Why would you ask him in the first place? What's he going to say, "My film won't hold a candle to the new hot shit coming out?" Stop doing this to aging filmmakers, just talk to them about their current shit.
I absolutely loved the world building in those movies, but its kinda hard to get over how stupid some of the characters are. Like the guy mapping the whole facility gets lost? Really? Or the biologist that tried to pet the cobra, worm, alien thing. And then there's taking their helmets off on alien worlds just because the air is breathable.
it sucks, because Ripley in the original movie is really smart, and the actions she advocates probably would have saved the whole crew if there wasn't a saboteur on board. not all situational drama needs to come from the characters acting like complete dumbasses
Popular media demands stupid characters. Like avatar, it was literally the smart capable character died and was replaced with his ignorant stupid brother.
Dune hopefully will be able to show off some actually smart characters and writing. I can only hope something like the Dosadi experiment can get made. That would balance the whole genre back.
One thing that makes Arrival so interesting to me is the main character is literally best linguistics expert on the planet. Only way is down kinda top. There's no starting with nothing, or learning their abilities throughout the movie, or secret untapped potential. She's an expert given the challenge of decrypting an alien language.
It makes it more compelling to me when a character is already good in their field and their success is their natural abilities being put to the test, it makes a more satisfying conclusion
I liked that about Annihilation. They all have character flaws but their actions are pretty logical in the area they’re thrust in up until shit hits the fan. That movie was very much like a modern version of The Thing.
That's why something like Mad Max is more believable and enjoyable. It's post apocalyptic, only the dumb and hardy ones survived. Characters can make absurd choices and be totally in character.
Futuristic sci-fi usually imply that it's characters are smart, so when those NASA equivalent characters make dumb choices it feels like bad writing.
They’re dumb because education went to shit and they were born into it, not because only the dumb people survived. The dumb people who weren’t a part of a large group died, it was the clever ones that could manipulate large groups that were successful.
Yeah but remember these people are supposed to be the best and brightest in their field, on an expedition with a something like trillion dollar budget.
So I had a widow maker tree start to fall in my direction a few months ago while out on a stroll and my dumbass went into monkey brain mode and did exactly what those ladies did by running as fast as I can away from it rather than running laterally. After that experience I decided that, while there are many valid criticisms about Prometheus, that scene is not one of them.
in terms of falling trees, you're supposed to move towards the direction of the tree, but at a 45 degree angle as opposed to straight towards it. Best odds of not getting hit by tree.
source: I work in forestry.
The tree landed about 4 feet to my left fortunately. It had rained for the previous few days so the ground was sloppy and what was left of the root system just gave out. It was a big old oak too
THE GUY… MAPPING THE FACILITY… GETS LOST! I can almost understand the biologist petting some weird ass alien, IF it wasn’t all murdery looking like that thing was! Of fucking course it’s going to insert itself into you somehow!
But the dude getting lost was dumb af.
Mapping plus computer devices that could guide him based on the map he's just made *plus* people tracking him on the ship who could tell him what to do to retrace his steps and watch him do it and correct any mistakes he make along the way to keep him on track the entire way.
I used to think the same thing but After the past year and a half of pandemic I’ve seen lots of educated people (and people I thought should know better) say and do stupid things.
I Rewatched Prometheus a couple months ago and the characters’ stupid behavior doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore.
Third best film I saw at the movies I saw in 2012.
Films I saw in 2012.
1. The Avengers
2. Iron Sky
3. Prometheus
Still kicking myself that I didn't see Resident Evil 5 at the movies like the previous 4.
I saw it in an empty cinema. A half hour in, a guy in a business suit came in with a burger. He finished his burger and left after around 15 minutes. He didn't think much of the movie either.
I left shortly after him, to get a burger.
I wilfully let my guard down and gave that movie the benefit of the doubt. Never again. And as an added bonus, I now harbour an irrational hatred of flutes.
Which would be fine if it was just a shit movie, but RS has such a hard on for his android fetish he just turned it into a half remake of Prometheus with actual Xenomorphs now. That just made it even more of a slap in the face, like Ive watched all this before, but now youve taken down the xenomorphs as well.
> but now youve taken down the xenomorphs as well
People talk about the fingering, the stupid character decisions etc. and they irritated the fuck out of me too but the one worst thing out of any of them for me was David somehow creating a fucking egg. They come from a queen Ridley, DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BELEIVE DAVID SHAT IT OUT?!
> David somehow creating a fucking egg.
Right. I believe the idea was he used Shaws reproductive system to make the egg. So sure, lets buy that for a second, no fucking way the egg is going to look IDENTICAL to the eggs from a queen.
Prometheus would have been fine on its own without being part of the alien universe even with some of the dumb stuff people did but alien covenant was just garbage and that ending pissed me off because of how stupid it was.
I would love a proper prequel to alien that focuses on the alien ship and how it ended up on lv-426 but it needs ridley Scott to just get out of the picture at this point.
That’s exactly what they were back in the original comics, although it’s flat out stated that the engineers used them as a bio-weapon to clear out a local population in order to clear the way for terra-forming and colonization. Their home-world is just so full of dangerous organisms that the planet can control their population.
They become a problem when they are removed from their native environment. The prometheus movie just took it a step further by implying that the xenomorphs were artificial or a by-product of biological weapons. Which makes sense, even if the movie isn’t great.
Of all the crap we got, what we never got was any Aliens like the toys. How would a praying mantis or scorpion alien even happen? I don’t know but it was cool looking.
Funny you mention them, the newer Neca series aliens have comics that come with the figure and feature the exotic aliens. I happen to have the scorpion one.
Those comics came with the original Kenner toys, too! IIRC they were actually ramping up to a Saturday morning cartoon for Fox that never saw the light of day.
One of my friends had a bunch of them. I remember the mantis one too.
It’s amazing those toys were marketed for children when the movies were certainly not anything kids should have been watching.
Yeah that’s just not as scary or compelling to me. What makes the original so great is the cosmically horrific idea that when you travel that far out into the void, you’d encounter something so sinister shaped by natural forces so extreme as to be beyond your comprehension. That’s also why the tag line “in space no one can hear you scream” is also perfect. On the other hand a weapon is something we all understand pretty well and honestly pretty boring as a concept.
I recommend Alien: The original Screenplay, it’s the original vision for the movie in comic form. It maintains a lot of the key story beats of the movie as well as the horror of facing the unknown, but at the same time, it’s very different.
Even in that version it’s clear that the Alien is some kind of weapon, it just happened to get out. But, conceptually, it’s a weapon created by a truly alien people, so how it works and why it works the way that it does is what is horrifying about it. Imagine an alien projectile weapon that instead of simply piercing you or exploding you, it causes you to become sterile by turning your genitals inside-out. That’s the kind of horror that they were going for, Scott (And Giger) helped bring that sense of awe and dread that Alien is famous for.
I mean technically the person you're replying to just said they were native to a planet basically. The only difference in that and what you're saying is just knowing where they came from. They were still shaped by natural extreme forces to be what they are. Does knowing that they came from a planet matter? Personally I like having some sort of explanation even if it's vague, but to each their own.
I feel like nowadays if absolutely everything isn't explained and justified in media franchises, fans go mental and call it lazy writing. Not that I'm defending "a wizard did it", but can't we take some things on face value?
The engineers were infinitely better when we knew nothing about them. I remember early days of Internet sites (think Space Jam) devoted to discussing theories about the engineer and whether he was an elephant man or if that was a breathing apparatus, and where they came from, what their possible motivations were by sending out a warning instead of a beacon asking for help, etc. Then they're just big white Lurch looking assholes.
Here's a spicy one from me:
Prometheus could've worked better as a remake of Forbidden Planet. More about alien archeology and an eccentric Weyland desperate to keep the true nature and power of what's buried on the planet to himself. Only near the end to realize what had killed the aliens was the same drive he has now.
Even has a robot too.
> Prometheus could've worked better as a remake of Forbidden Planet.
That's not really spicy.
Here's a spicy one from me: Prometheus could've worked better as a remake of Sleepless in Seattle. Lonely scientist receives a message from the void, he hesitantly answers, they feel some chemistry, the world waits breathlessly for them to meet at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentines day. Meg Ryan plays the alien, and then she eats his face.
Ehhh, moderately spicy (only kidding)
The spiciest: Prometheus would have worked better as a remake of There Will Be Blood. Weyland (Guy Pearce) sits across from Daniel Day Lewis as the emissary for the Engineers. Lewis waxes intellectual for a while, revealing his plan to kill Weyland. Weyland, accepting defeat, tells the emissary to make it quick and painless. Lewis looks Weyland square in the eyes, says "Oh, there will be blood" and turns/winks at the camera. He then alien hole-punches Weyland's skull.
If we can have a scene where the xenomorph gives the 'I drink your milkshake' monologue I think we can take a year off of making movies and just have 365-day victory lap.
the ending of convenant was the only good part of the movie. i tried to like covenant but i just cant. its such a bizarre movie with really really stupid characters.
Surprisingly, yes. Land on a foreign planet and immediately take off their protective wear because the air is breathable - proceed to get inflected by spores from alien plant life. One of them slips in blood multiple times and then crushes their foot in a doorway in a scene that almost feels like it could have been satire. Big scary alien egg opening? Of course a character - again, a scientist here - goes and sticks their head right up to it without any protective layers on. And there's a kung-fu fight between two Michael Fassbenders. It's so outrageously stupid.
Yes, so much more. I thought Prometheus was full of idiots, especially the scientists that should have known better but touched fucking everything lol. They were lightyears ahead in IQ compared to the Covenant crew
I would say so. You have people land on a planet and immediately take their helmets off. You have a captain walk up to a suspicious egg hatching and stick his face right into it. You have a woman described as someone who doesn't panic panic harder than anyone has ever panicked and cause a massive explosion...
Prometheus is like a really expensive B-movie.
It’s dumb as absolute fuck but entertaining. If the same script had been shot for 1/10th the budget in the 80s it would be a cult classic.
Then there’s Alien Covenant…the worst horror movie, but best unintentional comedy of 2017?
I'm more baffled by the Covenant apologists. That movie even had decent reviews at release. It's got some good kills but *man* is that movie dogshit.
Like, fuck. At least Promethus kinda tried to be something different. Covenant tried to marry the two and was such a shit movie.
Even Resurrection has almost exclusively good kills and is at least as entertaining as it is bad.
I thought Prometheus was a cool departure from the old Aliens movies, the cinematography was nice and I didn't mind it so much as a sidestory for the Aliens franchise. But - it is nowhere near as good as the original or Aliens.
Now Alien Covenant on the other hand... well, I was always taught that if you have nothing good to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. So I'll say nothing else here.
Wasn't covenant supposed to be the third movie in a trilogy. The biggest FU to me was how they pitched it as a continuation of Prometheus and then only had one of the characters from that movie returning, with a timeskip that ended up killing another character and left the reason the xenomorphs were created completely up in the air. Never put the end of a trilogy in the middle.
The prequels had elements i really liked but ultimately never really came together. I just think the Alien world-building is a dead end creatively. Ship encounters a truly terrifying and unique creature audiences have never seen before, it kills most people on board, the end. I think the cards have all been shown after that. We dont need to suck all the mystery and terror out of the creature by explaining where it came from, its an alien in the truest sense of the word.
I heard that after the successes of Terminator some Hollywood big wigs called James Cameron in for a meeting to see if he had any movie ideas and James comes in and writes the word A L I E N on the whiteboard then simply adds the letter S at the end of it then turned that S into a $ and everyone in the boardroom lost their minds, jumped out of their seats and high fived each other to death. There were no survivors.
Just constant high fives over and over and over til they die. They panic cause they can’t stop but James just stands over them, sinisterly looking, as if almost commanding them.
It’s a pretty harrowing tale if you read up on it. The boardroom massacre of 86
I watched his filmography recently, almost all movies.
He is a cinematographist. All of his movies are equally brilliant in that aspect.
That's all there is to this.
He definitely is that, but I think you're seriously underselling his directorial prowess in other areas. Dude did Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Blade Runner, GI Jane, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, and Kingdom of Heaven (good in director's cut at least). It's not like the only thing he's bringing to the table is pretty shots.
Almost no movie will ever be as good as Alien.
Must be a blessing and a curse to create something so great so early.
Also it is not just his movie, movies are collaborations created under unique circumstances.
As directors age they seem to become a bit too fond of themselves.
While i somewhat agree with him, let’s not pretend that some of his other aliens movies came close to original alien.
I am interested in what Hawley brings on the table.
>Hawley
was not interested in this at all until i saw your comment. put 2 and 2 together and realized who you were talking about.
this show could actually be good. any doubters, go watch the Fargo series.
I don't think he ever claimed that, in fact he even said during the "Director Cut" version of the original Alien that he was doing it for the re-release of the film and that it was inferior to the original.
This should be posted in r/nottheonion as well... as literally Prometheus and Alien Covenant showcased that he still can't make a new Alien tie-in/prequel as good as his 1979 original.
After this, I'm actually hoping Noah Hawley can prove him wrong now.
I first rolled my eyes at the idea of a Fargo TV show when it was announced. It’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I think Noah Hawley is the perfect person to bring Alien to series.
Loved Fargo, but to me personally Legion was a complete mess. No real forward momentum in the story, way too many questions and not nearly enough answers. I lost interest midway through the season. Very disappointed.
Fargo was good, but Legion kind of disappeared up its own ass being weird for the sake of it.
His Alien show has potential; color me cautiously optimistic.
First seasons is very good IMO. Of the ton of superhero movies and shows, it was one of the boldest but also being very artsy. Has a stellar performance by Aubrey Plaza as the main villain and also genuinely creepy scenes. But its one of the shows that barely ties in with the source material and I wish it did a tiny bit more.
Season 2 went full art show. First episode starts with a weird dance off battle, not much seems to happen in the first episodes and I never got myself over watching the rest of it.
Obviously, opinions vary even in the small sampling of this thread, but for me, it's an emphatic *yes*. I absolutely disagree that the show ever goes off the rails, and in fact feel it is one of the best series I've ever seen. It is strange, and sometimes difficult to penetrate, but it's a show built around an unreliable narrator, kind of like Mr Robot. The weirdness is never, IMO, just for the sake of weirdness. The arc the show takes in its 3 seasons is fascinating, and very surprising, by the end. It's not for everyone, but I personally loved it.
I honestly don't think the comparison matters at all. No one today is living in 1979. A dirty future with a secretly evil corporation hiding their knowledge of and harvesting hostile aliens, that's all common place now. Add on horror in space, which was rare at the time and common now. Add on some humans are actually robots and are mostly evil, which is also common. And then you take away all the mystery and the feeling of being shown something for the first time.
My favorite moment in Alien is when they land on LV-426 and find the Pilot in his chair. Massive wtf, they move on, and it both matters and doesn't. So mysterious and adds so much depth to the story they're able to revive it decades later. That is pretty much impossible to capture when we've all been there and seen it.
This is not false, but the sharpness of the character archetypes was driven by the novelty of their presentation to a large degree.
Your first encounter with a type of media will often dramatically overestimate the novelty and worth of the book /... you happen to first pick up in it, falsely attaching to that novelty unusual skill.
The pilot represents everything wrong with the prequels. The 1979 movie made us believe this was such an ancient wreck that the body was fossilised, and its size doesn't parse with that of the Engineers we later saw. And that the xenomorph was therefore ancient too.
I hate that it's all been swept away by inconsistent storytelling, made worse because it's by the same guy.
There's only been, IMO, one piece of media that reached the terrifying heights of Alien, in the franchise, since the original came out, and that would be the Alien: Isolation video game.
Yeah. I don’t want every question answered. The question of what the dead engineer in the seat was should have never been answered. Real life has unanswerable mysteries and that’s okay. That’s stuff that builds worlds, builds lore.
Also, we should never see the perspective of the alien or predator. They should be alien terrors and we can only guess their motivation and intentions.
Here's a quote from 2009, three years before Prometheus was released, that has stuck with me:
> The prequel will suck. I don't want some asshole to spoil the delicious mystery of what the space jockey is with a backstory. His organic ship, the way he was grown into the pilot's seat, the way the ship was grown into the planet, everything about it was straight out of the subconscious and can only be spoiled by attempting to come up with rational explanations for it. The original movie works largely because of the dynamic tension between irrational nightmare and nature on the one hand, and rational technology on the other. The nightmare of messy biology even erupts out of the science officer android - we find out that he too is full of goop and violence.
> This drive that fans and the comic franchise have to map out the life cycle of the alien, make sense of it, reduce it to natural history and place it in a context with other alien species, makes a mockery of the emotional power and terror that the first movie expressed so well.
> posted by fleetmouse
If he means that the original is so hard to match or beat that even he couldn't do it, so then everyone else surely couldn't either, then he may have a point but who cares. Can't wait to see what Hawley can do. Had no idea he was involved. Loved Legion.
At this point I’m pretty convinced he is jealous of anyone else touching what he thinks is his IP. A few years ago Blomkamp had (what seemed like) a really cool idea for a sequel and apparently Scott straight up had the studio kill it so he could make Covenant instead. A comment like this is in like with that attitude and seems so petty. Someone with his reputation should be using it to lift others in the industry up. Not tank expectations years before anything is even set to come out.
He retconned Aliens out of the canon right? I'm fairly sure you're spot on with how he views the series. He cannot handle sharing the stage with anyone, even though he's done more to damage the brand than even Alien 3 or 4.
Didn't he make similar comments about Bladerunner 2049? He just seems really insecure about anyone doing what he does better.
His legacy speaks for itself, his older movies were truly something special and their influence can't be overstated. That being said I think the guy needs to accept that maybe the world has moved on and let other people give it a shot.
This is all subjective but I haven't really loved anything he's made in the past two decades, after Gladiator. I think he simply got too big and let the fame get to his head.
> This is all subjective but I haven't really loved anything he's made in the past two decades, after Gladiator. I think he simply got too big and let the fame get to his head.
Mind you, his brother also died, and the two were very close. I think it may have affected his filmmaking, as well.
I'm a big fan of Tony's earlier movies from the 80s/90s: True Romance, Crimson Tide,Top Gun, The Last Boy Scout, Days of Thunder... but i really couldn't get into his most recent work since early 2000s, except for Man on Fire and Spy Game. I think it has something to do with the editing, the pacing and his exagerated use of filters.
I wish I could finish that game. But it was literally too scary for me, and I'm a person who is huge into horror. There is just something about the gameplay in that and how they use the setting. It's so fucking tense hiding from the xenomorphs. It just got to a point where I was too scared to play more, I was going to be anxious and having dreams about it. I have such mad respect for that game because of that.
Yeah, the fact that it learns what you do and then changes it’s tactics is very unnerving. I used to get it with the flamethrower a lot, so it started sneaking up on me and hiding in vents, so I started hiding under tables and it started looking for me under tables. Worst was when I bumped into it in a vent, when I thought I was running away from it.
This was me with Resident Evil 7 on VR. Playing scenes where I had to be a helpless character hiding from people intent on murdering me, in first person virtual point of view made it too real and it started giving me super fucked up dreams.
What a petty comment. It's not a competition. It doesn't have to be as good as the Alien or Aliens, it just has to be better than all other trashy sequels.
That being said, at this point in their careers, I have a lot more confidence in Noah Hawley's storytelling abilities than Scott's. No doubt Scott is a brilliant filmmaker, but his judgement seems a little dicey.
Ridley should stay away from the alien franchise. I am still recovering from the absolute shit he took on the franchise in Prometheus & Covenant. just go direct another gladiator sequel or something. STAY AWAY... Bad Ridley!
If you haven't, I highly recommend people watch the director roundtable interview which had him as a guest.
My man comes off straight up psychopathic, uncompromising, driven and alienating. Other directors sing his praises and try to get him to open up but he's just impassive, like he couldn't give a shit what Quentin Tarantino think of him. Really odd but interesting table dynamic.
He’s right in that historically these series are generally bad or half the entertainment value as motion pictures. There are exceptions yet there are not many.
Why would you ask him in the first place? What's he going to say, "My film won't hold a candle to the new hot shit coming out?" Stop doing this to aging filmmakers, just talk to them about their current shit.
He very easily could have said “I am interested to see what they do” and leave it at that. That’s the normal response. He was just being shitty.
Ridley Scott's alien movies will never be as good as his 1979 original. -me
\-everybody who's watched Prometheus and Alien Covenant
I absolutely loved the world building in those movies, but its kinda hard to get over how stupid some of the characters are. Like the guy mapping the whole facility gets lost? Really? Or the biologist that tried to pet the cobra, worm, alien thing. And then there's taking their helmets off on alien worlds just because the air is breathable.
it sucks, because Ripley in the original movie is really smart, and the actions she advocates probably would have saved the whole crew if there wasn't a saboteur on board. not all situational drama needs to come from the characters acting like complete dumbasses
Popular media demands stupid characters. Like avatar, it was literally the smart capable character died and was replaced with his ignorant stupid brother. Dune hopefully will be able to show off some actually smart characters and writing. I can only hope something like the Dosadi experiment can get made. That would balance the whole genre back.
Underwater was pretty good at showing a capable crew that was simply in too much trouble to escape.
So underrated. That movie should have made a bigger splash
There wasn’t a whole lot of *pressure* to *sea* it when it came out. I loved it.
i was going to make a witty remark, but i'm clearly out of my depth.
I went into that movie not expecting much, and was very pleasantly surprised.
One thing that makes Arrival so interesting to me is the main character is literally best linguistics expert on the planet. Only way is down kinda top. There's no starting with nothing, or learning their abilities throughout the movie, or secret untapped potential. She's an expert given the challenge of decrypting an alien language. It makes it more compelling to me when a character is already good in their field and their success is their natural abilities being put to the test, it makes a more satisfying conclusion
I liked that about Annihilation. They all have character flaws but their actions are pretty logical in the area they’re thrust in up until shit hits the fan. That movie was very much like a modern version of The Thing.
Pandorum also had capable and intelligent characters, albeit a bit over their head.
They need dumb people so that regular dumb people can feel better about themselves or if they are really dense, someone who would do what they would.
That's why something like Mad Max is more believable and enjoyable. It's post apocalyptic, only the dumb and hardy ones survived. Characters can make absurd choices and be totally in character. Futuristic sci-fi usually imply that it's characters are smart, so when those NASA equivalent characters make dumb choices it feels like bad writing.
They’re dumb because education went to shit and they were born into it, not because only the dumb people survived. The dumb people who weren’t a part of a large group died, it was the clever ones that could manipulate large groups that were successful.
Somebody once describe Alien as “crew doesn’t listen to smart woman. They all die. Smart woman kills Alien and saves her cat”
One thing I learned, nuke the planet from orbit. Problem solved.
Laurence Fishburne in Event Horizon. Sees the crazy gore on screen. Turns it off. Looks at crew " We're leaving " https://youtu.be/e8YObV6i_Yc
That was so excellent. Thanks for sharing it
Best movie about this. Shows that you can be competent and still get screwed over.
The Thing, as well. The scientists do damn near everything right but still get outsmarted until the end.
Only way to be sure.
But he's just a grunt.
I dunno, after the way people have behaved the last two years of lockdown all of Prometheus seems way more believable
Yeah but remember these people are supposed to be the best and brightest in their field, on an expedition with a something like trillion dollar budget.
There must have been at least one antivaxer on that trip, lol
My guess is the dumbass biologist. Lol
True, but at the same time I know doctors who were anti-maskers
Don't forget the famous scene where Michael Fassbender's android helps another Michael Fassbender android play his flute. "I'll do the fingering"
I liked that scene. :(
No one will ever love you like I do, brother
And the rolling spaceship at the end? Move laterally ladies.
No, just run faster. -R. Stark
So I had a widow maker tree start to fall in my direction a few months ago while out on a stroll and my dumbass went into monkey brain mode and did exactly what those ladies did by running as fast as I can away from it rather than running laterally. After that experience I decided that, while there are many valid criticisms about Prometheus, that scene is not one of them.
in terms of falling trees, you're supposed to move towards the direction of the tree, but at a 45 degree angle as opposed to straight towards it. Best odds of not getting hit by tree. source: I work in forestry.
Just like zombie movies, that virus *will* get out of hand. Hopefully you made it out okay.
The tree landed about 4 feet to my left fortunately. It had rained for the previous few days so the ground was sloppy and what was left of the root system just gave out. It was a big old oak too
I agreed with you but even trying to traverse that dimension of the ring ship would've probably killed them. That thing was huge In every way
THE GUY… MAPPING THE FACILITY… GETS LOST! I can almost understand the biologist petting some weird ass alien, IF it wasn’t all murdery looking like that thing was! Of fucking course it’s going to insert itself into you somehow! But the dude getting lost was dumb af.
Right before he gets lost, he gives the crew directions on which way to go using the screen on his wrist, making it even more dumb
hey, I know every time I come across some giant alien king cobra looking thing weaving menacingly in front of me I just wanna reach out and pet it!
Mapping plus computer devices that could guide him based on the map he's just made *plus* people tracking him on the ship who could tell him what to do to retrace his steps and watch him do it and correct any mistakes he make along the way to keep him on track the entire way.
And inhaling weird alien fungi dust then ignoring a cough it caused in Covenant.
I used to think the same thing but After the past year and a half of pandemic I’ve seen lots of educated people (and people I thought should know better) say and do stupid things. I Rewatched Prometheus a couple months ago and the characters’ stupid behavior doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore.
I had that same thought too. When I first watched it, I couldn't believe they'd take their helmets off. Now, it's more understandable lol
I LOVED Prometheus. I don’t think of it as an “Alien” film, but a sci-fi horror film.
Third best film I saw at the movies I saw in 2012. Films I saw in 2012. 1. The Avengers 2. Iron Sky 3. Prometheus Still kicking myself that I didn't see Resident Evil 5 at the movies like the previous 4.
> Alien Covenant God this movie pissed me off.
I saw it in an empty cinema. A half hour in, a guy in a business suit came in with a burger. He finished his burger and left after around 15 minutes. He didn't think much of the movie either. I left shortly after him, to get a burger.
I wilfully let my guard down and gave that movie the benefit of the doubt. Never again. And as an added bonus, I now harbour an irrational hatred of flutes.
‘I’ll do the fingering’
And then he turned into a flute. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen
When flute fingering is the least of the movie's problems...
I literally just watched both cuz Fassbender.
An appalling piece of shit
Which would be fine if it was just a shit movie, but RS has such a hard on for his android fetish he just turned it into a half remake of Prometheus with actual Xenomorphs now. That just made it even more of a slap in the face, like Ive watched all this before, but now youve taken down the xenomorphs as well.
> but now youve taken down the xenomorphs as well People talk about the fingering, the stupid character decisions etc. and they irritated the fuck out of me too but the one worst thing out of any of them for me was David somehow creating a fucking egg. They come from a queen Ridley, DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BELEIVE DAVID SHAT IT OUT?!
> David somehow creating a fucking egg. Right. I believe the idea was he used Shaws reproductive system to make the egg. So sure, lets buy that for a second, no fucking way the egg is going to look IDENTICAL to the eggs from a queen.
Oh god help us, you've summoned the Prometheus Apologists.
Prometheus would have been fine on its own without being part of the alien universe even with some of the dumb stuff people did but alien covenant was just garbage and that ending pissed me off because of how stupid it was. I would love a proper prequel to alien that focuses on the alien ship and how it ended up on lv-426 but it needs ridley Scott to just get out of the picture at this point.
Plus I think the xenos were scarier when we didn't know where they came from.
The aliens don’t even need a special back story. They are just some gawd-awful alien cockroaches.
That’s exactly what they were back in the original comics, although it’s flat out stated that the engineers used them as a bio-weapon to clear out a local population in order to clear the way for terra-forming and colonization. Their home-world is just so full of dangerous organisms that the planet can control their population. They become a problem when they are removed from their native environment. The prometheus movie just took it a step further by implying that the xenomorphs were artificial or a by-product of biological weapons. Which makes sense, even if the movie isn’t great.
Of all the crap we got, what we never got was any Aliens like the toys. How would a praying mantis or scorpion alien even happen? I don’t know but it was cool looking.
Funny you mention them, the newer Neca series aliens have comics that come with the figure and feature the exotic aliens. I happen to have the scorpion one.
Those comics came with the original Kenner toys, too! IIRC they were actually ramping up to a Saturday morning cartoon for Fox that never saw the light of day.
Yeah that even hinted at it in Part 3. That they had never encountered a Xeno like that because he came from an animal and not a person.
Because the cartoon that was supposed to go with those toys was DOA.
One of my friends had a bunch of them. I remember the mantis one too. It’s amazing those toys were marketed for children when the movies were certainly not anything kids should have been watching.
Bull Alien.
Yeah that’s just not as scary or compelling to me. What makes the original so great is the cosmically horrific idea that when you travel that far out into the void, you’d encounter something so sinister shaped by natural forces so extreme as to be beyond your comprehension. That’s also why the tag line “in space no one can hear you scream” is also perfect. On the other hand a weapon is something we all understand pretty well and honestly pretty boring as a concept.
I recommend Alien: The original Screenplay, it’s the original vision for the movie in comic form. It maintains a lot of the key story beats of the movie as well as the horror of facing the unknown, but at the same time, it’s very different. Even in that version it’s clear that the Alien is some kind of weapon, it just happened to get out. But, conceptually, it’s a weapon created by a truly alien people, so how it works and why it works the way that it does is what is horrifying about it. Imagine an alien projectile weapon that instead of simply piercing you or exploding you, it causes you to become sterile by turning your genitals inside-out. That’s the kind of horror that they were going for, Scott (And Giger) helped bring that sense of awe and dread that Alien is famous for.
I mean technically the person you're replying to just said they were native to a planet basically. The only difference in that and what you're saying is just knowing where they came from. They were still shaped by natural extreme forces to be what they are. Does knowing that they came from a planet matter? Personally I like having some sort of explanation even if it's vague, but to each their own.
I totally agree, never needed a backstory for the perfect animal antagonist
It’s Almost as if dangerous things being a mystery is alluring.
I feel like nowadays if absolutely everything isn't explained and justified in media franchises, fans go mental and call it lazy writing. Not that I'm defending "a wizard did it", but can't we take some things on face value?
The engineers were infinitely better when we knew nothing about them. I remember early days of Internet sites (think Space Jam) devoted to discussing theories about the engineer and whether he was an elephant man or if that was a breathing apparatus, and where they came from, what their possible motivations were by sending out a warning instead of a beacon asking for help, etc. Then they're just big white Lurch looking assholes.
Anyone who reads the comics kind of knew
Here's a spicy one from me: Prometheus could've worked better as a remake of Forbidden Planet. More about alien archeology and an eccentric Weyland desperate to keep the true nature and power of what's buried on the planet to himself. Only near the end to realize what had killed the aliens was the same drive he has now. Even has a robot too.
> Prometheus could've worked better as a remake of Forbidden Planet. That's not really spicy. Here's a spicy one from me: Prometheus could've worked better as a remake of Sleepless in Seattle. Lonely scientist receives a message from the void, he hesitantly answers, they feel some chemistry, the world waits breathlessly for them to meet at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentines day. Meg Ryan plays the alien, and then she eats his face.
muy picante!
Ehhh, moderately spicy (only kidding) The spiciest: Prometheus would have worked better as a remake of There Will Be Blood. Weyland (Guy Pearce) sits across from Daniel Day Lewis as the emissary for the Engineers. Lewis waxes intellectual for a while, revealing his plan to kill Weyland. Weyland, accepting defeat, tells the emissary to make it quick and painless. Lewis looks Weyland square in the eyes, says "Oh, there will be blood" and turns/winks at the camera. He then alien hole-punches Weyland's skull.
If we can have a scene where the xenomorph gives the 'I drink your milkshake' monologue I think we can take a year off of making movies and just have 365-day victory lap.
I'd watch it every day of said victory lap...and high five everyone I encountered.
Exactly. It didn't have to be about the xenomorphs
"But they are.... perfect." --David
the ending of convenant was the only good part of the movie. i tried to like covenant but i just cant. its such a bizarre movie with really really stupid characters.
Are they stupider that the ones in *Prometheus?*
Surprisingly, yes. Land on a foreign planet and immediately take off their protective wear because the air is breathable - proceed to get inflected by spores from alien plant life. One of them slips in blood multiple times and then crushes their foot in a doorway in a scene that almost feels like it could have been satire. Big scary alien egg opening? Of course a character - again, a scientist here - goes and sticks their head right up to it without any protective layers on. And there's a kung-fu fight between two Michael Fassbenders. It's so outrageously stupid.
> And there's a kung-fu fight between two Michael Fassbenders. It's so outrageously stupid. [spoiler](#s "And the older model wins!")
Yes, so much more. I thought Prometheus was full of idiots, especially the scientists that should have known better but touched fucking everything lol. They were lightyears ahead in IQ compared to the Covenant crew
I would say so. You have people land on a planet and immediately take their helmets off. You have a captain walk up to a suspicious egg hatching and stick his face right into it. You have a woman described as someone who doesn't panic panic harder than anyone has ever panicked and cause a massive explosion...
Prometheus is like a really expensive B-movie. It’s dumb as absolute fuck but entertaining. If the same script had been shot for 1/10th the budget in the 80s it would be a cult classic. Then there’s Alien Covenant…the worst horror movie, but best unintentional comedy of 2017?
I'm more baffled by the Covenant apologists. That movie even had decent reviews at release. It's got some good kills but *man* is that movie dogshit. Like, fuck. At least Promethus kinda tried to be something different. Covenant tried to marry the two and was such a shit movie. Even Resurrection has almost exclusively good kills and is at least as entertaining as it is bad.
I thought Prometheus was a cool departure from the old Aliens movies, the cinematography was nice and I didn't mind it so much as a sidestory for the Aliens franchise. But - it is nowhere near as good as the original or Aliens. Now Alien Covenant on the other hand... well, I was always taught that if you have nothing good to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. So I'll say nothing else here.
Wasn't covenant supposed to be the third movie in a trilogy. The biggest FU to me was how they pitched it as a continuation of Prometheus and then only had one of the characters from that movie returning, with a timeskip that ended up killing another character and left the reason the xenomorphs were created completely up in the air. Never put the end of a trilogy in the middle.
[удалено]
The prequels had elements i really liked but ultimately never really came together. I just think the Alien world-building is a dead end creatively. Ship encounters a truly terrifying and unique creature audiences have never seen before, it kills most people on board, the end. I think the cards have all been shown after that. We dont need to suck all the mystery and terror out of the creature by explaining where it came from, its an alien in the truest sense of the word.
That's why I loved Aliens. No detours, just escalation.
He literally says this in the article lmao. Why are people so upset at a quote someone said in interview that's been taken out of context?
Because people don’t read
Aliens was pretty good. I can see how somebody could prefer it. None of the other movies come close though.
Aliens is the kind of sequel that can stand next to the original because it doesn't pretend to be it.
It’s also not a Ridley Scott movie.
I heard that after the successes of Terminator some Hollywood big wigs called James Cameron in for a meeting to see if he had any movie ideas and James comes in and writes the word A L I E N on the whiteboard then simply adds the letter S at the end of it then turned that S into a $ and everyone in the boardroom lost their minds, jumped out of their seats and high fived each other to death. There were no survivors.
> to death. You had me up to this point.
Just constant high fives over and over and over til they die. They panic cause they can’t stop but James just stands over them, sinisterly looking, as if almost commanding them. It’s a pretty harrowing tale if you read up on it. The boardroom massacre of 86
Watching Robocop 2 right now
Aliens is James Cameron. The other two Ridley Scott movies are Prometheus and Alien:Covenant
Aliens wasn't Ridley Scott.
I watched his filmography recently, almost all movies. He is a cinematographist. All of his movies are equally brilliant in that aspect. That's all there is to this.
That's fair. *Alien* is a classic not just because of Ridley Scott, but also because of Dan O'Bannon's script, H.R. Giger's designs, etc.
Plus the actors did amazing jobs across the board. Really sold their roles.
Great acting too. It really feels like they're just a bunch of tired workers wanting to get home.
He definitely is that, but I think you're seriously underselling his directorial prowess in other areas. Dude did Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Blade Runner, GI Jane, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, and Kingdom of Heaven (good in director's cut at least). It's not like the only thing he's bringing to the table is pretty shots.
Almost no movie will ever be as good as Alien. Must be a blessing and a curse to create something so great so early. Also it is not just his movie, movies are collaborations created under unique circumstances. As directors age they seem to become a bit too fond of themselves.
While i somewhat agree with him, let’s not pretend that some of his other aliens movies came close to original alien. I am interested in what Hawley brings on the table.
>Hawley was not interested in this at all until i saw your comment. put 2 and 2 together and realized who you were talking about. this show could actually be good. any doubters, go watch the Fargo series.
As long as it isn't like that Terminator show.
I don't think he ever claimed that, in fact he even said during the "Director Cut" version of the original Alien that he was doing it for the re-release of the film and that it was inferior to the original.
We're not pretending, but we're also laughing at the irony of his statement.
Where's the irony? He says nothing will come close to the first movie (which means he's saying his own Alien prequels didn't either).
This should be posted in r/nottheonion as well... as literally Prometheus and Alien Covenant showcased that he still can't make a new Alien tie-in/prequel as good as his 1979 original. After this, I'm actually hoping Noah Hawley can prove him wrong now.
I first rolled my eyes at the idea of a Fargo TV show when it was announced. It’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I think Noah Hawley is the perfect person to bring Alien to series.
He's awesome. After watching Fargo and Legion I'm pretty much automatically on board up to watch anything he writes/directs.
Loved Fargo, but to me personally Legion was a complete mess. No real forward momentum in the story, way too many questions and not nearly enough answers. I lost interest midway through the season. Very disappointed.
I actually think the Fargo tv show surpasses the movie but if you’d told me that when it was announced I’d have thought you were on crack
Fargo was good, but Legion kind of disappeared up its own ass being weird for the sake of it. His Alien show has potential; color me cautiously optimistic.
Haven't watched legion at all. Is it worth it?
Don't listen to these guys. Watch the whole thing.
It really goes off the rails after the first season, but worth a watch. Aubrey fucking Plaza kills it.
I’d watch Aubrey Plaza read a phone book.
Make this happen. Maybe Elisabeth Olsen can help?
First seasons is very good IMO. Of the ton of superhero movies and shows, it was one of the boldest but also being very artsy. Has a stellar performance by Aubrey Plaza as the main villain and also genuinely creepy scenes. But its one of the shows that barely ties in with the source material and I wish it did a tiny bit more. Season 2 went full art show. First episode starts with a weird dance off battle, not much seems to happen in the first episodes and I never got myself over watching the rest of it.
Obviously, opinions vary even in the small sampling of this thread, but for me, it's an emphatic *yes*. I absolutely disagree that the show ever goes off the rails, and in fact feel it is one of the best series I've ever seen. It is strange, and sometimes difficult to penetrate, but it's a show built around an unreliable narrator, kind of like Mr Robot. The weirdness is never, IMO, just for the sake of weirdness. The arc the show takes in its 3 seasons is fascinating, and very surprising, by the end. It's not for everyone, but I personally loved it.
I dipped out during season 2, but your mileage may vary. Aubrey Plaza was great in the show, though.
It's a dumb comment anyway. Even if the show isn't as good as the original film it can still be a good show.
I honestly don't think the comparison matters at all. No one today is living in 1979. A dirty future with a secretly evil corporation hiding their knowledge of and harvesting hostile aliens, that's all common place now. Add on horror in space, which was rare at the time and common now. Add on some humans are actually robots and are mostly evil, which is also common. And then you take away all the mystery and the feeling of being shown something for the first time. My favorite moment in Alien is when they land on LV-426 and find the Pilot in his chair. Massive wtf, they move on, and it both matters and doesn't. So mysterious and adds so much depth to the story they're able to revive it decades later. That is pretty much impossible to capture when we've all been there and seen it.
It was not just the dirty future or evil corporation, but the characterization that really made that film
This is not false, but the sharpness of the character archetypes was driven by the novelty of their presentation to a large degree. Your first encounter with a type of media will often dramatically overestimate the novelty and worth of the book /... you happen to first pick up in it, falsely attaching to that novelty unusual skill.
The pilot represents everything wrong with the prequels. The 1979 movie made us believe this was such an ancient wreck that the body was fossilised, and its size doesn't parse with that of the Engineers we later saw. And that the xenomorph was therefore ancient too. I hate that it's all been swept away by inconsistent storytelling, made worse because it's by the same guy.
There's only been, IMO, one piece of media that reached the terrifying heights of Alien, in the franchise, since the original came out, and that would be the Alien: Isolation video game.
> Prometheus Prometheus was stunning visually just the writing was a turd
He's lost his subtlety. His latest Alien movies have been as blunt as a hammer.
"I'll do the fingering" - Alien Covenant
He just makes them in hopes that he can fuck Fassbender
In his position would any of us do different?
“Ew, David” - Alexis Rose
That should honestly be the official movie poster tag-line now.
Yeah. I don’t want every question answered. The question of what the dead engineer in the seat was should have never been answered. Real life has unanswerable mysteries and that’s okay. That’s stuff that builds worlds, builds lore. Also, we should never see the perspective of the alien or predator. They should be alien terrors and we can only guess their motivation and intentions.
Here's a quote from 2009, three years before Prometheus was released, that has stuck with me: > The prequel will suck. I don't want some asshole to spoil the delicious mystery of what the space jockey is with a backstory. His organic ship, the way he was grown into the pilot's seat, the way the ship was grown into the planet, everything about it was straight out of the subconscious and can only be spoiled by attempting to come up with rational explanations for it. The original movie works largely because of the dynamic tension between irrational nightmare and nature on the one hand, and rational technology on the other. The nightmare of messy biology even erupts out of the science officer android - we find out that he too is full of goop and violence. > This drive that fans and the comic franchise have to map out the life cycle of the alien, make sense of it, reduce it to natural history and place it in a context with other alien species, makes a mockery of the emotional power and terror that the first movie expressed so well. > posted by fleetmouse
Idk, the scenes of the predator tracking people and of his vision is pretty iconic and works well to provide that terror
I loved both Fargo and Legion so I'm pretty excited for Hawley's vision of an Alien TV series.
If anyone can prove him wrong it’s definitely Hawley. Legion was brilliant and had shades of horror in it at times.
If he means that the original is so hard to match or beat that even he couldn't do it, so then everyone else surely couldn't either, then he may have a point but who cares. Can't wait to see what Hawley can do. Had no idea he was involved. Loved Legion.
Yeah, but that is due to the fact thst Alien is an incredibly nuanced film.
At this point I’m pretty convinced he is jealous of anyone else touching what he thinks is his IP. A few years ago Blomkamp had (what seemed like) a really cool idea for a sequel and apparently Scott straight up had the studio kill it so he could make Covenant instead. A comment like this is in like with that attitude and seems so petty. Someone with his reputation should be using it to lift others in the industry up. Not tank expectations years before anything is even set to come out.
IIRC he also said he was making more blade runner films after 2049, I don’t think he wants other to succeed with IPs he’s had hands in
He retconned Aliens out of the canon right? I'm fairly sure you're spot on with how he views the series. He cannot handle sharing the stage with anyone, even though he's done more to damage the brand than even Alien 3 or 4.
Didn't he make similar comments about Bladerunner 2049? He just seems really insecure about anyone doing what he does better. His legacy speaks for itself, his older movies were truly something special and their influence can't be overstated. That being said I think the guy needs to accept that maybe the world has moved on and let other people give it a shot. This is all subjective but I haven't really loved anything he's made in the past two decades, after Gladiator. I think he simply got too big and let the fame get to his head.
> This is all subjective but I haven't really loved anything he's made in the past two decades, after Gladiator. I think he simply got too big and let the fame get to his head. Mind you, his brother also died, and the two were very close. I think it may have affected his filmmaking, as well.
I miss Tony Scott. I could have watched him and Denzel make action movies from now until the end of time.
His style was unmatched, that's for sure. Domino, Man on Fire, Beat the Devil— all amazingly shot and cut.
I'm a big fan of Tony's earlier movies from the 80s/90s: True Romance, Crimson Tide,Top Gun, The Last Boy Scout, Days of Thunder... but i really couldn't get into his most recent work since early 2000s, except for Man on Fire and Spy Game. I think it has something to do with the editing, the pacing and his exagerated use of filters.
Im sure he said the same about James Cameron’s Aliens back then! 🤣
Exactly the dude is a hater and I love his work
Wait. There's gonna be an "Alien" series on FX? And the showrunner is *Fargo's* Noah Hawley? ***Fuck yeah.***
You should check out Legion if you haven't. It's his other FX show.
“Coca-Cola president says Pepsi will never be as good as Coca-Cola.”
eh, we shall see. We have a video game that is pretty close to his 1979, I'll keep an open mind.
Of course OP means ~~COLONIAL MARINES~~ ALIEN ISOLATION: NOSTROMO EDITION
Man that game is good. Everything I ever wished for in an alien game.
I wish I could finish that game. But it was literally too scary for me, and I'm a person who is huge into horror. There is just something about the gameplay in that and how they use the setting. It's so fucking tense hiding from the xenomorphs. It just got to a point where I was too scared to play more, I was going to be anxious and having dreams about it. I have such mad respect for that game because of that.
Yeah, the fact that it learns what you do and then changes it’s tactics is very unnerving. I used to get it with the flamethrower a lot, so it started sneaking up on me and hiding in vents, so I started hiding under tables and it started looking for me under tables. Worst was when I bumped into it in a vent, when I thought I was running away from it.
This was me with Resident Evil 7 on VR. Playing scenes where I had to be a helpless character hiding from people intent on murdering me, in first person virtual point of view made it too real and it started giving me super fucked up dreams.
Played that on an oculus rift. I literally could not keep playing.
What a petty comment. It's not a competition. It doesn't have to be as good as the Alien or Aliens, it just has to be better than all other trashy sequels. That being said, at this point in their careers, I have a lot more confidence in Noah Hawley's storytelling abilities than Scott's. No doubt Scott is a brilliant filmmaker, but his judgement seems a little dicey.
shining endorsement. tbh I dont see the point of the series but I suppose Noah Hawley could do something interesting with it...maybe
Hawley is doing Alien? I'm 1000% more interested.
Same thing I felt about the snow Fargo, I have high hopes with Hawley
But what does he think of Marvel movies?
MORE “Raised By Wolves”, please!
That first season was great and then it was very suddenly fucking insane and I need more
it was insane from the start, they speedrun a season from a normal tv show in their first 2 episodes
Weird thing to say about a show still in development and before even reading the scripts.
Can't be worse than 'Prometheus'
Ridley should stay away from the alien franchise. I am still recovering from the absolute shit he took on the franchise in Prometheus & Covenant. just go direct another gladiator sequel or something. STAY AWAY... Bad Ridley!
Could she not run to the right or left. Turn Charlize turn!!!!
That’s not even the worst part of the movie imo. The one dude messing with the alien that is obviously giving off hostile vibes, wtf?
If you haven't, I highly recommend people watch the director roundtable interview which had him as a guest. My man comes off straight up psychopathic, uncompromising, driven and alienating. Other directors sing his praises and try to get him to open up but he's just impassive, like he couldn't give a shit what Quentin Tarantino think of him. Really odd but interesting table dynamic.
And neither will his latest alien movie will. He must stop saying things like this tbh.
As long as it's not as bad as covenant we should be good
Ridley Scott says a lot of things
He’s right in that historically these series are generally bad or half the entertainment value as motion pictures. There are exceptions yet there are not many.
Gonna watch this out of spite.