We each carry a readiness to suspend disbelief to a given work of fiction. Not only does that level vary from person to person, it varies within the same person depending on what we’re watching. You’re absolutely right that Spiderman as a concept requires a generous portion of suspension of disbelief before you even walk into the theater. “The Avengers” requires viewers to accept a super soldier who survived being frozen for decades who possesses a shield of supermetal, an extradimensional humanoid with power over lightning, a man who turns into an ogre with virtually limitless strength and invulnerable skin (where does that extra mass come from?), the existence of powered battle armor (not so far off) that runs on a self-contained power source small enough to fit in a cavity inside the wearer’s chest (still a ways off), a helicopter-type aircraft carrier, and on and on. Let’s not even talk about the costs to New York City of repairing all these superhero duke-‘em-outs. I’m willing to cut the superhero movies slack that I don’t generally cut science fiction, which means I’m using at least a double standard.

Within a given film, though, there ought to be some internal logic that goes beyond advancing the plot and creating the types of scenes that define the genre. “AvP” is a perfect example of a film that revolved around creating a handful of fanboy-type scenes and shitcanned the integrity (if such a word is appropriate) of its source material by so doing. I’ve always disliked the “Superman v Batman” stories because they are more a reflection of idle discussion taken too seriously and punctuated by the occasional “Dude, don’t bogart that” than an attempt to tell a good story. Many of the characters of “Prometheus” behave as though they are in a very different context. I would be willing to entertain the idea that the underlying message is that human beings are basically fools. This, however, seems inconsistent with the underlying message of “Alien” and “Aliens” that human beings suffer as a result of decisions made by leaders who have serious flaws.

Still, one needs to get what one needs to get from a film. I love “The Wrath of Khan”, but in reality the whole Star Trek universe is silly. The best that can be said is that a) everything shown is a metaphor adapted to its audience and b) when it’s at its best, internal logic is pretty good. When it’s at its worst, internal logic can be pretty shoddy.

I haven't seen Prometheus yet, but I plan to. (I'm not concerned about spoilers either, already looked it up on the internet). I ended up seeing the #1 movie in America the past weekend.

Anyone here a fan of the American TV show Lost? One of the creators of Lost is the screenwriter who edited the original script. If you've watched Lost, you will know there were a lot of plot twists and unresolved questions. I can see why there were a lot of mixed reviews, as I think a lot of people were expecting something similar to Aliens.

btw my comment about Prometheus being released early in Europe because of "some soccer tournament" was supposed to be a sarcastic type comment about the stereotypical American who doesn't pay attention to anything outside the USA. :D

-bdd

Prometheus had much potential, and if Ridley Scott was still doing as much drugs as he was when he was making Bladerunner and Alien, it'd probably be better.

How do you throw away massive audience recognition and buy in of your visual design by saying that all the lovely HR Giger bits of the Space Jocky are his space suit, and he's really just a -Zendrati-, err, Promethian giant man thing.

Gah!

You're most welcome. I've been a minor fan of Lovecraft's horror for some time and I'm constantly surprised (and often very happy) to find how much influence his writings had on latterday writers or movie makers. It's part of the reason I've gotten in so deep with the Alien movies along with the Evil Dead, Reanimator, The Thing, Prince Of Darkness and In The Mouth Of Madness movies amongst others.

New Aliens Colonial Marines Video Game
 

This could be cool. Or not.

http://www.amazon.com/Aliens-Colonia...lonial+marines

This is pretty neat.

http://toybox.io9.com/this-excellent...4/+charliejane

http://io9.com/neill-blomkamps-secre...e-f-1677082116

Apparently, the Aliens survival-horror video game (Alien: Isolation) is pretty good. Conversely, the Colonial Marines game was supposed crap.

One of the few games so bad it spawned a class action lawsuit
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ali.../1100-6407789/

Good News?
 

Personally, I could do without all the sequels after Aliens and I have mixed feelings about Prometheus and the other rumored pseudo-prequels, but I must admit that this news has me a little hopeful.

http://io9.com/holy-xenomorphs-neill...lie-1686663351

If this is true, I hope he doesn't eff it up.

Right there with you. My personal Aliens continuity has only two movies and a bunch of Dark Horse comics.

- C.

Bloody brilliant.

I think people dismiss the third Alien movie too readily, if Fincher had been allowed to continue the movie without studio execs interfering with it, the story would have been more readily apparent.

The prisoners had essentially adopted a monastic lifestyle and then a woman enters their world and brings the "dragon", evil enters their "paradise" and destroys their harmony. Ripley then nobly sacrifices herself to prevent the evil from spreading.
Again, it's very mythic and Lovecraftian but most of the imagery that would have brought that across was cut from the cinema release.

The Assembly Cut makes some of it more apparent but the original notion of the three movies as a tryptych was screwed up by the studio execs telling the film crew how to make the movie (because all they really wanted was a crowd pleaser to pull more money in).
The idea of integrity/continuity of story was considered less important than making money.

The fourth movie I can live without.

My big concern with this new take is that it's a fan appeaser. Apparently it dismisses anything after the second movie. Some people are obviously going to like that but there was so much more to the story with the addition of Alien 3 in its intended form.

Some of you are probably thinking why I'm against fan appeasement films? They cater to the lowest common denominator so they can pull as big a crowd as possible. Any notion of crafting a movie to tell a story is generally replaced by a formula calculated to get bums on seats. They're movies made by economists, not by storytellers.

Unfortunately these days a lot of the general public don't want to think when they watch a movie, hence the general dislike for Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning - it's a horror story more than a simplistic action movie and I reckon a lot of the audience didn't understand that (I'm mean for goodness sakes, it's another retelling of Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness" but then, nobody bothers to read novels anymore, let alone see the connections... )

I prefer the story, otherwise I might as well just stick my thumb up my arse, my mind in neutral and watch the latest Waste-of-Skin Anderson/Michael Bay Aliens Vs. Predators Vs. Battleship Vs. Transformers explosion-fest and believe that I am entertained.

Nobody saw this coming.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/s/alien...184258582.html

I certainly didn't. It straightens out the info I originally had although I still stand by my rant against fan appeasement movies.

I don't care for them much either, so this article came as a bit of a relief. I am cautiously optimistic now. Also going in the new Alien film's favor is that it seems Mr. Blomkamp is a reflective dude- he recently admitted that he let concept get in the way of story on Elysium, a film that I found a pretty big disappointment (especially since I'd come up with a very similar plot myself, years before the film came out:mad:).

I just want to know, will it have Colonial Marines?

A lot of the joy of the first two films was lost to me when they snuffed Hicks and Newt before the third film even started. I'll watch any new Alien/Predator/both together film as a matter of course but to date IMO Aliens was the best of the lot. I'm kind of torn. I'd be happy to see a film in which Hicks survived but then again, I don't like canon being broken.

I agree with Targan. Killing Hicks and Newt was a mistake. A fine line exists between fiction acknowledging that life is hard and bad things happen on the one hand and just crushing the viewer's hopes. I have real life to crush my hopes. I don't need my entertainment to assist.

Alien 3 + William Gibson? Holy Shitballs!
 

WHAT?!?

How am I just finding out about this?!?

I love Aliens (Alien is good too; the rest can bugger off) and I read any articles that I see about anything directly related to the franchise. I'm also a big William Gibson (of Neuromancer fame) fan. Hell, I interviewed the guy! (Well, I asked him one question on BBC radio.) But anyway, I had no idea that he'd written a script for Alien 3. I'd prefer a film of it, but I'll take comics over nothing.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/dark-horse-i...-in-1827548457

-

I'm a big fan of Gibson's stories from the day that I first read Neuromancer as a teenager (I bought it at an airport shop while waiting for some relatives to arrive on a flight).
I do think he has periods of disappearing up his own arsehole at times, particularly when he comments on other people's visions of cyberpunk, however I am very interested in seeing his story for Alien.

Pretty much the whole third movie, including the premise, sucked, except for possibly information about the alien and some about Weyland-Yutland. And I'm not happy that Ripley ended up with a queen inside of her -- it was good for the script, but again the premise sucked and smacked of desperation to make the third movie work.

Agreed on all points. This is exactly why I'm so stoked about a different script for 3.

I'll stick to what I posted earlier - knowing what the director wanted to achieve, I accept the third movie and actually like it in the assembly cut.
As for Ripley being impregnated with an alien, that's an important part of the mythic elements of the story, the "bringing evil into paradise" and her sacrificing herself for the good of humanity concepts that I mentioned before.

The studio is responsible for screwing up the movie, the cinematic release is a bad butcher's job of what it was meant to be.
The novel makes things much more apparent, the alien infects a dog-like creature rather than some bovine and so it's final form is sleeker and faster than the biped form we've seen before and this causes the prisoners to identify it as "the dragon", i.e the devil come to destroy their world and ruin their lives... which is exactly what was going to happen if Weyland-Yutani was ever able to get an example of the alien back to Earth.

Having said all that, it in no way changes my mind that I want to see Gibson's story.
I'll probably buy it as soon as it's released in graphic novel/anthology form.

I heard a rumour just a few weeks ago of James Cameron coming back for Alien 5 and completely tossing the events of the 3rd and 4th movies.
Yes, that means Hicks and Newt would be back and Ripley didn't die on Fiorina (Fury) 161.
Is it true? Damn I hope so!

I myself, think it unlikely.
Besides having ruled out any further involvement with the franchise in 2006, James Cameron is unlikely to throw out some of those films. He follows Ridley Scott's ideas of the story. As far as the studio is concerned, their trust is in Scott and it's his vision of the franchise that they're interested in.

“Alien: Covenant” stumbled at the box office. Is that franchise over?
It was a disappointment, but I trust Ridley [Scott] and Emma [Watts] to know the right story when they find it. When universes are as rich as “Alien,” they can stay in a too familiar groove — in which case you’re in trouble — but they can also find a planet or a storyline or a villain that also lives in that universe that can be groundbreaking.
https://variety.com/2017/film/featur...ar-1202563799/

AFAIK, Cameron is still busy finishing his Avatar sequels. Last I heard, he had other projects- not Aliens-related- lined up for when the Avatar series wrapped.

A year or two ago, Neil Blonkamp was tapped to helm an Alien 3 RETCON (see earlier in this thread) but that came to naught.

I think the closest we're going to get to a new post Alien-Aliens continuity movie is the comic book I referenced a few posts ago.