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I find it funny that Cameron is annoyed...considering he turned them into a cannon fodder race. Aliens was a good movie, but lets not kid ourselves. It reduced the horror of the aliens.
Alien 3 was actually quite good. It got back to the basics of Alien. Resurrection was almost good...good design and ideas...poor execution (seeing the Newborn much earlier would have saved it).
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2012/03/21 23:37:11
Hordini wrote:Didn't the xenomorph in Alien 3 come from a facehugger coupling with a dog? Wouldn't that pretty much confirm that the facehuggers don't specifically need humans to do their thing?
That's why I suggested a possible Ret-Con.
It's common knowledge that Ridley/Cameron weren't completely happy with the direction the films went after they did their.
I suppose it's also possible, that even if in Prometheus the scientists claim that the facehuggers or xenomorphs need humans to reproduce, it could just be because nobody realized that they could reproduce with another life form until the facehugger in Alien 3 attached itself to the dog.
It is also possible that people don't ret con, but completely ignore anything past Aliens. Scott gets to decide what is canon and what isn't! Singer did that with Superman Returns where the movie acted as if anything past Superman 2 didn't exist.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Going slightly off topic here, but why do you guys think the Aliens/Predators are Iconic? What makes them so? I am just curious as to what everyone's thoughts are.
Oh, and today, I asked a good 17 people at work which they prefered, sixteen of us said Predator
I've never feared Death or Dying. I've only feared never Trying.
Ahtman wrote:It is also possible that people don't ret con, but completely ignore anything past Aliens. Scott gets to decide what is canon and what isn't! Singer did that with Superman Returns where the movie acted as if anything past Superman 2 didn't exist.
That's true, but is there that much stuff past Aliens that would significantly change the way the species functions? The only thing I could think of really is their life cycle which doesn't really change much after Aliens anyway, right? It seems like Alien and Aliens sort of established how the xenomorphs work, and the rest of the films just go with the flow. So even if they ignore everything that happens after Aliens, there really isn't anything specifically discovered in the later films that might change the way we think about xenomorphs if it was ignored.
Ahtman wrote:It is also possible that people don't ret con, but completely ignore anything past Aliens. Scott gets to decide what is canon and what isn't! Singer did that with Superman Returns where the movie acted as if anything past Superman 2 didn't exist.
That's true, but is there that much stuff past Aliens that would significantly change the way the species functions?
Mostly the idea that the creature takes on aspects of its host insteaad of having a generally set form. I suppose there is the thing in AvP2 where the Predator/alien hybrid impregnated the chick directly through her mouth.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Ahtman wrote:It is also possible that people don't ret con, but completely ignore anything past Aliens. Scott gets to decide what is canon and what isn't! Singer did that with Superman Returns where the movie acted as if anything past Superman 2 didn't exist.
That's true, but is there that much stuff past Aliens that would significantly change the way the species functions?
Mostly the idea that the creature takes on aspects of its host insteaad of having a generally set form. I suppose there is the thing in AvP2 where the Predator/alien hybrid impregnated the chick directly through her mouth.
And didn't multiple Aliens come out of that, where as most of the time it's only 1 per host?
Manchu wrote:
Ahtman wrote:... impregnated the chick directly through her mouth.
There's no way to talk about that and make it sound good.
Not really, no
VGcats put it best: "If they're getting you pregnant through the mouth, wouldn't that mean they're sticking their.... You know.... down your throat?"
I've never feared Death or Dying. I've only feared never Trying.
Manchu wrote:Yeah, this has been known for some time.
Are we thinking bad Android, seeing that we had a couple of films where they were good?
I think Theron's character might be a dodgy Wayland agent or something sinister. She recently gave an interview saying she only plays bad characters because she is a bitch, and can relate to that or something.
Slarg232 wrote:Going slightly off topic here, but why do you guys think the Aliens/Predators are Iconic? What makes them so? I am just curious as to what everyone's thoughts are.
Oh, and today, I asked a good 17 people at work which they prefered, sixteen of us said Predator
Seriously...?
In the words of the late, great Colonel Sanders: "I'm too drunk to taste this chicken."
My prediction is that someone gets infected by something on that planet, and goes mad. In between killing other crew members he starts changing, over the course of some body horror sequences he becomes the Space Jockey. The rest of the crew try to stop him, eventually stopping most of his plan by wounding him or something. At this point he goes to settle in the chair from the first movie, while something else grows inside of him...
If I'm right, and it's a total shot in the dark, it actually makes some kind of thematic sense. Humans being used to restart some mysterious, dead species could be an interesting twist on the original series. More likely it will suck dog bollocks, but only time will tell.
Frazzled wrote:I'm just hoping he got off the pipe ling enough to make a good story again. His last few movies have been craptacular.
Previews so far have been superb though.
Yes, definitely all this.
Though I'll caution that the previews for other Ridley Scott movies also looked pretty good, despite sucking pretty hard.
(and my apologies to whoever it was that told me to watch the extended edition of Kingdom of Heaven, as I still haven't found the time... stupid wedding to plan).
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Frazzled wrote:Maniacal laughh...maniacal laughhh...
Done to death, but not just by Alien. Lots and lots of movies with the evil corporate spiel. Meh,
Alien was among the first, so it gets a pass. But yeah, it's been done so often since then that you really need to do it well to make it interesting.
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Slarg232 wrote:So here is a question, did Ridley make Predator or was he just Alien?
Predator was made by John Mctiernan. Who followed that up with Die Hard, and those two movies are basically demand every action movie fan worship him as a God. Except most everything else he made after that was either forgettable or absolutely, god-damn awful.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2012/03/22 07:24:24
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Mr Hyena wrote:I find it funny that Cameron is annoyed...considering he turned them into a cannon fodder race. Aliens was a good movie, but lets not kid ourselves. It reduced the horror of the aliens.
It reduced the horror of an alien, as a direct, personal threat. But it ramped up the horror of the species as a whole, the hive of aliens that captures people to bring back, trapped and waiting for eggs is a pretty god-damn awesome kind of horror.
Alien 3 was actually quite good. It got back to the basics of Alien.
Outside of killing main characters from the previous movie as part of the credits sequence, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the idea of what happened in Alien 3. It's just the execution was dreadful. It basically amounted to a tedious exposition that didn't improve anything, before Ripley had conversations with a collection of indistinguishable characters, all of whom then got dispatched by the alien's magical power of appearing from the right side of the camera.
Resurrection was almost good...good design and ideas...poor execution (seeing the Newborn much earlier would have saved it).
Seriously? Resurrection is gorgeous, stylish Aliens vs Pirates fun... right up until the appearance of the newborn. Which as well as looking really stupid, and being born amidst a really stupid speach from a ridiculously over the top character, it once again defaulted to relying on the ability of the Alien to appear on the right side of the camera to kill its prey.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
It reduced the horror of an alien, as a direct, personal threat. But it ramped up the horror of the species as a whole, the hive of aliens that captures people to bring back, trapped and waiting for eggs is a pretty god-damn awesome kind of horror.
It does yeah...just a shame it makes them look like glorified insects though. I did prefer the idea of Egg morphing, even if its wasteful host-wise.
Seriously? Resurrection is gorgeous, stylish Aliens vs Pirates fun... right up until the appearance of the newborn. Which as well as looking really stupid, and being born amidst a really stupid speach from a ridiculously over the top character, it once again defaulted to relying on the ability of the Alien to appear on the right side of the camera to kill its prey.
The Newborn was supposed to look kinda stupid given that its a deformed genetic mutant. The speech bit was pretty crap.
Manchu wrote:How'd you figure that it isn't LV426?
No one said all of Giger's drawings were xenomorphs. And Prometheus is hardly a documentary about Giger's sketchbook.
LV246's atmosphere was absolute crap. If you see them boogeying around in the vehicles etc. the atmosphere is less..primordial.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
sebster wrote:(and my apologies to whoever it was that told me to watch the extended edition of Kingdom of Heaven, as I still haven't found the time... stupid wedding to plan).
That was me and I expect progress on that front, mister.
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Frazzled wrote:LV246's atmosphere was absolute crap. If you see them boogeying around in the vehicles etc. the atmosphere is less..primordial.
Discussed and refuted above.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/03/22 13:27:40
The terrain is also much less broken. The terrain is Alien is craptacular badlands. The terrain in the preview looks like Arizona.
Also, in Alien when they discover the spacejockey one of them-I can't remember which- notes that the spacejockey looks fossilized. Yet the jockey popping out in the preview looks nice and new. Fossilization takes a bit of time.
It could theoretically be LV, but I doubt it.
Of course this brings up the jump the shark moment in Alien. If the Company new about something on that rock, why did they send the crew of tug boat? Uh...ok.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/03/22 13:35:00
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Manchu wrote:So ... space jockeys lure us to some rock so that they can figure out the way to Earth? To destroy humanity with the xenomorphs?
Thats essentially the story to Aliens 2.5 , the Space Jockey race manipulated Newt's brain and trailed them to earth.
Yeah, I read those novels and the comics they were based on. TBF, it's pretty different from what I was suggesting about Prometheus. Dark Horse retconned Newt into a character called Billie while Hicks became Wilks. The idea was that the government had found out where the xenomorph "home planet" was and sent a few platoons of Colonial Marines to bring one back (facepalm). After everything goes to gak on that planet, Billie and Wilks are trying to escape a swarm of xenomorphs and a space jockey provides the deus ex machina resolution (somehow, it makes the xenomorphs just die) at that curcial moment when our heroes are "all outta hope." The jockey links minds with Billie and she's overwhelmed by its hatred of the xenomorphs. When Wilks and Billie get back to Earth, they discover some corporation already had a xenomorph there and -- as one might expect -- things have gone to gak so Earth is completely overrun. At that moment, Billie realizes that the jockey has re-linked, having used them to find Earth. It seems to be pleased that the xenomorphs are fething over our planet and Billie gets the impression it will come back to clean up the xenomorphs later and claim Earth. But if you read the rest of the Perrys' trilogy, none of this is ever really mentioned again and nothing comes of it. (In all fairness, xenomorphs may still control Earth as the trilogy closes.) In the comics, there's a bizarre scene with the U.S. president assassinating a space jockey come to terraform Earth via chestburster (that is, the jockey is assassinated with a chestburster; not that he's terraforming Earth with one). Talk about an ambush!
Anyway, it's not like the the jockeys actually tricked humanity to coming to find them in the comics or novels, as may be the case in Prometheus. It's just an unhappy coincidence that a being capable of instantly neutralizing a swarm of xenomorphs happened to be around at the exact moment with the human protagonists required its power. Not satisfied with leaving the gakky conceit alone, the writers then used it as a horror twist: and you thought the xenomorph was bad! But apprently subsequent writers didn't find that very convincing and here we are, with Sir Ridley completely free to do whatever he likes.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/03/22 14:08:30
The idea was that the government had found out where the xenomorph "home planet" was and sent a few platoons of Colonial Marines to bring one back (facepalm).
After the generic 'corporations are evil' schtick, this is the Alien trope I would like to see die second. Can we get a different motivation at at least once?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/03/22 14:01:01
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Sure, that's my whole point. No one not working on the film can say this definitely isn't LV426. There is no real evidence of that. It's like saying the space jockey in Prometheus isn't a real space jockey because it's different from the one we saw in Alien. As to the "fossilization" -- that's an assumption made by the viewers and crew, a conclusion based on brief visual inspection.
Of course this brings up the jump the shark moment in Alien. If the Company new about something on that rock, why did they send the crew of tug boat? Uh...ok.
I thought about this, too. I'd need a bit more information than I currently have to explain it. My guess is that (1) the Prometheus never made it back and the project was dismissed as a failure and (2) the Weyland-Yutani merger saw repriotitizations but that someone like Burke eventually ran across the files and decided to investigate on the sly and without investing anything but disposable resources. That person wouldn't have made any noise when the Nostromo failed to report back for fear of liability -- hence the company setting up Hadley's Hope. And when Ripley turned up, Carter Burke did some digging or had done some digging and connected the dots.
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Ahtman wrote:After the generic 'corporations are evil' schtick, this is the Alien trope I would like to see die second. Can we get a different motivation at at least once?
There was a possibility here to compare and contrast evil monolithic corporations with the evil monolithic government. But neither Dark Horse or Steve Perry did anything with it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/03/22 14:06:10
I vaguely remember those books if they are the first 3 alien novels. Somehow Ripley ended up in them too.....but I don't remember the space jockey bit. Granted it's probably been a decade since I read those books.
Sidenote the novels for AvP were much better than the movie concept since it took place.....well in the future so it tied in with the aliens unlike the AvP movies.
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streamdragon wrote:Incorrect. In Alien, a giant hole can be seen in the Space Jockey's chest...
Yeah, it's a fair assumption that the jockey was killed by a chestburster. And before these trailers came out, it was a fair assumption that the space jockeys were nothing like humans. The second notion now seems debatable.
Hulksmash wrote:I vaguely remember those books if they are the first 3 alien novels. Somehow Ripley ended up in them too.....but I don't remember the space jockey bit. Granted it's probably been a decade since I read those books.
The Ripley in the Perrys' trilogy turns out to be a synthetic. How or why this is the case is not explained at all.
Sidenote the novels for AvP were much better than the movie concept since it took place.....well in the future so it tied in with the aliens unlike the AvP movies.
Yeah, I love those. Machiko FTW! The Perrys actually wrote the first book, Prey.
