Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 / Aliens 2

[moonblood]

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/alien-5 ... y-greenlit

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/alien/3 ... surrection

No thread for this? I'm a little excited about it actually, I can't help it. And I don't get excited about stuff easily these days. But Aliens is my favourite movie of all time and although I've grown to like Alien 3, getting a 'true' (or whatever you want to call it) sequel to Aliens after 30 years would be pretty amazing IMO and maybe he could pull it off. I haven't seen Elysium but I remember really liking District 9.

[Mortificator]

It sounds like bad fanfiction.

[antares]

I always felt that Alien Resurrection is to the Alien franchise what Spaceballs is to Star Wars, so a director who thinks Resurrection should be ignored is giving me hope.

[drauch]

I find it hard to ever get excited about this kind of shit anymore. Sigourney Weaver is 65 years old. Just make a new goddamn franchise, or better yet, a single film.

[BIL]

Don't care really - sequels are always wait and see at best for me, particularly where horror/horror-inflected stuff is concerned. Prometheus killed the last spark of childlike naivete and enthusiasm in me. 3:

But I do like that concept art of an aged, battle-scarred Hicks. Mucho manloves @ Michael Biehn. You'd think he'd be put off shotguns after his unfortunate close-quarters encounter with a Xenomorph towards the end of the 1986 Aliens movie, though! ^_~

[drauch]

Don't care really, but I do like that concept art of an aged, battle-scarred Hicks. Mucho manloves @ Michael Biehn. You'd think he'd be put off shotguns after his unfortunate close-quarters encounter with a Xenomorph towards the end of the Aliens movie, though! ^_~

Wow, didn't even notice that before. That is admittedly pretty frickin' cool.

Still, I stand by my earlier pessimistic and hate-fueled post.

[Ed Oscuro]

Look at drawn Weaver's neck and then look at those arms.

[BIL]

Its a trick arm like that one Johnny Depp/Antonio Banderas movie you think she's gonna go all ALLAHU SNACKBAR on Evil Corporation HQ then *BOOM* "Bitch u shot meh! Under the table! Aieee!"

EDIT: or maybe it's a sentient synthetic arm, mutually distrustful ofc. Maybe it'll betray her at the end and not press the plunger to blow up the ship with the Xeno specimens! (you'll never guess which evil corporation is MFG )

[Ed Oscuro]

They really need to use William Gibson's script already, and not just the barcode tatoos.

Everybody go ho-tel, car-tel
holiday in (space)
if Lambert's gash starts acting up, then you take a synthetic

[GaijinPunch]

Curious as to how the Hicks/Ripley thing would work out. Comic book movies are re-imagined all the time. Why can't Aliens? Still... Elysium...

[BryanM]

Still... Elysium...

It was great up until the adolescent power fantasy action kicked in and the whole "Matt Damon is socialist Jesus" thing. That would be like if Mel Gibson had played Jeezurs in Passion of the Christ.

The correct storyline is Matt Damon tries to acquire currency by doing horrible shit, ultimately fails to get cured even after getting moolah, and dies in a gutter. Reality!

[CMoon]

I find it hard to ever get excited about this kind of shit anymore. Sigourney Weaver is 65 years old. Just make a new goddamn franchise, or better yet, a single film.

This. I'm not offended by the idea of sequels, but I worry the same production could into making something new instead of just aping something that was good a long time ago. I feel like the sci-fi horror 'genre' (which was never big to begin with) hasn't had an original film in at least a decade.

[BryanM]

They really need to use William Gibson's script already

Gibson alters the nature of the Xenomorphs, bestowing the creatures with fairly substantial new abilities in his story. Most notably, the Xenomorphs in his draft now exhibit an ability to reproduce via a close-proximity airborne contagion, similar to a virus. When this contagion is inhaled into the lungs, the victim, after a variable amount of time, goes through "the change", as Gibson calls it, and becomes a form of Xenomorph.

: [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[

Prometheus

I think Prometheus shows that the franchise is used up from a quality standpoint. You can't add more mystery without venturing into the realm of absurdity, since things are pretty ridiculous already. In Alien you can overlook the fact that the Xeno grows by reformatting air on an atomic level [1] by assuming it got into the food supply somehow for example.

Aliens was the last of the low hanging fruit.


[1] This would of course cause radiation that would be easy to detect if it wasn't able to input the correct number of neutrons for the heavier elements... but then you'd be ripping those out of other atoms, which would then become radioactive... argh, see what happens when you overthink this stuff.

[Ed Oscuro]

overthink

Thinking and Alien...don't go together.

I agree that people morphing into Aliens would probably seem hokey if they tried to fit it into the existing mess, but at the time Gibson wrote that (and with the help of practical effects) it probably would've been noteworthy fun. Possibly he could've done something to better fit the franchise, so maybe this is his realism taking a hard stance against the "air built" nonsense. Instead we got something that was so far into the weeds that you can't laugh at it much.

That is really the last thing from Gibson's script I'd focus on. Android sexy times, big fights, and bioengineered weapons; it had the makings of something at least good if not great.

[Mischief Maker]

I think Prometheus shows that the franchise is used up from a quality standpoint. You can't add more mystery without venturing into the realm of absurdity, since things are pretty ridiculous already. In Alien you can overlook the fact that the Xeno grows by reformatting air on an atomic level [1] by assuming it got into the food supply somehow for example.

I disagree, but from a tangential angle.

The downfall of Prometheus was Ridley Scott getting full of the hype toward his best movie, and letting his ego conflate the elephant pilot into God. Kinda like how George Lucas turned Darth Vader into Jesus. Just because bad writers are attached to existing properties doesn't mean the property itself is devoid of possibilities.

Here's an idea off the top of my head:

A post-Aliens movie where the Weyland-Yutani corporation is actively searching for Xenomorphs for its weapons division. A deep space probe picks up a massive derelict ship in space bigger than the one in Alien, but clearly made from the same technology. A ship with a complement of soldiers and scientists is diverted to the derelict and given explicit instructions to pick up some Xenomorph eggs, with detailed information about the Alien's lifecycle. Essentially the characters are coming in knowing everything the audience knows. However, when they board the ship, they find that it's not completely derelict, but rather it's a damaged space factory run by biological machines ala. "Rendezvous with Rama" but with Geiger-inspired designs, including many creatures grown right into the walls like the elephant pilot. Everything looks threatening, but the vast majority of these creatures take no notice, or just cursory interest in the humans, so the characters get a little bold to find the eggs that will make them rich and split up. The comms with the main ship suddenly go staticky, so the crew decides to regroup and return to the ship, but one member doesn't return, so they track his transponder only to find in horror that HE has been partially merged with the walls of the ship and his body is being used for some painful but unclear purpose. They try to get him loose but suddenly an alarm goes off, and they hear something big coming their way. After a hurried argument they leave him and start running back for the ship, but find that the layout of the hallways has shifted, they have no idea how to get out, and something is coming for them...

See? Doesn't break the Alien backstory, puts the audience back on shaky ground because they no longer know all the rules.

[neorichieb1971]

I love the fact that Ripley spent 4 movies trying to stop Aliens getting to Earth and then "Aliens Vs Predator" showed that they were on Earth at least a few hundred years before she was born.

And in Aliens vs Predator 2 the story goes so deep there is a fight between a jealous boyfriend and the pizza delivery guy. WOW!

[BryanM]

I mean it could be a decent flick and I'm pretty optimistic about it. It's just that a premise and novelty gets old really quick.

Sequences of contrived coincidences, like in Spider Man 3, just aren't self sustaining.

Weyland-Yutani corporation

So much time has passed, it feels like that by now they should have long since gotten their hands on the aliens, dissected and perfected them, and been using them as lobotomized killer robots. And were perfectly reasonable overlords, with all this "evil corporation" schtick put to sleep. Any dissent from Ripley on the matter would cast her as a crazy terrorist lady from the middle ages. Since she's spent so much time in cryo, the guys in suits would derisively call her "tube lady" and keep offering to put her up in an apartment filled with excessively hairy cats.

The entire movie could be her sitting on her sofa watching Robomorphs killing rebels on the news on her tv. And pulling long strands of cat hair out of her pasta.

And in Aliens vs Predator 2 the story goes so deep there is a fight between a jealous boyfriend and the pizza delivery guy. WOW!

... maybe I should try watching those movies.

... maybe it's for the best I have no desire to, still.

Android sexy times

Ok you've sold me.

[Ed Oscuro]

They really oughta just stick the knife in already. Aliens in the streets man. I mean, for real. Wait, didn't they try that too? ...this franchise

[antares]

Don't remind me of AVP 2 people, it's like Scream meets Aliens

I haven't seen the Predators movie from 2010 yet. Did I miss something?

[Herr Schatten]

Where's Newt?

[Stevens]

Here's an idea off the top of my head:

See? Doesn't break the Alien backstory, puts the audience back on shaky ground because they no longer know all the rules.

You came up with that off the top of your head? Put some thought into it and get that script written. Fresh take man..I like it.

[JBC]

I'm excited but I've always been a fan of the franchise since I first saw the Konami arcade. I like Blomkamp's movies so far & have always wanted them to retcon 3&4, so I'll give it a chance. (N.B. seems to be tiptoe'ing around the subject atm though)

I agree that Prometheus was abit pretentious with all the religious ties. Combined with logic problems & uppity nonsense on some of the character's part it has it's fair share of problems. However, I still found it to be an interesting flick. I much preferred the enigmatic space elephant concept we all had of the Space Jockey before they decided they were the big blue human 'Engineers' of humanity

The majority of my fandom is directed at the early Dark Horse comics & novel series. They really knew how to maintain a moody, depressed atmosphere in those things. In fact, to gear up I'm ordering the 7 original books I missed plus last year's new 'Alien' trilogy of novels. All have pretty bad reviews but whatever. Can't get worse than AVP Requiem.

EDIT - Just watched Prometheus again & came up with a good alternate title - '2 Heads In A Duffle Bag'. Man that first half is so weak, but it gets good around the time Holloway gets torched. Compared to Alien the characters are so unrealistically stupid. You mean to tell me a wrecker crew can conduct themselves more professionally than a group of scientists? Ugh. Just ugh!

[Squire Grooktook]

Here's an idea off the top of my head:

See? Doesn't break the Alien backstory, puts the audience back on shaky ground because they no longer know all the rules.

You came up with that off the top of your head? Put some thought into it and get that script written. Fresh take man..I like it.

Yeah, much better than the virus concept or anything that came after Aliens. Honestly, would have been an interesting take if the franchise didn't become entirely about the Xenomorph's themselves but branched off into an entire H.R Giger universe of bio-mechanical horror. I mean, "Alien" or "Aliens" could refer to more than just Xenos.

[Ed Oscuro]

I much preferred the enigmatic space elephant concept we all had of the Space Jockey before they decided they were the big blue human 'Engineers' of humanity

I don't know who originally had that concept, but I find it unreasonable to expect that they had the "engineers" concept in mind exactly as such from the beginning. It's possible they thought the Pilot was a member of a species that had made a bioweapon (and Gibson's draft tries to make that explicit) but it's also quite reasonable to think that were members of a species that just got unlucky - and in fact I think that is what was intended.

So here we are, with more borrowing or maybe unintentional echoing of the Gibson draft, but it didn't work out so well.

Honestly, the franchise seems like a nightmare to try and expand, even going back to its roots. It is like thinking about The Thing or The Blob and trying to meaningfully expand that franchise. It's a fear of the unknown horror story - chip away at that too much and the whole thing comes crashing down!

[BryanM]

it's also quite reasonable to think that were members of a species that just got unlucky

Definitely what I always assumed. Anything else is just... contrived.

The whole thing with "these guys a gillion million lightyears away created life on earth and this inefficient killer cyberanimal" is just so... argh. It's like that scene in Final Fantasy 8 when all the characters realize they all grew up together in the same orphanage. It's like, "Hey, EVERYONE'S CONNECTED". The proper response: "what the fuck?" "Why?" "What does this change?" "How does this matter at all?"

And the answer is, it does not matter. They just want you to know the magic moon crystals make us all connected and one entity, man.

I'm not sure there's enough cat drugs in the world to make that palatable to those of us not in the moon crystal cult...

Honestly, the franchise seems like a nightmare to try and expand, even going back to its roots.

This kind of spectacle inflation infects most sequels. The Die Hard franchise being a prime example; gotta expand the budget and scope, even though more sets and longer FX scenes don't make for a better movie.

When you get into the storylines with interdimensional Old Gods, reality morphing into hell around you.. you kind of get away from the roots where it was just about some guys who wanted to acquire currency and meet some girls through being ghost janitors.

Still, I think my "out of touch with the times tube lady" pitch is the right way to go.

It's a fear of the unknown horror story - chip away at that too much and the whole thing comes crashing down!

Agree. It is a full-on action/comedy franchise now.

[Herr Schatten]

Agree. It is a full-on action/comedy franchise now.

I agree. To be perfectly honest, though, the franchise turned that way as early as the Aliens director's cut. The suspense/fear of the unknown aspect only got reintroduced to that movie when people with some sense decided to cut away a lot of crap Cameron originally shot.

[Xyga]

Cybernetic aliens still wouldn't beat a bare-handed genetically-modified Ripley-Jesus, even if they mastered Panzer Kunst.

[Ed Oscuro]

This kind of spectacle inflation infects most sequels.

Ironically this is something that I think traces back to early sci-fi's doughnut and pastry man Dr. E.E. Smith and his Lensman series, getting bigger and bigger (and there's even some precedent for the Alien-as-bioweapon concept there too). Maybe spectacle inflation - nice phrase! - is seen in some earlier fiction (i.e. the Book of Revelation) but I think it only really became a thing with sci-fi appearing on the scene.

[CMoon]

To be perfectly honest, though, the franchise turned that way as early as the Aliens director's cut. The suspense/fear of the unknown aspect only got reintroduced to that movie when people with some sense decided to cut away a lot of crap Cameron originally shot.

Actually, this is a really interesting question: theatrical vs director's cut. I think a lot of people will go with director's cut because it is longer and explains more, but I think it can be argued that a lot of that stuff works better on the cutting room floor. Unlike the cut footage from Terminator, it is really well done, and anyone who loves the film should watch it, but there's something to be said for seeing the film the first time without any clue what the marines are going to run into. I think the one error here was taking out the scene of the auto-cannons running out of ammo. Great suspenseful scene.

To be clear, I like the film both ways. I will always opt for the director's cut now, but not really sure it is superior.

[JBC]

Gettin' geared up. I heard these are pretty meh but any Alien is better than no Ali- ...

Well, maybe not. I'll just hope for the best.