Comments (Page 696)

id have the actor be middle aged, sharp looking and can carry the pat of an AI off well. id love there to be a side story that the yutani company sees the merger as an opportunity to destroy weyland from within so place an AI at the head of the negotiations and the company to infiltrate weyland. this would then lead into a nice back story for Ash and what happened later on between synthetics and humans. would also open up the possibility of another movie between alien3 and resurrection as to what happened to earth as we see its been quite decimated at the end of resurrection. I think Watanbe or Sanada would have the look on screen for the part

What a mess. Bureaucracy at work. Too many irons in the fire to think this franchise can be saved. I'm beginning to have major doubts...

@Kethol the FIRST release will be the "theatrical cut"...followed by an extensive "Director's Cut" about 6-12 months later, followed by an "Ultimate Edition" and a repackaged Quadrilogy, with repackaged Prometheus, etc., about 1-2 years later. That's usually what "they" do...

Oh Congrats!

as for not liking the characters, speak for yourself.  I was intruiged by Rosenthal and Ankor and wouldn't mind having seen more of them

iraptus, yes we are all very familiar with the AI in out of the shadows. I love the trilogy book series and river of pain is my favourite. im glad they are regarded as canon and I would def pay to see these films on the big screen. these books are a must by for all alien fans. theres a scene inside the derelict involving newts mother and father and it would be brilliant for the franchise to be shown on screen.

I really enjoyed this read, well done. Your characters and wording are spot on. This was what I needed. Thank you.

100% Hiroyuki Sanada. huge fan!

Sab Shimono

I say Scott should be allowed finish his prequels and then Fox should do a full on reboot. I would love to see a "reimagining" of the Alien franchise.

To the OP- Great posts on this question! I never thought of Ripley that way until Resurrection when she  made inuendos toward the crew. She was never sexed up and so that's how I saw her- I think everyone watched that climbing into the suit scene a few times. In fact, I recall less than a year ago one or two members were posting close ups of...umm....oh....what we now might call granny panties.

'though I’ve noticed that the moment of the expulsion/fall is a repeated moment, shown from different angles in succession – it is a kind of ‘frozen moment’, the part of the dream that keeps coming back to us.' - by murnau

Perfect description of the scene! If I'm not mistaken that is the only scene in the movie where we see moments in slow motion building meaning with the help of rain/water (they used water in the scene)=death, falling=death, darkness=death - echoed in Scott's Blade Runner well-known Roy Batty scene from the end of the movie where Batty is dying, it is raining, and dream-like slow motion is used.

Why not start the next film where they left off with a flashback. Spend 15-20 min on the end of that story. Since it's a flashback they can be vague in some spots, but still finish the story. The ending can tie directly into Alien and the new Alien 5(?) in the future. Then they carry on with the new timeline.

Why not start the next film where they left off with a flashback. Spend 15-20 min on the end of that story. Since it's a flashback they can be vague in some spots, but still finish the story. The ending can tie directly into Alien and the new Alien 5(?) in the future. Then they carry on with the new timeline.

And some more by Ev Shipard:

When Billy Crudup says: 'I'm dying to meet your new girlfriend...' :D :D

This is what i reckon needs doing, do alien:awakening, warts and all, with engineer elders returning, chase david with walts help, take the battle back to the zeta2 system to tie it back(no david creating original bio-mech alien, that derelict is thousands of years old) in with alien(79).

That gets the prequel trilogy home and hosed.

Don't bring ellen ripley back her story is done, instead her daughter amanda's story needs telling, the events prior to her arrival and the horror that went down on sevastopol and after the destruction of sevastopol, or other unsuspecting ships crews that stumble upon xeno- eggs and their nightmare dealings with this organism, the possibilities are endless.

 @ nakedlunch- This "Not Available" and deleted comments happened with Facehuggers! other threads. What is going on?

murnau its funny you mention the conspiracy of silence around what the xenomorph represents. To me the xenomorph is the metaphoric opposite to the idiom of the elephant in the room.  Whereas the elephant represents a large conspicuous problem that society does not wish to address, and is happy to sweep under the rug; such as social diseases like substance abuse, domestic violence, lust for the flesh, Sexual fetishes etc.

The Xenomorph is the lurking black spider that secretly wishes to embrace and indulge such desires. That is why you never really get a look at the beast in ALIEN, because no-one wants to see their demons in full, and in the light, and acknowledge its presence as a whole.

And perhaps that is why we skirt around the topics you mention, but joke about it lightheartedly instead?   

You are totally correct about Weaver being miscast in Ghostbusters. That role did not do her justice. 

btw, check out my new film blog 'thoughts of murnau' on wordpress - review of A:C and Spiderman:Homecoming on there. . .

Thanks for all the replies, and for the upvote! A fun conversation . . .

I’ve always found Weaver impressive, feminine but with androgynous characteristics, complex, elegant, intelligent, sexy as one part of her 3 dimensional persona. I think she was miscast in Ghostbusters, and too intelligent for B Murray’s smug clowning (watched it recently – Venkman would be done for sexual harassment these days, he doesn’t hear ‘no’ when she says ‘no’).

It interests me that the replies here are comfortable joking around with beaver/weaver but not comfortable acknowledging any of this topic’s ideas about aggressive, destructive desire, symbolized by the xeno. It’s as if the xeno is both visible and invisible, the horrid elephant in the room, so to speak. We all know it’s there, and our conspiracy of silence fills the space around it.

Fascinating that you see yourself as the monster falling, Ati. That’s probably personal imaginative stuff that places you there. Thanks for sharing. I haven’t looked at that scene in that way, though I’ve noticed that the moment of the expulsion/fall is a repeated moment, shown from different angles in succession – it is a kind of ‘frozen moment’, the part of the dream that keeps coming back to us.

I did know that Ridley wanted Ripley (Ridley/Ripley?) to die at the end in an earlier draft. I’m not sure what you mean by 2 movies spliced together, though, Ati. If she had died, we might not be talking about the movie after all these years. In my thoughts, Ripley being killed was ultimately unbearable for Scott because – in the dream logic I’ve sketched – that would mean that the destructive rage wins, and the guilt of that is too much. The strong compensatory female figure allows the rage to run riot, but must be suppressed at the end of the dream. Strangely, as Ripley goes to sleep in the escape pod, we the audience ‘wake up’, exit the movie/dream, safe in the knowledge that the monster has, for now, been put down. It sits there in the box, until the next movie, or the next time we watch. We want the monster to burn and rage, just as we want Ripley/Shaw/Daniels to put it back in the box for us.

The scenes in A3 and Covenant that show the point-of-view of the xeno are mistakes, I think. The xeno is empty, it is the absent space where our own dangerous horrors and urges take root. You could say that we are put inside the monster for a moment, seeing through its eyes, but this is too strong an identification, too conscious. The xeno is so extreme that we cannot sit inside it. It is totally ‘other’ – it is us, but can never be experienced by us in our waking life.

Kethol I don't think I misunderstood anything. This is word for word what they said (minute 30):

"But yeah, for the alien we were told exactly to stay away from this and that which is sort of confusing because... man, that is what the Alien is, so how do you not do that, how you not make it like Giger. But I think that's why things were a little more organic looking and not not so many hoses and that sort of stuff"

BigDave The xenomorph was not the problem. It seems the problem was the depiction of Elizabeth Shaw's cadaver. And another thing, sometimes these type of arrangements expire with time. Who knows if Fox is still able to use designs from old movies.

lol XD

VivisectedEngineer yep :) Ash and Ripley are in it. The one common criticism of the book is that they really didn't need to be. It is a forgone conclusion that Ripley must survive..

The story is strong enough without them, but it a nice touch nonetheless.  

Now that's a "cooked" Xenomorph!

Heh......

And about Ripley, she is the Alien franchise plain and simple. And if they ever want someone to take her place then they can't kill off whatever female lead they put in the role, like Shaw or Daniels possibly. If you want another face to the franchise, and please no more David, you gotta stick with someone and not totally write them off, like Shaw. And you know what's crazy if Daniels would have known at the end of Covenant that that wasn't really Walter, buy asking a couple simple questions, and took out David that would have been enough to save the movie for me. Even with all that is wrong with Covenant, and in my opinion there is a lot, that would have salvaged it for me. Because no one is that dumb that when there are two identical living things, in this case androids, that someone wouldn't ask a couple questions that only that person would know to verify that in this case Walter is Walter, so dumb.

@Big Dave  I agree, I am an Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 fan and I think just like you that that was a perfect ending for Ripley. All the other movies seem to, in my opinion, take away from the impact those 3 movies have had.

It's Dr. Curt Connors, get it right

Awesome! :)

'I think you misunderstand.' -- by Kethol

Kethol - I think your choice of words is very careful and polite! :D

'I think everyone is entitled to their opinion...' by BigDave from the previous comment.

Curt Connors comment impact:

and:

Does anyone notice how @Ati uses the same pictures and gifs in almost every comment section? And he calls us trolls, I love Fassbender but I am kind of sick of seeing the same pictures of him, anybody else? Wait here it comes the gif of Fassbender and Ridley 'I can't make movies anymore' Scott looking at each other and then they laugh.

Indeed thats a logical step.... when a ship is not using any kind of Hyper Drive/Warp FTL Technology, it would make more sense for it to use Sails and like Impulse Engines to take it through a Solar System once it has reached on.

More so the idea that the Sails act as a Recharge, i think Once mankind does start to explore Space more, they would surely employ some kind of  Solar Sail device to Charge, maybe also they can act as Solar Sails to sail on solar waves and the like but then this is flawed, so is the sling shot routes (Gravity Assist)

I cant see us breaking the FTL Barrier or no where near it, but who knows what the future Brings...  But certainly Nuclear/Fusion Reactor Engines to Propel the ship faster than any kind of conventional rockets and gravity assists would be more likely the future of Space Travel in say 50-100 years time.

Even the Fusion like Blast Technology Theory seems likely, where the Ship lets off a Nuclear Blast just behind the Ship and the Shock-wave Propels the Ship forwards.  I think this is indeed a very plausible solution for the future of Space Travel.

But i do think Solar Charging Sails would definitely be the method they would use for obtaining all the Ships electrical needs. Apart from those related to Propulsion.

An interesting topic... I think, similiar to BigDave's suggestion for ADF to have an input on the script, the next film just needs someone who can take what John Logan or Michael Green give (I'm not sure who is working/worked on the supposed outline for the next screenplay) and then wrangle the characters and the plotline. I mean, I have said before that I think what the writers and Ridley are doing well is the big mythological, social questions, ideas, and themes as well as David's character, but the human characters (mostly) are lacking. They need someone to ground the screenplay a bit. We need believable, developed/developing characters in a quality story. 

Now for the op question, the problems definitely could have been ironed out, but I suppose it gets tough to do so during a production, and maybe the big dogs (Ridley, editor, producers, etc.) kind of had tunnel vision at that point? I think it happens with, really, every production. The great ones usually find a way around it though. 

ALSO, once again BigDave already pointed this out, comparing novels to screenplays/films is tough. While the screenplay could have made better on some of the things the novel did, a film has to show things (we can't get in characters' heads as easily) and the movie is almost never long enough to do so. 

The Alien 3, Alien Resurrection Designs are not to far off the Alien Covenant design and the Covenant Xenomorph is more closer to those than the Alien/Aliens versions.

The Queen within the Franchise again does not look no where near as Bio-Mechanical as the Xenomorphs in Aliens... the Queen looks more Armored/Exoskeleton like... 

I think FOX are maybe looking overall at the Original Design and when looking at this, it clearly looks like this Beast is some kind of Machine more than a Organism... yet its birthed from a very Organic Looking Egg/Face Hugger and from Organic Human Hosts and indeed the Classic Chest Busters also do not look as Mechanical.

So it may seem a little out of place for a truly Bio-Mechanical 1979 ALIEN Xenomorph to be birthed from a Organic Process.

Maybe this is why they are toning this element down, there are a few rumors that the reasons the Xenomorph got toned down in previous movies was to distance itself away from HR Gigers Designs so they did not have to pay him royalties etc.. but i dont know how much these are true.. if they are.

I understand there was some conflict with HR Giger over the designs process in Alien 3, so who knows.

I know a lot of Fans Typically like either or both the ALIEN 1979 Xenomorph and how it was handled or the 1986 ALIENS.

So if we asked every Alien Franchise Fan, i think we can expect a Higher % would like to see the more Bio-Mechanical Alien/Aliens look of the Xenomorph compared to say Alien 3, Alien Resurrection and Alien Covenant versions.

IF FOX still decide to continue with the next movie or two linking directly to ALIEN in that from the Experiments conducted on Planet 4 by David lead to the Eggs on the Derelict, then i am pretty sure FOX will have to go the more ALIEN 1979 Aesthetic and FOX do have people check on Social Media how their Franchise is being received and so i think there is a good chance that if they are listening to Fans, they would see that a Majority would indeed like to see the introduction of a more Bio-Mechanical Design again.

I think Fox may have taken one of his suggestions. In the early draft Foster was given the Covenant was propelled through space by solar sails, which was an idea Ridley specifically wanted. Obviously there is not enough energy in interstellar space, let alone stellar space, to push a ship with solar sails to faster than light speeds. That is just silly, so Foster wrote a way around that.

In the movie that solar sail idea was changed and the ship was given engines to propel it. The solar sails were used to re-charge the 'energy grid', whatever that is supposed to be. 

I dont think purchasing the full rights to Necronom IV is a problem,  at the early stages they was indeed planning on using this design as the basis for one of the creature designs.

I think FOX/RS have looked at the Xenomorph and maybe felt the 1979 version was a bit Mechanical Looking, and decided to tone it down a little.

One thing a lot of people seem to forget with the Xenomorph and the Necronomicon designs..... that is only ALIEN really has this kind of Design, Aliens the design was less Mechanical as far as the Xenomorph, and the Queen much more so.

The movies after these Original TWO and so Alien 3 and Alien R and even AVP Movies the Xenomorphs look more a mix between the Covenants Organic look and Alien movie Synthetic.

No Doubt RS has plans to eventually bring about the more HR Giger Look, but he said we are not quite there yet... which implies by the time they Tie in to ALIEN we will see a more Bio-Mechanical Look.

I am not sure how close it would be to the 1979 version, but i would SAFELY ASSUME the Final Look by the time they Finish (if they ever do) the last Prequel would look just like the Alien Isolation Games version.

I have not listen to the Podcast, and will be busy and so i will do Monday, but i do recall that Wayne Haag had said the design was to not quite be HR Giger, but some elements would be kept closer to how Prometheus handled that Aesthetic

but of course Wayne was not working on Creature Design.