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- Me_Wise_Magic
- Rep: 70
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
Aliens was just the 80s action movie version of Alien. I love it. Bill Paxton is amazing in it.
I thought Prometheus was pretty good but I don't need several more movies to tie it in all nice and neat with Alien. Unnecessary IMO.
If you've watched the recent Tom Cruise film, "Edge of Tomorrow: Live Die Repeat", Paxton is exceptional in it. That was Oscar worthy comedy in there from his character. He also saved the first season of Marvel's Agent of Shield besides Clark Gregg.
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
Apex after reading that post I'm gonna have to watch Alien 3 again. I haven't watched it since release. I didn't like it but would like a fresh look at it.
Make sure it is the Assembly Cut. Superior "directors cut" of the theatrical release.
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
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We are sort of similar. I think Aliens is a very good movie, but a bad Alien movie. The mythology and atmosphere is radically different. Alien was visually sharp and dark. Aliens is rounded and lit. It reduces the ominous company to Burke. It changes the alien by having so many of them, introducing the Queen etc. It perhaps should have been a stand alone film, as it was partly intended (Cameron was going to make a Vietnam movie). It did launch Alien to a broader audience though, and without it we would never have gotten the big budget sequels that we did, with more to come.
Alien 3 was a potential great movie. As is I think it's still very good. Fincher offers marvelous photography and the cast is one of the best seen in a horror movie. The way it brutally sheds the left overs from Aliens makes it sort of like Die Hard With a Vengeance, a spiritual sequel to the original film. We are back to one location, one alien. The bad android turned good android is now bad again, without sacrificing the good character of Bishop from Aliens. Respectful and well done. The company is back to its original mythological state. Mysterious and malevolent. I like all those details. On top of that you have some marvelous characterization in not only Sigourney Weaver, but the cast as a whole. Every little character has his little personality and moments to display it.
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
Make sure it is the Assembly Cut. Superior "directors cut" of the theatrical release.
Definitely. I enjoyed it as what it was, a version closer to Fincher's intended cut. I felt he and everyone else worked hard with what they had. Less than a script, with the anxious Fox execs and the incredibly territorial producer-writers Walter Hill and David Giler.
Those two lowered their stock in my eyes by condescending on the original Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusset script for Alien. O'Bannon was fresh off from Jodorowsky's Dune, during the (aborted) production of which he encountered Giger's work. O'Bannon brought in a tough-as-nails script and a unique monster design. Hill and Giler felt they could 'fix' it by replacing a beautiful visual cue like redshift with superfluous jargon lifted from the Apollo program documents.
Giler and Hill also brushed up the script with a Point Blank -inspired format. Alien is a highly aesthetic film, so it's easy to see the benefits of an elegant script next to the Giger designs and Ridley Scott in the helm. However, film scholars keep raving about the sense of awe and terror O'Bannon's narrative injects into the film. They should, as a strong script was needed to maintain all the imagery.
It's a well-crafted film. Scott was commissioned a director's cut for a DVD release, which he obliged to do, while maintaining the original version was one he was already happy with. The DC blows the lid on the mystery of what happened to the lost crew members. The original cut deftly sets the stage for a beautiful monster in deep age, surrounded by a suitably grungy crew of space truckers. Only in the 70's. 
I think Aliens is a very good movie, but a bad Alien movie.
It did launch Alien to a broader audience though, and without it we would never have gotten the big budget sequels that we did, with more to come.
Aliens was another perfect storm in retrospect, if only in the sense of establishing the series as a franchise. Sigourney Weaver was a proponent of gun control, so you can bet she appreciated a return to a single alien without firearms. On Alien3, she was an actress-producer, and backed Fincher all the way. Unfortunately, many audiences were expecting the polar opposite, a rehash of Aliens. This was the Terminator 2 era of scifi action; Predator 2 had hinted on an Alien cross-over. To put it into perspective, I think Scott's original film would've had an uphill battle in 1991.
Imagine going after it under those circumstances - without a solid script. The pressure on Fincher and his crew was enormous, like the colossal sets built in Shepperton Studios, London. Hostile creative associates (Giler and Hill) were powerplaying their way into the writing process, motivated by greed. Executives at Fox had set a firm release date before filming. To make matter worse, an ill-advised teaser announced 'In 1992, we would discover, on Earth, everyone can hear you scream'. Next stop, misery.
Alien3 has problems, that's a given. But the fact that it can go head-to-head with every succeeding film in the expanded universe tells you something.
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
Alien: Covenant has a lot going on under the hood. It is both a prequel to the storied Alien franchise, as well as a sequel to the movie Prometheus. While there will certainly be elements of both films in Covenant, Michael Fassbender explains how this movie will differ from its predecessor. The actor says that the new film will be taking many cues from the original Alien and will, therefore, be much scarier that Prometheus was.
While the excitement for Prometheus, which spent most of its production seemingly not sure if it was Alien prequel or not, was very high, the end result didn't quite hit the mark for many fans. Having said that, interest in the Alien franchise as a whole has never waned. So, what will Alien: Covenant do to improve on Prometheus, beyond simply calling itself an Alien movie at the beginning? Michael Fassbender tells Collider that it will be a movie much more in the vein of Alien as far as tension and terror.
It's much scarier than Prometheus, but it's got the same sort of scope of Prometheus. It's kind of got more of thriller, imminent disaster feel that Alien had, so it's kind of a beautiful meeting of both of those films. I'm really excited to see it, I think it's gonna be super scary number one and then again with the massive scope of Prometheus... Once it starts and the ball starts rolling, it doesn't let up. It's really gonna bring chills to the cinema.
The scope of Prometheus was certainly big. The film essentially encompassed all of humanity. However, it's the "imminent disaster" idea here that we're most interested in. That was the thing that made Alien an absolutely stellar sci-fi horror movie. The enemy was a nearly indestructible monster, who could have been lurking behind any corner. We fully expected our characters to be brutally killed at any moment, and that was what made the film tense and exciting. It certainly seems that Ridley Scott is going to try to recapture that magic here in Alien: Covenant. Michael Fassbender's comments echo those recently made by co-star Danny McBride, who called Covenant a "dark horror movie."
We're guessing these are exactly the sorts of words that fans are going to want to hear about Alien: Covenant. With Ridley Scott returning to the franchise that he began, we were expecting something a little more Alien-ish with Prometheus . Unfortunately, what we got was a cartographer who got lost and a biologist who tried to pet an alien creature. Hopefully, the crew of the spacecraft Covenant is a bit smarter than those on the Prometheus.
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
My excitement for this is going out the window. They're gonna veer it too much into the Alien world. I wanted the continuation of the story in Prometheus.....not where they change plans midway and are gonna bring Ripley's mother into this. I think they initially had a vision for this concept, it didn't kill at the box office, so they're gonna wrap it up quicker to get it to connect with Alien.
A shame.
- elevendayempire
- Rep: 96
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
The only words I want to hear about Alien: Covenant are "We're cancelling it and doing Neill Blomkamp's Aliens 2 instead." The world does not need another Prometheus sequel.
Re: Alien 5 & Prometheus 2
My excitement for this is going out the window. They're gonna veer it too much into the Alien world. I wanted the continuation of the story in Prometheus.....not where they change plans midway and are gonna bring Ripley's mother into this. I think they initially had a vision for this concept, it didn't kill at the box office, so they're gonna wrap it up quicker to get it to connect with Alien.
A shame.
They are doing what? 
As much as I disliked Prometheus I did have a bit of an interest in the story to come. But I guess we'll be seeing another remake/reboot/sequel that is so popular today. Can't wait for a string of these movies to bomb, bankrupting some of these lazy studios.
