stumpcity t1_j42w93s wrote
Cannot fuckin wait.
Between this and Fede Alvarez's upcoming movie (that has absolutely zero to do with any of the previous films other than there's an Alien in it) I feel like fans of this property are going to be eating really well for the first time since... what, 1991?
I know you're not supposed to be getting your hopes up (it's kind of a bad era for that, as it turns out) but goddammit... I'm getting my hopes up here.
fun fact completely beside the point, so I'll put it in spoilers: >!"Xenomorph" isn't the name of the Alien species (it doesn't have a name) since the reason Cameron used the word in the first place was much like how "unobtanium" was used in Avatar: It was just used specifically to replicate emptyheaded corporate speak and you were supposed to think the person using it was a dipshit for using it. it worked in Avatar (worked too well there, really) but for whatever reason hardcore Alien fans legitimately think "xenomorph" sounds better than just calling it an alien, and completely missed the satire!<
Paul_cz t1_j43cw96 wrote
I liked 3 and Resurrection too, as different as they were. And I also ate very well with the AvP games and Isolation.
But yeah the Ridley nustuff was not good and neither were AvP movies.
stumpcity t1_j43djpk wrote
I very much like Alien 3, but the version of it that made it really work as a conclusion to Ripley's story didn't come out until the DVD era. Not a fan of Resurrection, though.
Isolation is flat-out amazing at making you feel like you're in that world, absolutely. Love that game to death. I don't think the STORY in the game is all that notable, but that's not why the game works anyway, so it just needs to be good enough to get you to the next level/setpiece.
VeteranSergeant t1_j483b39 wrote
> Not a fan of Resurrection, though.
Resurrection is just not a good movie. It's too tonally jarring, and took a lot of talented people and put them in a place where they weren't working to their strengths. The took a talented French arthouse film director and tried to have him make a boilerplate sci-fi film. And then they took a comedic writer and tried to have him write a serious science fiction script.
So what you have is basically an Alien film that is bizarre in both its aesthetic and its plot, trying too hard to be clever and funny while still trying to remain horrific. Cast with a bunch of fairly good actors who all seem to think they are in different movies.
Alien 3 is a flawed film from a great visionary director like David Fincher, and as much as Fox screwed with him and the production, sending him into shooting with a film where the sets were already half finished, but the script was still being changed, you can see David Fincher's directorial vision stamped all across it.
Resurrection has this weird mishmash of Jean Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, City of Lost Children, Delicatessen) trying to direct a film written by Joss Whedon (at the time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and rewrites for Speed, Toy Story and Waterworld), as a sequel to a franchise that was dark and horrific body/creature horror set in a bleak corporate future. Whedon's script not only abandoned the bleak corporate future (there's a deleted scene joke about Weyland Yutani, the company from the first three films, having been bought out by Walmart), Jeunet seemed to struggle with the "dark and horrific" part. About the only part of the film that seemed "on brand" is the fairly great scene where she comes across the other Ripley clones. It's the one part of the film where there are no attempts to cram in a joke, a visual gag, or be anything other than horrific, and Jeunet's flair for the bizarre actually helped the film rather than hurt it.
The main reason some Alien fans hate Alien 3 is they never got over Noot and Hix dying in the opening scene. Otherwise, the Assembly Cut (later remastered as the "Special Edition") is a fantastic character piece about sacrifice and redemption. That original ending where she just falls into the molten lead and the Alien isn't born is incredibly powerful, ruined completely in the theatrical release with a chestbursting scene that removes the sacrifice element. The score by Eliot Goldenthal is top notch too, probably the best of the franchise.
Frank_chevelle t1_j43oe4d wrote
I only hated that they killed off Hicks and Newt like they did. Rest of part 3 was ok.
MaterialCarrot t1_j45z1oh wrote
Ditto. Will never forgive Alien 3 for that. I was happy to see everyone die in 3. Fucking nihilist bullshit. Watching that movie is like having the flu for two hours.
OverLurking t1_j45makx wrote
If I remember correctly it had something to do with contracts or some such? There is a back story to that you should look up to that script I know it’s enlightening
Frank_chevelle t1_j45wigz wrote
I remember hearing that some of the writers didn’t like the Newt character so many of the scripts had her dying. Still wish those characters got better endings even if they died in 3.
King_Tamino t1_j46no46 wrote
Well it’s hard to integrate a 12 year old long term. Newts role in 2 was great but what should they do? Copy & paste? Risk of making her an even more badass character which might result in the same criticism that star trek TNG recieved? A kid smarter than everyone, solving every problem etc
VeteranSergeant t1_j484lrk wrote
Mostly just timing. Originally they didn't think they could get Sigourney Weaver back. She was too famous by then and hadn't been interested in making Aliens until they gave her a fat paycheck. Fox assumed she was done with the franchise, which is why early versions of Alien 3 (including the first treatments by Neuromancer author William Gibson) either didn't feature Ripley at all, or in a tiny cameo.
But, eventually Weaver relented and agreed to be in the film, but by then, Michael Biehn (Hicks) was booked solid for 2 years, including in the timeframe where they wanted film Alien 3 with Weaver. Hicks was the central character in the William Gibson Alien III (and does his own voice alongside Lance Henriksen in the fairly-good audio drama adaptation released a few years back). But his character wasn't considered essential to Fox, so they went with a script that didn't utilize Hicks, which was essentially a mashup of ideas from previous iterations, mostly Vincent Ward's version, only moved from a weird wooden planet (yeah, who knows) to a prison, and Ward's monks turned into a religious cult of prisoners. I'm assuming they just decided it was too hard to get from Aliens to an Alien 3 set on a prison planet without just killing off Newt and Hicks.
horseren0ir t1_j45mekv wrote
I like ‘em all
SortOfHorrific t1_j43cwq2 wrote
Since 2012, Prometheus was pretty entertaining. Can’t say the same for Covenant, though.
dawn_chorus__ t1_j43ve1l wrote
Am I alone in wanting a conclusion to David's story, even though Prometheus and Covenant had problems? I hope Scott finishes the trilogy.
stumpcity t1_j4454sv wrote
I would watch it, but I also feel like at this point, you can kinda fill in the blanks yourself, which I'd imagine would turn the movie into kind of a box-ticking exercise focused on plot:
-
David invents the Queen (probably experiments on himself to become some weird hybrid Engineer/Android thing)
-
Walter catches up with David
-
Walter tries to stop David from destroying Earth
-
Ship crashes on LV-426 in a spectacularly weird fashion
-
Alien.
Now, does the idea of a mad scientist movie starring JUST Michael Fassbender in space sound like something worth watching? Absolutely. And it'd probably give Ridley a lot of time to put a lot of his (close approximation to) philosophizing into the movie (basically the best parts of Covenant, really) so it wouldn't just be plotty plot plot. But I don't know that there's going to be a lot to it beyond that. Or that he wouldn't fuck up the execution even if he DID have a lot more to it beyond that initially (see: Prometheus).
IrrelevantLeprechaun t1_j45qn3g wrote
I frankly hate the concept that the aliens AND the alien queen are all a simple invention by a human-made android. It completely cheapens the mystique of the Alien itself by turning it into yet another "folly of man" story.
Fgge t1_j47n6j6 wrote
The obsession with explaining every detail has really dragged the franchise down. Same as the Space Jockey.
Breezyisthewind t1_j4727q6 wrote
No it doesn’t. It makes it cooler.
ConstantaByTheSea t1_j473jzx wrote
Agreed, I love the Prometheus and Covenant movies, and Scott does amazing work building up that world. I want to know more about the engineers and see David's story concluded. The aliens imho are not really that interesting to see over and over again. I get it, they're scary monsters, ooo, as if it hasn't been done to death a million times. I want to see people take risks and the stage-play vibes of these two films works great!
horseren0ir t1_j45mqdh wrote
Were they in an engineer ship at the end of covenant?
LatterTarget7 t1_j46oqs3 wrote
No
dawn_chorus__ t1_j45o6t5 wrote
Doesn't Scott also have to explain the distress signal in Alien?
sweetpeapickle t1_j47kmfv wrote
No, I am with you. Plus I liked the two movies. We're they the best thing ever, no.
LatterTarget7 t1_j46onx4 wrote
I also want a conclusion just to see how it ends. Cause I’m not sure how you can make the jump from the eggs and fully formed baby aliens to the eggs in the original with the chest bursters. It’ll have to be a pretty long movie to fill in the evolution
IrrelevantLeprechaun t1_j48g9g0 wrote
If it's anything like Covenant, they'll probably just say "David spent a lot of time experimenting on cryo-sleeping colonists until he got a batch that's just like the original Alien."
stumpcity t1_j43dyk8 wrote
Covenant is a better movie than Prometheus is. Or at least it's more consistent at being what it's trying to be. Prometheus literally doesn't know what it wants to be and halfway through becomes a half-assed Blade Runner movie instead of an Alien one.
Covenant knows what it wants to be from jump and sticks to that pretty solidly. Prometheus is just a confused, frustrating mess (which makes sense once you watch the making-of documentary on the blu-ray).
I wouldn't say either of them are as good as the Alien 3 "assembly cut," which isn't a GREAT movie by any stretch, but is at least - fundamentally broken as it is, even in its best version - better at being a thematic closer to Ellen Ripley's story than either Prometheus or Covenant are at being chapters in the birth of the Alien.
edit: what in the world about those 3 paragraphs is setting people off. Jesus Christ.
tehkory t1_j43scbd wrote
You said nice things about Prometheus; people who hate Prometheus hate that.
You said nice things about Covenant; people who hate Covenant hate that.
You said nice things about Alien3; people who hate Alien3 hate that.
Then you edited; people who hate edits about downvotes hate that.
stumpcity t1_j43tql0 wrote
So what you're saying is I'm right and people hate that.
I should be used to this by now.
Asiriya t1_j44ea63 wrote
I don’t see how Covenant knows what it wants to be. It goes from philosophising in the opening establishing the same tone as Prometheus to a really dumb slasher, interlaced with moments of Prometheus-like intrigue where it can’t help but fill in the blanks between the films (and that stuff being far more interesting than the slasher the film actually is). Then it’s never sure if it wants to be an alien film or an android film - I don’t think it’s nearly as deft as the original was at juggling both.
I know the Prometheus script had a dozen hands on it but what happened during production, I’ve never seen the BTS you mentioned.
stumpcity t1_j44jjn2 wrote
Ridley Scott basically got wine drunk every day and messed up whatever was working that day
[deleted] t1_j45p1pj wrote
[deleted]
sweetpeapickle t1_j47l2eb wrote
You did not mention Jesus Christ before, so I don't think he has anything to do with setting people off.
VeteranSergeant t1_j4853oa wrote
> Covenant is a better movie than Prometheus is
This sounds like a gingivitis vs lip cancer argument. I'd rather just not have either.
Bushgjl t1_j43rzi3 wrote
I really liked the first 1/3 of Covenant, it felt "Alien" but afterwards falls apart into a convoluted mess with so many different things happening at once.
EmperorXerro t1_j44csik wrote
I thought it was solid until David shows up
Fleadip t1_j44ph24 wrote
I also enjoyed Prometheus.
zornyan t1_j47389p wrote
I enjoyed them all, I mean I can appreciate the newer ones weren’t as good, maybe I’m a bit too forgiving since I absolutely love the world and alien story, I grew up watching the films, reading comics and playing the games (avp was amazing on pc) and just really enjoy any content that helps fill in the history/lore and has some cool as xenonorphs in it!
prodigalkal7 t1_j44bzmo wrote
Damn, I did not know that fun fact you added. Anywhere you can direct me on where you got that?
King_Tamino t1_j46n48u wrote
Not a hardcore fan but .. it does really sound better. Alien can meaning anything from xenomorph, independence day aliens to E.T. or maybe Paddington.
However Xeno already has this dark vibes swinging with it. While most people obviously (hopefully?) know Xeno just means "foreigner“ so people should hopefully recognize that Xenomorph is just slang / combo to describe a foreign thing that well .. morphs, drastically changes it’s form/mutates
Sekh765 t1_j49pr01 wrote
Yea not sure why OP is trying to act like "Xenomorph" is some strange hardcore fan only name that should be changed. It's an awesome name and it clearly denotes which movie monster you are talking about. It's not "satire", it's a good name. Imagine trying to talk about your favorite movie monsters and being like "Oh I like the Alien!" yea which alien. "You know! The Alien! From... The space... movie.."
The Thing fans already have this issue.
5370616e69617264 t1_j460xz4 wrote
Xeno = Alien/Strange, Morph = Genetic variant of an animal.
It makes sense to use that word, instead of the generic "Aliens", specially after the "Arcturians" line or when the franchise is linked with franchises like Predator (which are aliens too). And also if we consider than the aliens adapt to the animal they come from...
stumpcity t1_j46lh99 wrote
>Xeno = Alien/Strange, Morph = Genetic variant of an animal.
I didn't say people were confused by what it meant. I said they misunderstood why Gorman was using it, or why Cameron put it in his mouth.
It's not a name for the species. It's a name to specify what a fuckin nitwit Company Man Gorman is.
And then the Fandom started talking like him
AjvarAndVodka t1_j47w3wk wrote
That's a cool tidbit.
But I'll still call it Xeno. It DOES sound better. In my opinion at least.
stumpcity t1_j47whv5 wrote
you always were an asshole, Gorman
BMANN2 t1_j457mfe wrote
Does that upcoming movie have a name? I haven’t heard anything about this.
horseren0ir t1_j45qavp wrote
Alien: Romulus
brettmgreene t1_j48ebqi wrote
>unobtanium
That's still very much a real term used by real scientists and researchers.
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