Blomkamp has moved on from Alien 5 - CONFIRMED

I think he is trying to keep face and not appear disrespectful to the Ridley Scott Prequels.

I still think he could be FISHING with those concepts, because if his Tweet is True then why would he not release every piece of Concept?  I think if Disney decide to go the route of making another Alien movie and are interested in his Concepts... i think they could maybe approach him to see what his ideas had been.

And if offered i doubt Blomkamp would turn it down.

I would not blame RS on the Franchise,  the blame is with FOX, and then Fans Reaction to Prometheus and wanting to see more Queens and Xenomorphs.   But even so, RS had worked with Logan and Harper on AC and i feel this movie handled things in a totally bad way.

The Franchise is in Limbo....   In Hindsight FOX/RS should have looked at Lindeloffs Draft and Jon Spaights work and made a movie that was in the middle of both.... giving more clues to the Xenomorph and giving us Xenomorph like Monsters...   Then it would have allowed a sequel to move away from the Xenomorph.

By this i mean the First Installment... AKA Prometheus it needed some elements from Alien Engineers, between both those stories was a ideal Prequel.

I think Blomkamps Alien 5 as in lets bring Ripley back would have been a Fan Service, but thats no disrespect to the Fanboys, without them we would not even get any more Alien movies after Aliens.

I just think that giving a Alternative to Alien 3, while it may make a decent Popcorn flick, if it makes $$$ then we would see a Alien 6 and 7 and i dont think Miss Weaver would pass the Torch, and i think there is only so much Queens, Xenomorphs and Ripley before it gets STALE

I also think once they open the Pandoras BOX of Ret-conning Alien 3, where do they go next?  Re-boot the Prequels.... so that we  have to accept Alien 3 and Alien R did not happen, and Prometheus and Alien Covenant?   Then what if a Reboot Prequels again gives us a Ripley Saga, and thus turn the Franchise into like Star Wars... NO THANKS

Blomkamp had some good ideas, the Plot could still work... just remove Ripley and Hicks and Newt they all died in Alien 3...

But Blomkamps ideas could be used as a sequel to Alien that happens prior to Aliens, i think this could work.  Or indeed be set after Alien 3 but prior to Alien R

'Blomkamp has moved on...' - Probably that is a clever decision.

'Ridley Scott has officially ruined the future of the franchise.'

Officially ruined! :DDDDDDDD

Finally some good news.

Good riddance, Neill Blomkamp.

I'm gonna play the devils advocate here,

Let's look at the filmography (as director) of each Alien movie director thus far, before they made their installment in the franchise:

Ridley Scott - The Duelists

James Cameron - Xenogenesis, Pirahna 2: The Spawning, The Terminator

David Fincher - N/A

Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children

Paul W S Anderson - Shopping, Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, Soldier, The sight

Strause Brothers - N/A

...

Neill Blomkamp - District 9, Elysium, Chappie

On paper Ridley Scott is damn lucky he got the job of directing Alien, with the most "qualified" in the list being James Cameron, Paul W S Anderson, and Blomkamp himself. For the purists who prefer the first three films of the franchise, Blomkamp "now" is more qualified than Scott and Fincher were when they made their installments.

And yet, lets be honest here, Ridley Scott is acting like he owns the Alien franchise. He didn't add anything of value to the script of Alien and was only offered the job of directing Alien because all of Fox's preferred directors had turned it down. The script was written by O'Bannon, who also brought Giger on board, Ash's addition to the script was because of Giler. Hell, Ridley wanted the Alien to kill Ripley and "phone home". Ridleys constant to-ing and fro-ing with his comments worries me

While I wasn't too happy with some of the retconning in Prometheus, there was enough of interest if it was explored further, but A:C, for me is one of the worst movies I have seen, and the reason behind why it was made (reaction to social media comments) is reason enough IMO that Ridley should step down. Fassbender may be the movies best performer but his uber-villain distracts the movie's narrative away from what it should be about - the Engineers and the Xenomorphs. Ridley claims the Alien is cooked. I don't feel the Alien is cooked, because I feel it hasn't been used effectively yet.

In all honesty, I feel Blomkamp is a better visual effects artist than a director. That said though I feel a Blomkamp Aliens 2 would be a much more enjoyable movie than watching David fight some Engineers. Blomkamp's Alien movie may not be the Alien movie we all want, were its realized as the terror we all infer it to be, but it will be a better alien movie that Ridleys which he has said won't even feature the Alien.

Fox's deal was that if A:C underperformed Blomkamp would get his chance, time Fox put their money where their mouth is IMO.

Rant over.

Gavin

Well to be fully correct Scott had already directed ads also and Fincher music videos; in Cameron case Xenogenesys is a short codirected, and Piranha 2... thats a joke too.

But did Cameron obtained really obtain 200 mil for Rodriguez's Alita Battle Angel from Fox? And if that is successful as an AI movie, man, Scott will probably be even more pissed.

If one wants to see where I think we should go with the franchise (compiled loosely from what I've seen uttered in forums across the web), refer to this.

Don't give up, Blomkamp! True fans of Alien franchise with you!

Remember: the king has his reign and then he get retcon. L0L.

This is the destiny of Alien3 - a movie that never shouldn't have filmed.

I don’t think RS has ruined the franchise, and would rather wag my judgemental finger in the direction of Neill Blomkamp. This may appear to be quite a strong statement to make and no doubt appear unfair and harsh. But there is a difference between being judged guilty and actually being guilty.

So Neill says he is moving on from doing an Alien V movie. Oh dear, what a shame, never mind. But what exactly is he moving on from?

Considering that he hijacked the momentum gained by RS who was breathing some new life into the franchise and imposed his own ideas indirectly into another director’s project which was still work in progress. (Would Neill have liked someone to do that to him?) I think there are a number of other issues that Neill has felt the need to move on from.

Let’s take a closer look at that concept work that had fans drooling and what was contained therein, because it was certainly not just Xenos.

There are quite a number of things to observe from what Neill decided to publish, on his account and under his name. Of course it was no surprise to see pictures of Xenos, and to state the obvious, pictures of xeno’s which Neill would like to make a film about. Having an Alien movie made by Neill Blomkamp does sound like an exciting prospect, but the excitement does’nt just end there. We see a derelict in a hanger, which could suggest that the seed for his idea has come from a storyline that involves someone called Turk who was killed instead of Hicks. Sure enough we see a picture of Hicks included in his plans. So now we are looking at an Aliens part 2, but the piece de resistance that puts the icing on the cake for the whole proposal is the inclusion of Ripley played by the one and only Sigourney Weaver. Well bugger me sideways with a fish knife if that does’nt look like one hell of a proposal.

The moment Neill decided to share his vision with the world was met with a shockwave of interest, which is hardly surprising. The interest generated was in the kind of numbers that demand people sit up and take notice. Enough for someone in the accounts department at Fox no doubt.

Now this does raise an issue of data interpretation. Were the nods of approval at Neill’s proposal just a nod to say fans wanted to see the xeno? Fans do revere the xeno and as such the xeno demands to be handled with respect. Just throwing a xeno into a movie for a quick cash grab does not guarantee success.

Were the nods of approval validate fans approval at Neill wanting to make an Alien movie. I would say there was an element of that, but could Neill be considered something of a household name to justify that level of reaction? Hmmm?

Were the nods of approval fans voicing their feelings about wanting a James Cameron style action movie with lots of xenos because Prometheus did not feature any, and it looked like a way of voicing disapproval against RS ? possibly, maybe.

Or were the nods of approval about fans wanting to see a household name like Sigourney Weaver revive her role as Ripley because she became synonymous with the Alien franchise and everything else looks great on paper? That sounds more like it I think.

I think up to now we have about one and a half movies of what RS had initially intended. As for what is responsible is clearly a mixture of different elements. I would have to admit that it would be unjust to single out one individual , but I don’t think Neill should be let off the hook completely Scott free and immune from criticism either.

With regards to Neill saying he is moving on from Alien V, I think he now knows that silence is golden. I would not rule out the possibility of him doing an Alien movie, just not the one he was intending.

I think the Problem with the Franchise is each movie, the new directors and production added something a bit different, the whole Franchise has suffered from not sticking to any kind of coherent continuity.

Ridley Scott may well be arrogant, he does consider Alien as his Baby and you have to wonder what kind of plans he had for the Franchise after Alien, and how much of this had evolved over the time until work began on the Prequels.

I think the Xenomorph is cooked a bit, you need to be careful and its hard to draw the line to where you can take the BEAST you cant really have your cake and eat it, and so you have to either try and handle it well like we saw in Alien and Alien  3 or give it the Popcorn treatment like in Aliens and Alien R

I think deep down RS had other plans, and while his Prometheus 2 was changed to Alien Covenant and introduced us back to the Xenomorph it was reduced to just Fan Service and a Plot Device, where the Bigger Picture was about WHY would such a thing be created.

I think while Prometheus was very interesting, maybe the Plot behind the Prequels in Hindsight is not the right path they should have taken, but i also think going Gung Hoo Xenomorphs would indeed just Waterdown the Beast even more than the AVP movies did.

I think we need to look at the Franchise prior to the Polarizing Prequels...  What made the FRANCHISE what it was?

And the Answer may seem....  Xenomorph Eggs, Queens and Human's faced with these Threats... and RIPLEY...

But looking at the gap between Alien 3, and Alien R compared to the Prequels.. its been over 20 years since Miss Weaver played Ripley in any form.... 

*Does a Ripley 8 Clone Age?  What benefit does the Xeno DNA thus have?  I allowed her to Regenerate, but what it cant stop her from aging?

*Do we do a Blomkamp and Ret-con all Aliens Sequels... set a movie 20-25 years after ALIENS where Alien 3 on-wards did not happen..  But what Fresh can this bring to the Table?

Miss Weavers Age is a Problem.. RS said we can De-Age her but that requires Expensive CGI that costs a lot of Money to do any justice.

The only viable Options are..

1) Do a Blomkamp Aliens Sequel, but then where do we go from this? a Blomkamp Alien 4, and 5 (Aliens 6, and 7) would another 2-3 Ripely vs Xenomorph movies not get STALE? Once we start to De-canon Alien 3 and Alien R and they do well, do we then see Disney De-Canon the Prequels and make it a more Alieny Prequels and connect the Ripley Family?

2) Do a Alien Resurrection sequel, where Ripley is going through some changes, she is changing and evolving as the Xeno DNA overwrites her Human DNA.... thus some make up, and different skin tone can hide that Miss Weaver is 20 years older than in Alien Resurrection.

3) Do some Alien Isolation Sequel, set some 25-35 years latter as far as a Movie, that will then allow the Game to be tied in, and allow Miss Weaver with some slight make up changes to play a 50-60 year old Amanda Ripley.

But then again i feel we can explore other Alien sequels that play Parallel to Ripleys Saga but do not have Ripley or cast Miss Weaver in any shape or form.

@ Big Dave

But then again i feel we can explore other Alien sequels that play Parallel to Ripleys Saga but do not have Ripley or cast Miss Weaver in any shape or form.

I certainly feel that this is one way to go.

What to do and where to go, do seem the big questions. So,

One of the things mentioned in Alien was that the company probably wanted the creature for its bio-weapons division. What if we were to carry on with that in mind. OK, so Alien R tried this to a certain extent but what if we can put in a twist to this.

One of the big questions to be answered is how much did the company know about the xeno. Was there an incident that involved another crew discovering something related to the creature, and to all intents and purposes their mission was actually a success leading to the company WY thinking it would be no problem getting hold of another specimen of what they got originally. Did WY actually achieve something ?

Did the bioweapons division have something in mind that obtaining the xeno, or something related would accomplish. Maybe the company had come across a dead facehugger somewhere and thought that was all there was to it. We have seen very little of the workings of WY and I think that could prove an interesting avenue to explore.

Was there a series of events that made WY think the xeno was something completely different? Had any other ships disappeared off the WY radar to reappear somewhere unexpected? And is the coffee the only good thing on any of WY’s ships?

I think there are lots of other avenues available to explore, but it would have to be careful not to become an alternative Star Trek.

Maybe that is for the better, I am not really interested in another Ripley movie. Having said this I am not interested in another David movie either and I am afraid that the next one will be crap.

I would not blame the fans like Big Dave does for wanting more Xenos, I am not even sure if that is correct. Most of the criticism that Prometheus got was that it had bad characters. My impression about the criticism of Prometheus comes from searching Google for things like “criticism of Prometheus” and similar things. Scott got it wrong if he thought that the lack of Xenos is what made Prometheus a disappointment.

Covenant handled things in a bad way by having mostly uninteresting characters and by having David responsible (possibly) for the Xeno. To me Covenant is worse than Prometheus unfortunately. Scott is partially to blame since he only cares about David.

Alien 5 would not have gotten any interest from me. I am not sure if I want another Ripley-hunts-Xenos-movie. To me Ripley ended in Alien 3, but they did AR which I still watch some times each year but it is not very good. WR is the only reason why I watch AR. Taking A3 out of canon would make me totally disappointed since that is my favorite this far in the franchise.

Barf the Morg: I agree somewhat with what you say but I don't think that it is because he is holding Alien 5 back, it is because his obsession with David. Turning the prequels into the David adventure is what is threatening to turn the franchise into shit IMO.

Gavin: The first three movie are the best IMO of the franchise. AR is where things started to get messed up and they have ever since. I agree that Scott is acting arrogant since he refuses to listen to much criticism even though both AC and Prometheus are disappointments but I think that Prometheus is the better one among those two. Keep Scott away from the story and it will be better that way or else we will get David part 77 (LOL). Fassbender is a good actor but like you say it becomes too much David and less monsters and Engineers and human too by the way.

"And if that is successful as an AI movie, man, Scott will probably be even more pissed." - Red0Guy

Then him be so, alien movies should not be about AI, no matter what Scott thinks.

Leto: I totally disagree about Alien 3, it gave a good ending to Ripley. Killing off Newt and Hicks could have been done better but it was never about them anyways. Some people want Alien 5, and that is probably fine for them but I think that they should have stopped  the Ripley story after Alien 3.

@Batchpool

I think this is where the Prequels would eventually lead us, if Davids Creations end up on the Derelict, then its likely as we see with the Advent Prologue that the Company are aware and would be incoming to see what David has been up to...  But where would they send ships?  Origae-6? they could also check out LV-223 and Planet 4.

But i think we will see Engineers Return and this is the Plot Device that leads to the involvement of the Engineer Ship the Cargo ends up on....   so after the events from AC to Alien, the company must get some insight into Davids Creation but it becomes a BUST!

However they find out some of his Creations have ended up on a Ship on LV-426

@BigDave

But how would engineers know about Origae-6?

@Thoughts_Dreams

Again good points... when we look at RS we need to look at his Mindset, he was proud of ALIEN considered it his Baby, its one of the most Iconic Movies he had ever been involved with, and he never got to explore a sequel the way he would have wanted... so he had the chance with a Prequel Series, and a thing to remember about RS... is exactly has he has said a few times...  HE MAKES MOVIES for himself... not the FANS so indeed you are right with your point regarding RS.

Regarding the blame on the Xenomorph, myself i think the Prequels had the right idea, the Xenomorph had been done over and over, and it needed to be something fresh and  you either had to show more of the Xenomorph Origin first then MOVE ON or show something different but then SET UP the Xenomorph again.

Prometheus was right in exploring something bigger and fresh, its problem was in hindsight Fans expected it to be a literal Prequel and expected as a Alien Prequel more answers should have been given, they was too vague and did not ANSWER how the Xenomorph was Created... not in a Spoon Fed Way... also there was no Xenomorphs... which did not settle well with some fans... The Bigger Problem was there was nothing related to the Xenomorphs.

The Hammerpede, Trilobite and Deacon all provided clues, but because none of these really got up to the Shenanigans of Xenomorphs in previous movies it just felt it was not ALIEN at all...  This does not mean it needed Xenomorphs..

But having a Zombie Fifield and Angry Engineer killing the Humans instead of anything related to the Xenomorphs was the Big Problem with Prometheus.

They felt Prometheus did enough to show us that these Engineers had experimented on stuff that is related to the Xenomorph, but lost control Thousands of Years ago, so all we had was the Xenomorph is related to the Black-Goo, Mural and Deacon and a result of what was going on LV-223 Thousands of years ago..   

RS and FOX felt that was all that was needed and they could move on to explore other things and not have to directly show the Xenomorph, because you have to be careful, you have to give the Xenomorph Special Treatment if you are to cover it again.... which means Sacrifice other things you can explore.  They knew its hard to cover the things they wanted and have a Xenomorph, the Balancing Act would be hard.

Alas FOX felt actually it was a mistake to take the Prequels away from the Xenomorph, and it needed to be introduced again.....   But trying to cover other things too, meant the Xenomorph was just not done justice...

I dont see it as  nothing about blaming Fans for the Xenomorph, i think FOX felt that bringing the Xenomorph back would surely please those who had been disappointed with the lack of Alieny Monster Carnage in Prometheus and looking at the Fans Excitement for Blomkamps Alien 5, i think FOX felt that the classic Xenomorph is something the fans would like to see again.

IF Alien Covenant never happened and Alien 5 did, there is no Guarantee it would have done justice to the Xenomorph apart from the same as what AVP and Alien R had done.. and so Popcorn Action Fan Service.  Some fans liked Alien and Alien 3 and how they dealt with the Xenomorph...  they would not be into a Action Popcorn kind of Xeno Trope...    I think AC tried to please Alien and Aliens Fans, but did so in a bad way.

I dont think AC was bad because of the Xenomorph, just in some respects it was bad in how it was handled.

I think the Problem and what i was touching on regarding Fans wanting Xenomorphs.. is the Franchise was limited... we could Ret-con the Prequels make them more Xenomorph, but then doing 2-3 Xenomorph Prequels would be hard to do, it may please Popcorn Fanboys, but you could over exploit the Xenomorph and if you do this... you risk damaging the reputation of the Xenomorph, much like the AVP movies did.... but we could ignore them as they are not Canon.

But a Prequel Series with Xenos and Queens, can potentially over cook the Xenomorph it has to be done very very well.  How do you maintain that for another 2-3 movies?

Its why something more and fresh has to be looked at and Prometheus decided the Space Jockey would be better to be explored in more detail as NO movie showed nothing about him apart from his Dead Corpse in ALIEN

The Problem with doing a Prequel to cover the Space Jockey and loosely give us clues to the Xenomorph, is a Prequel with some Fans would not be a ALIEN Prequel unless it had ALIENS in it, for some fans this means Queens and Xenos, but then for others it just had to be something related, the Neomorphs are a fine example.  Imagine if Milburn Chest Busted a Deacon, and Fifield became a Deacon/Human Hybrid and attacked the Crew.... this would be more ALIENY  but Prometheus tried to be more of a Thought Provoking movie and felt it never needed Alien Monsters, not in terms of how the Alien Franchise did....  and this is BECAUSE the aim was a loose Prequel and not a ALIEN Prequel, the aim was to go away from Alien, because Prometheus was the stepping stone to explore the Engineers.

some fans would be upset at this, because they expect when taking the route of the Space Jockey, we would get a movie that would show us WHEN/HOW and WHERE/WHY the Xenomorph came to be, and that further prequels should be connected to the ALIEN universe which has to be about Xenomorphs and similar Monsters created from the Black Goo.

THIS ^^^ Paragraphe is why we got Alien Covenant, and indeed a Alien: Prefix Prequel Series where FOX felt that indeed instead of steering away from Alien and Xenomorph like Monsters, in Hindsight they never covered it enough in Prometheus and that actually heading towards Alien is the better route for the Franchise... to give those Answers and that doing a ALIEN Prequels that would go further from ALIEN would maybe not do as well as ALIEN movies.

So they attempted this with Alien Covenant, setting up a ALIEN: Trilogy that with TWO more movies would lead to Alien, would have Xenomorphs, while setting up a return of the Engineers only as for the Plot Device to get a Derelict Engineer Ship involved.   And also to cover AI/David arc.

They would no doubt have thought Fans would be interested in Davids Arc from Prometheus to AC, they would be excited to showcase different Black Goo Creations, and indeed have TWO kinds on the loose, the Neomorph and Xenomorph...   And then set up the next movie to step closer to ALIEN with the Engineers coming back so that by the time we get past the NEXT Two movies.

We will see Xenomorphs vs Engineers vs Humans and get the events that lead to Alien, and then leave it open for FOX to explore the Engineers in other movies if they go down well.

They was not expecting the disappointment and back lash that Alien Covenant had got.

"But how would engineers know about Origae-6?"

Good Question, the one answer would be HOW else does a Engineer Ship end up with Davids Creations...  

1) Is Origae-6 a Engineer World, or was and does it have a Engineer Ship? i feel this is a bit too much of a coincidence.

2) Do the Engineers arrive at Planet 4 and then realize what happened, and can find out the Juggernaught had came from LV-223 and then head to LV-223.. but for this to lead to Alien, Davids Creations have to get from Origae-6 to LV-223  and i dont think David would head directly to LV-223 but who knows...   Oriage-6 will take 7 years odd to reach, i would assume if David goes to Origae-6 spends a year there and then heads to LV-223 with a Human ship we are talking 15 years here?

3) Do the Engineers arrive on Planet 4 and find some way of knowing David is off to Origae-6, i think they could track him if they arrived early but then would no doubt catch up with the Covenant way before it gets anywhere...  So its maybe likely that they find WALTER and somehow via him they know that David has taken the Covenant Ship and its destination is Origae-6

I think Option 3 is the more likely set up.

BigDave

option 3 is presupposes that Walter is still functional as the Engineers have not invented binary logic, have they...? Or they don't care ...

Big Dave

Thanks

Alien was not his baby, it was more like a result of a collaborative effort (Scott, Giger, etcetera). It is a good movie but it is not a result of a one man show.
If me makes movies for himself then he can not be surprised if many people think that they are bad. Nope, the criticism of Prometheus and AC is still valid if you ask me, if Scott agrees or not is his thing. As much as he does movies for himself that is as much as I have the right to think what ever about their quality. When something sucks I say it because that is simply how I am as a person even though you got to choose your words according to the situation sometimes.


Prometheus got tome things right but it should have been closer to the Xeno and had better human characters. Some ambiguity is OK but Prometheus got too much of it if they expect a majority sit down many hours again and again they are wrong. They should have gotten a better connection to the monster (not actual Xenos, I agree) and better characters.

Exactly, the Zombie Fifield was lame and using the Xeno version should have been better as far as story-telling is concerned. Not only the Zombie version was a mistake but there were other things that it did wrong.

Maybe Scott and Fox felt that it was all that was needed but Scott is not a story teller, he is a visualist. I don’t think that he has a clue about what makes good writing. Yes keeping Prometheus away from the Xeno was a mistake although it was far from my biggest problem with it. Perhaps they thought that many persons would be pleased if they only brought the Xeno back but the problems with Prometheus were more than that but Fox and Ridley didn’t seem to understand that so we got lame characters again which I think that more people had problems with in P compared to the lack of Xenos.

Sure, I agree that it was good that they didn’t do A5.

“I dont think AC was bad because of the Xenomorph, just in some respects it was bad in how it was handled.”

This but that was just one thing that I had a problem with, my biggest problem was how they wrote the characters. They had not traits that stood out so no one became memorable. You could easily see who was who in Alien 1-3 but in Covenant they were mostly like blank papers. Sure they just threw in the Xeno and had it killed a short time after, if I remember it correctly (something that I am not sure if I do).

Yes I agree that the Xeno shouldn’t be on-screen for most of the movie and I like the ideas of the Engineers in theory it is just that it wasn’t handled well. Having it about David is worse since I find that far less interesting.

How to maintain it over 3 movies: I agree that they need something new it is just that I don’t like that they went the AI way. I would gladly see more of the Engineers and their connection to it, not make David responsible for it and have better human characters.

The Neomorph was fine and handled better than the Xeno even though they should have done the scenes with the Xeno better.

Prometheus had many issues but not having a Xeno in it was a very small problem compared to other things and if you search for criticism of Prometheus you will see that more people had issues with lame characters than not having a Xeno in it, search google for it. I am not too worried about that compared to other things (bad human characters mostly, and the Engineers could have been written better o at least had been better done on the screen). OK but I think that both Ridley and Fox misunderstood what the criticism was about, it was not mainly about no Xeno, it was that the characters were lame, that seems to be the main complaint.

"We will see Xenomorphs vs Engineers vs Humans and get the events that lead to Alien, and then leave it open for FOX to explore the Engineers in other movies if they go down well."

That is a very interesting idea but unfortunately AC did not work so now I have many doubts about the next one.

"They was not expecting the disappointment and back lash that Alien Covenant had got."

Mainly because of crappy human characters aside from Oram, and since the director was mostly interested in robots because that is how it turned out on the screen at least.

Alright maybe the characters were not crappy like in Prometheus but they did not have distinctive character traits.