altered eyes that allows him to see in pitch black, so he turns the tables and hunts the alien instead
again, a brilliant and entirely original idea from hollywood for the alien prequel!
Make your own machinima (Score:3, Informative)
Why wait for another Aliens movie? Grab your copy of Tremulous [tremulous.net] and get going! Pronto!
My nightmares involve not being able to pounce away from a chainsuit fast enough.
Beyond the Alien (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I loved the first two movies, and would have liked the series to progress as it seemed it should - 3 would have the Alien actually brought back to a space station around Earth, then 4 could be them getting TO Earth.
But the point I wanted to make is that the next sequel should have someone stumble on the Alien's home planet - where they originally are from. Think about it - they are communal, live in a colony and can build a new one with a single individual, like some of our insects. They cooperate, can withstand very hostile environments. They have eggs that can do the same and lie dormant for long periods of time. They have lightning speed, hide really well, and have acid for blood.
Now think about the world that could produce such a creature, with all those defenses. The Aliens.... are not even CLOSE to the top of the food chain. Imagine what horrors you would find on the world that produced them....
THAT's the movie I want to see.
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I can't think of a single choreographer who wouldn't just faint at the chance of helping produce such a number!
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It is not a Tumor! It is the Republican Party!
Re:Meh, Alien was your basic horror movie (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to forget that Alien predated Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and most of the other "classic horror" movies:
Alien (1979)
Friday the 13th (1980)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Only Halloween (1978) predates Alien, and by a short enough period that I think it's safe to say that Alien was well underway before Halloween hit the theater.
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"It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)" [imdb.com]
"Out of the fifties 'B' Science-Fiction monster movies, this easily ranks as the best. It's most notable as the film that ALIEN is an unaccredited remake of, thus giving it a certain historical significance."
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Yeah, it beat the 80's Horror Film Peak, but there were plenty before that. Ridley himself pitched the movie as "Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Space" when trying to sign on people who were initially not enthused about doing a SciFi film.
But wasn't "just" a horror movie. It was an awesome horror movie.