I have just finished watching the first four Alien movies. Is there any serious talk about a 5th? And I don’t mean “Alien vs. Predator”!
Please Og, NO!
I don’t think they could get Sigourney Weaver on board at this point. And even if they could, I just pray they don’t invite Winona Rider along.
A few years ago I saw an interview someplace in which S.W. revealed the studio bounced the idea of an AlienV off of her, and she hadn’t objected to it completely. Obviously the thing isn’t even in pre-production since then, so I agree the window of opportunity for another chapter in the Ripley-as-alien-human-mutant-hybrid-clone-with-SuperPowers™ saga has passed. I doubt any actor at S.W.'s age could pull that off convicingly.
AvsP did OK in the box office, didn’t it? These days, the only excuse the studios need to lob another retread at us is a profit, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see another spinoff of some sort.
There could be a lot of life left in the franchise, if they are willing to go in some different directions.
If I were to write A5, I’d describe an encounter with a strain of the aliens that had evolved while the strain in the previous movies were dormant in egg form for god knows how long in that alien ship they were originally found in.
They could have weapons, greater intelligence, etc. But they’d still have to have the same “look and feel” as the aliens we know and love.
There was talk that Ridley Scott and James Cameron considered the idea of working together somehow to oversee a fifth (and presumably final) Alien movie, trying to go back to its origins. That’d probably be very interesting and worth seeing, but it seems that isn’t going to happen.
Meh. A-IV was a huge mistake as it was. Most people seem to have hated A-III with a burning hate like a thousand Suns, but I actually thought it was a reasonably fitting end to the franchise. I didn’t hate IV, really. I pitied it. It tried so hard to be liked, but the premise was such a sad contrivance, such a pathetically-transparent attempt to milk the money cow that it never really had a chance to be a legitimate Alien flick.
Any attempt at continuity would just compound the error, I’m guessing. They story’s been told; there’s no motivation except nostalgia and money. Again, if there’s any life left in the franchise, it’s some kind of vulgar spinoff like AvP, something that blatantly flouts aspirations to substance, and hence can be considered so separate from the Ripley arc no one would attempt to compare them. Freddie Kruger and Jason Voorhees bury the hatchet and join forces to defeat their deadliest challenger!..or maybe…What happens when a chestburster parasitizes a vampire???
If that dink Sylvester Stallone is allowed to make more Rambos and Rockies, sweet sweet Sigourney should be greenlighted to do her thing toot sweet.
That’s BRILLIANT.
But make the eggs located in the ship regular eggs from the modern species. But because when they hatch there’s no adults around the resulting adults are feral.
So actually the aliens are an enlightened race that evolved from stone cold killers. They have art and music and such. They’re peaceful and such.
Then have some company people bump into them and recognize them as the race of ‘terrifying’ aliens and what the misunderstandings drive the plot.
Maybe toss in an alien cult that wants to return to their primal destructive past and settle Earth and you’ve got yourself a new take on the franchise.
I read an interview with James Cameron (can’t find a link) that basically said that, and that he was even interested in directing another one. Then Alien vs Predator came out and they both lost interest in the idea.
So there’s another thing to be mad at that movie for!
I seriously disagree with Jon Chance on this one.
Aliens were scaryonly because they semed like a primal force of destruction: malicious hunger incarnate. They were a lot less scary in Aliens (2nd movie) because the heroes actally had guns. And if they hadn’t been outnumbered a hundred-to one and had competent leadership, they’d have done fine.
Give the aliens weaponry and “greater intelligence,” and the movie loses the last shred of fear. The aliens are just really ugly orcs. And orcs are not very scary.
I was trying to figure out why everyone but me hated Alien 3 so much, and I may have an answer other than “Because you’re an idiot, Loopy”.
I never saw the flick in theaters. Rather, I saw the “restored” version on DVD without realising it was a “directors cut” of sorts (the director himself was reportedly so peeved by the theater edit he will have nothing to do with any of it). Apparently the theatrical release is more than 30 min. shorter and is rendered almost incoherent by the hash so much omitted story made of it. Interesting…
Well, I must be an idiot too because I liked it. Even before I saw the restored Director’s Cut.
However, I like to pretend that Alien 4 doesn’t even exist.
And I agree with smiling bandit: Don’t give them more intelligence and guns. They are at their most frightening lurking in the shadows just around the corner, appearing as ominious blips on the radar detector, and with the sole purpose of protecting/feeding their queen and her eggs.
I don’t think inteligence is the way to go. But, different directions could work. After Alien 2, Dark Horse comics got the rights to publish Alien comics. Most of the stories they’ve done don’t involve Ripley or any characters from the movies at all.
Various governments and megacorps continue to breed and research aliens as weapons.
It’s found that like bees, aliens secrete royal jelly. Research reveals that it is a powerful stimulant and steroid, though heavily addicting. It is also a hallucinogenic drug.
The Church Of The Queen Mother worships the aliens. Royal jelly is their communion/eucharist. They view incubating a chestburster and being killed by its emergence as becoming one with their god.
The aliens have been found on other planets, and in other ancient ships so there’s no need to keep going back to LV246.
The aliens homeworld has been found.
OTTOMH Specific Stories (no spoilers)
Music Of The Spears- Pop music really is manufactured, composed by machines and performed by androids. A man struggles as one of the few remaining human musicians. His symphony of hatred is incomplete. He needs to record an alien.
Sacrifice- A ship crashes on a remote colony planet. The lone survivor, a priest, learns that an alien is loose in the jungle surrounding the outpost. The colonists are unarmed farmers. How have they kept the alien at bay?
Tuulitu-What if a cult believed that the writings of HP Lovecraft were the writings of an actual prophet? What if they found an ancient alien nest? Rather than cheezy and filled with winking jokes, this story is dark and serious. What happens when fanatics find proof of their beliefs?
Hasn’t Sigourney said that a future Alien move should show their home planet? Or what became of the rave that piloted the Derelict? Personally I think she can still pull off female action hero.
Hey, I’d be first in line if Sigourney signed on for IV. What other movie am I going to get to see her in a tank top sweaty, dirty and oozing estrogenical amazonian power?
Ehh…Clips of Imaginary Heros show Weaver is aging gracefully, but aging nonetheless. She’s got to be close to fifty. If someone dropped everything right now and started serious work on Alien V, I’d expect it in about four or five years. I admire Weaver for clearly not turning herself into a plasticised cyborg like the now duck-lipped Meg Ryan, but again, unless Alien-Human hybrids age just like you and I, and they make allowances for that in the script, which will necessarily limit the action element, it’s going to be a tough sell without some serious makeup magic, I think.
Yeah. A few more shots of sigourney in her panties sure wouldn’t hurt any future movies!
What a sweetie!
In the commentary for the first one, Ridley says his idea was that the ship which crashed was basically an aircraft carrier and that the aliens were the shock forces dropped onto a planet to wipe out the locals before the masters showed up (and somehow handled the aliens), one of them got loose, attacked the crew of the ship and it crashed on the planet for Ripley & Co. to find. The number of possibilities that such a situation opens up are nearly endless. Naturally, however, the suits in Follywood have no intention something like that since it’s cool.
If it were me, I’d breathe life into the franchise another way than expounding on “Hey, here’s even more information about this shadowy super-secret enemy monster! Now with complete color photos!” There’s only so much more we can learn about the Aliens race before they become just another zoological exhibit — dangerous, yes, but hardly scary.
The original Alien was scary because things happened that were very creepy, sometimes sudden and sometimes slow, but there was no explanation. We almost never saw the thing or knew its capabilities. Partly this was budget, but also directorial choice: imagining and unknown monster is better than seeing another copy of a known monster.
I don’t know all of the unofficial non-movie information about the Aliens, so what I’m about to say probably breaks a lot of fan-lore.
I would do Alien V as a movie where they return to the original planet to bomb the freakin’ place from orbit, just to be sure. No lingering doubts. No mamby-pamby waffling. Kill off the sources we know of without prejudice. Throw out the ecological worries of the first [del]four[/del] three films and all of the “but we might learn something!” or “but think of the military applications!” Mankind has got its shit together and it’s gonna wipe 'em out.
So they go back to finish the job.
Something else has got there first. A new type of Creature, designed as the arch-foe of the Alien. These aren’t natural creatures but bio-weapons, used by alien races as part of planetary takeover. Seed the planet with some Aliens — stop by a few months later and release the top-secret “stand down” enzyme into the atmosphere — you have a planet for your very own. The Creatures were designed to defeat the Aliens, and maybe vice-versa: they’re part of a bio-arms race. Right now the Creatures happen to be better.
That would give the franchise a new, mysterious monster; it would keep the old monster and allow for new mysterious upgrades; it would give the humans a decisive role like “Discover who made these!” rather than the vague conflicts like “Let’s exploit nature for riches!” It would include lots of blood and combat and gore, and some of that lurking, sneaky, unknown quality of the first movie.
It would also happen to be symbolically topical to what’s happening today: two ancient civilizations whom the heroes don’t fully comprehend have been fighting each other with increasing hatred and viciousness for millenia.
Yeah, okay, it probably breaks about a dozen things in the canon. But as it stands, the mystery and unknown horror of the first movie is long gone and something’s gotta be done to bring it back.