Prometheus 2 - “Alien: Paradise Lost�!

[Shin Mefilas]

Ok in a surprising move the title of the sequel to Ridley Scott's Prometheus will be called Alien: Paradise Lost.

 

While not much is known about the plot yet this simple change does raise a few question. And how will this effect Neill Blomkamp’s Alien movie?

 

[H222G981]

Sounds interesting and very exciting. It always takes forever for an Alien film to come out. So really looking forward to this.

[Salkafar]

Prometheus was a great disappointment to me.

 

Alien is as good as it is because it is simple and it doesn't try to explain too much. It implies a lot, but the central part always remains a state of utter panic because you're locked in a room with something that wants to kill you. By comparison, Prometheus was burdened, top-heavy, pretentious and clumsy.

[Shin Mefilas]

I honestly like the movie but like any good fan I will not deny its flawed. I loved the science fiction and world building but as a movie there's definitely something not quite right. 

 

The movie's biggest flaw in my eyes was leaving so much unexplained (which was done on purpose and out of  pretension ). I'm not referring to the stuff related to the Engineers that side of things is fine. Tons of information about the humans characters that was in the script and would have really help flesh them out was never shot or even hinted at. For example in extra material rather then being incompetent scientists Elizabeth Shaw and her partner come across as "fringe scientists" who's theories aren't taken seriously by their piers and who seem to put more stock in faith then the scientific method (or at least that's the impression I got) but because their discoveries correspond with those made by Wayland himself he takes them more seriously. Now doesn't that make more sense then whats actually shown in the movie,

 

I agree somewhat with you view as well Salkafar.

 

Hopefully Mr. Scott has learned that having an ego trip is not the way to make a  good movie. Maybe this change in title is a sign that Ridley has either gotten over himself or had his wrists slapped and can now get back making good movies.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Prometheus Guyver

[H222G981]

I agree with Salkafar. I'm hoping this takes us back to the actual Alien series. I was hoping for an Alien 5, but well....we had to settled for Prometheus instead. 

[Shin Mefilas]

Well hopefully we are getting both Ridley's doing his prequel series and Neill will be doing Alien 5

Edited September 25, 2015 by Prometheus Guyver

[Mirabilis]

I'm a huge die hard aliens fanatical fan. So Prometheus really pissed me off, the movie was horrible. The philosophical plot twists, various creatures, monsters and stuff was all way too much. The religious aspect I felt was shoved through and completely unnecessary and insulting. They could've made a great film without any religious tone to it (much like the first two Alien films). Heck, without the religious stuff the film would've been infinitely better; though it still would've suffered from trying to do too much with the various monsters. I feel like it's original intended script, to be a direct prequel to the Aliens franchise, would've been far better. I can only hope that this new film will fix the problems of the last and not be as horrid as this last one.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Mirabilis

[*Jess♥]

when anyone asks me what my favourite movie is, I generally default to Alien. It's not because it genuinely is my favourite movie, or the best movie I have ever seen, but it is generally very difficult to make such a monumental decision. "the best".
I choose Alien because the way it is shot is very beautiful to me. It is art as far as I am concerned. not the pretentious crap you get from art students, but something beautiful crafted with dedication and attention to balance and aesthetic qualities. It is like a beautiful haunting piece of music, in visual form. The script and the technicalities etc don't really concern me too much. as a result of this view, I really don't have a high opinion of Aliens.  Aliens took it in a completely different direction and turned it into an action horror-thriller.  For these reasons, I give more credit to Alien 3 and a little bit of credit to Alien 4.
But of course, as Prometheus was made by Ridley Scott himself, I feel it is completely on point. The beautiful imagery and pacing and themes are all back just how I remembered.  I am less concerned with plot holes or scripts or technicalities, more concerned with how it looks and feels.
This move... calling the next one 'Alien'. In some senses I feel this is a problem. It feels to me that Scott is compromising. He is compromising his ideals in order to please studio execs or the fans of a franchise.  This suggests he may be pandering and that potentially hurts the thing I loved about the other two films.

[Shin Mefilas]

To be honest Jess I feel the same but I'm happy to meet people half way when they dislike it. The movie has it's flaws but I love it.

 

As for the compromising, we'll just have to see how it plays out. You have actually got me worried now   .

Edited September 25, 2015 by Prometheus Guyver

[Salkafar]

Alien was made in an era which, in many ways, I feel was the age when movie making reached its zenith. Not just because of the art itself, but because of the world in which they were made.

 

I mean, the late Seventies. The tail end of the hippie age, right before the great Beast rose in the White House - the children of the flower age, now fully grown and developed, at the height of their ability. What movies were made in those five years?

 

A handful of them: Rocky, Taxi Driver, Carrie, The Omen, Network, Logan's Run, All the president's men, Marathon Man, Star Wars (back before it was called 'A New Hope'), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Smokey and the Bandit, Annie Hall, Eraserhead, Saturday Night Fever, The Hills Have Eyes, Grease, Halloween, The Deer Hunter, Superman, Midnight Express, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the best version), Dawn of the Dead (mother of all zombie flicks), Watership Down, The Lord of the Rings (the animated one), The Boys from Brazil, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Mad frickin' Max, Apocalypse Now, The Warriors, Caligula, Kramer vs. Kramer, Life of Brian, Star Trek: the Motion Picture, the Amityville Horror and The Black Hole (Thanks, IMDb).

 

Compare it to what's being groaned out by Hollywood today. It's no comparing.

Edited September 26, 2015 by Salkafar

[H222G981]

Alien still is and was a masterpiece. Same with Aliens. But still. No amount of sequels in today's Hollywood will ever beat those movies. They will always be the best of the series no matter how many Fox makes. 

[Shin Mefilas]

[Salkafar]

"The beast was invented". Oh crap.

 

Well, that's it for me, really...

[Shin Mefilas]

Ok so it looks like Alien Paradise Lost and Alien 5 are both coming out the same year.

[Salkafar]

My money's on Blomkamp. What happens when movie directors return to the franchise that made them famous has already been demonstrated by George Lucas... twice over.

[Shin Mefilas]

You probably right.

[H222G981]

I'd sure like to see Ripley again. 

[Mirabilis]

I think it's time they expanded on the Alien franchise without Ripley. Alien Isolation would've been a great film for the series. Better the Alien Resurrection at least.

[Shin Mefilas]

while it would be nice to see her again the movies seem a little to overreliance on her.

 

Their have other female and male protagonists in the novels and comics that are just as compelling as her so you don't always need Ripley. Sometimes what fans wont isn't what we should get.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Prometheus Guyver

[Shin Mefilas]

Ridley Scott has confirmed that the Prometheus sequel is definitely more of an Alien film: “Well, really it’s “Alien.†They’re going to go to the planet where the engineers came from, and come across the evolving creature that they had made. Why did they make it? Why would they make such a terrifying beast? It felt bio-mechanoid, it felt like a weapon. And so the movie will explain that, and reintroduce the alien back into it.â€

 

Ridley Scott has talked about how he considered the Alien (the creature) to be done and no longer scary. Creative Assembly proved him wrong with Alien Isolation which was praised for returning Alien to its former horror glory. But the inclusion of the traditional Alien in Alien: Covenant has been in question for sometime because of Scott’s past comments. No longer though, as Scott confirms the Alien will feature in Alien: Covenant in all stages of its life cycle: “There was always this discussion: Is Alien, the character, the beast, played out or not? We’ll have them all: egg, face-hugger, chest-burster, then the big boy. I think maybe we can go another round or two.â€

 

[Mirabilis]

Personally, I think alien was better left without an origin story. It helped create and stimulate the horror of the creature. The mystery and imagination. Everything was left unexplained, and in the end it didn't matter. All that mattered was the alien existed and it was going to kill you. I think sometimes, things like this, can do more harm than good. It takes away some of the mystery and charm of the series. The magic of the horror. I dunno. I'll see it, only because I'm a die hard aliens fan, but I don't know if I'll like it.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Mirabilis

[Salkafar]

Explaining precisely where the villain came from always takes away from the horror unless the explanation is absurd or completely disproportionate. Then it can work.

 

Example 1: In the Transformers franchise, the ultimate villain is Unicron, who is slowly destroying all that exists, one planet at a time. He literally eats planets with all the people on them. He is gigantic, he is pure evil, he is incredibly powerful and only one thing in the universe can stop him. Now, in most incarnations of the franchise where Unicron appears, if his origin is explained at all, it is that he is an evil god from the dawn of time. But in the cartoon, it was revealed he was created by a silly old man in a laboratory. He just got out of hand. Dramatically sound: such significance from such insignificance. Like opening a jar containing a deadly strain of some disease because you misread the label, or just were curious. Oops!

 

Example 2: In the Iron Man comics, for almost a year of stories (actually it might be longer) Tony Stark was plagued by an unseen enemy. Paralyzed by a gunshot wound, he had had an experimental bio-chip implanted in his spine to regain the ability to walk; but it turned out this was a deadly trap, as the bio-chip was a parasitic organism which gradually insinuated itself into his nervous system. Eventually his body could be taken over and remote-controlled by his deadly enemy - a man who we, the readers, did see, and who gloried in his victory over Tony Stark, because he hated him with a furious passion. In the end, the men confronted each other in armored battle. Tony Stark won... and when his mortal enemy's identity was finally revealed (he had apparently been killed)... he did not recognize him. He had no idea who he was at all. It was brilliant.

 

Example 3: In the Dark Horse Alien comics, from years before their completely pointless 'Fire and stone' comics, there was a mini-series called 'the Destroying Angels'. In this, it was revealed that the Xenomorphs have appeared on Earth before... about two billion years ago. Hence the name 'destroying angels' - it's like they're agents of some cosmic force, sent to effect extinction events. No attempt is made to explain where they actually come from. They don't need it. The Xenomorphs are Lovecraftian horrors - they are simply the most perfect expression of a universe which itself is horrible, unknown, dark, scary and deadly. Nothing Scott intends to explain is going to improve that.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Salkafar

[Shin Mefilas]

While I agree with you to a degree Salkafar eventually we were going to reach this point sooner or later. Unlike most horror icons that have either died off or get remade the Alien franchise is still ongoing and a movie of this nature was effectively inevitable.

 

Besides while Destroying Angels didn't try to explain their origins Dark Horse had already tried to explain their origin in Dark Horse Presents: Aliens. While it was only a theory it is suggested that the Xenomorphs evolved on their own planet. On this planet were fully integrated into the environment, they even had their own natural predators that kept the hives under control. However someone was stupid and took them off world and without any natural predators they bred like wildfire.

 

 

My personal interpretation has always been that like the Guyver, the Xenomorphs are a bio-weapon gone out of control. A cosmic horror (or Destroying Angels) created by gods, The Engineers. Something that has openly been suggested by Scott since the very beginning. This is a concept I prefer, that the Xenomorphs is part of something much bigger rather then just being an invasive species on a cosmic scale. Prometheus was, as far as I am considered, a step in the right direction despite its flaws. What I want is something that will give me insight and hints but doesn't spell everything out. So like Prometheus but better.

 

I have always been fascinated by the Alien, infact that the very first thing I felt about them. It was only as I got older that I learned how scary they were and even then my fascination still heavily outweighs any primal fear I may have. Plus it is simply human nature to want to know and understand. The tiger that stalked our ancestors in the night likely held the same qualities we ascribe to the Alien now. But even now just because we know everything about the tiger is doesn't make one any less beautiful or terrifying. The Alien has been studied and dissected ever since it first appeared on screen but it has never become less scary, Alien Isolation proved that. Exploring where it came from will likely not do that either. 

 

A similar thing happened to Jurassic Park, eventually just having dinosaurs wasn't going to be enough. Whether you liked of Jurassic World or not, genetically modified dinosaurs were going to be a thing eventual. And I personally was happy with the outcome. 

 

 I'm actually more worried about this so called Alien 5 which looks to undo Alien 3. Despite what some fans think Alien 3 is not a bad movie, infact I have always felt it was on par with the first two. 

 

This video best explains my feelings.

 

I am really looking forward to Alien: Covenant. 

Edited December 13, 2015 by Prometheus Guyver

[*Jess♥]

I did really like alien 3.
it had teh same sense of isolation and hopelessness as the original. I always hated aliens. cameron turned it into an action movie. that's not alien for me.

 

I think the alien is scary no matter what. seeing the origins in prometheus didn't make it less scary, it makes it more scary because it kinda makes me feel vulnerable in my own being. not due to external monsters, but the potential within . those things that can get inside our bodies to the cellular level. it's no longer just a fear of a predator, but also a fear of disease.

 

also, I know almost exactly what a nuclear warhead is, I know what it does, how it is made, and more or less who makes it. and I know why. is it scary? yes, it's one of the most scary things I can think of.

 

i think not knowing about something gives a sense of constant danger, something we can grow accustomed to. constant dread will eventually subside into a hyper awareness and eventually a comfort with hte idea of danger. it's the existence of safety that makes the danger more stark. when we know the origin of something, when we know that there are safe places in the universe, we know the danger ever more acutely.

[Salkafar]

I always liked Alien 3, despite its sad ending (actually, that still worked for me, and the score is smegging beautiful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1bd9L5Tw7k&list=PLCF78A6D4F54F01DA ), and knowing from what troubled origins it came makes me appreciate it even more. I do remember that Sigourney Weaver said it felt like God was giving her the role of Queen Isabella in 1492: Conquest of Paradise to make up for the sheer hell of shooting Alien 3.

 

Now, Alien Resurrection on the other hand...

 

There is one thing that does not, and never will belong in an Alien movie, and that is humor.

Edited December 13, 2015 by Salkafar