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The "Prometheus" trilogy
...Fox is remaking Alien.
Yes... ALIEN!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: Fox is said to be digging into its back catalogue once again after its remake of Predator to unleash a new version of Ridley Scott's Alien. According to BloodyDisgusting.com, the plan for the new movie is to stick very much to the original concept, which saw the crew of a spaceship investigating a transmission from another planet and discovering an alien that had perfectly evolved to destroy mankind. Michael Costigan, Ridley Scott and Tony Scott are said to be attached to produce the remake, and commercial/music video director Carl Rinsch will be at the helm and attempting to fill Ridley Scott's sizable shoes. Of course this is still in the rumor stages, but then so was Rodriguez's version of Predators. ARGH! |
Website Collider confirmed today with Tony Scott the exclusive breaking news that Carl Rinsch will be getting behind the camera for 20th Century Fox's reboot of the Alien franchise started back in '79 by Ridley Scott.
It was also confirmed that the reboot is being pinned as a "prequel" (even though we all know damn well it's still a reboot). At today’s junket for Tony Scott’s new film “The Taking of Pelham 123″, I went up Tony after the press conference ended to ask him what was up with the remake. The big news is he confirmed Carl Rinsch would be directing it and that it’s a prequel to his brother Ridley’s classic! What Tony told me is after the jump: Collider: 20th Century Fox is talking about remaking or redoing the original Alien. What’s going on with that? Tony Scott: Yes, Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He’s one of our directors at our company. Collider: I’m going to be blunt about this. Fox has not been doing a great job recently with their movies. They haven’t been an artist friendly studio. Are you guys going to have some creative control and make this a kick-ass film? Tony: Yes! But Fox is our home. They finace our production company. Collider: And I’m very happy that you guys have the financing. But a lot of the films they’ve been doing at the studio level, they’ve been nickel and diming and not giving fandom what they want. So I guess my question for you is…are you a little nervous about reengaging the franchise or are you excited. Tony: I’m excited cause Ridley created the original and Carl Rinsch is one of the family. Collider: When do you envision this film getting in front of cameras? Tony: Hopefully the end of the year. Collider: Will it be a summer of 2011 movie? Tony: Honestly, I don’t know. http://www.collider.com/2009/05/29/e...its-a-prequel/ *goes to the bathroom, points gun at own head, uncocks hammer, and pulls trigger* :( |
Sometimes I wonder what will happen when there will be no classic left for remaking...will they go for 2nd remaking (I'm not sure what should we call it then)?
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And about time..
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This is the end of mankind's stability. The end.
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Nope, dont think i was ready to hear that.
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It was only a matter of time. As much as it sucks, this one doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
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This defies belief.
:mad: :mad: :( :( I was having a good day until I read this. There have been so many films made which are shit enough to warrant remaking, why cant they do them? Alien is one of the most perfect films ever made, dont fuck with it!!! If its a prequel then the only thing they can do is the story of what happens on the crashed giants ship before Dallas and co. discover it. |
At 20th Century Fox, no one can hear you scream.
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Oh well its not going to crack the earth in two. Don't bother watching it. Remake bashing is a pretty tired topic.
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I think they should remake Apocalypse Now, It's way over due............ Forgot emoticons... hmmm, :>/ what ever the Fook that means.....
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That's cool - I look forward to seeing it actually. Love the original, and curious to see what they do this time around.
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At least Scott has some involvement, Im sure he'll be ran to a number of times.
That said, if you don't like remakes that much that you can't just not watch them - I think people need to start sabotaging shit and posting their exploits, then we will hear the true story of those who stood against the beast. |
Collider's scoop last Friday managed to semi-calm the blast wave of fanboy wrath at the notion that Ridley Scott's original Alien was to be remade.
Turns out the planned film is a prequel. Whether this kills the possibility of Alien 5 or realises it (the Alien multiverse was already spaghetti junction - could the new film be considered Alien 0?), a lot of Top 10 Contenders For New Ripley lists have been ripped up half-written, and that's a good thing. Alien fans who are familiar with the excellent documentaries on the Quadrilogy edition - and the various commentaries on the films - will have heard a lot of excited speculation and flights-of-fancy about a prequel, from the likes of concept artist Ron Cobb, Sigourney Weaver, Ridley Scott, prosthetic effects chief Tom Woodruff, producers David Giler and Walter Hill, and numerous other franchise luminaries. Much of the talk has been about how a prequel could take us to the aliens' home world - but there's been confusion as to which culture was being referred to... THE SPACE-JOCKEY In Alien two extra-terrestrial cultures are depicted: the insect-like xenomorphs and the technologically advanced race of whom the only remnant example is the 'space jockey'. The space-jockey himself was derived from a production sketch that Ridley Scott took a shine to, but proved to be one of many set-requests initially nixed by the line producer and the roving team of paranoid and penny-pinching executives that plagued Pinewood during the movie's production (the set was later offered to Scott as a fait accomplis for the great footage he was turning out). The space-jockey embodies H.R. Giger's favourite themes: death, sex and disgust, with bones becoming melded to technology. He seems to be some sort of gunner or telescope operator - yet in the production sketch the projecting tube is pointing only at what appears to be light in a curved wall, with no means either of firing out or of viewing the stars. If it is a window, it has as narrow an aperture as any archer had to contend with in medieval times. In addition, the fuselage of the 'cannon' is not only phallic but directing out from the space-jockey's hip area; we seem to come across the huge creature in a Pompeii-like moment of lonely sexual activity, frozen by the advent of the xenomorph that has burst out of its chest. It's a poetic image, and it might take a bit of a plot-hack to give it a practical slant. The problem with sequels is that they have to make sense of stuff which was thrown into the originals that spawned them mostly by dint of being 'cool' or intriguing. Thus Neo's powers of flight, which made such a cool end to the original The Matrix had to be embarrassingly persistent in the sequels; and Michael J. Fox's girlfriend being immediately 'knocked out' by Doc Brown at the start of Back To The Future Part II; and even the walk-on parts in the original Tremors getting their own Tremors sequel. You kind of have to project backwards and force it to make sense post facto. This might be problematic for an Alien prequel for many reasons… Not least the space-jockey himself. He is patently part of a machine, and the machine is patently part of the (now derelict) spaceship. Was he bred for the purpose by his race? Or will the prequel show him ambulatory and getting into the 'empty' telescope/cannon and a whole lot of CGI cyber-bones wrapping round him, like Tony Stark's Iron Man suit? That would solve a problem, but it's hokey and the design of the original space-jockey doesn't support it. The space-jockey is growing out of the chair. That's an insane idea from Giger's bizarre and brilliant imagination, but it might take a young David Lynch to make the concept workable in an Alien prequel. I can't say I envy Carl Rinch the task. THE EGGS IN THE DERELICT SHIP Likewise problematic the reason that all those eggs were in the cargo hold of the derelict in Alien. Were they laid there by a long-dead Aliens-style xenomorph queen after the ship got infested, like the Nostromo, by a single alien? Or are they genetically-engineered weapons created by the space-jockey race to drop on enemies in a ghastly act of biological warfare? Ridley Scott and others have commented on the space-jockey that his race seems to have been pacific by nature, perhaps more so than mankind. Yet Dark Horse's comics spin-offs and various other Alienverse novels and spins have been providing a wealth of alternative possibilities since the late 1980s. Michael Jan Friedman's Aliens: Original Sin names the space-jockey race as the Mala'kak, whilst Steve Perry's 1992 novel Earth Hive calls them 'the collectors'. Graphic novel writer Mark Verheiden instead depicts the space-jockeys as a war-like race in the vein of the Predators, but ones who are only holding off their enslavement of the human race until the galaxy is dis-infested of their common enemy - the xenomorphs. Another spun-off origin story for the space-jockey came from the creators of ALIEN - The official authorised movie magazine. You can find the piece here, but fundamentally it suggests that history was pretty much repeating itself when the colonists met their grim fate on LV-426 in James Cameron's Aliens. In this set-up, the space-jockey race had been searching for lifeless worlds to colonise, and their sweeps for life-forms on the apparently barren planet had not registered the 'dormant' alien eggs, which woke up enough to wipe out three successive landing parties, each more heavily-armed than the last (the last being the space-jockey's own doomed mission from Alien). (This doesn't necessarily establish LV-426 as the xenomorph home world - flies don't really have a native country as a species, and a xenomorph culture is merely an 'infestation' in the terms of more civilised societies. Who knows how many millennia these acid-spewing nasties have been stowing away and spreading their unique brand of havoc throughout the galaxy?) Scott et al have also suggested other theories regarding the space-jockey, including that the apparent rough similarity in physiognomy between the two alien races is because the xenomorphs are biological weapons, or super-soldiers derived from space-jockey DNA. Thus the protective 'blue layer of light' over the egg-weapons in the cargo hold. But what sense does that make? As soon as Kane breaks the beam of light, the little fellers start twitching. Why would any military party set a trap on board its own ship? The fundamental problem here is how dated the Holoco laser-effects are in the sequence where John Hurt descends to investigate the egg. The camera is kept at a low angle in order to disguise the fact that the blue layer emanates from a single light source, but these days it doesn't look like anything but a late 1970s disco laser. James Cameron didn't keep the blue-light device in the finale of Aliens, so it must have been space-jockey tech, right? But in my opinion Cameron also thought it was a protective xenomorph tripwire, a luminous gas to give the creepy creatures the heads up on a new victim approaching - but one that would have been too hard to make work in his own explosive confrontation between Ripley and the alien queen. (Continued...) |
THE HUMAN ELEMENT
It's going to take some work to get the human race involved in a prequel set-up for Alien. In the original movie, Weyland-Yutani's diversion of the Nostromo to LV-426 seems an opportunistic - if rather heartless - approach to new business acquisitions. The crew of the Nostromo are heading back from a long and gruelling spell of work in the Solomons when they are told to investigate the space-jockey's 'distress' signal or forfeit their shares. They'll later find out that they are all entirely 'expendable', so long as the valuable bug makes its way back to the Weyland-Yutani research labs. Clearly the company is way ahead of the crew's efforts to decipher the signal, which obviously contains a pretty detailed description of the xenomorph and its potential capability as a military weapon. The science-officer Ash turns out to be an android planted by the company to protect its interests, but at no point is it suggested that the Nostromo shipped out of Earth with Ash on board specifically to protect the alien. If the distress-signal is public-domain and has reached Earth, and (as at least one of the Aliens comics suggested) other military powers might be just as interested in it...why send the Nostromo off to accomplish its mining remit for years before diverting it to LV-426 on the return journey? Any other interested power aware of the information could just send a ship straight to the planet and comfortably beat Weyland-Yutani to the prize. No, the suggestion is that Ash is on board as a 'mole' because of a general company policy of spying on its workers, and that the entirely surprising advent of the space-jockey's signal is exactly the kind of thing the company needs an 'inside man' for. Paul Anderson's risible 2004 prequel Aliens Vs. Predator didn't even make a significant dent in this back-story, since it presented Lance Henrikson as the 'template' of Aliens' Bishop and co-founder of Weyland Yutani - and then killed him off. Anderson admitted as much in a 2005 edition of Movie Magic, declaring "…there's nothing in [Alien Vs. Predator] that contradicts anything that already exists". All the company needed to do to 'look good for the records' and not be beaten to the punch was to divert the Nostromo on the way out. If, that is, they knew about LV-426 in advance of the mission. But let's face it, the way Alien is set up, they didn't. The Nostromo was obviously the nearest ship available anywhere - if other powers on Earth had decoded the message and were sending ships to LV-426 to retrieve a xenomorph, they weren't going to beat the Nostromo, which was in the wrong place at the wrong time...at least according to the O'Bannon/Shusett script. In my opinion, some nasty acts of canon-hacking will be needed to suggest that there were adequate human machinations to generate an entire film prior to the Nostromo's involvement. But what choice is there, if this is the road the producers have chosen? The chances of Alien 0 dealing entirely with an expensive CGI/prosthetics space-jockey civilisation are pretty remote, not least because such an outlandish project doesn't tick all the demographic boxes for the target audience (who are almost inevitably going to be young teenagers, I fear). The producers will be needing pretty faces to shroud in face-huggers - and probably younger ones than featured in the original movie. ALIEN 0 OR ALIEN 5? In light of these and other problems, may I strongly recommend that they return to the long-awaited Alien 5 instead? We know Sigourney Weaver costs money (and that this has always been an issue with the Alien movies after the first), but she's always been worth it. And unless the intention is to spin off the Alien canon into a new side-alley as J.J. Abrams did with Star Trek, we just don't seem to fit into the picture until the original Alien movie rumbles into view. "I’d like to see [the Alien sequels] stop. A horror movie’s a fragile thing, and once you’ve gotten past the original, it isn’t scary anymore." - Dan O'Bannon, creator of Alien. http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/2599...n_prequel.html |
I remember nothing of this...space jockey...
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http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...ace-jockey.jpg http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/m...romfilms-1.jpg |
They could always expand on the space jockey story in an Alien 5, could they not? Give Ripley some reason to go back there. It would be tough, because she's a clone now; granted she's an almost perfect one. Otherwise, I might have suggested some kind of imprint left from being just close to the Jockey ship.
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Or what if...the space jockey was a device that rendered all who witness it and wonder "what the fuck is that" unconscious, grabbing them and cloning them at that precise moment to keep the originals in stasis for study purposes while sending out their cloned counterparts into the world to see how well their collected/engineered aliens do as a weapon without destroying the original life?
Then the derelict ship crashes on the planet after being automatically pulled back there, they all wake up and they're in the midst of an Alien/whatever made the space jockey war. Seriously though, I cant remember any scene with this thing in it whatsoever. |
It was quite short. They just walk past it.
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Man, I'd be touching it n'shit...no wonder it never stuck...
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Get ready to jump around and whoop in joy!!
After months of speculation, Variety is reporting that the Alien prequel is definitely on, with original Alien helmer Ridley Scott set to direct. Twentieth Century Fox has also hired Jon Spaihts to write the script, which will precede the first Alien. Spaihts got the job after pitching the studio and Scott Free, which will produce the film. The film is set up to be a prequel to the groundbreaking 1979 film that Scott directed. It will precede that film, in which the crew of a commercial towing ship returning to Earth is awakened and sent to respond to a distress signal from a nearby planetoid. The crew discovers too late that the signal generated by an empty ship was meant to warn them. The deal gives Fox another chance to keep the "Alien" franchise alive. There were three sequels to Scott's original, but it is the first time the director has set his mind on directing one. Spaihts has also worked on the upcoming sci-fi flick Shadow 19 starring Keanu Reeves, and will rewrite Timur Bekmambetov's The Darkest Hour. It is the first Alien movie Ridley Scott has been directly involved in since the original, with Carl Rinsch previously linked to direct the project. |
I figured the space jockey was actually part of the ship, maybe the pilot, with just enough biological parts to be a host for the alien.
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Erk... No prequel please. The primary aspect that made Alien scary was the unknown. Seems like he's going to give too much away in a prequel.
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Re: "Alien" - The Prequel
Ridley Scott actually lined up to direct now. Should be interesting to see him retake the helm after the series has been passed through so many directors.
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Sigourney Weaver has spoken about the upcoming Alien Prequel on SciFi Squad. It's doubtful she'll play any role in the prequel.
She says Ripley couldn't appear in a prequel because her first encounter with the creature is in Alien. But she's happy that Ridley Scott is producing it. Do you have any interest in being part of the planned Alien prequel movie, or appearing in the franchise ever again? Well, I don't think that Ripley could appear in an Alien prequel because she doesn't have any access to the creature until the first Alien. But Ridley (Scott) is producing it and that makes me happy. I wasn't thrilled with the whole Alien Vs. Predator thing. I never saw them, but one of the reasons I died in (Alien) 3 was to not have anything to do with those (laughs). Just because, you know, I think it just seemed so economically motivated somehow. I feel we did four good movies, and I'm content with that. I hope if they do something new, they will encompass the idea of where the alien first came from, because I think that's an interesting idea -- to find out what happened and "how did it get to us?" |
*shakes head*
the only good thing that seems to come from this is that Ridley is involved will be approached with caution |
We all learned over the summer that Ridley Scott, director of the original "Alien," will be returning to the franchise he created to direct a prequel.
Given the series' overarching story, fans very reasonably speculated that a prequel would take a look at the events immediately preceding the first movie. It seems that may not be an accurate assumption anymore. Scott, who in London recently to support his daughter's entry at the London Film Festival, took some time out to chat with Empire about some of his plans for the prequel. He doesn't drop any specific narrative bombs, but there is a general outline of the "when" fans can expect to be deposited into. "The prequel will be a while ago," he explained. "It’s very difficult to put a year on 'Alien,' but [for example] if 'Alien' was towards the end of this century, then the prequel story will take place thirty years prior.” What's interesting about this is that the xenomorphs discovered in "Alien" are just that: a new discovery. A prequel set immediately before the first movie could easily justify human foreknowledge of the creatures by simply killing off any human protagonists. A 30 year gap is a bit trickier. Perhaps the xenomorphs are in fact a secret creation of shadowy human forces? Or an older discovery, carefully covered up (for a time)? Time will certainly tell. And Scott is excited about the telling. “I never thought I’d look forward to a sequel,” Scott said. “But a prequel is kind of interesting. I’m looking forward to doing that.” |
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I think two things that need to be mentioned is that based on the original screenplay and novelization: 1) The space jockey was there for a very very long (thousands? Hundreds of thousands years?) time and the "reason" he/she/it seems to be part of the chair is that its been pretty much fossilized to the chair 2) That all the eggs seen in the "cargo" hold of the derelict ship are the fellow crew members of the space jockey - remember before Cameron got a hold of the franchise and made "starship troopers" out of it the Aliens are created by the victims being converted into the eggs by some form of DNA manipulation - of course thats after the Alien gets to eat a little bit first. The famous cut scene from Alien when Ripley gets lost and stumbles into the bowels of the Nostromo and finds Dallas halfway to being an "egg" and another almost fully formed egg is seen with whats left of Brett inside being changed. In fact Dan O'Bannon was miffed in 79 when this was cut from the film and the whole Queen aspect a few yrs later as it took a really disturbing and creepy angle out of play. I would think and hope a revisit using the original point of the Alien having the ability to transform other lifeforms into its own and what happened to the derelict crew could make an awesome feature |
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another point to note, V, is that it seems Weland-Yutani did have prior knowledge of the Aliens, hence why they sent the crew to answer the distress signal. Isn't it possible they've known about them since AVP:R but have simply never had the opportunity to get any before? |
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If you remember, Ripley sits down to decipher the "distress" signal in binary and realises that its actually a "warning". Its very much possible that the signal was picked up/beamed through Weyland-Yutani satellites/ships back to Earth and they already knew it was a warning signal, yet they changed the course of the Nostromo to go ahead and intercept it. I am sure this is one of the things which we will see in this prequel. Ridley Scott will surely touch upon this part. |
Any new news, V?
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Nope. Just rumors.
Keep your fingers crossed for an update once Predators is released this summer. |
I am not really a big fan of any of the alien movies. So I'll probably miss out on the remake as well.
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Shadowlocked has confirmed with Star Wars and Alien art-director Roger Christian that Ridley Scott’s upcoming Alien prequel will be shot in 3D.
Christian, who ran into Ridley at a recent film festival, hopes to work on the film, and briefly expressed his excitement for the project: Quote:
Fans believed that would never happen. Why would Scott return to film a prequel of one of the most popular sci-fi film franchises of all time? Why compete with yourself? Producing the film seems like a much safer bet. Who knows why, but Ridley Scott signed on to direct a prequel to Alien. The film will be a direct prequel to Scott’s original 1979 film. In a 2002 interview, Scott wanted to return “to where the alien creatures were first found and explain how they were created.” Chances are this idea would also be incorporated into the reboot. Jon Spaihts will write the screenplay, a job he earned after pitching the studio and production company Scott Free. Spaihts has no produced credits, but has written Shadow 19 and Passengers, both of which are also sci-fi space thrillers. Empire spoke to Scott when he was out and about in London to attend the local festival premiere of his daughter’s movie Cracks, and the filmmaker threw out some really general statements about the film — they know where it’s going, the screenplay is now being written by Jon Spaihts, and then this more specific tidbit: Quote:
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Also part of Alien Quadrilogy box set. |
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