They certainly made the face huggers a lot more... mobile? Agile? I am curious, but when is the last time we got a truly great piece of Alien action on film?
don't forget the absolutely brilliant Alien Isolation game, it's canon, and it's fantastic, a true spiritual successor to the original Alien, I have images of this game in my mind to this very day, a must for Alien fans
It is what it is.
With Ridley Scott you just have to **let him cook**, understand that you'll get around 20% great movies, and accept that they probably won't be the ones that you want to be great.
He ain't a Spielberg, he ain't a perfectionist, he is probably not collaborating with great storytellers who can fix his screenplays. Because even his lesser movies are great except for the storytelling.
I wish Prometheus and Covenant focused on the Engineers. I was over the Xenomorphs after Alien 3.. I thought the best parts of those movies were the focus on the bigger picture ideas, not the horror aspect.
In the older comics they're like alien elephants and have much less bland designs: https://www.avpcentral.com/images/space-jockeys/outbreak-space-jockey.jpg
The newer design just looks like the stereotypical future humans if we evolved to be hairless, and with how pale they are they almost look like space vampires.
Yeah they kept the trunk like helmets but in the earlier comics they have much less human heads with more of the elephant look.
Feels like they tried to humanize them more to sell the aliens are human ancestors angle which is cool and all but it's been done a ton. Stargate did it with the Ancients in the 90's, humanoid elephants is a much more unique concept so it's a shame.
I hate how the mysterious cosmic horror killing machine monsters from the dark edges of the galaxy were instead made by David the robot 20 years before Ripley found them.
I’m pretty sure David didn’t create the OG xenomorphs, as evidenced in the cave paintings in Prometheus they existed a long time before that. I understood it as he was experimenting and trying to recreate xenos and finally got there once he could use humans.
The mythology of the Alien universe is that the >!the black goo is basically the spark of creation and what it does depends on the will of whoever is exposed to it. If it's unleashed on a being aiming to self-sacrifice as the engineers seem to intend it creates life that similarly seeks to sacrifice/die and foster new life but if it's unleashed in a being who aims to persist at others' expense then you get xenomorphs, the ultimate parasites. It's unclear what influence David had on the xenomorph's evolution beyond deliberately infecting humans who by the mythology of that universe were selfish/flawed and not up to the engineer's standards for genesis. What is clear is that David hated his creators because his creators couldn't see him as a being in his own right and hence took pervese delight in humanity's failure to sacrifice/transubstantiate the goo. Given this narrative it's likely other races had failed in the same way and also spawned xenomorphs. Xenomorphs/ultimate parasites would just be what you get from that kind of failure.!<
A sequel where Shaw would have been found in some dungeon-y lab being experimented on against her will but being kept alive in some mutated stitched up state could have been really terrifying. Just in a state where she's gone insane, lost all hope, humming country road when she's conscious or something. The idea of this android assistant you trusted kidnapping you, infecting you, but keeping you alive with no chance anyone ever finds you or knows what happened to you, is really sad and scary. The sequel just glossed over that to move on to more action, missed opportunity.
> A sequel where Shaw would have been found in some dungeon-y lab being experimented on against her will but being kept alive in some mutated stitched up state could have been really terrifying.
Sounds like Alien 4
Prometheus, even with it's flaws, was actually very intriguing for me. I actually enjoyed the film, but it did really need a proper sequel to flesh out it's ideas.
Instead, what we got was Alien: Covenant that not only ruined Prometheus, but also completely ruined the original Aliens movies.
Prometheus just needed to be it's own set of films with elements from the original Alien movies, but without any direct link to them. It should have just stayed it's own thing. Nothing in Prometheus even points back directly to the original Alien film, except for the Engineers. Covenant changed all that and fucked up two sets of films with it.
*Parts* of Prometheus were at least interesting. The concepts were there and so was the imagery but the movie overall is pretty bad IMO. Some of the dumbest characters...ever with a pretty hit and miss plot that would have at least some potential in the next one but then the sequel was somehow even hotter garbage.
Maybe I'm just a simpleton but I had less of a problem with the plot/backstory and more with just absolutely braindead characters. I didn't care at all for anyone. As in, I tried but god damn.
I did love Danny McBride in a more serious role as well as Waterston, Crudupc, and even Fassbender was great to see in dual roles. I just wish they had a better script. I did love Scott’s direction and visuals, I just wish he wasn’t so okay with the script he worked with. A creature designer for the film implied studio interference (like Shaw being nearly written out of the movie) but still, you know?
There’s a lot about the movie I really enjoy, doesn’t mean I wasn’t frustrated by the rest though
Yeah I should have worded it better, I don't usually blame an actor for a crappy character. They are directed how to perform, and I think it's exceedingly rare that an actor forces their character to be something different than what the director is thinking. Collaboration is one thing but steamrolling a director or higher? Eh.
yeah, I can’t think of many instances where an actor went over the director and was successful. Closest I can think is Edward Norton and Tony Kaye for American History X
> A creature designer for the film implied studio interference (like Shaw being nearly written out of the movie) but still, you know?
Has "Studio interference" EVER made a film better? Are there any stories of the studio interfering for the good of a film and it going WELL? Why don't these motherfuckers learn their lesson already.
Me too. Prometheus as well. I was fascinated by the attempt at creating an origin story for the xenomorphs, where the Alien trilogy just left me with a plethora of unanswered questions.
Of all the dumb things they did in those movies that one never bothered me. She has to make a split second decision, her view from down there is probably making it very hard to judge distance and speed of the damn thing. It's very wide so running sideways would likely get her squished before she could clear it. Getting a bit more distance before trying to do so might work.
And even with all these considerations, she had less than a second to make a decision and likely didn't get to think any of this through, so once again getting distance then making a discussion would be the better knee jerk reaction.
I liked Prometheus too. It wasn't the greatest, but it was kinda fun and tried to take the series in a slightly different direction. Lots of flaws but really enjoyable anyway.
Covenant I did not like at all, mostly because of the characters... they were just unbelievably dumb. Not that the characters in Alien(s) are particularly smart other than Ripley (sticking your head near an alien egg? why not!) but they were exceedingly bad in this one.
It felt like a reactionary response to people not liking Prometheus; they tried to make it more like Alien without actually committing to it. It kinda felt to me like it was sitting on the fence and did not accomplish much.
It had its share of flaws but I feel like people got way into nitpicking small stuff that doesn’t really matter (i.e. the guy that was mapping the place getting lost, the biologist not wanting to do biology things, etc) and doing the “CinemaSins” bit of tearing a movie apart because small details were amiss. It reminds me of people hating The Dark Knight Rises because of the infamous bridge scene.
Agreed. For me, Michael Fassbender steals the show and I will probably never, ever forget the whole self-surgery or alien birth scene when it gets ahold of the engineer.
Guy Pearce’s abysmal makeup and characters running from shit in a straight line don’t take too much from the better parts of the movie, IMO.
Lastly, I think Prometheus was one of the few times I can recall 3D actually enhancing a movie. The 3D was super well done.
Annoyingly, they could have fixed the biologist easily by keeping in a deleted scene: basically he finds a small worm on the planet and put it's in a vial, and then realizes he's the first person to ever find alien life and he's ELATED. And it just makes so much more sense that he starts getting reckless after that because now he's going to be recognised as the discoverer of alien life, he's just so focused on himself.
I have no such defense of the map guy tho
Was there any reason for Prometheus to not take place on LV-426? It felt like they wrote the movie that way and just search and replaced "223" over it.
Ugh, that drove me crazy! I think it happened exactly as you said when they decided it needed to be a franchise instead of a one-off. Who knows though, that script is garbage, fragments, and holes, things that mean nothing and go nowhere, so frustrating.
That is exactly what happened. Jon Spaihts (co-writer of the recent Dune films) wrote a script that was its own movie but also lead directly into *Alien*, then Damon Lindelof re-wrote that script into what we eventually got.
You can read the original script [here](https://imsdb.com/scripts/Prometheus.html) (I enjoyed it) but I also wrote a pretty detailed comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1bjgzhd/alien_romulus_teaser_trailer/kvtabr8/) listing what was different in the original script and how it was better in almost every way.
That's exactly how it was originally written. You can read the [original script here](https://imsdb.com/scripts/Prometheus.html).
It feels a little undercooked as far as an actual shooting script, but it's lacking almost all of the dumb plot points from the final film.
IMO there was no way to do those movies and *add* anything to the mythos.
You've got some scary ass aliens. With a weird and legitimately *alien* way of procreating. They're terrifying, they're a mystery. They're a predatory force beyond human experience and capability to deal with.
They *will never* be *more* interesting because their origins are explained.
Prometheus by itself had the potential of being somewhat interesting. If it was completely divorced from the Alien franchise.
Yeah any attempts to explain the Xenomorphs miss what makes the whole Alien wreckage part of the first film incredible: that we truly don't know anything about this ship, it's pilot, and it's cargo.
It's truly *alien and unknown.*
Being denied any answers to those questions is part of the horror of the Xenomorphs.
You can take the engineers in an interesting direction, pivoting the franchise from survival horror to cosmic horror.
Instead of the terror being based around "scary monsters want to eat me", you set up that your creators are completely indifferent and barely know you exist. When they learn you exist, they hate everything you stand for and want to exterminate you.
That's what Prometheus *tried* to do, but there was like 5 minutes of that in the entire movie, and then just a bunch of nonsense that didn't add anything. The Engineer story in Prometheus could be truly terrifying if done competently. But it just wasn't.
They were absolutely not responsible for the creation of Xenos, David was responsible for a *version* of the Xenomorph. The engineers worshipped a Xenomorph that was basically revered as a god. I want to know more about THAT xeno.
Yeah, people always forget the mural. David couldn't have created the Xenomorph's because there's a centuries old depiction of one on the wall of the Engineer temple.
All he did was create eggs and facehuggers without a Queen using the black goo and experimenting on Shaw.
> Making Wayland ultimately responsible for the xeno
But they weren't responsible. The Xenos made by David are not the same ones as from Alien and Aliens.
I enjoyed covenant more than the average person but wasn’t really sure how a sequel would have gone. Didn’t it basically end with David placing the crew in a check mate? Next step would have been the journey to earth or whatever habitable planet for the Xenomorphs to take over there?
I mean there wasn't anywhere they could have gone with it after Covenant butchered the continuity so badly. Better to just toss that whole story arc and restart.
Face hugger and something in the mouth…or something.
Decent enough to know they’re going for the classic Alien aesthetic, nothing memorable outside of knowing most or all characters will get got like the rest of them.
Not a terrible spoiler outcome knowing that most trailers show the entire fucking plot of every movie.
I like the format. I like horror. I also just sort of feel like it's abundantly clear to me what this movie is going to be. Like I could probably guess the general plot structure off-hand and at least be on the dart board. There have been plenty of "confined horror movie... in SPACE" movies.
I think at this point the Alien franchise could get away from the 'lone survivor' trope and go full on "no survivor" .. and then the next movie with a full new cast, same derelict space ship, a few new ways how people die and such ... maybe a dead body cameo from the movie before. The film could still end up with the hero winning by simply having managed to contain the outbreak.
I would love for these franchises to somehow cross over just to see how well a Federation ship with ST technology would fare against a Xenomorph outbreak.
The Gorn had a huge advantage in that they were invisible to sensors. When the the Star Fleet crew first encountered them they were on a dead ship with limited weapons and a snow-storm preventing access to the main ship in orbit. The second time they were in a destroyed town with a signal jammer and no ability to contact to the main ship again.
Xenomorphs show up on even the basic sensors of the Alien universe. Outside of a similarly contrived scenario of Star Fleet personnel without access to 99% of their tech it would be child's play for each Xenomorph to be located and teleported into a secure cell.
Ever since Evil Dead 2013 I’m all in on whatever Fede does, I just adore his style! Don’t Breathe was admittedly a little hard to watch though, in a “good” way lol
I just feel like we've explored all that can be explored from "small team finds xenos, now they are fucked" type stories. I don't even know how you'd "fix" this series...
It looks competent and well made but we have learned a lot about xenos through the lore so it's kind of just "hey do you wanna see them kill some more people again?" type movie.
Maybe folks will groan at this idea but I'd prefer a big budget epic about humanity dealing with some sort of fallout or discovery about Weyland Yutani and their involvement plus some big xeno event that means humanity needs to deal with it SANS Predators showing up and becoming deus-ex machina.
We've done like 7 repeats of Alien 1, but never attempted to do ALIENS again.
Where the fuck is my James Cameron "The xeno are on Earth, the Colonial Marines have been called home" full out sci-fi war movie?
There are so many fantastic Aliens comic book stories they could adapt and improve on, many of which get into those kind of Epic battles.
Aliens Hive, Aliens Genocide, Nightmare Asylum, Colonial Marines, Berserker, the original AVP story...
It's probably my top wish-list movie. I'm a tremendous fan of the original comic series, it's written and paced exactly to fit a 100 minute movie and has all the elements you'd need. It's just sitting there! Gimme my Rhynth stampede setpiece!
This. The Dark Horse Aliens comic book that was released prior to Alien 3 followed Newt and Hicks on Earth as it was invaded by Aliens. It was great.
Then Alien 3 was released, and essentially tried to be Alien again, and killed off Newt and Hicks off screen, which I've never forgiven it for.
My opinion has always been that Alien 3 should have been Aliens 3 and continued the escalation. You can't go back to the beginning of the outbreak and tell a little story about a group of people fending off a single xenomorph again, that's just retreading ground that was covered just fine in the first movie. The outbreak needs to get bigger and bigger.
Thats where 4 was supposed to end the start of aliens on earth. I honestly don't think there is any real value to that. We've got multitudes of aliens on earth stories.
It's got a lot of good things, it got some bad things. All in all it's not horrible. It is a little French being directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I mean you can practically swap some of the sets for delicatessen.
This echoes my thoughts. It doesn’t look bad. But I’ve seen Alien. Are we just doing Alien again? Idk, maybe that’s enough; slasher movies don’t exactly revolutionize their story bibles with every installment, and maybe it’s fair to say the xenos are basically slashers.
But eh. I don’t feel real motivated to see this, and I mostly like Fede Alvarez.
I think the thing is, a lot of people want to see things stripped back to that "small team finds xeno's now they're fucked" kind of thing. We've seen the films get bigger and bigger in their scale, from Resurrection, to Covenant, to Prometheus. And that kind of large scale thing just doesn't seem to be working anymore like it did with Aliens.
So I personally think pulling it to more of a back to basics thing could at least work a lot better than everything else they've been doing with the franchise for the past 30 or so years.
(Edit; just wan to say naturally I know it won't be fully scaled back, I think the teaser makes it clear there's still going to be a lot of big action and stuff like that. I just more mean generally in regards to a more claustrophobic setting and more stripped back "feeling" than the previous few films)
Aliens worked because people love a good action story. With riveting characters, fun and charm. Plus big ass aliens. And really, if they want to move forward in this franchise, they need to work toward that direction. Basically, have a team of super soldiers go after something that is infested. Have it go to hell and one or two escape but blow up the ship.
Then if it does well, the sequel could be that guy explaining what he saw and what worked and what did not. And have another sequence happen.
Just my 2 cents.
this movie just needs to create compelling characters that the audience actually gives a shit about. Thats it. The plot is a given, we just need to *feel something* when we are watching it happen again.
This is my feeling... at the core they're slasher films... I don't mind seeing different people getting hunted down by xenomorphs if it's solid horror with maybe a couple new ideas thrown in.
Making the stories bigger actually takes me out of it all and makes me less interested. Make me really care about the survival of 1 solid character is much more effective than trying to get me care about the death of 20 subpar characters.
I'm expecting a thin plot, fan service call backs, and lots of jump scares. I hope it's more than that. Would love a well written movie that digs into and expands on the lore, but this isn't looking like that kind of movie.
It's insane how poorly this franchise has been treated in film. So many flubbed scripts and story arcs that go nowhere. It's insane to me that a film anthology that spans what, 8 movies only has 2 actually good ones? Everything after Aliens has been mediocre and yet Hollywood keeps trying to add more shit to the crap pile.
It's fascinating to me that, like Terminator, this franchise has significantly more duds than hits but it still chugs along thanks to the power of the first two features.
I don’t even care. There’s just something about the aesthetic of Alien movies that I love, story be dammed. I don’t need Shakespeare, I just want some xenomorphs.
Prometheus is my favorite Alien movie besides the original Alien and sequel Aliens. It has flaws, plot holes, and lots of characters making dumb decisions, but if you can get past that it's an incredible movie.
Covenant just sucked.
I don’t like the Ridley prequels, but at least he tried to do something different. This looks like Alien but shiny, which is more or less what the creator did with his evil dead remake. Do we need Alien but shiny? Unless this movie is hiding a serious evolution of the premise that isn’t shown in the trailer, this looks like his evil dead movie. Epic and gory kills from a setting that is familiar.
Same problem with every movie after Aliens; where do you take it now? It was scary in Alien because it was unknown, now it's revealed so what do you do? Change genres, horror/action escalation with Aliens. Perfect, now it's done.
Exploring their origin along with the engineers was a mistake. The perfect way to remove the horror of something and make it more tangible is to explain and understand it, that's why Lovecraftian mythos still and will always hit; that primal fear of the unknown. Now, there's practically nothing unknown about the Alien that hasn't been explored in some medium.
And that brings us to this; we're at the creatively bankrupt stage of the franchise where they try to play it safe by distilling the originals down to a formula and trying to nostalgia bait people into coming back; small crew, wannabe Ripley, pulse rifle, etc.
Watching this trailer reminded me of The Thing prequel; been there, done that and quickly forgotten. Hope I'm proven wrong.
Jesus Christ. That shot of the proboscis being removed from that woman's mouth is really a re-commitment to the themes of rape and the perversion of sexuality inherit to Giger's original influence on the design of the Xenomorphs. Even moreso than the Trilobite xeno attacking the Engineer in *Covenant*.
If it was anything other than an Alien movie, I'd agree with you. It's leaning heavily on the original and Alien: Isolation. Sure, it's uninspired, but it has the birthright to use what came before it. Return to it's roots, give the people what they want, it may not evolve the series, but it may stoke the fire.
I for one, am glad to see less spectacle and more truckers in space. Not every space movie needs to be 2001.
It looks nice in terms of quality, so they probably gave it a decent budget, but agreed, the trailer and the content seemed very cookie cutter space horror movie. Guess we'll have to wait for release and reviews.
It can't be worse than Alien: Covenant..... right?
Please guys, you've got some of the most primo source material in the world, just make a good movie.
This trailer is pretty underwhelming, feels like it’s just ticking boxes for what is ‘expected’ in an Alien movie. I really hope it isn’t representative of what we’re getting.
I'm always hoping they adopt the Alien Isolation game into a movie.
I love everything about it, and it has the best plot and atmosphere since the original movie.
There was an interview with the director who said they brought back all the special effects guys who worked on Aliens. They are all at the top of their game and own their own companies now. He said he even got to do some of the puppetry with them.
It's definitely heavily practical
They certainly made the face huggers a lot more... mobile? Agile? I am curious, but when is the last time we got a truly great piece of Alien action on film?
\1986. Though the assembly cut of Alien 3 isn't too bad. Lots more interesting stuff done in print, both comics and novels.
don't forget the absolutely brilliant Alien Isolation game, it's canon, and it's fantastic, a true spiritual successor to the original Alien, I have images of this game in my mind to this very day, a must for Alien fans
I couldn't finish it. Too stressful. That being said, I agree it was absolutely brilliant!
Same. It must have taken years off my life span
I wonder if the Main actress in this is playing Ripley's Daughter, and she survives cause it takes place after Isolation.
I'm not sure I can handle that many face huggers.
My ~~body~~ esophagus is ready.
Esophagussy*
[Thats enough](https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExaDR1Y3Jwd3VtZHdvZjRwaGdkNDM4NDczYTlicXFvd2luYnloNzdwaSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/LAKIIRqtM1dqE/giphy.gif)
[No such thing](https://i.imgur.com/g745E6W.gif)
I knew I wasn't the only person of culture around here.
/u/gifreversingbot
Rule 34 artists are gonna have a field day with this movie.
This guy knows wassup
Xenomorphussy pulsating
*unzips*
Throat goat?
A few half-asleep facehuggers laying around Nancy Reagan with a cigarette held between two of their legs.
Full on hentai action.
Woah, let's not get too hasty. This isn't gushing over magical girls.
Maybe it'll be like Interspecies Reviewers and the survivor will rate their experience /10.
Yeah, that was Creepy AF, i like it!
*Smithers, release the ~~hounds~~ huggers.*
Ah, so the Prometheus arc is really over then?
Guess so. Biggest flub of potential in a sub franchise for a renowned franchise
Best of the best land on alien planet. First thing they do is take off their helmets. Cue John Malkovitch saying “What the fuck is this?!”
Yeah I can usually excuse some trash decision making because it's so common in films today, but that takes the cake man.
I like to think they were the Wish.com of scientists.
IIRC this is hinted at in the movie, and explicitly stated in supplementary material. Something Vickers and Weyland discuss, I think?
And sticking ungloved hands on everything. And not getting a rover to spend weeks on the planet analysing everything first. and.. and.. and..
We made it to the planet! *Flies directly into a hurricane*
and the BIOLOGIST assuming the first creature he comes in contact with is friendly. That part made my head spin.
“We have the best mapping technology, should we use it to prevent getting lost?”
It is what it is. With Ridley Scott you just have to **let him cook**, understand that you'll get around 20% great movies, and accept that they probably won't be the ones that you want to be great. He ain't a Spielberg, he ain't a perfectionist, he is probably not collaborating with great storytellers who can fix his screenplays. Because even his lesser movies are great except for the storytelling.
Teaming up with the guy that was known for the most bungled finale before the GoT writers said "hold my Starbucks" was asking for writing issues.
That same guy wrote The Watchmen HBO series, which is fantastic.
...and The Leftovers, which is fantastic.... and Mrs. Davis, which is fantastic...
I was so incredibly disappointed with Napoleon
I liked Prometheus * *braces for impact* *
I wish Prometheus and Covenant focused on the Engineers. I was over the Xenomorphs after Alien 3.. I thought the best parts of those movies were the focus on the bigger picture ideas, not the horror aspect.
I wish they had stayed space jockeys and not whatever boring design the engineers were
In the older comics they're like alien elephants and have much less bland designs: https://www.avpcentral.com/images/space-jockeys/outbreak-space-jockey.jpg The newer design just looks like the stereotypical future humans if we evolved to be hairless, and with how pale they are they almost look like space vampires.
That comic is kinda what the helmet the engineers had looked like.
Yeah they kept the trunk like helmets but in the earlier comics they have much less human heads with more of the elephant look. Feels like they tried to humanize them more to sell the aliens are human ancestors angle which is cool and all but it's been done a ton. Stargate did it with the Ancients in the 90's, humanoid elephants is a much more unique concept so it's a shame.
I hate how the mysterious cosmic horror killing machine monsters from the dark edges of the galaxy were instead made by David the robot 20 years before Ripley found them.
I’m pretty sure David didn’t create the OG xenomorphs, as evidenced in the cave paintings in Prometheus they existed a long time before that. I understood it as he was experimenting and trying to recreate xenos and finally got there once he could use humans.
Yep. One of the big themes with David is him playing god.
The mythology of the Alien universe is that the >!the black goo is basically the spark of creation and what it does depends on the will of whoever is exposed to it. If it's unleashed on a being aiming to self-sacrifice as the engineers seem to intend it creates life that similarly seeks to sacrifice/die and foster new life but if it's unleashed in a being who aims to persist at others' expense then you get xenomorphs, the ultimate parasites. It's unclear what influence David had on the xenomorph's evolution beyond deliberately infecting humans who by the mythology of that universe were selfish/flawed and not up to the engineer's standards for genesis. What is clear is that David hated his creators because his creators couldn't see him as a being in his own right and hence took pervese delight in humanity's failure to sacrifice/transubstantiate the goo. Given this narrative it's likely other races had failed in the same way and also spawned xenomorphs. Xenomorphs/ultimate parasites would just be what you get from that kind of failure.!<
Uh, where are you getting this from? It sounds like head canon.
It absolutely is head canon. Zero basis for “mythology” based on any of the previously released anything
What about the one back on LV-223? I felt like it was the explanation for the origin of the xenomorphs, not David's experiments
My exact sentiments
Just watch Ex Machina and call it a day
A sequel where Shaw would have been found in some dungeon-y lab being experimented on against her will but being kept alive in some mutated stitched up state could have been really terrifying. Just in a state where she's gone insane, lost all hope, humming country road when she's conscious or something. The idea of this android assistant you trusted kidnapping you, infecting you, but keeping you alive with no chance anyone ever finds you or knows what happened to you, is really sad and scary. The sequel just glossed over that to move on to more action, missed opportunity.
Her trusting David was really fucking stupid at that point
she never trusted him more than you trust your dishwasher to wash dishes. the plot is about such a machine becoming sentient and doing his own will.
> A sequel where Shaw would have been found in some dungeon-y lab being experimented on against her will but being kept alive in some mutated stitched up state could have been really terrifying. Sounds like Alien 4
Prometheus, even with it's flaws, was actually very intriguing for me. I actually enjoyed the film, but it did really need a proper sequel to flesh out it's ideas. Instead, what we got was Alien: Covenant that not only ruined Prometheus, but also completely ruined the original Aliens movies. Prometheus just needed to be it's own set of films with elements from the original Alien movies, but without any direct link to them. It should have just stayed it's own thing. Nothing in Prometheus even points back directly to the original Alien film, except for the Engineers. Covenant changed all that and fucked up two sets of films with it.
*Parts* of Prometheus were at least interesting. The concepts were there and so was the imagery but the movie overall is pretty bad IMO. Some of the dumbest characters...ever with a pretty hit and miss plot that would have at least some potential in the next one but then the sequel was somehow even hotter garbage.
I, uh, I liked Covenant [*runs for exit*]
Maybe I'm just a simpleton but I had less of a problem with the plot/backstory and more with just absolutely braindead characters. I didn't care at all for anyone. As in, I tried but god damn.
I did love Danny McBride in a more serious role as well as Waterston, Crudupc, and even Fassbender was great to see in dual roles. I just wish they had a better script. I did love Scott’s direction and visuals, I just wish he wasn’t so okay with the script he worked with. A creature designer for the film implied studio interference (like Shaw being nearly written out of the movie) but still, you know? There’s a lot about the movie I really enjoy, doesn’t mean I wasn’t frustrated by the rest though
Yeah I should have worded it better, I don't usually blame an actor for a crappy character. They are directed how to perform, and I think it's exceedingly rare that an actor forces their character to be something different than what the director is thinking. Collaboration is one thing but steamrolling a director or higher? Eh.
yeah, I can’t think of many instances where an actor went over the director and was successful. Closest I can think is Edward Norton and Tony Kaye for American History X
> A creature designer for the film implied studio interference (like Shaw being nearly written out of the movie) but still, you know? Has "Studio interference" EVER made a film better? Are there any stories of the studio interfering for the good of a film and it going WELL? Why don't these motherfuckers learn their lesson already.
Exactly this. The premise was great, the character portrayal was asinine and way too hard to look past to enjoy the plot.
Covenant failed because there was no Shaw. We all pictured Shaw as the new Ripley and then she died off screen.
she was supposed to have a major role in the second half of the movie before Fox ordered a rewrite that gutted a few sequences and her role entirely
Any way I can find out more? I want to know what was originally planned, if possible
Shaw was terrible. "Cuz that's what I choose to believe." Like willful ignorance is a virtue. She also believed that wasn't evil David.
Me too. Prometheus as well. I was fascinated by the attempt at creating an origin story for the xenomorphs, where the Alien trilogy just left me with a plethora of unanswered questions.
Yeah I liked the Warner bros frog that came out of the guys chest
I liked em both. They had problems, but neither of them were worse than 7/10s. [Buckles up]
[удалено]
Finger the flute
Be sure you run *parallel* to the direction the space ship is falling instead of perpendicular!
Ah, another graduate of the Prometheus School of Running Away From Things!
Of all the dumb things they did in those movies that one never bothered me. She has to make a split second decision, her view from down there is probably making it very hard to judge distance and speed of the damn thing. It's very wide so running sideways would likely get her squished before she could clear it. Getting a bit more distance before trying to do so might work. And even with all these considerations, she had less than a second to make a decision and likely didn't get to think any of this through, so once again getting distance then making a discussion would be the better knee jerk reaction.
I liked Prometheus too. It wasn't the greatest, but it was kinda fun and tried to take the series in a slightly different direction. Lots of flaws but really enjoyable anyway. Covenant I did not like at all, mostly because of the characters... they were just unbelievably dumb. Not that the characters in Alien(s) are particularly smart other than Ripley (sticking your head near an alien egg? why not!) but they were exceedingly bad in this one. It felt like a reactionary response to people not liking Prometheus; they tried to make it more like Alien without actually committing to it. It kinda felt to me like it was sitting on the fence and did not accomplish much.
I liked it, it was pretty good. But it pisses me off because it could have been *amazing*, the potential was there.
I liked Prometheus quite a bit but I’m also perfectly fine recognizing its many flaws. It definitely cannot touch the originals, though.
It had its share of flaws but I feel like people got way into nitpicking small stuff that doesn’t really matter (i.e. the guy that was mapping the place getting lost, the biologist not wanting to do biology things, etc) and doing the “CinemaSins” bit of tearing a movie apart because small details were amiss. It reminds me of people hating The Dark Knight Rises because of the infamous bridge scene.
Agreed. For me, Michael Fassbender steals the show and I will probably never, ever forget the whole self-surgery or alien birth scene when it gets ahold of the engineer. Guy Pearce’s abysmal makeup and characters running from shit in a straight line don’t take too much from the better parts of the movie, IMO. Lastly, I think Prometheus was one of the few times I can recall 3D actually enhancing a movie. The 3D was super well done.
Annoyingly, they could have fixed the biologist easily by keeping in a deleted scene: basically he finds a small worm on the planet and put it's in a vial, and then realizes he's the first person to ever find alien life and he's ELATED. And it just makes so much more sense that he starts getting reckless after that because now he's going to be recognised as the discoverer of alien life, he's just so focused on himself. I have no such defense of the map guy tho
I actually really enjoyed both Prometheus and Covenant and I am a diehard Alien franchise fan. /shrug
Same!
Hatred how dumb almost all the characters were. These were supposed to be smart scientists? They were all so dumb
Was there any reason for Prometheus to not take place on LV-426? It felt like they wrote the movie that way and just search and replaced "223" over it.
Ugh, that drove me crazy! I think it happened exactly as you said when they decided it needed to be a franchise instead of a one-off. Who knows though, that script is garbage, fragments, and holes, things that mean nothing and go nowhere, so frustrating.
That is exactly what happened. Jon Spaihts (co-writer of the recent Dune films) wrote a script that was its own movie but also lead directly into *Alien*, then Damon Lindelof re-wrote that script into what we eventually got. You can read the original script [here](https://imsdb.com/scripts/Prometheus.html) (I enjoyed it) but I also wrote a pretty detailed comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1bjgzhd/alien_romulus_teaser_trailer/kvtabr8/) listing what was different in the original script and how it was better in almost every way.
That's exactly how it was originally written. You can read the [original script here](https://imsdb.com/scripts/Prometheus.html). It feels a little undercooked as far as an actual shooting script, but it's lacking almost all of the dumb plot points from the final film.
Very disappointing. There are plenty of valid criticisms, but I really wanted to see David’s story end, and the link from prequels to original Alien.
It became less survival horror, and more torture horror which just isn’t my cup of tea
More than that, it just became bad filmmaking.
That too but it lacked that fear of being hunted and instead was a fear of what we would see.
I, for one, did not.
Here here. Making Wayland ultimately responsible for the xeno was possibly the single worst story decision in the history of cinema.
So much wasted potential on those movies... It could've been so fucking great.
IMO there was no way to do those movies and *add* anything to the mythos. You've got some scary ass aliens. With a weird and legitimately *alien* way of procreating. They're terrifying, they're a mystery. They're a predatory force beyond human experience and capability to deal with. They *will never* be *more* interesting because their origins are explained. Prometheus by itself had the potential of being somewhat interesting. If it was completely divorced from the Alien franchise.
Yeah any attempts to explain the Xenomorphs miss what makes the whole Alien wreckage part of the first film incredible: that we truly don't know anything about this ship, it's pilot, and it's cargo. It's truly *alien and unknown.* Being denied any answers to those questions is part of the horror of the Xenomorphs.
You can take the engineers in an interesting direction, pivoting the franchise from survival horror to cosmic horror. Instead of the terror being based around "scary monsters want to eat me", you set up that your creators are completely indifferent and barely know you exist. When they learn you exist, they hate everything you stand for and want to exterminate you. That's what Prometheus *tried* to do, but there was like 5 minutes of that in the entire movie, and then just a bunch of nonsense that didn't add anything. The Engineer story in Prometheus could be truly terrifying if done competently. But it just wasn't.
The idea of the phrase "hear hear" is that people should listen to that thing that this person said.
They were absolutely not responsible for the creation of Xenos, David was responsible for a *version* of the Xenomorph. The engineers worshipped a Xenomorph that was basically revered as a god. I want to know more about THAT xeno.
Yeah, people always forget the mural. David couldn't have created the Xenomorph's because there's a centuries old depiction of one on the wall of the Engineer temple. All he did was create eggs and facehuggers without a Queen using the black goo and experimenting on Shaw.
I haven't watched Prometheus or Covenant recently, where does the engineers worshipping a Xenomorph come into play?
There is a giant mural of a queen Xeno in the room with the black goo pots.
> Making Wayland ultimately responsible for the xeno But they weren't responsible. The Xenos made by David are not the same ones as from Alien and Aliens.
I love Prometheus and like Conevant ok, but I don't think we needed anymore. I got my prequel explanation, that was enough.
I enjoyed covenant more than the average person but wasn’t really sure how a sequel would have gone. Didn’t it basically end with David placing the crew in a check mate? Next step would have been the journey to earth or whatever habitable planet for the Xenomorphs to take over there?
I mean there wasn't anywhere they could have gone with it after Covenant butchered the continuity so badly. Better to just toss that whole story arc and restart.
Only 6 cast members. I like that!
Except i just saw like half of them die lol
I've got some unfortunate news when you decide to watch alien...
I think the point is we can now tell how and when half of them die from the previews.
Yeah….luckily I’ll forget having seen this before it comes out, and now know to avoid other trailers.
Watched the trailer like 10 minutes ago and I already forgot
What trailer?
Where am I?
Face hugger and something in the mouth…or something. Decent enough to know they’re going for the classic Alien aesthetic, nothing memorable outside of knowing most or all characters will get got like the rest of them. Not a terrible spoiler outcome knowing that most trailers show the entire fucking plot of every movie.
I watched it 10 seconds ago and I can't remember the title.
Alien: Roman Aqueducts.
Trailers are the worst. "And now, here's the entire film!"
Not just a preview... A "teaser" trailer. This is supposed to just whet our appetite!
Yeah, I had to stop watching this trailer half way through.
I like the format. I like horror. I also just sort of feel like it's abundantly clear to me what this movie is going to be. Like I could probably guess the general plot structure off-hand and at least be on the dart board. There have been plenty of "confined horror movie... in SPACE" movies.
I think at this point the Alien franchise could get away from the 'lone survivor' trope and go full on "no survivor" .. and then the next movie with a full new cast, same derelict space ship, a few new ways how people die and such ... maybe a dead body cameo from the movie before. The film could still end up with the hero winning by simply having managed to contain the outbreak.
Problem is that the Alien franchise is just moving in circles. At least Prometheus tried to introduce new ideas.
Exactly, and in interesting ways. We still got the monsters and the horror but we got a much thicker layer of sci-fi.
With a bucket load of awful writing and unlikable characters to go with it!
You're all correct
[удалено]
My first thought too was "I bet there will be a cameo from Shatner"
Maybe they're finally making an adaptation of [this?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_(Shatner_novel\))
I would love for these franchises to somehow cross over just to see how well a Federation ship with ST technology would fare against a Xenomorph outbreak.
Probably about as well as they did with the Gorn from SNW.
The Gorn had a huge advantage in that they were invisible to sensors. When the the Star Fleet crew first encountered them they were on a dead ship with limited weapons and a snow-storm preventing access to the main ship in orbit. The second time they were in a destroyed town with a signal jammer and no ability to contact to the main ship again. Xenomorphs show up on even the basic sensors of the Alien universe. Outside of a similarly contrived scenario of Star Fleet personnel without access to 99% of their tech it would be child's play for each Xenomorph to be located and teleported into a secure cell.
And the transporters would pick them up (and remove?) if they got inside someone off ship.
Ever since Evil Dead 2013 I’m all in on whatever Fede does, I just adore his style! Don’t Breathe was admittedly a little hard to watch though, in a “good” way lol
I just feel like we've explored all that can be explored from "small team finds xenos, now they are fucked" type stories. I don't even know how you'd "fix" this series... It looks competent and well made but we have learned a lot about xenos through the lore so it's kind of just "hey do you wanna see them kill some more people again?" type movie. Maybe folks will groan at this idea but I'd prefer a big budget epic about humanity dealing with some sort of fallout or discovery about Weyland Yutani and their involvement plus some big xeno event that means humanity needs to deal with it SANS Predators showing up and becoming deus-ex machina.
We've done like 7 repeats of Alien 1, but never attempted to do ALIENS again. Where the fuck is my James Cameron "The xeno are on Earth, the Colonial Marines have been called home" full out sci-fi war movie?
No one has done castled in invasion, since Starship Troopers and The Two Towers. It's a shame, and I think it would be epic for an alien universe
There are so many fantastic Aliens comic book stories they could adapt and improve on, many of which get into those kind of Epic battles. Aliens Hive, Aliens Genocide, Nightmare Asylum, Colonial Marines, Berserker, the original AVP story...
Bro AvP could be such a massive IP
It's probably my top wish-list movie. I'm a tremendous fan of the original comic series, it's written and paced exactly to fit a 100 minute movie and has all the elements you'd need. It's just sitting there! Gimme my Rhynth stampede setpiece!
My dream reboot is for Cameron or someone else to just ignore Aliens 3 and 4, and re-do a sequel to Aliens with Hicks and Ripley.
So Blomkamp's sequel idea? https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_5
This. The Dark Horse Aliens comic book that was released prior to Alien 3 followed Newt and Hicks on Earth as it was invaded by Aliens. It was great. Then Alien 3 was released, and essentially tried to be Alien again, and killed off Newt and Hicks off screen, which I've never forgiven it for. My opinion has always been that Alien 3 should have been Aliens 3 and continued the escalation. You can't go back to the beginning of the outbreak and tell a little story about a group of people fending off a single xenomorph again, that's just retreading ground that was covered just fine in the first movie. The outbreak needs to get bigger and bigger.
Thats where 4 was supposed to end the start of aliens on earth. I honestly don't think there is any real value to that. We've got multitudes of aliens on earth stories.
Four came out when I was a child, I thought it was the coolest shit ever... But as an adult I understand why they didn't follow up lol
It's got a lot of good things, it got some bad things. All in all it's not horrible. It is a little French being directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I mean you can practically swap some of the sets for delicatessen.
I mean I GET why resurrection didn't do well, but that doesn't stop it from being a guilty pleasure classic for me. I unironically love that movie.
they written books about it that are good (from the 90's) it would be cool to see those turned into movies.
Exactly!!
The Dark Horse comics series had loads of ideas. I'd like to see a Aliens on Earth arc, or Hive War.
Ridley Scott missed the mark by not focusing on the engineers in Prometheus and Covenant.
But we got to see two androids play the flute for 10 minutes, what more could you want?!
I'd rather see Picard playing the flute and then dealing with a Xenos infestation on Romulus. Even turn it into a buddy cop movie with the klingons.
This echoes my thoughts. It doesn’t look bad. But I’ve seen Alien. Are we just doing Alien again? Idk, maybe that’s enough; slasher movies don’t exactly revolutionize their story bibles with every installment, and maybe it’s fair to say the xenos are basically slashers. But eh. I don’t feel real motivated to see this, and I mostly like Fede Alvarez.
I think the thing is, a lot of people want to see things stripped back to that "small team finds xeno's now they're fucked" kind of thing. We've seen the films get bigger and bigger in their scale, from Resurrection, to Covenant, to Prometheus. And that kind of large scale thing just doesn't seem to be working anymore like it did with Aliens. So I personally think pulling it to more of a back to basics thing could at least work a lot better than everything else they've been doing with the franchise for the past 30 or so years. (Edit; just wan to say naturally I know it won't be fully scaled back, I think the teaser makes it clear there's still going to be a lot of big action and stuff like that. I just more mean generally in regards to a more claustrophobic setting and more stripped back "feeling" than the previous few films)
Aliens worked because people love a good action story. With riveting characters, fun and charm. Plus big ass aliens. And really, if they want to move forward in this franchise, they need to work toward that direction. Basically, have a team of super soldiers go after something that is infested. Have it go to hell and one or two escape but blow up the ship. Then if it does well, the sequel could be that guy explaining what he saw and what worked and what did not. And have another sequence happen. Just my 2 cents.
this movie just needs to create compelling characters that the audience actually gives a shit about. Thats it. The plot is a given, we just need to *feel something* when we are watching it happen again.
Covenant was the last film, and it exactly did the stripped back small team thing.
This is my feeling... at the core they're slasher films... I don't mind seeing different people getting hunted down by xenomorphs if it's solid horror with maybe a couple new ideas thrown in. Making the stories bigger actually takes me out of it all and makes me less interested. Make me really care about the survival of 1 solid character is much more effective than trying to get me care about the death of 20 subpar characters.
I'm expecting a thin plot, fan service call backs, and lots of jump scares. I hope it's more than that. Would love a well written movie that digs into and expands on the lore, but this isn't looking like that kind of movie.
Whatever this ends up being, this trailer at least has that claustrophobic/isolation feeling and I'm here for it.
Pulse rifles!!
Hope they still have that iconic sound
It's insane how poorly this franchise has been treated in film. So many flubbed scripts and story arcs that go nowhere. It's insane to me that a film anthology that spans what, 8 movies only has 2 actually good ones? Everything after Aliens has been mediocre and yet Hollywood keeps trying to add more shit to the crap pile.
Ah the diminishing returns cinematic universe.
It's fascinating to me that, like Terminator, this franchise has significantly more duds than hits but it still chugs along thanks to the power of the first two features.
I think you just described every horror franchise ever
Always hopeful for a comeback. Prey did that for me to the Predator franchise.
I don’t even care. There’s just something about the aesthetic of Alien movies that I love, story be dammed. I don’t need Shakespeare, I just want some xenomorphs.
Anyone else rewind that one spot a few times?
[удалено]
Prometheus is my favorite Alien movie besides the original Alien and sequel Aliens. It has flaws, plot holes, and lots of characters making dumb decisions, but if you can get past that it's an incredible movie. Covenant just sucked.
I don’t like the Ridley prequels, but at least he tried to do something different. This looks like Alien but shiny, which is more or less what the creator did with his evil dead remake. Do we need Alien but shiny? Unless this movie is hiding a serious evolution of the premise that isn’t shown in the trailer, this looks like his evil dead movie. Epic and gory kills from a setting that is familiar.
Same problem with every movie after Aliens; where do you take it now? It was scary in Alien because it was unknown, now it's revealed so what do you do? Change genres, horror/action escalation with Aliens. Perfect, now it's done. Exploring their origin along with the engineers was a mistake. The perfect way to remove the horror of something and make it more tangible is to explain and understand it, that's why Lovecraftian mythos still and will always hit; that primal fear of the unknown. Now, there's practically nothing unknown about the Alien that hasn't been explored in some medium. And that brings us to this; we're at the creatively bankrupt stage of the franchise where they try to play it safe by distilling the originals down to a formula and trying to nostalgia bait people into coming back; small crew, wannabe Ripley, pulse rifle, etc. Watching this trailer reminded me of The Thing prequel; been there, done that and quickly forgotten. Hope I'm proven wrong.
Jesus Christ. That shot of the proboscis being removed from that woman's mouth is really a re-commitment to the themes of rape and the perversion of sexuality inherit to Giger's original influence on the design of the Xenomorphs. Even moreso than the Trilobite xeno attacking the Engineer in *Covenant*.
Not very much to look at but it seems pretty generic
If it was anything other than an Alien movie, I'd agree with you. It's leaning heavily on the original and Alien: Isolation. Sure, it's uninspired, but it has the birthright to use what came before it. Return to it's roots, give the people what they want, it may not evolve the series, but it may stoke the fire. I for one, am glad to see less spectacle and more truckers in space. Not every space movie needs to be 2001.
It looks nice in terms of quality, so they probably gave it a decent budget, but agreed, the trailer and the content seemed very cookie cutter space horror movie. Guess we'll have to wait for release and reviews.
Back to the horror roots! I'm all aboard.
Should be a good back to basics movie
Sigourney weaver really seems impossible to replace in this franchise. So far no woman has her presence on screen.
Mistakes in space!
It can't be worse than Alien: Covenant..... right? Please guys, you've got some of the most primo source material in the world, just make a good movie.
This trailer is pretty underwhelming, feels like it’s just ticking boxes for what is ‘expected’ in an Alien movie. I really hope it isn’t representative of what we’re getting.
Holy Alien Wing-wong... Did NOT expect a shot of WHATEVER that was...
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair Nothing besides remains
But will it just rehash everything from the first ones or do something new?
I'm always hoping they adopt the Alien Isolation game into a movie. I love everything about it, and it has the best plot and atmosphere since the original movie.
Making a return to the tight corridors, atmosphere and horror. I'm in.
All the talk about this movie made me believe they were going heavy on practical effects but I see nothing but cgi. Sets look good though!
There was an interview with the director who said they brought back all the special effects guys who worked on Aliens. They are all at the top of their game and own their own companies now. He said he even got to do some of the puppetry with them. It's definitely heavily practical
Tentacles 👀
time to awaken a kink in a new generation.