Topic: New "Alien" movie coming from Neill Blomkamp

[surreal]

This could be amazing, having seen his design ideas at least it should look amazing:

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/new-alien-movie-confirmed-at-fox-with-director-neill-blomkamp-1201436551/

[Paaaaul]

Or it could be a beautiful looking turd like Elysium.

[mobias]

Dear god they're making another Prometheus movie. Not doubt Scott will answer all the plot questions absolutely no one was interested in at the end of the last one.

[Johnny Textface]

Think there's going to be three Prometheus movies altogether?

Let's hope Blomkamp forgets Alien Cubed and Insurrection ever happened yeah?

I'm excited for this - shame Giger did a death though.

[Alberon]

It looks like, from the pre-production artwork he released when he thought the project was dead, Blomkamp was looking to ignore Alien 3 and 4 and produce a new sequel to Aliens.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/movies/news/a619008/neill-blomkamp-reveals-concept-art-for-alien-sequel-that-never-happened.html

Whether any of that is where he's going now, or whether he's working on something completely new it does have promise. Elysium was destroyed by an abysmal script, but it was shot well, and District 9 shows he's capable of good work. Chappie is being released soon, so we can see if he's still got it.

Have to say though that I'm much more interested in a Blomkamp Alien film (especially if Weaver is back) than I am in another Prometheus movie (which was also shot well, but with a dreadful script).

[mobias]

I'm excited for this - shame Giger did a death though.

There's a massive body of work of fantastic designs going right back through his career though. Anyone could easily take inspiration for new creatures and designs from any number of his books if they really wanted to. The depressing and surprising thing is that no director since the first movie has really wanted Giger's involvement in any meaningful way. Even with Prometheus Giger was only involved in quite a minor way. I remember Ridley Scott stating in an interview he chose a new designer for a lot of stuff because he wanted the film to have a fresh feel to it. Its Bonkers really. 

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If Sigourney Weaver is involved, it might not be as Ellen Ripley but as another character (Ellen's daughter?).  It depends where the events of Prometheus 2 fit into the Alien timeline.

[mobias]

Reading his post I would say this probably isn't going to happen. It looks like it was done as a bit of fan fiction, just toying with ideas. Having said all that I suppose if they can crowbar in an Aliens v's Predator movie into the Alien franchise they can crowbar in a sequel to Aliens and pretend 3 and 4 never happened. I suspect 21st Century Fox probably think the Prometheus franchise is the new Alien cash cow now though. I think thats the direction they'll take it. Its such a shame they started out on such a duff footing.   

[Johnny Textface]

I remember Ridley Scott stating in an interview he chose a new designer for a lot of stuff because he wanted the film to have a fresh feel to it. Its Bonkers really. 

There's a little bit in The Furious Gods: Making of Prometheus, where Giger comes to visit the set.  Scott is showing him some designs they've done and how they've tried to interpret some of his earlier work.  He just looks a bit bemused.

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I don't really see the value of ignoring Alien 3.  Yes it was flawed but as far as the events with the company and Ripley's storyline are concerned it's a perfectly decent conclusion to what was then a trilogy.  It's Alien Resurrection that should be directly ignored with its "Gosh we are arriving on Earth" cliffhanger and a new Ripley who we've no connection with.  I don't get why there's such an obsession with focusing on Ripley again when her story is obviously over.  If a new action film is needed in the style of Aliens, they can make one.  They had that opportunity with Aliens vs Predator anyway, and messed it up.  That wasn't to do with a lack of Sigourney Weaver.

[Alberon]

For all it's many many flaws I tend to prefer Alien Resurrection to Alien 3. Maybe what I don't like about the third one is the way it pisses all over the ending of Aliens by killing Newt off like that.

Whether Blomkamp's doodles represent a real idea of where Alien 5 is going or whether it just got him the job and a blank slate I can't see them following on from the fourth Alien film either. Resurrection was made eighteen years ago now and wasn't a huge hit on release. If they started the new film with Ripley being a half-alien clone most of the audience could go WTF?

[El Unicornio, mang]

Reading his post I would say this probably isn't going to happen.

It's definitely happening. The art post he did had nothing to do with it, but possibly the interest it garnered caused Fox to sit up and take notice.

I'm excited for it, have liked his first two films a lot. The aliens will be CGI, but will actually look real if his other work is anything to go by.

[greenman]

I remember reading a rejected Aliens sequal script from sometime in the late 80's/early 90's online a few years ago that wasn't that bad, mostly involving Hicks and Bishop on a marine space station with the company messing around and turning the Alien into a kind of airborne infection.

Not surprising Blomkamp is interested considering the look of a lot of his alien/future tech seems lifted from the loader in Aliens.

[Mango Chimes]

They've ballsed up Alien too much by now.  Ripley's story is done.  I don't know who the audience is for a second Prometheus.  AND, iconic sure, but the Alien has looked shit in every film except for Aliens.  There's nothing exciting in those paintings; they just look like artwork from Aliens, which is a good film that's been made already.

I'd say I'm sceptical.

[Steven]

Yep, they either need to re-invent the isolated insular paranoia claustrophobia angle or the balls out action hordes of visceral bastards coming at you format and visit it in a new way, which all the Alien/Aliens sequels have done and failed, or come up with an interesting new actually original angle for once.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

I used to think "visiting the alien home planet / explaining the Space Jockey" were solid gold premises from which a classic scifi film as good as the original couldn't fail to emerge. I was proved wrong.

Ok, here's my idea. We redo Alien, but this time it's a spaceship of aliens who discover the wreckage of a human spaceship whose crew was killed by the Xenomorph.

One of the aliens tries to understand and reconstruct the humans and so he builds some sort of device that lets him take on human form and/or control a humanoid robot.

And... stuff.

[Steven]

I used to think "visiting the alien home planet / explaining the Space Jockey" were solid gold premises from which a classic scifi film as good as the original couldn't fail to emerge. I was proved wrong.

It was a solid gold premise precisely because it was unexplained, that's what filled the entire thing with intrigue and mystery in that these elements were like some kind of ancient ineffable quasi-sci-fi Lovecraftian Ancient Ones of the cosmos, your mind can form some shape of the silhouette in the darkness that it's a technology based giant species but also hits those Giger elements of God-like estranged forms from the horrified recesses of the mind. It's all the gaps in explanation there that provide you with that hinterland curiosity that makes it so absorbing.

Could they have made a good film AND explain the origin story? Probably, but it was best a story left with some mystery, it didn't need explaining, we need myth in the world. But getting the Lost guy to write it was a fucking mistake, terrible by-numbers episodic TV writing, gah! My beautiful Elephantine Man turned into a big bald bouncer controlling things with a clarinet recital? Sod off. Doing a bait and switch with the two crashed ships? Fuck you.

[greenman]

I used to think "visiting the alien home planet / explaining the Space Jockey" were solid gold premises from which a classic scifi film as good as the original couldn't fail to emerge. I was proved wrong.

Really though I think the main problem with Prometheus is that it doesn't follow though on this instead trying to shoehorn a typical Alien plot in. Theres was potential with the Shaw and David characters to do something more interesting but ultimately it ended up being differed to a sequel.

[biggytitbo]

One really exciting idea for an Aliens sequel is to have it set in Leeds.

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One really exciting idea for an Aliens sequel is to have it set in Leeds.

The storyline could be that silhouettes of alien-esque beings are freaking out Leeds inhabitants, with them revealed in the end to be the silhouettes of bald-headed men and not xenomorphs at all.  (Not before loads of people die first though.)

[stunted]

Anything with more than one alien (while not precluding the making of a good film) will diminish what the alien could be.

 I also don't see the sense of having a plot involving Ripley because what is point? and because it'll bog the film down in the same way Premetheous was bogged down by shoehorning and, as mobias put it, answering the questions no one wanted answered. A better film could be made if it was completely free of the constraints of the first ones and people are more likely to enjoy it on its own merits than tediously and unfavourably compare it to the earlier films or feel like the characters have been ruined for them.

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Through Alien Resurrection and two AVP films the alien has already been diminished to buggery, surely.  I can't think how they can undo what we've already viewed of it to turn it back into a creature of the shadows whose very appeal hangs on it being hardly seen.

They should come up with a new alien entirely, I think.  The Giger beast from Ridley Scott's Alien is done.

[Johnny Textface]

The Giger beast from Ridley Scott's Alien is done.

The Giger beast IS Alien though - without it, you might as well call it something else.

[stunted]

Through Alien Resurrection and two AVP films the alien has already been diminished to buggery, surely.  I can't think how they can undo what we've already viewed of it to turn it back into a creature of the shadows whose very appeal hangs on it being hardly seen.

They should come up with a new alien entirely, I think.  The Giger beast from Ridley Scott's Alien is done.

I agree to the extent that any continuation of Alien as it is now would be redundant. I assumed the new film was rebooting the franchise so a new film could be made that refocuses on the source material. Not necessarily an unseen creature but definitely a single and singular creature. I just think there's more potential with a single alien (speaking as someone who enjoys Alien through to Alien Resurrection to different extents and for different reasons). With one alien, the alien is more of a character and it's personal - it's not these are aliens are killing everyone, it's this alien wants to kill you and you can never understand why. Maybe I've just been playing too much Alien Isolation.[1] Something beyond our understanding is key to a lot of good scifi and I think it's that sense that's diminished when there is more than one alien.

1.	I haven't quite completed Alien Isolation but after you blow up the nest and go back to sneaking through the ship, the game really loses something. It's no longer you pitted against and trying to outwit this alien but just you against a bunch of aliens.

[Bhazor]

Honestly, I think Alien has run its course by now. Horror is based on the unknown and unknowable. At this point we know everything about the fuckers. We've seen all their tricks, we know they're life cycle heck we've seen one give birth.

To me it would be like making a new Jason film and expecting it to be scary.

[stunted]

Honestly, I think Alien has run its course by now. Horror is based on the unknown and unknowable. At this point we know everything about the fuckers. We've seen all their tricks, we know they're life cycle heck we've seen one give birth.

To me it would be like making a new Jason film and expecting it to be scary.

You're probably right. I happened to edit my post to say something along the lines of what you've said above about understanding. The reason I think there's a (small) chance that this could be good is because the alien from the first film is different from those in subsequent films so there's a chance it could be rebooted with a less known alien. That said this would probably be difficult/impossible to do without the film looking like a shit remake.

[Mango Chimes]

The reason I think there's a (small) chance that this could be good is because the alien from the first film is different from those in subsequent films

Is it?  I know there's a load of zoology bollocks in the comics and that defining the species, but in the films you've got Alien-that-kills-people-for-some-reason (Alien, Alien 3) and Alien-that-grabs-people-to-gunk-them-up-and-put-an-egg-in-front-of-their-gob (Aliens).  I forget what happens in Resurrection (and the AvPs) but they're a mix of the two, right?

Oh, and big-fuck-off-Alien-that-lays-eggs-and-gets-mardy-if-you-disturb-it, obv.  That's in at least three of 'em.

Going back to one-Alien-hidden-in-a-place-ooh isn't exciting because we've done that twice already.  The proper-full-on-action-film option is still sort of open (despite Aliens reputation, it's actually pretty sedate and subtle,) and something we haven't ever seen is what happens when The Company does actually weaponise them.  But then you'd have trouble avoiding comparisons to Starship Troopers.

The thing I'm most interested in about the prospect of this film is how they can find an interesting angle because I can't see it.  (Ripley-again-but-this-time-with-some-stuff-on-her-face isn't it.)

[Steven]

Is it?  I know there's a load of zoology bollocks in the comics and that defining the species, but in the films you've got Alien-that-kills-people-for-some-reason (Alien, Alien 3) and Alien-that-grabs-people-to-gunk-them-up-and-put-an-egg-in-front-of-their-gob (Aliens).  I forget what happens in Resurrection (and the AvPs) but they're a mix of the two, right?

They did have a deleted scene from the first film where Dallas is cocooned which is presumably where Cameron got the initial idea for the whole hive structure idea.

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The Giger beast IS Alien though - without it, you might as well call it something else.

Well, quite.  They should do something else.

[El Unicornio, mang]

They did have a deleted scene from the first film where Dallas is cocooned which is presumably where Cameron got the initial idea for the whole hive structure idea.

It's also part of the director's cut, which ruins the continuity although I like it for it's creepiness.