Alien prequel

[p2p_productions]

http://p2pproductions.blogspot.com/2009/07/just-when-will-weyland-yutani-learn.html

Topic

[Andrew]

Bring on the Space Jockey!!!!!!!

[Dave]

Some call him the gangsta of love

[p2p_productions]

Great to hear Scott’s back in the driving seat. Though I can’t help but wonder what James Cameron’s story for 5 might’ve entailed. Perhaps, a sequel rather than a prequel?

[Ridley]

Bring on the Space Jockey!!!!!!!

Bleh, I hope that’s not an endorsement. That thing should never be seen in motion. Ever.

[p2p_productions]

>Bleh, I hope that?s not an endorsement. That thing should never be seen in motion. Ever.

A time lapse shot of the Jockey fossilising in the chair might be cool.

[Andrew]

> I can?t help but wonder what James Cameron?s story for 5 might?ve entailed.

Even money a nuke going off at some point.

> That thing should never be seen in motion. Ever.

Ridley. Scott.

That is all.

[p2p_productions]

At this rate, Giger himself might even be brought back.

[peas_and_corn]

Are they really going to call it “Vlien”?

[Dave]

It’s to distinguish it from the increasingly separate ‘Alien Fives Predator’ series.

[peas_and_corn]

But… it’s so stupid (kinda like the alien/aliens annoyance)

[pfm]

It should be called Alien Inception or something. Maybe Aliener.

[Ridley]

> That thing should never be seen in motion. Ever.

Ridley. Scott.

That is all.

Elephant in the room.

[Ben Paddon]

I’m not even allowed to talk about this. It’s all very exciting.

[Dave]

Ali(b)en

[hummingbird]

After doing my best to purge every last detail of Resurrection from my memory, I really can’t decide whether I want this or not.

[TheLeen]

> Ali(b)en

Haha! Love it!

[pfm]

> After doing my best to purge every last detail of Resurrection from my memory, I really can?t decide whether I want this or not.

Yeah but Resurrection was directed by completely the wrong person in Jean-Pierre Jeunet (the commentary with him is an experience, all through it I was thinking ‘why did you direct this??’) and written by some hack who’s name slips my mind. He thinks he’s way way better and cooler than he is.

Inception, or whatever it gets called, is already better because they’re not involved.

[ChrisM]

>and written by some hack who?s name slips my mind. He thinks he?s way way better and cooler than he is.

His name is Joss Whedon. But I rather like his stuff.

As for Alien Resurrection, I quite liked it, although I think it’s probably the weakest of the films.

It had some good ideas. I.e. interpreting the concept of the ‘alien within’ in a whole other way. I also quite liked the crew members of the Betty and (yes) the Ripley Clone, although I understand peoples dislike of bringing her back. Remember though, it’s not actually her. Call was a great character too.

And that underwater sequence was brilliant.

I wasn’t keen on how they set up the crew of the Betty being alone on the ship with the aliens. I.e. they escape, and all the crew members are all massacred or flee. A)The Aliens are few in number and would pick people off one or two at a time, if we follow their activity in the previous films. b) It’s a ship of miltary people. Army guys. Running.

As for The Newborn… I’m all for plot twists but the way it was introduced just felt tacked on. Freaky looking critter though, but I prefer the others.

[Ben Paddon]

After doing my best to purge every last detail of Resurrection from my memory, I really can?t decide whether I want this or not.

Yes. You do.

[hummingbird]

> Yeah but Resurrection was directed by completely the wrong person in Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Thing is, I love Jeunet as a director, especially the movies he did with Marc Caro.
In a way that made Resurrection doubly disappointing.

[Andrew]

Jeunet was a fine and interesting choice, but the entire project was misguided. Whedon’s script was totally, totally wrong for the gig – what was on the page was already off-kilter for the series. Too arch, too knowing. Whedon’s considerable skills are mostly in playing with genres and archetypes, in presenting fictions that could only exist in fiction. Buffy is about ‘the girl in horror films’, it’s not about a real high-school girl. Firefly, Dollhouse, Dr Horrible – all doing the same thing. Brilliantly…but it ain’t Alien.

The Alien series, even in the third film, is predicated on taking place in a ‘real’ world. There’s nothing self-aware or post-modern in the films’ reality. Clunky space freighters, military grunts and scabby, dilapidated prisons. It’s a utilitarian, functional future. No whacky space pirates, no in-jokes about the company being bought by fucking Wall-Mart.

The ship’s computer in Alien is called Mother because it encourages a crew to perceive their computer a certain way, to see it as a protecting and life-giving unit. It makes sense within the fiction, carries elegant subtext but never goes beyond credibility. The ship’s computer in Resurrection is called Father because, well, you all saw Alien, right? See what we did? It’s like Mother only different! Clever!

Nope.

Completely the wrong franchise to do that with. And, simply by virtue of taking the material seriously, it makes Paul W.S. Anderson – who really is a hack, and whose AvP film is seriously mentally defective – a better Alien writer than one of the best scribes working in TV and film today. (Hell, it’s not even the worst AvP film. How insane is that?!)

[p2p_productions]

I know I’ve said this before, but Resurrection was the first screenplay I ever read, and for me, remains one of the best. Maybe it was just the particular draft I managed to get my hands on at the time, but IMO, the whole feel of the movie was quite different to what ended up on screen.

The trouble I find with Resurrection is that conceptually, it bears little resemblance to what was on the page. For a start, there’s more horror in Whedon’s screenplay, whereas the filmmakers themselves opted to go for a more Aliens-lite, action/adventure approach, cutting a fair amount of it out for no discernable reason.

Something that also sticks in my mind is the one line of stage direction which states the Betty and Auriga should not look alike, as to provide better contrast between them:

“A small vessel, it is every bit dirty and jerry-rigged as the Auriga is pristine.”

…I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when I finally saw the interior of the Auriga on the big screen for the first time.

Characterisation was also thrown out of the window to some degree. The music, although beautiful didn’t help, with its overtly ‘classic’ movie monster stylings. Some of the casting was off. The early CG effects were a bit of a miscalculation…

In short, I just don’t feel Whedon’s script was mostly to blame. Like all screenplays, his needed a polish here or there, but I have a feeling, if Scott, Cameron, or even Fincher had been behind the wheel on his shooting draft, Resurrection wouldn’t have received half the criticisms it did, and still does.

[Andrew]

If those guys had directed, they’d have had that script completely overhauled – by someone else.

[p2p_productions]

Agreed – a polish at the very least. But I still think that script had potential, darnit! :-))

[Andrew]

Oh it’s certainly not an incompetent work by any stretch. But it’s too flawed a thing to make a great movie out of. The – wholly reasonable – critique that the director showed the creature on-screen far too much is spot-on…but the script specifically required it.

(And not always for good reasons. The aliens escape by killing one of their number and using the acid to eat through the floor. Because, y’know, they’re entirely aware of what their blood is like, and what things it will have an effect on. Apparently these aliens actually SAW Alien!)

[p2p_productions]

>The aliens escape by killing one of their number and using the acid to eat through the floor.

Yeah, the whole acid-attack begs the question, why didn’t they just spit it out (maybe, time was a factor, or something)? And don’t get me started on Christie’s self-sacrifice… If there had only been a justifiable reason for him doing so, I could understand. But if I recall, what remains of the dead alien is just hanging limply off his boot – why didn’t he just shake it off?!

I think on the page, Vriess carried him to the top of the shaft, not realising he was already dead. So much better, dramatically.

[Ridley]

(Hell, it?s not even the worst AvP film. How insane is that?!)

Can I has elaboration?

[Andrew]

> Can I has elaboration?

Certainly!

For all the crapness of the first AvP – the PG-13 certificate; the building that cycles every ten minutes, meaning the aliens’ incubation must, also, only be ten minutes or less; the stupidity of ‘one day we’ll build a robot that looks like a younger version of the boss…after we’ve built some other models first’ – it does at least manage to be vaguely suited to its own fictional universe. It takes itself seriously. (It doesn’t deserve to, but that’s another debate.)

The production values are good – very good, actually – and the final ‘T-Rex’ tussle with the queen is emphatically not bad at all. The characters, though stupidly thin and under-developed, are appropriate to the genre and the series. And the arctic town environment itself is a smart location to stage things, albeit it woefully underused.

So while it’s basically mediocre nonsense, it’s still streets ahead of Requiem – which is incompetently photographed (hey, who needs to see stuff!), lecherous (a swimsuit scene?!), thinly written (never has there been such a lame study of ‘bullying’), and lazy (teens in a small town – such a remarkable setting for a horror film).

Failing to use its concepts well is one thing – the Predator doing clean-up could have been interesting, at least – and I applaud the desire to go for the R rating (though not the way it’s employed for gratuitous rather than frightening reasons), but it can’t even get the editing right, showcasing the limits of the practical effects rather than the benefits and failing to elicit a single jump.

Anderson’s film makes me slump away feeling that it really should have been better. The sequel makes me want to hire someone to kill the Strause brothers in order to prevent them getting near a camera ever again.

> Yeah, the whole acid-attack begs the question, why didn?t they just spit it out

Their spit isn’t acidic, so far as we’ve seen in the flicks. It dribbles, and crystallises – apparently – as part of the cocoon/environment change process. But it don’t sizzle.

> I think on the page, Vriess carried him to the top of the shaft, not realising he was already dead. So much better, dramatically.

I think this probably nails why Whedon, on his own, can’t manage ‘horror’ (by which I mean that tense, dark, empty spaceship horror). Either version of events has some emotional weight, but that’s the man’s skill – within a metaphorical context (as opposed to a realist one) to have gut-punch impact on an audience by means of a clever story beat.

He rigs surprises, shocks and revelations like a series of tripwires – Call’s a robot! Someone’s dead! – but he can’t seem to do the same with tension. The script’s full of hum-drum action bites and dark corridor bits and bobs, but because he’s blatantly more interested in the other stuff – new life cycles! Someone is alive after all! – he can’t commit to it.

I get why – that stuff can be very, very dull to write a lot of the time, and relies on the director not to screw it up, where a revelation to a group is both a joy to write and harder to get wrong on-set – but horror requires patience, tiny, incremental change, constant ratcheting up. Whedon’s movies are a little too ADD to do that, and a little too curious to leave the creatures in the dark.

[Carlito]

> The aliens escape by killing one of their number and using the acid to eat through the floor. Because, y?know, they?re entirely aware of what their blood is like, and what things it will have an effect on.

Look, you’re not thinking alien! That’s what aliens are: alien! They do alien things. Things that are… alien.

[Danny Stephenson]

LISTER: Your answer for anything weird is aliens isn’t it? You lose your keys: ‘It’s aliens’… A picture falls off the wall: ‘It’s aliens’… That time we lost a whole crew in a day? You thought that was ‘aliens’ as well!

RIMMER: Well we didn’t kill them all, Lister… Who did?

LISTER: Rimmer, aliens killed our crew?!

RIMMER: Well maybe they do something weird and alien-esque, Like a little mouth comes out of a bigger mouth or something.

LISTER: Well I wouldn’t like to be stuck behind one in a derelict mining ship!!

[End Scene]

[p2p_productions]

>Their spit isn?t acidic, so far as we?ve seen in the flicks. It dribbles, and crystallises – apparently – as part of the cocoon/environment change process. But it don?t sizzle.

http://www.anchorpointessays.com/stage3.html#spitting

;-)

[Andrew]

> http://www.anchorpointessays.com/stage3.html#spitting

Hmm – excellent. A page as prone to in-universe theorising (and typos) as my very own Space Corps Database!

[p2p_productions]

Yeah, love The Anchorpoint Essays. There’s a brief vid of that elevator shaft scene, too:

http://www.anchorpointessays.com/media/Adult_Auriga002.html

[Danny Stephenson]

A cheeky question, here:

Andrew, when you’re writing stuff like that for TOS, does it have to be authorised by Doug first?

[Andrew]

All content for the site is approved by GNP. I wouldn’t let that fool you into thinking my flights of fancy are especially ‘canon’, though!

[pfm]

I’ve never got on that well with Whedon’s all-too-knowing-hey-look-I’m-one-of-you-a-geek-writing-a-script-I’ve-seen-all-those-movies-too-and-hey-like-you-I-love-hot-girls-too-even-ones-who-can’t-act-so-let’s-all-get-in-a-big-ol-van-called-TV-and-take-the-piss tone, but I would love to see what he originally envisaged for Resurrection and how much the end result was due to studio fuckery.

To think of how much the Alien franchise got fucked over by execs, it’s a wonder Ridley Scott wants to come back to it. He did say at one stage that if they went ahead with the AvP franchise that would be the end of it for him. Or was it Cameron who said that?? He and Cameron planned to work on Alien 5 together at one point. I still reckon that’s what should be being made instead of a prequel. No doubt it will end on LV-426 right before the Nostromo crew land.

It’s the combination of Whedon and Jeunet that didn’t quite work. Along with the studio not giving them enough money and freedom, of course. The studio didn’t want anything that meant anything, just aliens chasing and killing people, which is probably what the execs just saw the Alien franchise as. It reminds me of Return of the Jedi, Jedi seems to have been made with the assumption that ‘this is what Star Wars is!’ rather than it naturally BEING Star Wars.

[Andrew]

> I-love-hot-girls-too-even-ones-who-can?t-act

You’re an idiot.

> I would love to see what he originally envisaged for Resurrection

Script:

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/a/alien-resurrection-script-screenplay-whedon.html

> The studio didn?t want anything that meant anything, just aliens chasing and killing people

I seriously believe that Resurrection is well-meant. Where Alien3 was laden with interference, Resurrection was built on reasonable foundations – they hired Whedon because he’s fantastic at female lead characters and genre content. They just missed the fact that he doesn’t play in the realism sandpit.

The main studio thing was bringing Ripley – specifically Weaver – back, a wrinkle that wasn’t on the cards when Whedon first started on the project. But since it led to the best bits of the film, it’s hard to argue against. Hiring Jeunet was a reasonable move, too. A couple of successful, visually arresting flicks behind him – and he was given plenty of scope to go for a vision of his own (one that, in the end, didn’t suit the series, mind you).

It’s the kind of set-up that, usually, you’d think was the right way to make a movie. Which just goes to prove, once again, how much of production is just weird, crazy alchemy.

[TheLeen]

I like the original three Alien films (some more, others less ;)) for being Alien, and I like Resurrection for being Resurrection.

It’s different from the old ones, but hey, Sigourney’s crazy-sexy Ripley clone made it worthwhile all by herself, although there were many many small things that I really enjoyed in the film, like, almost the entire cast. I wouldn’t have cast Michael Wincott for the role, but it was still good seeing him up there. And Brad Dourif. And some details that I didn’t much like but there’s (unsurprisingly) few films that don’t have those :P
I liked those two hours of my life and I’ve occasionally rewatched it and it’s always been a good time. I know I’m relatively easy to please, and I get why the film pissed of the die-hard Alien fans, but… I really don’t see why everyone’s giving Resurrection such a hard time, overall.

[si]

Until BtE came along, I’d never watched BladeRunner. And I’ve never seen the Alien movies either.
What kind of SF fan am I?

[Kris ‘Drivaaar’ Carter]

A shit one.

[si]

*sits and cries like a baby*

[Kris ‘Drivaaar’ Carter]

There, there…. I haven’t seen Blade Runner either. :)

[JamesTC]

I have, you know since I ordered it shortly after BTE finished, good film, not as good at BTE.

[peas_and_corn]

Didn’t Blade Runner rip off Red Dwarf?

[Ben Paddon]

Nah, Red Dwarf ripped off Jump Leads.

[pfm]

Ridley Scott must be pissed off that they didn’t ask him to direct G.I. Joe.

[Nakrophile]

I don’t like the idea of a prequel one bit. At least it’ll look nice…

[Dave]

>the stupidity of ?one day we?ll build a robot that looks like a younger version of the boss?after we?ve built some other models first?

This actually does make a sort of sense, it’s feasible that Weyland-Yutani are precisely the sort of company that would commemorate its founders and Parker’s reaction to Ash in Alien doesn’t make androids seem commonplace. Ash is undercover whereas Bishop is not, and if Mr Weyland is famous his replicas would make rubbish undercover operatives.

[Andrew]

They honour the boss by creating a mass-produced version of the man to do whatever tasks he’s ordered to? Hmm.

Also: See Alien 3 for the actual guy who designed Bishop. Still daft, but slightly more sensible, in a ‘God made us in his own image’ kinda way’.

Which only makes you wonder if he’s a) Living Bishop a clone of the guy in AvP, or b) that the AvP guy’s only there for reasons of stunt casting, thanks mainly to an (undeserved) B-movie fame level that made his available.

It’s B, obviously.

[ChrisM]

c) A realistic android with red blood. (That makes one wonder why Call, and even more advanced synthetic is back to the gooey snot. Maybe the red was because Bishop 2 ( was specifically designed to confuse Ripley on the off-chance someone knocked his ear off from behind like. Yeah, not sure I quite buy that either.

In that theories defence, when Bishop says “I’m human! I am!” after being hit, the tone suggests he’s almost trying to pursuade himself. I.e. as if he has been programmed to think he’s human like the replicants of Bladerunner, but the nature of his injury is giving him doubts. I think I’m probably reading too much into it, and the tone is actually him trying to pursuade Ripley though. Except his added ‘I am’ is too quiet for her to hear… (probably not intentional, but it fits the timeline with AvP in retroactive hindsight.)

d) Bishop 2 is a human descendant of Weyland rather than a clone or droid, who rather looks like his ancestor. Actually with the difference in appearance due to the difference in Henrickson’s age in Alien 2&3 and AvP I almost buy that. Almost. Then again maybe to characters in the show the two characters wouldn’t look alike… (Yep another stretch.)

[Author]

Replies