What next for the Alien?

[.matthew.]

There's actually quite a lot of additional lore about the Aliens, with an extended heirarchy such as the Alien Empress and the Alien Mother (or something like that). Either way, the upper echelons of the race get progressively more intelligent and it'd be possible to do stuff with them more easily than the mindless hunters that we normally see.

 

[BT Jones]

Alien is one of my favourite franchises. I loved how each movie featured character groups with different occupations. There was (in film release order); space freighter workers; soldiers; prisoners; mercenaries; geologists; colonists.

1 & 2 are, obviously, legendary, but I really enjoyed the Director's Edition (or alternative cut) of Alien 3. Really good, if you haven't seen. Far more coherent, with whole subplots reinstated.

I'm also a big fan of Prometheus. I like where Ridley Scott was trying to go (even if he was demystifying the original movie), but I think he rushed the ending a bit. Covenant took this potential and rather flushed it down the toilet, even if there were some decent set pieces. I think he got caught between extending the story and giving the kids the xenomorph slasher movie he thought they wanted.

I think the obvious avenue for Alien would be television and an extended universe whereby perhaps a group of explores travel the universe trying to track down the engineers or, alternatively, wipe out new infestations. As long as it is handled with dignity by proper storytellers and quality scriptwriters (and not made into a Walking Dead style headcount of the weak style exercise), it has the potential to be compelling - more so than similar shows like Raised by Wolves or Altered Carbon.

Also, it would be great if they could somehow resurrect Vincent Ward's original Alien 3 idea (Aliens versus monks on a wooden planet). That's a great entry in the book "The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made".

 

[Dave]

(Aliens versus monks on a wooden planet)

A planet of trees, or a planet made out of wood?

The latter wouldn't work so well if they used flamethrowers!

 

[BAYLOR]

Alien is one of my favourite franchises. I loved how each movie featured character groups with different occupations. There was (in film release order); space freighter workers; soldiers; prisoners; mercenaries; geologists; colonists.

1 & 2 are, obviously, legendary, but I really enjoyed the Director's Edition (or alternative cut) of Alien 3. Really good, if you haven't seen. Far more coherent, with whole subplots reinstated.

I'm also a big fan of Prometheus. I like where Ridley Scott was trying to go (even if he was demystifying the original movie), but I think he rushed the ending a bit. Covenant took this potential and rather flushed it down the toilet, even if there were some decent set pieces. I think he got caught between extending the story and giving the kids the xenomorph slasher movie he thought they wanted.

I think the obvious avenue for Alien would be television and an extended universe whereby perhaps a group of explores travel the universe trying to track down the engineers or, alternatively, wipe out new infestations. As long as it is handled with dignity by proper storytellers and quality scriptwriters (and not made into a Walking Dead style headcount of the weak style exercise), it has the potential to be compelling - more so than similar shows like Raised by Wolves or Altered Carbon.

Also, it would be great if they could somehow resurrect Vincent Ward's original Alien 3 idea (Aliens versus monks on a wooden planet). That's a great entry in the book "The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made".

The first two Alien films are really good . Number 3 is well made but , I didn't like the ending . Aline Resurrection , the whole cloning Ripley concept just didn't work for me. Alien Verses Predator . the first film is silly but fun to watch and I liked the idea of the two Xenos being in same universe , which was foreshadowed in the comics and the second Predator film . Requleim was second AvP film was pretty dire.

As For Prometheus and Covenant , I didn't care for either film. The study should have gone with Neil Blompkamp's Alien film instead.

 

[BT Jones]

A planet of trees, or a planet made out of wood?

The latter wouldn't work so well if they used flamethrowers!

From memory, it was an artificial planet made out of wood. If they could engineer that, I'm sure they could suppress fire, ban flamethrowers or treat the wood with some kind of fireproof resin!!

BAYLOR said:
The first two Alien films are really good . Number 3 is well made but , I didn't like the ending . Aline Resurrection , the whole cloning Ripley concept just didn't work for me. Alien Verses Predator . the first film is silly but fun to watch and I liked the idea of the two Xenos being in same universe , which was foreshadowed in the comics and the second Predator film . Requleim was second AvP film was pretty dire.

As For Prometheus and Covenant , I didn't care for either film. The study should have gone with Neil Blompkamp's Alien film instead.

Yeah, Blompkamp's movie would have been interesting; ignoring 3, 4 & 5. Then again, this doesn't always make for a great movie, as Terminator Dark Fate proved. Seriously @BAYLOR, if you haven't seen the special edition of Alien 3, you should watch it.

 

[BT Jones]

.

 

[AE35Unit]

Alien vs Covid

 

[BAYLOR]

From memory, it was an artificial planet made out of wood. If they could engineer that, I'm sure they could suppress fire, ban flamethrowers or treat the wood with some kind of fireproof resin!!


Yeah, Blompkamp's movie would have been interesting; ignoring 3, 4 & 5. Then again, this doesn't always make for a great movie, as Terminator Dark Fate proved. Seriously @BAYLOR, if you haven't seen the special edition of Alien 3, you should watch it.

Fair enough . And for the Record I avoided The latest Terminator film.

 

[AE35Unit]

Fair enough . And for the Record I avoided The latest Terminator film.

Oh it was good

 

[Judderman]

I could see Alien and Aliens being rebooted/remade into two seasons of a series. Considering their age and how much is being remade.
Potential to be a good series in its own right, but extremely unlikely to match those films.

 

[Toby Frost]

Yes, I can imagine how even a good series could become artificially bloated and slow. There's a difficult balance between being superficial and overlong. One of the reasons that they're both such good films is that they fit the structure of a film really well - and therefore don't fit the form of a TV show.

Interestingly, the roleplaying game contains both Fiorina, where the film of Alien 3 was set, and a wooden planet called Arceon, which seems to be the monastic planet from the unused script. I think it's a shame that Blomkamp's film didn't get made: Alien 3 has good bits, but I don't think it's that great overall. I'd be interested to see how much a different edit would mend some of the problems, but I suspect that they're too fundamental.

 

[paeng]

The first movie used horror, and the second action because the creature was already revealed. The third had to use another genre, and it employed something like detective fiction.

Given that, they can make TV versions of the novels that were made into audio dramas to fill in gaps between the first two movies:

Audio dramas

avp.fandom.com

For the prequels, they can probably make one TV mini-series to finish that story line, and show how it leads to the first feature.

These should not be very expensive as most scenes can be shot using the same sets and props.

 

[BAYLOR]

Yes, I can imagine how even a good series could become artificially bloated and slow. There's a difficult balance between being superficial and overlong. One of the reasons that they're both such good films is that they fit the structure of a film really well - and therefore don't fit the form of a TV show.

Interestingly, the roleplaying game contains both Fiorina, where the film of Alien 3 was set, and a wooden planet called Arceon, which seems to be the monastic planet from the unused script. I think it's a shame that Blomkamp's film didn't get made: Alien 3 has good bits, but I don't think it's that great overall. I'd be interested to see how much a different edit would mend some of the problems, but I suspect that they're too fundamental.

They could bring in the Predators and the Engineers to liven things up aa bit. it's just a thought.

 

[.matthew.]

They could bring in the Predators and the Engineers to liven things up aa bit. it's just a thought.

A Predator engineer (a subclass of Predator) in a fight for survival (and advancement in social status that goes with bagging such a nice trophy) against an Alien incursion

 

[BAYLOR]

A Predator engineer (a subclass of Predator) in a fight for survival (and advancement in social status that goes with bagging such a nice trophy) against an Alien incursion

There are so many possibilities here.

 

[Toby Frost]

The engineers were a disappointment to me. The original space jockey had so much potential: it was this vast thing that seemed to have partially formed from the ship (or merged with it) with a strange, elephantine head - and it turns out it was a big blue man in a funny helmet (which doesn't visually work) who somehow created humans. I thought it was a clumsy retcon that took away a lot of the mystery of the original. As with a lot of these things, I felt that the explanation was weaker than the mystery.

As for the Predator, it's cool, and one of my favourite aliens, but it just doesn't fit the bleak atmosphere of Alien for me. It's something from an action film, not a horror film. I could imagine it fighting Robocop or the Terminator. But I'm probably splitting hairs.

 

[.matthew.]

I meant more of just regular engineering staff - the Predator ships have to get fixed somehow and I don't imagine a Predator hunter type doing it themselves. I was imagining it a sort of less actiony one though since it wouldn't have the crazy killing skills of the ones we're used to seeing.

Plenty of opportunities for them to bump into each other in vents too

 

[BAYLOR]

The engineers were a disappointment to me. The original space jockey had so much potential: it was this vast thing that seemed to have partially formed from the ship (or merged with it) with a strange, elephantine head - and it turns out it was a big blue man in a funny helmet (which doesn't visually work) who somehow created humans. I thought it was a clumsy retcon that took away a lot of the mystery of the original. As with a lot of these things, I felt that the explanation was weaker than the mystery.

As for the Predator, it's cool, and one of my favourite aliens, but it just doesn't fit the bleak atmosphere of Alien for me. It's something from an action film, not a horror film. I could imagine it fighting Robocop or the Terminator. But I'm probably splitting hairs.

There was graphic novel incarnation of the Space jockey whose look was more inline with the original film.

The whole alien vs predator set up stated with a Dark Horse comics series. In my case , I actually like the idea and Aliens snd Predators being in the same universe.

 

[Vince W]

I have no problem with Aliens and Predators being in the same universe, I just wish they had better stories than just running and screaming.

 

[Toby Frost]

The Alien RPG, which appears to be canon and cross-references very closely to the old Aliens Technical Manual, mentions an inconclusive war between the US marines and the Union of Progressive Peoples, the Communist Bloc of the setting. It sounds very much like Space Vietnam, and could be a good start for a series. Interesting also that the Seegson Corporation from the Alien: Isolation computer game, has now been incorporated into the setting. There's also mention of mining on Io, which sounds suspiciously like the Con Amalgmated colony from Outland.