Prometheus (Alien Prequel)

[bassman]

The scope and size of that film really is in the league of a firmly established director who's 50 and on his tenth film. Aliens was his third. I think it would be more of his second. He left Piranha 2 and apparently very little of his work made it in.

[3pidemiC]

This better be a prequel or at the very least a "retelling". Or else.... I say we grease this rat-fuck-son-of-a-bitch right now!

[Neil]

Agree wholeheartedly. Despite its age, there is not a single shot in Alien that doesn't still look as impressive and beautiful today as it is was when it was released in 1979. Next time you watch this movie, forget the story and just look at it - it is, almost without a doubt, one of the most aesthetically and cinematographically impressive movies ever made, and all done without crazy MTV editing ('cept in the helmet-cam scenes, where it works) and no ridiculous CGI swooping/tracking shots to drag you out of the movie. It was made for ten million dollars, thirty years ago, and visually it still blows every modern mega-buck blockbuster of the last decade out of the water. Same goes for Aliens. All the attention to detail is just beautiful. The fact the dropship leans over slight cos one of the pod wings opens before its counterpart. The APC with its rear wheel steering and turret that can be slung at the back. And let's not get on to the loaders Every thing is believable and beautifully done!

[DubiousComforts]

I loved Alien...even more than Aliens. However I still think there is a bit of a pacing issue with the film. I know the slow pace was meant to give it that tension feel but it gets a bit boring at times...and for the most part the music does give some of the surprises away...except for Dallas in the Ventilation ducts...that was WAY SCARY!!! I disagree in regards to the pacing. It is deliberate and creates an atmosphere of isolation and hopelessness. The dialog between the characters is intentionally kept vague in order to evoke tension in the audience. This film is carefully and skillfully set-up so that when the monster appears and all hell breaks loose, the horror has maximum impact. All the greatest 70s films created scares in this manner. It is truly a lost art form. Like The Exorcist, people were scared shitless by ALIEN when it was first released. The only reason it couldn't outdo the phenomenon known as JAWS is because the action takes place in outer space as opposed to on the beach, in your backyard. That being said, just imagine today's ADHD audiences sitting through a faithful remake of ALIEN which included everything that made the film great in the first place. It will never happen.

[krakenslayer]

The more I think about this remake, the more depressed I get. I know it's strange when there is suffering and hunger and injustice in the real world to feel so strongly about something as inconsequential as a movie, but I think this announcement is very representative of the way the world is going today - the media is just shovelling out stuff we've already digested, dressed up to look as something new, essentially feeding us our own shit, and we're the ones to blame because we just sit there and compliantly munch down on it. To take the metaphor one step further, and in a kind of anti-analogy to the Alien's own lifespan, I feel like Fox just ripped open my breastbone and shat into my heart.

[MaximusIncredulous]

I loved Alien...even more than Aliens. However I still think there is a bit of a pacing issue with the film. I know the slow pace was meant to give it that tension feel but it gets a bit boring at times...and for the most part the music does give some of the surprises away...except for Dallas in the Ventilation ducts...that was WAY SCARY!!! Funny that you find the duct music scary. Scott used a temp track of Jerry Goldsmith's score for Freud in that part and later decided to keep it in the film. I don't know if Goldsmith's music overall gives away anything, I certainly didn't feel that when I saw it in '79, but it is certainly one of his most strangest scores.

[MinionZombie]

Same goes for Aliens. All the attention to detail is just beautiful. The fact the dropship leans over slight cos one of the pod wings opens before its counterpart. The APC with its rear wheel steering and turret that can be slung at the back. And let's not get on to the loaders Every thing is believable and beautifully done! Plus the pacing, editing, direction and scoring are all spot-on. Aliens never fails to get me on the edge of my seat, and my adrenaline pumping. It's simply awesomeness.

[Craig]

...Why?

[darth los]

That being said, just imagine today's ADHD audiences sitting through a faithful remake of ALIEN which included everything that made the film great in the first place. It will never happen. Or even better put, It'll NEVER MAKE ANY MONEY Which is as we all Know is the difference between a film being made or not.

[kortick]

I saw Alien the same day I saw Apocalyse Now. Just killing a day at the movies. The thing Alien had going for it which cant be duplicated now, is the sheer originality of it. The entire movie was like nothing you ever saw. It wasnt anything like Martian movies u grew up with. And no matter what u had seen before there was nothing, and I mean nothing that prepared you for this: Everyone in the theater went nuts then there was this kinda shocked quiet that followed as everyone tried to figure out what just happened and more importantly what the hell was gonna happen next. Thats the main reason not to do a remake in my opinion. We already know the shocks and surprises. Put out an original film that can actually make u feel like u did when u first saw Alien back in 1979.

[krakenslayer]

Panic over, kinda. According to AICN, it's NOT a remake, but a prequel. Usually, that word would have me rolling my eyes with despair, however... Ridley Scott has been saying for decades that if he was to ever go back to the franchise, he would love to do an origin story, shedding at least some light on how that ancient extraterrestrial spacecraft came to be on LV-421 and how Ash and the Company seemed to know so much about the alien and it's potential value to weapons tech (possibly ignoring - or now incorporating? - the AvP movies). Basically, if the new movie stems from this idea that's been rolling around in Scott's head for years, then I personally think it might not be so bad. That is, provided they return to H.R. Geiger's Alien design and go the extra mile to get some shit hot cinematography to build that old-school organic-meets-industrial-meets-cyberpunk dynamic of the first two/three movies.

[Neil]

Panic over, kinda. According to AICN, it's NOT a remake, but a prequel. Usually, that word would have me rolling my eyes with despair, however... Ridley Scott has been saying for decades that if he was to ever go back to the franchise, he would love to do an origin story, shedding at least some light on how that ancient extraterrestrial spacecraft came to be on LV-421 and how Ash and the Company seemed to know so much about the alien and it's potential value to weapons tech (possibly ignoring - or now incorporating? - the AvP movies). Basically, if the new movie stems from this idea that's been rolling around in Scott's head for years, then I personally think it might not be so bad. That is, provided they return to H.R. Geiger's Alien design and go the extra mile to get some shit hot cinematography to build that old-school organic-meets-industrial-meets-cyberpunk dynamic of the first two/three movies. So there will be no humans in it? Hmm...

[Tricky]

Panic over, kinda. According to AICN, it's NOT a remake, but a prequel. Usually, that word would have me rolling my eyes with despair, however... Ridley Scott has been saying for decades that if he was to ever go back to the franchise, he would love to do an origin story, shedding at least some light on how that ancient extraterrestrial spacecraft came to be on LV-421 and how Ash and the Company seemed to know so much about the alien and it's potential value to weapons tech (possibly ignoring - or now incorporating? - the AvP movies). Basically, if the new movie stems from this idea that's been rolling around in Scott's head for years, then I personally think it might not be so bad. That is, provided they return to H.R. Geiger's Alien design and go the extra mile to get some shit hot cinematography to build that old-school organic-meets-industrial-meets-cyberpunk dynamic of the first two/three movies. Now that does sound a bit more interesting,i was always quite fascinated by that huge crashed spacecraft!i dont know whether i'd like them revealing the mystery behind it though,its one of those things that gives you more to think about with the films as you can use your imagination to come up with your own theories & stories about how it came to be there & how they ended up with the xenomorphs on board. Still, i much prefer the idea of that than a remake of a film that really doesnt need to be remade!

[krakenslayer]

Now that does sound a bit more interesting,i was always quite fascinated by that huge crashed spacecraft!i dont know whether i'd like them revealing the mystery behind it though,its one of those things that gives you more to think about with the films as you can use your imagination to come up with your own theories & stories about how it came to be there & how they ended up with the xenomorphs on board. Still, i much prefer the idea of that than a remake of a film that really doesnt need to be remade! I think, if they put a lot of effort in, it's possible to do a story involving contact between humans and the "space jockey" race without spoiling the deep horror and mystery of it all - think of something along the lines of the mysterious extraterrestrial elder gods of Lovecraft's fiction, or the unreal encounter between mankind and the completely unfathomable alien intelligence in at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I like to think of them as god-like beings that have been forced to retreat to the outer edges of the universe due to the spread of the parasitic xenomorph infestation, a race so mind-bogglingly different and infinitely more intelligent than us, yet tragically brought to it's knees by the ultimate killing machine of the cosmos. Knowing Hollywood, however, there is a real danger of them being reduced to a bunch of wisecracking CG animations with ray guns and snappy, subtitled one-liners.

[Tricky]

The derelict ship contains several thousand alien eggs. Scott suggests in his Alien DVD commentary that the Jockey's ship was a "bomber": alien eggs could be dropped on an enemy planet, and the aliens would proceed to kill the population as they spawned. According to Cameron, the Space Jockey's craft picked up alien eggs and the pilot became infected by the dangerous cargo; the ship landed on LV-426 and the Space Jockey transmitted the signal as a warning.[1] John Mollo and Ron Cobb's "The Alien Portfolio" and Alan Dean Foster's novelization of Alien state the Space Jockey encountered the aliens on LV-426. (wikipedia)