ALIEN and ALIENS Thread...

[MaulFan]

My vote would be for Ridley Scott or James Cameron to direct, I can't think of anyone else who could do as good a job as a series capper would deserve, if Alien 5 were to be the end all of the Alien solo story with only AVP films after that. There are many talented directors out now, but the trouble is, and I think what anchors films like Resurrection and AVP, is that despite what they say in commentaries, these director's can't capture the quality Scott and Cameron brought to the first two; they're coming up in a newer style of shooting, which is good because evoloving ways make for fresh ideas, but it's bad when you want to revisit something older and lose touch with what made it succeed. It'd be interesting to see how you could pull of an hour and a half / two hour film with the space jockey in the story, I don't know how much could happen with one character, but even if A5 wasn't a prequel and just a continuation of the story, if done well, could be a great flick.

 

[-=LoneWolf=-]

I think after all this discussion, that Fox should really look into greenlighting one more ALIEN film... Just one more....do it all proud....wrap it all up...

Since Sigourney is about too old to take it on again, I doubt there would be a followup one...so....
This prequel to the series idea, the Space Jockey's story...somehow...seems like a very viable thing.
If it were made by a good filmmaker, someone with some pith to their style, some visual fun, even Ridley Scott again, someone....then it could work!

WHY NOT?!?!?!?

And your discussions have pretty much nailed the ALIEN's life cycles...
I wonder if they even would.
What I wouldn't give for one, really WEIRD Alien movie! All aliens and space jockeys (or others!)...no humans...subtitled....and OFF THE HOOK! Wherever they come from, has to be the equivelent of Hell!

I'd love to see it.

a few prominent people involved in the production of the alien films did voice their desire see a 5th film going back to the beginning to solve the mystery of the alien and space jockey. one even said that he wants to see the 5th film end just when the Nostromo lands on LV-426. so if there's ever gonna be another Alien movie, i think that's the direction it's gonna go...

i once heard a rumour way back that if James Cameron was to make Alien 5, he would pick up where Aliens left off and position all the events in Alien 3 and Resurrection as a bad dream that Ripley had during hypersleep on the way back to earth in the Sulaco (talk about slapping the two films ) but i guess that won't ever happen now that the principle cast is too old...

 

[MaulFan]

i once heard a rumour way back that if James Cameron was to make Alien 5, he would pick up where Aliens left off and position all the events in Alien 3 and Resurrection as a bad dream that Ripley had during hypersleep on the way back to earth in the Sulaco (talk about slapping the two films ) but i guess that won't ever happen now that the principle cast is too old...

Nonsense, if you can write a bogus crash story to kill off Hicks and drown Newt, you can work with aged actors. You use stock footage of them in stasis, create cgi graphics of the ship returning to earth, use new actors and sets to establish the characters as alive, then throw a 20 years later fade and show them looking the age they should be in the story and you develop your means of bringing the Alien back into their lives from there. It could be done, oh yes, it could be done.

 

[abake]

If you were the top brass at Fox, which new director would you hire to do Alien 5?
Who would you like to script it?
And what would your premise for the story be?

 

[MaulFan]

If you were the top brass at Fox, which new director would you hire to do Alien 5?
Who would you like to script it?
And what would your premise for the story be?

Alien 5 - Written and Directed by James Cameron

Plot -

Ripley, Newt and Hicks return to Earth safely aboard the Sulacco. The Company, angered that their prized weapon has been lost once again, takes measures to reduce Ripley and Hicks to civilians. The story jumps ahead many years and reveals Ripley, Hicks and Newt to have formed a family after having their lives turned upside down by The Company. Newt is of working age and her job takes her out into space. Having lost the Alien specimens on LV-426, The Company has searched the galaxy to track down another case of the Alien creature and finally discover one. Knowing Newt is Ripley's daughter, they foolishly send Newt's work ship out to where the Alien's have been found in an ALIEN style scenario to bring one back. Through the grapevine, Ripley learns of what The Company is up to and she and Hicks set out to rescue their daughter with the aid of some of Hick's old corp buddies (ones not in ALIENS). From that point on, it's an all out race against the most dangerous incarnation of the Aliens to date, packed with explosions, guns, and all the other elements that made Alien and Aliens such great journey's to take, the conclusion of which is finding the planet where the Alien race originates from and a furious Ripley sets out to eliminate the source of her nightmares once and for all, but some cleverly hidden Company employees stir things up and it's a final battle between Ripley and the gang, The Company and the Aliens, but just to be a little Hollywood, it ends with opportunity for the story to go on, but is also done that it could be felt it is truly over finally.

 

[Reinhardt]

i gotta hand it to you MaulFan... your premise is quite appealing.

I'd still like to go back to a prequel type film, about the space jockey and where the aliens came from. With a director that doesn't like doing fast cuts... kinda like how Alien was directed. There are quite a few asian directors that are not that fast cut happy... a few that come to mind are Park Wook Chan (director of Oldboy), and Takashi Miike (Audition). Not saying they would be good, but that style of filmmaking... atmosphere and mood, versus total action.

Even though Aliens is pretty much the greatest movie ever made, i'd like to see this prequel with less action, and more build-up and mood.

 

[dekadentdave]

The reason why I think Alien3 is the underrated and unappreciated masterpiece of the series is the fact that Ripley, Newt and Hicks all die. It's very real. S*** happens people. Any Predator will tell you that. They could have just made Aliens part 2 but it would have been more of the same. I was glad they took an unexpected left turn and as much as I liked Hicks, killing off him and Newt made perfect sense. Ripley's luck had finally run out and she's forced to confront this thing once and for all on some backwater prison planet at the ass-end of space and she's got one inside her. Brilliant. F'n brilliant. It was the perfect conclusion to the saga. Then Alien Resurrection had to come along and ruin a perfect trilogy by bringing her back. The Ripley saga was over. Time for NEW characters in DIFFERENT settings.

 

[-=LoneWolf=-]

The reason why I think Alien3 is the underrated and unappreciated masterpiece of the series is the fact that Ripley, Newt and Hicks all die. It's very real. S*** happens people. Any Predator will tell you that. They could have just made Aliens part 2 but it would have been more of the same. I was glad they took an unexpected left turn and as much as I liked Hicks, killing off him and Newt made perfect sense. Ripley's luck had finally run out and she's forced to confront this thing once and for all on some backwater prison planet at the ass-end of space and she's got one inside her. Brilliant. F'n brilliant. It was the perfect conclusion to the saga. Then Alien Resurrection had to come along and ruin a perfect trilogy by bringing her back. The Ripley saga was over. Time for NEW characters in DIFFERENT settings.

i agree with you 110%!!

 

[Rogue Trooper]

i agree with you 110%!!

Yeah i though alien 3 was wicked way to end the trilogy about ripley. Alien 3 was great, all the bald conivict shouting in london cokney accent as they run about the corridors with the alien eye view (if it has eyes).
I always liked the idea of the wood spacesphere floating through space with all the monks on board as a cool alien 3 concept.
I once read in Empire movie mag that Ridley Scott and Jim Cameron had a meating about them making another alien movie with Cameron as writer and Ridley as director. That was about year before AVP. Dont know if it was true of course but at the time i was well excited about the idea.

 

[dekadentdave]

I still have the Cinefantastique issue of Alien3 that came out before the movie that went in-depth behind Vincent Ward's script about the wooden planet of monks and it sounded like a whacked out idea and then detailed all of the production problems with the studio and I was convinced the film was doomed. Much to my surprise when I went to see it I actually enjoyed it and its ominous tone is very haunting. It's a downer of a film from beginning to end which is why I think most people hate it. Audiences want happy endings and to see their heroes victorious. I like it raw.

 

[Reinhardt]

speaking of non-hollywood endings and liking it raw, i thought "Arlington Road" had one of the best endings ever.

Back to Alien discussion!

 

[pjam]

For anyone interested, JC's First Draft

https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Aliens_James_Cameron_May_28_1985_first_draft.html

 

[abake]

Frankly, I don't know who I'd hire as a director.
I'm starting to doubt Ridley, he's gone into "formula-mode"... e.g. Gladiator/Kingdom of Heaven. One-against-the-world type of hero at odds with the politics surrounding him, big battle with fire and missiles, emotionally charged fight in the woods, old and wise father figure that gets offed at the beginning... just too many coincidences. And I did enjoy both movies!
I'm also doubting Cameron. Titanic ferchrissakes! And, even though I enjoy T2, I do find it a bit irritating with the goody-good terminator. It's supposed to be a killing machine!
I think I would like him to do the script though, if it didn't involve becoming an Aliens 2. I love the Colonial Marines, but I don't need to see that kind of movie again.
That's the reason why Aliens and A3 are great sequels, each went its own way, building on the story and not trying to do the same thing again.
A:R tried to do it, but failed due to a poor script (IMHO).
But back to the script question.
I think Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins) would be good. The man can write. And direct, which seems like a big plus to me. Another one I like a lot is Michael Polish (Northfork). Great writer and director as well with a beautiful visual style.

 

[-=LoneWolf=-]

yeah i think christopher nolan is great too. he has an excellent sense of narrative

 

[Reinhardt]

yeah i think christopher nolan is great too. he has an excellent sense of narrative

definitely!

 

[pjam]

Aliens 3 - 1992

Domestic: $55,473,545 34.7%
+ Foreign: $104,300,000 65.3%
= Worldwide: $159,773,545

I'm happy for anyone who enjoyed this film, seriously. You, the audience, are all that counts in any interpretation of this franchise but it did very poorly commercially in the US Market, much better Int'l as you can see. I just don't think it worked for me, the prison colony dog Catcher Alien take on it would have been better served as a Comic Book/Dark Horse type medium rendition IMO.

And don't even ask me about AR or AVP!

 

[dekadentdave]

Box office figures are meaningless in measuring artistic merit. Blade Runner was a commercial box office flop and it is regarded as one of the most influential science fiction masterpieces of all-time.

 

[screamingmetal]

The reason why I think Alien3 is the underrated and unappreciated masterpiece of the series is the fact that Ripley, Newt and Hicks all die. It's very real. S*** happens people. Any Predator will tell you that. They could have just made Aliens part 2 but it would have been more of the same. I was glad they took an unexpected left turn and as much as I liked Hicks, killing off him and Newt made perfect sense. Ripley's luck had finally run out and she's forced to confront this thing once and for all on some backwater prison planet at the ass-end of space and she's got one inside her. Brilliant. F'n brilliant. It was the perfect conclusion to the saga. Then Alien Resurrection had to come along and ruin a perfect trilogy by bringing her back. The Ripley saga was over. Time for NEW characters in DIFFERENT settings.

I completely agree with you Dave, Alien 3 is very underrated. I love Aliens, but to see that again would be on the same level of AVP. I'm not 100% against that to tell the truth, but at least Alien 3 tried to be something else, a bit of the original with a lot more adrenaline.

 

[figuremasterles]

I think ALIEN - ALIENS - ALIEN 3, is one of the best, most original trilogies ever. I actually enjoyed AR, and to a much lesser extent, AVP, but I didn't have high hopes for either, and for AR, it was post REAL Ripley anyway. I did enjoy the peripheral characters alot. And the humor.

But anyway...

I've had this ALIENS sequel story idea for ages...a direct sequel to ALIENS, and a seperate storyline from the Ripley tale...

See if anyone else has had this one.


ANd, using Hollywood logic, if the use of an Alien queen on ice for over 100 years is OK for a movie (AVP) then how bout this one...


(Events occur within months of the end of ALIENS, entirely seperately from the Ripley story....)

An interstellar colonial passenger ship is travelling near to the area of LV426, on the way to populate an outer rim planet...they intercept biological data in the form of a frozen mass nearby, and decide to investigate... totally unaware of what has transpired in this region of space recently...

They find...the frozen form of a balled up insectoid looking, heretofore unidentified mass. They take it aboard and put it in a freezer, radio back to base and to their trajectory, and continue on, thinking they have made an interesting discovery.

The "thing" in the freezer (yeah, why not!) wakes up. Yep, she's the same queen as the ALIENS one! Imagine that!...and she breaks loose and kills crewmen nearby and nests, and begins laying eggs...hundreds of eggs....leading to...that first facehugger...and that first alien...and then....well, it's a passenger ship carrying thousands of people....

The company becomes aware, and a huge contingent of Colonial marines are sent with a team of WY scientific investigators. ..will they make it on time...

Back at the ship, chaos insues...the Aliens are even worse this go round, at command of the very angry Queen, who remembers this host species with loathing, we are FINALLY subjected to actually seeing the people captured and the vain attempts at rescues, all thwarted...
Some of the more hardy passengers work up a counterattack on the growing nest, but to no avail...all seems lost...
During this segment, alien warriors are seen taking eggs from the nest area, to other parts of the ship...

Then, in the nick of time, the cavalry arrives...

CM ships shows up and hundreds of seriously armed marines debark with exosuits and heavy artillery and go at it with the nest... Imagine it like a big game, first wave, hundreds of facehuggers skittering at them...hundred s...then come the warriors in waves....

A group of the passengers has learned enough to plan a blow up of the ship, and are almost stopped by company men, but the plan is set and all hell breaks loose.
Imagine large scale versions of any action seen so far in the ALIEN movies and you can imagine the scale. Something like the last part of Matrix Revolutions, only with ALiens....

The remaining passengers and crew and marines hit the lifeboats and all leave as the ship is detonated, taking with it the Colonial Marine vessels and all...
But, the Queen has outsmarted all the escaping people...on each lifeboat, eggs are secured, and chaos ensues further, only this time, spreading out to all points...

The "main" characters manage to kill off the eggs and clean up their ship, to find the Queen aboard the small craft. She kills all but two and they destroy the vessel and the original Queen from ALIENS is finally killed.

But, her brood is spreading out in the remaining overwhelmed lifeboats....

To be continued????...

It's silly, but no more so than any other idea I guess. And it sets up more of the franchise without the other actors.

There is more followup and I would enjoy seeing this kind of straigtup ALIEN movie more than more AVPs! (Nothing against Predators, they deserve their own good movies!)

I just thought about going back to ALIENS and follow up on it in a different style. WITH NO RIPLEY!

And yes, it does smack of some of the followup comics, but so what. Some of those were great ideas.

Just an idea....

 

[dekadentdave]

Another reason why I think audiences were disappointed with Alien3 was because the teaser trailer playing in theaters the summer before promised that the Aliens were coming to Earth. I would love to see an all-out outbreak happen on Earth ala John Carpenter's The Thing with the Colonial Marines having to fight a full-scale war against the Alien invasion. With the state of current CGI technology now this could be very possible to do on a scale like 300 but with Aliens.