Comments (Page 716)

@Michelle & MonsterZero

That would be a great opening scene, MonsterZero! We then move on to an expedition to LV-223, financed by WY, the purpose being to find out what happened to Peter Weyland, his daughter (Ms Vickers) and the expensive Prometheus ship. The finding of a diary, Michelle, is perfect, perhaps as they search one of the other facilities (temples) on LV-223? We are then shown what was written down by the main characters in the movie? Like in Godfather 2, we can go back and forth in time (between the expedition exploring LV-223 and the temples, and as someone reads the diary, we are transported back in time). As we are in the diary, as it were, we learn of the fates of many of the abducted humans (experimentations, mutations, eggs, facehuggers, xenos etc). Our main characters manage to escape from their imprisonment, however, and tries desperately to find a way out, but . . . :)

Thank you for the comments.

I Moon Girl - Your comment is beautiful, I have more images, I'm going to share them...

Starlogger - The seventies era is awesome! Eddie Jones' painting (from that decade) above looks total Alien for me. More works from Thuberchs are coming...

joylift --- Reading your comment carefully, I think I must try to understand your frustration concerning the fact that your scripts in the Alien Universe are not wanted by Fox. At the same time, I strongly believe that your offensive behaviour should not be tolerated on the site. I think you should try to avoid the extreme you have provided in your comment above. Moreover, I suggest that you should stop attacking and ridiculing Ridley Scott in your comments and show more respect towards him and his works.

The sixth day man was created, in the seventh day god took a rest and in the eighth day David was created.

@Chli - Great way to explain the LV223 outbreak that occurred 2000-ish years ago!!!

Hmm... I liked AC so much. This is really good movie. And finnaly good Alien movie from the time of Aliens 1986.

C'mon dk. The franchise is fine and dandy. The scripts need talent, however!

Love those ! I never stopped looking at all those 60's-70's era Chelsey Bonestell style "space" and "spaceship" drawings. These all evoke the same sort of feelings! Thuberch's is quite interesting!

Fantastic!!

I think I would be happy to have 3-5 more films, as I cannot imagine my day without you all here & the discussions we are able to create!!

The thing is, each movie is of a different genre, therefore naturally there will be division of fans about which is preferred.

Alien:  Sci-fi/Horror
Aliens: Sci-fi/Action
Alien3: Slow-burning horror
AR: Sci-fi/Comedy/Horror
AVP: Action/Thriller
AVPR: ?
Prometheus: Sci-fi
AC: Horror

No two are of the same specific genre. It is little wonder then that the movies are recieved differently by audiences. In answer to the OP's question, I personally really like the prequels - Alien Covenant in particular which has became my favourite of them all - mainly due to the cast/characters which I thought were superb. I've read so much hate regarding the characters of AC which I don't fully understand as I found them real and engaging, but each to their own - different strokes for different folks as they say :) 'Aliens' for me hasn't aged well and has became one of the weaker installments over time; but I prefer dialogue over action so that's to be expected.

@Asbjørn I did articles on each of Bloomkamp's new short movies. They're fun but I don't think he's the right choice to direct an Alien movie. I think it's wishful thinking to say Neil Blomkamp will save the Alien franchise. 

Zygote-Volume 1 is the third experimental film from Neill Blomkamp's Oats Studios  

"Yeah, you're not gonna find anyone who likes the prequels here." - LOL

I watched the films in release order and Alien 1979 was the best.

Then Prometheus got the place and now Covenant is my favorite of all.The only thing I dislike is the ending.

I love alien 3 so much more than aliens. it just seems like it is a more thoughtful although more deppressing movie. I actually admired its guts to kill of newt and hicks alot. it also has sigorny weavers best alien proformance in my opinion. 

@chli

Wow! That would be a awesome prequel! Ancient aliens stuff.

Have the opening scene: The Engineers arriving on Earth 2,000 years ago(in a scorpion ship?) finding a nice village. Stunning all the inhabitants(loud thumping disorienting them...cool effect) and then we see the Engineers stacking the humans(like bricks)into the hold of their starship.....maybe taking some farm animals too?

No colonial Marines to rescue you. You are truly over matched and all alone.

Blomkamp can't tell a story, and what stories he has told have been the same thing re-hashed. He needs to stay as far away from the Alien series as possible.

@ Michelle

Yes, I agree that there can be a difference between what you would like to happen in future prequels/sequels, and what you think will happen based on AC, interviews with RS etc. David has become the driving character, for better or worse (He definitely is an interesting character and Fassbender a very good actor).

The theme of hubris and nemesis fits in if David is chosen as the creator of the xenomorph, and that he perishes from his own creation? I suppose there is no turning back now and we will have to accept David as the creator of the Xenomorph, and the Space Jockey not being ancient?

@Ati

Well, the problem is that the Space Jockey can't be ancient. If we follow the route that David is the creator of the Xenomorph, the Space Jockey can only have been dead for a couple of years (18 at the most) when The Nostromo lands on LV-426.

I dislike the prequels for several reasons, like the sheer stupidity of most characters, the deconstruction of the mythic Space jockey and xenomorph and last but not the least this abomination  called David.

I like Alien 3 because most characters are insane but not stupid. My favorites being Dylan and Morse. Moreover the sacrifice of Ripley is according to me one of the greatest moment of the franchise.

I don't think that aliens is overrated as it has great characters (personnal favorite is Hudson), tries to bring a deeper understanding of the Xenomorph hive, has lot of action, has great score and visuals and was the first movie of the franchise i watched.

I even somehow like Alien Ressurection for its craziness, the hybrid Ripley, the characters and some insane scenes such as the chest burster birth or the xenomorph escape from their pods. I don't really like the newborn as i find it a bit too disgusting. 

And last but not the least i find that some aspects of AVP (the flashback scene especially) and AVP:R (the pragmatism of military at the end and the sheer efficienty of the wolf predator) are quite interesting.

As you can notice, the characters of a movie are very important for me to enjoy it. I strongly dislike stupid and useless characters as for me they make the monster look less frightening and less impressive and they make the whole movie way less entertaining.

@Chli

Great Blue Sky thinking. A kind of Godfather II structure might work or a story within a story where ancient man and woman tell us the story from their perspective from a diary found by the Prometheus crew. If you went this root then the Prometheus would still be adversarial Shaw verses WY (desire for knowledge) but drop the Peter Weyland narrative with David's curiosity getting the better of him and waking an Engineer crew which has to be destroyed by a redeemed Captain who detaches the life boat for Shaw. If you make David and Shaw very antagonistic but survive then you can dwell on their rapprochement in the follow through.

The facts are :-

1) The stories need much more robust exposition.

2) Fewer and more powerful relationships. 

3) Return to A L I E N and make the anticipation much greater and deconstruct the life cycle so you can see the life cycle we get in A L I E N is just one outcome.  

Surely Walter has a massive part to play. All that marketing, development etc.. just for him to be killed by an older model is just like what they done with Shaw, they built her up and she wasnt really in A:C 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyuAt-_Nj_o

listen to the sound the beetles make when they fly, this resembles a lot the sound of the insects that were created seconds after David released the cargo. 

And maybe this explains the worms in the temple room in Prometheus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtU6VLFaiN8

The engineers created bio weapons by mutating insects and low level organisms.

goliathus regius-megasoma elephas-rhino beetle and others of the same species mixed up and mutated in the suitable proportions to destroy a planet. If they visited us in the past, this explains why in some cultures like ancient Egypt the beetles were considered to be a religious and royal symbol (as a honor to 'their' ways according to the alien saga).

This one is the best, that sheds more light on the 'black goo'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-2s-2Veixs

I have seen some pictures of the art on the walls of the entrance of the cathedral and noticed that on the wall the first scene of the Prometheus is depicted, a young engineer with that cup (or it could be a face!) that the engineer drunk and a few other carry his dead body! Was the first scene of Prometheus actually realized on the planet that David bombed as a ritual for reallocation? Are the engineers actually dying and are searching a way to start again by destroying other planets to make them habitable for them? Is this cathedral a temple dedicated to the man who gave them another chance to start again?

David: Why are you here Walter? (In my opinion this is not told) Because mankind searched for its creators which are..(and now back in the movie) a dying species grasping for resurrection. They don't deserve to start again and I'm not going to let them. (by destroying what's left of them).

JayJohns -

Yes. Really good points

I felt a little cheated after A:C as it was billed as a straight sequel. If there was something more concrete i could appreciate the "long game", i would of loved to walk out of A:C thinking: oh i cant wait until the next one, that was amazing and a real surprise. 

But it wasnt like that. Fox meddled, things went on behind the scenes, stories changed etc..

It had a negative effect on the film.

As a standalone action flick A:C is decent enough.

As a sequel it is terrible.

We still have a little hope though so i am not giving up. I want another movie or 2 to wrap the prequels up. Although i think 1 is enough especially as it may of taken a decade for 3 films to land. That is bad

We need another director for the Alien Franchise. Scott blew it with AC! What a complete piece of crap. Look what Blomkamp did with an extremely limited budget! 

I loved both of the prequels as well! Watched Covenant for the second time at the weekend and it was excellent,I wasn't too sure when I saw it in the cinema but Fassbender was masterful again, I loved the second viewing after not knowing really what I thought of it in the cinema! Alien is a brilliant film but the rest then are dribble really, Aliens is ok but not great!

I hope Ridley can tell his take on the franchise that he helped develop. I really don't like the trend that people feel entitled to second guess a storyteller or artist out of proportions. Yes, everyone is entitled to her or his opinion, but in the end a franchise that has so many fans and almost every fan has a head-canon version of a preferred take on this universe, then almost every director, screenwriter is set up to fail for a clearly visible and audible size of potential audience. I mean, I was there when ALien 3 flopped at the theatre, and it was a disppointment in regards that it wasn't the continuation I and many others were expecting, but the movie grew on me and looking back from where we are I think the consensus may be that it was a good installment of the series.
So, what I'd like to say is, I think Ridley deserves to tell his story of the origins (I myself find it very interesting and symbolic in many ways, and in this age of the advent of AI it is a cautionary tale as well), and the studio as the IPs owner can always decide later to remake, relaunch, whatever the franchise. Hell, I could imagine a TV-series even.
I know here we are talking about box office numbers, revenues and whatnot, but as Kethol mentioned, a sizable part of the profit comes from secondary sources no from cinemas.
Also, the original Alien didn't have to compete with a massive onslaught of summer blockbuster movies (from Disney et al) that are spoonfed to the audience with tremendous marketing efforts that a singular movie (even if it's part of a series) can not have rationally, partially because it is not suitable for all audience segments (as opposed to the yearly Marvel movies that compel people either becuse they are comics fans or they like the big names of the cast).

lets start a partition to have Blackwinter-witch pushed as a writer for the franchise. Her work is head and shoulders above every other official or non-official script 

Honestly, I think it very unlikely that the first Alien got 20% of its revenues from the foreign market. I think the information probably was not properly recorded. What I can tell you is that I was shocked to see the movie theater 60% empty on opening weekend. And in the past the Alien movies used to have some legs, but the word of mouth killed Covenant. 

We go back in time (about 2000 years) to LV-223. Different kinds of experimentation are going on in the many facilities (mutagen, eggs etc). Humans have been abducted from Earth (as guinea pigs) and a man and a woman become the main characters in the story which centres on their trying to escape LV-223. When they understand that the engineers’ purpose is to extinguish mankind, they sacrifice themselves by letting out the weapon of mass destruction on LV-223, resulting in the outbreak (which the crew of Prometheus find out). However, one juggernaut manages to escape with the cargo hold filled with xeno-eggs. The pilot is infected and when the pain in his chest starts, quickly, he has to land on the nearest planet - LV-426 . . .

Nice with the secret room, Michelle (Perhaps opened with the emerald crystal?).

@ Joylitt

Using Box Office Mojo (which I source in the article) I can reveal that the numbers you include above are just the domestic or US numbers, not the worldwide numbers. It seems that despite many recently released movies making more in "foreign" markets than they do in the US, no one seems to have the information for the foreign gross of past movies adjusted for inflation, hence why I did not include such figures in the article.

Without the Worldwide total's adjusted for inflation the above numbers you quote (from Box Office Mojo, no Less) are not indicative of the true figures, because in the case of Alien Covenant the movie has made over twice as much in foreign revenue (68.1%) than it has in the US (31.9%), whereas Alien made much less in foreign markets (22.9%) than it did domestically (77.1%), as shown by the unadjusted worldwide gross totals.

RS changes his mind all the time. Between his mind changing and FOX's meddling, it is difficult to care. Members on the forum have better ideas imo.

Comparing box office totals, adjusted or unadjusted, to a movie that came out nearly 40 years ago is totally pointless. Definitely not comparing apples to apples and it does not show how "popular" a movie is. That's more like comparing an apple to a refrigerator.

40 years ago there were only a few revenue streams. Box office was big factor in initial profits, along with later syndication. Home video sales was just beginning, so that was not a factor. Today theatrical is basically just a way to promote your movie, and usually studios lose money or just break even at that stage. Movie profits don't really start rolling in until the theatrical run is over and all the other far more profitable revenue streams kick in. Everything AFTER is where the studios really start to earn on a film.

If nobody buys the home video releases, VOD rentals are low, the premium channel Fox sells broadcast rights to (HBO) does not want to buy that many broadcasts, and the dozens of other outlets worldwide that Fox sells broadcast rights to do not want it, then maybe a sequel would be re-evaluated.

So Fox IS NOT reassessing Ridley Scott movies? They just cancelled them altogether?

Now seriously, Ati you sound like Trump trying to fence off the "fake news media" haha. And I am sure if you called Ridley Scott right now and asked him about the follow up to Covenant he would probably reply to you: "What follow up? Are you talking about the Alien franchise? But that franchise is cooked, Sir; however I did my best to bring it to a wonderful conclusion that answers all you ever need to know about Alien"

@MonsterZero - "The real question is: Why are the Engineers fossilized in A:C?!? I know it looks cool...But is there another logical reason?"

Fossilized? Fossils are embedded in minerals and rock. The dead engineers have been in open air for 10 years. We don't know what the pathogen did to their tissue to make it harden and look like that, but I don't think they were turned to stone.

I imagine the emaciated tissue hardened like a leather husk. Whatever it did, apparently not even bacteria will touch it.

The problem is that people don't know what they want. AVP is a disgrace. The predator can only see heat signatures and the alien gives off NO HEAT! Or did the trolls forget Aliens. The prequels are good and Ridley Scott should have stayed the course instead of listening to all the incompetent crying of so called fans and critics. Maybe if this was a Disney franchise there wouldn't be half the trolls................

I Moon Girl Fair point considering time of year and other competition.

Plus, in an earlier thread, some board members found that this year is just a bad year for movies.  So, that is something to consider too.

Gavin, no offence but your information is totally wrong. Covenant is the second least popular Alien movie only ahead of AVP Requiem. Less people went to the theaters to watch it than to any other Alien movie. The original Alien is still the highest grossing one, when you adjust the numbers for inflation.

Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation

I really do hope those at fox decide to atleast finish up the prequels with at 1 more movie. Blomkamp can direct the sequel to The Lone Ranger. Also lets not forget that Weaver was a producer on Alien 3.

Lawrence of Arabia We all have our likes and dislikes. This forum would become pointless and boring if everyone agreed about everything imo.