Neill Blomkamp's ALIEN is official!

[olbertfrog]

Prometheus isn't an Alien movie. People still think it is which is why they don't like it I think. It isn't what I expected, and it's far from perfect, but it's a good movie imo.

It is an alien movie, it does not follow Ripley story but is set in the same universe.
Call it spin off, side story or whatever its an Alien movie.
Its a bigger louder version of the first movie, it uses whole unused scenes and concept from the original.
Personally im dissapointed because of one thing, the dumbest useless move they made at the last minute.
Remove all the thing that made it directly an Alien prequel for something that is not as good.
Not that i Wanted it so bad to be a prequel but rather because they reworked stuff at the last minutes and it shows.changing the planet name, having a ship crash again (engineers keep crashing in every planet in the area) engineers bodies chestbustered, only a few things among other that pop there and there when you know where to Watch...
Basically its the original Alien prequel script with a modified last act.
Why? Just REALLY go another route as you said Ridley.
Now if that was for the better that would be fine by me but i found the original prequel script far more satisfying.
Especially toward the ending, when you witness the birth of the first xeno, the ultramorph wich was conceptualized by Carlos Huante who really found a great way to show how the xeno came to be.
Just keep the story as it was, close the book on that chapter then just have Shaw and David leave for Paradise.
The movie is impressive and beautifully done, i just freaking hate the final act (wich also has been butchered on the editing bay, dead mercs pop in back minutes after the hangar attack among others).
That What is bothering me the most, all is there to make a very cool new chapter to the saga but Ridley tought its wasnt good enough and muddle it up.

 

[karamazov80]

Whedon certainly does deserve a lot of the blame for Resurrection. It clearly took him awhile to hit his stride with Buffy and Firefly. And the directing style and subject matter may simply have not meshed well with his style and strengths.

 

[Khev]

Now that you mention it it does have Whedon humour - ''I thought you were dead'' ''I get that a lot'', ''I heard that you ran into these things before, so like, what did you do?'' ''I died'' etc etc

I heard that in Age of Ultron someone refers to Black Widow as being "severely ****able."

 

[a-dev]

The first Alien film didn't have anything like that kind of obvious ''lets make the audience laugh here'' humour. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about which makes A:R feel like it doesn't fit.

 

[Khev]

The first Alien film didn't have anything like that kind of obvious ''lets make the audience laugh here'' humour. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about which makes A:R feel like it doesn't fit.

ALIEN had no one-liners. ALIENS just had "Get away from her you *****!" but it fit the scene. A:Res had one-liners all over the place. I know Whedon is your boy a-dev but it did have the feeling of a writer trying to impress us with "peppy" dialogue. "Who do I have to **** to get off this boat?" "Want a souvenir?" etc.

 

[a-dev]

He certainly aint my boy for Alien. He's much better suited to what he's doing now.

 

[karamazov80]

I don't know, I think Hudson existed just as a running gag meant to make the audience chuckle. But the style of the humor was fundamentally different. And I think that's key. Despite the fact that Alien is a horror drama and Aliens is an action movie, both were pseudo-realistic, as was Alien 3. Resurrection wasn't. The in your face winks and nods were just too much.

 

[Khev]

Hudson's dialogue was still natural. The one-liners in A:Res were like the dialogue you'd here the littlest kid say in an 80's sitcom family. Things you know they'd never say but are there to make the audience chuckle. Hudson was partly hilarious because of how authentic his nervous breakdowns were given the circumstances.

 

[a-dev]

If the marines didn't have banter or a mascot type figure I don't think it would have been realistic. Any humour there was more natural. Sorta like T2 as compared to T3 - while T2 had a plausible reason for a Terminator to be coming out with one-liners (he was being instructed by a child), T3 had no such excuse. The one liners were only there for marketing reasons external to any context in the movie. (''Oh, people liked the humour in T2 so we need it again here'')

 

[karamazov80]

Well like I said, I think it's pseudo-realistic, which is important. But my comment was in reference to a-dev's argument that Aliens didn't have "audience--you need to laugh here" moments, as I think it did (maybe not Paul Blart audiences, but audiences like most of us). You very rarely have full on realism in movies. But Whedon doesn't seem to care about even approaching realism, and really never did in Buffy, Firefly, Avengers, etc. I do think Resurrection's faults go well beyond his influence, but he didn't fit there, and didn't help things.

 

[a-dev]

Well like I said, I think it's pseudo-realistic, which is important. But my comment was in reference to a-dev's argument that Aliens didn't have "audience--you need to laugh here" moments, as I think it did

Just a minor correction but I said that in relation to the first film, your point still stands though.

 

[karamazov80]

Ridley Scott. . .doesn't strike me as a fun guy at parties.

 

[Khev]

Ridley Scott. . .doesn't strike me as a fun guy at parties.

"I see the Hors d'Oeuvres are gone, like tears in rain...."

 

[a-dev]

This is the problem with sequels, they escalate based on the last sequel that came out. This bigger = better mentality. And all it does is keep straining credibility, going further and further away from the original concept. The first sequel might be good (Aliens, T2), because it doesn't push things too far but then the next one, not in all cases but in many, feels like it has to even bigger again till it just gets silly (T3). Then the fourth and fifth movies are just so far gone that I can't believe it's supposed to be the same character and the same fictional universe. (A:R, Die Hard 4 and 5, T5 most likely)


This is a reason I respect Alien 3 and perhaps also Die Hard 3. I don't feel they conform to the above pattern. Alien 3 didn't in any way shape or form ''go off the rails'' as Blomkamp (was reported to have) said. Quite the contrary, it was amazingly restrained for a third movie.

What I'm saying is sequels should look not at the last sequel (no matter how well received it was) but at the original movie when they try to measure how far to push things like action and humour. And sure, maybe go bigger, but at least this way you'll only be as far out as that first good sequel, it'll still hopefully have some plausibility to it rather than having an almost 70 year old Arnie skydiving from one helicopter into the rotor blades of another.

 

[karamazov80]

I think the main issue is not necessarily that subsequent movies try to be even "bigger" than their predecessors, but a related factor, in that executives want to appeal to larger audiences. What that usually means is that creativity is tamped down, the expectations from the audience (in terms of their intelligence, wit, and ability to draw their own conclusions) is lowered, and I think the logical end of that with an action movie is to just blow more **** up, throw out more obvious, adolescent humor, make the story dumber, spell more things out, give folks a happier ending maybe. Ultimately, to focus more on the superficial style than the substance. Marketing and demographic considerations drive decisions more than a writer's creative impulses.

And it's a creative downward spiral. But it's the nature of things. I was watching one of Ken Burns' Jazz episodes last night, and there was a movement away from the mass appeal big band and swing music after WWII. But the guys who were most successful were those who weren't trying to do anything new or creative, but to make simple, gimmicky music that appealed to the masses. Same thing we see here.

 

[a-dev]

Yeah I don't think our points are incompatible. It's all studio-driven. Perhaps there are writers & directors out there with some cop-on, who would know how to make another decent instalment in a given franchise - alas it matters not when the studio wants what it wants.

 

[karamazov80]

Right. So, if Cameron decided to come back for T3, or something like Salvation, he may have been pressured to make it bigger. And I think he could have, and also made a good film, because he would have insisted that he have a large amount of creative control, and because frankly he's a good filmmaker and storyteller. But you rarely get that. The reality is that even the most successful creative forces start feeling more pressure than they're comfortable with once the stakes and expectations get too high, so they bow out and move on, and hacks get brought in to act on behalf of the producers.

Take Marvel Studios--Edgar Wright couldn't deal with it, and Favreau and Whedon end up getting frustrated and moving on after fulfilling their obligations and getting their nice paydays. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Russo Bros. leaving after Avengers 3.2. In a sense they aren't the best example because Feige (their primary creative force) has good sense and ends up overseeing good films, but creativity is definitely constrained in that situation. Cap 3 was going to be Civil War, and Avengers 3 the Infinity Gauntlet, and certain things have to play out in certain ways, and you have to sign onto that if you want to work for them.

 

[Khev]

Did Peter Jackson get props for making the battle of the five armies less epic than the battle of Pelenor Fields? No. So you guys have no one but yourselves to blame. NO ONE.

 

[karamazov80]

I was actually going to use The Hobbit movies as an example of pushing too far in the wrong direction in pursuit of the almighty dollar, but didn't want to incur your wrath

 

[Khev]

Don't make me go Triple H on you. I much prefer a trilogy to a Part 1 and Part 2. Sure it allowed them to make an extra billion but they didn't take anything from previous films and make it lame. Legolas, Galadriel, and Elrond all remained cool, none of them were given over-sized horse teeth or anything. I guess "You should have stayed dead" can qualify as a one-liner but I still say much restraint was exercised throughout. Thorin and Azog, Bolg and Legolas, Bolg vs. Tauriel and Kili, not only was not a single dramatic one-liner uttered among any of them but they literally didn't speak a word at all to each other during their respective duels. Very cool.

Even Last Crusade and ROTJ dabbled in self parody and previously awesome characters were kind of diminished.