Yes and yes and, again, yes. The extended cuts of all of the movies really make them better ( Spoiler with the possible exception of Ripley finding Dallas alive and cocooned, that made no sense to me since a soldier(for lack of a better term) alien can't produce eggs and has no queen to provide hosts/food for /digression ), especially Alien 3. So much was changed for the theatrical release than half of it just doesn't fit, the extended version puts it all back where it should be. Couldn't agree more about Resurrection though (FFS they even get the name of the god damn planet in 3 wrong! Named Fiori 16 in Alien 3 but is suddenly Fiori 161 in Resurrection or am I imagining that? I'm sure that's the case, maybe I've gone mad ) The AvP movies can just **** right off. Now I'm not against a cross franchise movie (since the idea was blatantly there from Predator 2 i.e. Alien skull in the trophy rack) however it needs to be done the right way...... 1 - A Predator is dropped onto a random planet with life to prove its worth. 2 - Random planet just so happens to be LV-426, possibly sometime in the future when it's been recolonised but has succumbed to an undiscovered nest with a queen. Net result being a planet with literally thousands, if not millions, of Aliens. 3 - Predator realises he's in the **** with this one and calls in the cavalry. 4 - Give the special effects department 98% of the budget. 5 - Await adoration from the public for not ****ing it up with ******** ancient Earth references, blood sample cloning, 'unexpected benefits of the genetic crossover' and/or Winona Ryder.
Nothing in the trailer indicates if it will be any good, lots of crap films have great trailers. This could have just gone in 'videos of awesome'.
So could the Hobbit trailer yet that got it's own thread too; both films were actually posted in the videos of awesome thread, but they are so potentially huge they deserved their own threads too ( as many films have in the past ). Ah, that was explained however, and thus it made sense to cut it from the theatrical version: Spoiler the alien was intended to reproduce by turning victims into eggs, from which face huggers could emerge & impregnate other victims who were used as hosts = alien life cycle without a queen. They cut it for some reason, I think relating to Dallas just being better dead/vanished vs being turned into a host for the next face hugger- same deal with Burke in Aliens as it happens. Lucky cut really as it left the door open for James Cameron to come up with the queen idea in the next film. Here's hoping Scott does a good job, would be nice to revive the Alien franchise again without it being a pile of Michael Bay-style ****.
Anyone checked out the 2023 TED with Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland? http://blog.ted.com/ted2023/ If this isn't an Alien film, I'll eat my left nipple.
I think the great thing about this is it goes back and rewrites the proper story on the mechanics of the creatures. It was lost in Aliens since Cameron went for the shooty shooty loud bang brigade and cut back on the actual story of the creature. They cut out the Dallas scene at the end of Alien as Ridley felt it slowed down the mad panic for Ripley to get off the ship. He also said from the very beginning he felt the creatures were engineered for a purpose and Camerons addition of a queen was never needed in the Alien life cycle. Watching all four movies now back to back and Aliens sticks out as aging really badly with some pretty poor actors giving us some pretty bad acting. Especially in the Special Edition which shows how bad Cameron really is at any original thought or writing. David Finchers alledged version of Alien 3 is an entirely different movie to the one released and is a decent effort. It was his first movie so you can't blame him especially with the script he had to work with. Resurrection I felt was straight out of the comic books and while still more entertaining than Aliens and the borefest Aliens Special Edition, it still wasn't the best. With Ridley returning here, the proper story is now for all to see.
Looks like it'll be one of those films where it'll either be totally brilliant or crap all over the franchise, IMHO. I'm not doubting the artistic merit is there and Scott normally does a decent job but sometimes franchises like this have had their day and should be left alone. I'd rather the ship and explanation of the jockey be left to imagination than have another AVP/Terminator 3/Phantom menace.
Take a weekend off and sit down and watch all 4 together. You'll get to the pathetic excuse for a derelict scene and start yawning. If that doesn't do it for you, try the let's hint at the plot line for introducing the queen we'll be showing later with some god awful acting. I'm yawning just recalling this stink burger! Yes, it was all fun and games watching it when we were kids thinking it was the best thing we have ever and will ever see again. However, it has simply not stood the test of time anywhere near as much as Alien. Even Alien3 and Resurrection are watchable now for giggles. Aliens is just a steaming pile of Cameron
You seem to be mistaking boring with tension building; not everything has to rush straight into the action like a Michael Bay movie. Also, you are overlooking the fact that the audience ( should ) already know what will happen inside the derelict from the first film- there is no need for a re-cap or repeat of the same derelict scene. The film was cut down as back then, 120 minutes for considered too long- not like these days where 3-4 hours is perfectly acceptable. As for the acting, I didn't feel it was bad at all in Aliens; Resurrection however had some terribly delivered dialogue and overly hammed-up acting. Alien 3 is greatly overlooked however, I'll give you that- no poor acting or overly cheesy dialogue, just subtle gags occasionally which give the viewer a wry smile. All personal opinion though, the figures speak for themselves: Alien: $11m budget, $185 takings, IMDB rating of 8.5/10 Aliens: $8.5m budget, $130m takings, IMDB rating of 8.5/10 Alien 3: $63m budget, $160m takings, IMDB rating of 6.4/10 Resurrection: $70m budget, $161m takings, IMDB rating of 6.2/10 Aliens was very much an action movie compared to a horror movie- judging by the trailers for Prometheus it is doing a balancing act between the two genres, whilst telling the back story we've all been longing to see. We'll see I guess.... EDIT: Indeed, I'm wondering if he had any direct input on this film, haven't caught the details of the production crew on the trailers. Giger is a very talented individual, and also a bit scary...
I read an interview or a tagline somewhere that Giger was involved with "back engineering" his designs to fit this film, thats open to debate as to just what that means. For my money I take it to suggest that its expanding on the tech of the space jockey race. With regards to the above mentioned budgets, my info has the Aliens budget at $18 million (studio estimate was at least $55 million for the same script) - based on 1985 money. Regarding the Dallas coccoon scene, it was always originally part of the first film but cut at the final review as it was deemed to kill the pace of the film at that point. Interesting side note for you Alien fans out there, there was a scene shot of Ripley disconnecting Mother in the same way that Dave Bowman shuts down HAL in 2001, this was dropped for not being very effective and being just too similar to the 2001 scene. Source for this info is an interview with Ridley Scott for issue 1 of Cinefex magazine. Personally, I am really looking forward to this film, I reckon Ridley Scott to be one of the few true cinematic greats we have alive and working at the moment, his films may vary in quality (or maybe I just don't like some of them) but you are pretty much guaranteed that they will always look absolutely stunning. He has made two sci-fi films so far and they are two of the most iconic films in the genre, this should complete the trilogy. All I need for him to do now is actually make the script he has been working on for The Forever War in to a film and I can die happy.
Sorry I cannot agree with you at all. It's bad actors giving bad acting. Can you remember any of the cast giving a truly decent performance in anything? OK, I'll give you Bill Paxton as Chet in Weird Science but that's it. Camerons total plastic, cheapness of the set, creatures and design of the movie completely dumped on Giger's excellent truly organic work in Alien. It appears that Ridley's return will re-write everything that happened after Alien as complete rubbish, which is the right way to go.
really looking forward to this one. To me, the only real mistake made in the entire franchise was setting the AvP movies in the present day, and not in a future beyond the Alien (without predator) films. A lot of the stuff that appears in extended versions of the first 3 movies was already in Alan Dean Fosters novels too.
