President Schwarzeneggar must have broken up their monopoly by the time replicants and flying cars were invented.
Ugh, I am so mixed about this. I loved the first three Alien movies. Yes, even Alien 3. Alien:Resurrection was completely devoid of any merit and should never have been made. But the idea of adding a QUALITY new addition to the Alien franchise (pretending 4 never happened) would be amazing. Buuuutttt…
It was with great anticipation that I awaited Prometheus and hopefully a prequel that took us back to the roots of the Alien story and would be a worthy addition to the Alien franchise. We all know how well that turned out. I cannot imagine Prometheus 2 being able to salvage the mess they’ve created.
So now, a new Alien movie is possible and I’m reminded of my expectations with Prometheus and really not excited about this. I also think bringing back the Ripley character will be a horrible, horrible move. There just isn’t a reasonable way to do it considering all that has already been done. Are we going to clone her AGAIN? Or will there be some Ripley-Alien as we’ve seen in some of the posts by Neil which look more like Ripley-Borg than anything else. If that’s how they have to shoehorn in Signorney Weaver to get the movie made, better to not make the movie.
MeanJoe, thanks - I almost could’ve written that myself, word for word. I’m enough of an Alien junkie I’ll see just about any films they make, but I suspect I’ll hate myself for it.
From the concept art that’s been seen so far, with Ripley in xenomorph-drag and scarred-face-Hicks at Weyland-Yutani HQ with the alien ship, it’s certainly post-Aliens in the continuity. The question is, will it be set as a direct sequel to Aliens, thereby jettisoning Alien³ and Alien Resurrection from continuity, or not?
On the big picture stuff, I thought they had done fine. Or at least, they were vague enough about everything that it doesn’t tie you to any one answer in particular.
The problems with Prometheus centered around the small picture stuff. A group of scientists went around acting as reasonably as a five year old on laughing gas, with the only explanable reason for it being that the script was written by someone with the intellect of a five year old on laughing gas, and Ridley Scott couldn’t be bothered to put his attention into anything but the visuals.
Well… Hicks died off screen, and Ripley has already been cloned multiple times, so I think they have plenty of ways to fanwank continuity if they want to.
For example: they could say that the Ripley in Alien 3 was already a clone, put there so that WY could build better planets by infesting a prison colony with the aliens. Great way to get an alien colony to study without any risk of them escaping. In this version, they only showed up with the troops at the end of Alien 3 when Ripley was going to kill the only alien queen they had. And then in Alien 4, we already know all of that cloning was done just so they could pull another alien queen out of the mess.
Unfortunately, I don’t have confidence that they came up as good an explanation.
Interesting article in Cracked critiquing Weyland-Yutani’s business plan.
And yet here we go again
So now along with prequels, sequels, sidequels and reboots we have to put up with movies going back to the point where the franchise spun off the rails so they can put right what once went wrong, like they’re Quantum Leaping movies as do-overs.
Fuck it, why not? So long as they learn the lessons of Superman Returns. I look forward to The Godfather 3, Indiana Jones 4 and Stark Trek 5.
I guess that’s exactly what they are doing.
How about I write the next Alien film?
Open with a shot of the standard “futuristic” green terminals from every Alien film:
From: Weyland Yutani Vice President of Teraforming Systems, Doomsday Weapons & Entertainment Media
To: Captain of Conestoga-class light assault carrier USS Costaguana
Subject: Company Directive 1243553
Proceed immediately to high orbit moon Acheron (LV-426). Deploy android combat team to derelict spacecraft of unknown origin located near site of Hadley’s Hope atmosphere processing colony to retrieve three (3) eggs of presumably alien origin.
SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: Locate USS Sulaco and determine fate of USCM task force and Hadley’s Hope colony. CONTACT VIA COMNET OR SHUTTLECRAFT ONLY!
EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION! INITATE EXTREME BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL HAZARD PROTOCOLS AT ALL TIMES!
MAINTAIN CONDITION 1 AT ALL TIMES
Eggs must be immediately placed in stasis in a reinforced blast and acid resistant compartment under armed guard. Preferably with ability to vent into space and/or purge with extreme temperatures.
Any crew who comes in contact with the surface, USS Sulaco or cargo and any survivors from the USS Sulaco or Colony must remain in QUARANTINE under same conditions for at least 48 hours. Any craft that comes in contact with the surface or USS Sulaco must also be completely swept by armed security team before and after docking and then stored in a secure area.
Basically the rest of the film mostly consists of 60-something year old Hicks and 120 something year old Ripley taking their grandkids to one of the three Weyland-Yutani World amusement parks to see the scary xenomorph exhibit behind six feet of acid-resistant glass.
Seriously. You mean to tell me an interstellar corporation can’t figure out how to retrieve a dumb fucking space cockroach without destroying a colony, a space freighter and a warship causing the deaths of a hundreds people?
Probably it can’t. An interstellar corporation is still a corporation.
Well, Fox insisted that the video game Aliens: Colonial Marines was supposed to be canon with the film franchise. And in that:
It is revealed that in between *Aliens *and Alien[sup]3[/sup] a company ship intercepted the Sulaco, woke Hicks, a Mr. Weyland (i.e. Lance Henrickson) interrogates him, there was a struggle, and someone else was pushed into Hicks’ cryotube, which gets ejected and lands on the prison planet. In Alien[sup]3[/sup] a collapsed girder obscured his face.
Pretty tenuous, but hey, some version of it could work! That, combined with the now infamous Alien[sup]3[/sup] was all just a hypersleep dream idea…
You might want to check out BrainGlutton’s link, which spoils what the deal is in its title.
It would appear now that the new film will somehow connect Alien and Aliens.
This is what I mean, it’s too early to be sure. I always thought that the alien invasion of the colony (Hadley’s Hope) from the second film would have made for a great SciFi Channel TV movie (great as in their Battlestar Galactica reboot, not Sharknado!) 
Michael Biehn has signed up to reprise his role as Hicks. If only they could figure out a way to resurrect Hudson they would be in some really pretty shit.
I read that Blomkamp will be ignoring Alien 3 & 4 as if those never happened, so it’ll be a direct sequel of Aliens.
I think ultimately people don’t really care that they’re watching sequels and prequels, and most people don’t even care that much that continuity is maintained.
But they do care about quality. The problem with the post Aliens Alien movies isn’t that they were sequels and prequels, it’s that they all sucked. Alien3 is the least sucky of them, but it is at best deeply flawed.
Branching continuity back at the last good movie is a great idea. Hicks is awesome. We shouldn’t let the writers/directors/producers of a bad sequel made 20 years ago keep us from making new good stories about him.
I don’t remember if it was a post or just a link in one, but someone here explained the simple truth about why only the first two Alien films were really good: They both had amazingly talented directors and the studio allowed them both complete freedom to make exactly the film they envisioned, with no interference.
It’s hard to imagine now, but back then there was no such thing as film franchises, other than James Bond & Star Trek both of which were viewed as campy, PG-rated kid’s fare. But by the time of Alien 3 the studio wanted complete control. What’s a real shame is that David Fincher later proved himself a true artist and if allowed to he’d have delivered with Alien[sup]3[/sup].
Even though the first AVP film wasn’t as horrible as I expected, the worst thing about it was that before the studio greenlit it James Cameron was seriously considering returning to the series. Once they went with AVP however he abandoned any ideas for it, saying they had turned it into, “Frankenstein vs The Wolfman”. Ridley Scott did eventually make Prometheus, but it wasn’t exactly the same thing…
Am I the only person that liked Alien: Resurrection? I mean sure, it wasn’t great, but it was a damn sight better than either AvP and Prometheus!
That said, I have no problem dropping all of those from the canon. I’m all for a truer in-universe sequel and I’m kind of excited to see where it goes. I just wish there was a way to get Vasquez back.
and as an aside I’m still praying Del Toro will reconsider doing At the Mountains of Madness since Prometheus sucked so hard.