It’s official: Fox has announced that Ridley Scott, who brought us Alien in 1979, is set to direct the latest entry in the franchise, the yet untitled Alien 5, slated for 2011.
Is it possible that the horrible creatures from Alien can behave themselves? We should get to see how they interact on their own turf as this prequel will visit them on their planet of origin. No doubt, they won’t act civilized for long once the humans arrive.
At 71, Ridley Scott is a very busy man. A look at his IMDb shows he has quite a number of movies in the works including Brave New World, The Forever War, Stones, The Kind One and Child 44.
The screenwriter for the new Alien movie, John Spaihts, made the successful pitch to Fox and Ridley Scott on the strength of his previous space thrillers, featuring Keanu Reeves: Shadow 19 and Passengers. Spaihts’ current writing schedule includes The Darkest Hour, Children of Mars and St. George and the Dragon.
There have been three sequels to Scott’s original, most notably James Cameron’s Aliens, the second movie that came out in 1986. This is the first time that Ridley Scott has returned as director of the franchise. Will he be able to bring this latest movie back to the level of the first two?
August 1st, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Sounds great. I’m looking forward to this.
August 1st, 2009 at 6:49 pm
To be honest I have always wondered about that race that the “alien gunner” or “space-jockey” belongs to. The one that we see in the banner for this article. I wanted to know more about them. None of the crew seemed that surprised that a massive creature lay dead and no one wondered what it was or how they lived or where they came from. Sure, they didn’t have time LATER ON, but during the initial discovery it always seemed like a “Oh wow, look at that. That’s interesting” more so than a “Oh my god! It’s huge! I’ve never seen that shit ever!” which is usually the most likely response. So hopefully that creatures origin will be discussed.
August 2nd, 2009 at 1:55 am
I think an interesting way to approach this would be to have a human crew terrorizing the aliens- kind of a reverse of the original storyline. To make the audience sympathize with the aliens and make the humans terrifying would be a challenge and bring something different to the franchise
August 2nd, 2009 at 1:56 am
Excellent point, Bullet Train. I agree. That would be an perfect point of entry for this new movie. Wouldn’t that be just the thing to bring all this back to a higher level? We can only assume the best with whatever Scott and company come up with.
August 2nd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I just rewatched Alien this afternoon, because of this announcement and because it was on commercial TV yesterday. I should go back and re-watch the director’s cut, to see if they made a bigger deal about the gunner.
Honestly, I think the LAST thing you want to do is make the aliens sympathetic. They work best as an amusment park dark ride, where you just wait for one of them to jump out of the shadows. They tried to make the aliens more sympathetic in Resurrection, and look how well that turned out… and that was from Joss Whedon.
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:07 am
A prequel is what AvP were. They weren’t that good.
Elaborating on the origin of the mysterious spacecraft will remove some of the intrigue of Alien. I mean, half the fun is having no clue why its there, what it is, and all that. It’s like making a prequel of The Thing. Who wants that?
Then again, who knows? I suppose it could be alot like Alien, with the space jockies dying one by one with an alien loose. I mean, that’s as much as we can infer from the evidence. Should be interesting, to say the least.
…man, Giger always creeps me out.
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:14 am
Well, with Ridley Scott helming it, this news bit just got a slightly better nod in my book than most. But as is customary, I’m waiting for a trailer.
The ‘space jockeys’ were also touched on in the early Aliens comics from Dark Horse. It seemed that they used some of the Xenos to cleanse a potential planet, then wipe them out so they can colonise it for themselves….
Here’s the Wiki entry;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Jockey_(Alien)
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:38 am
Any ALIEN is good alien…except for #3!
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:51 am
With Ridley, I’m hoping for the best. Give me a 2 t o2 1/2 hour epic like the first two movies. Don’t try to cram a million things in 1 1/2 hours like the AVP movies.
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:46 am
I’m not sure what is true continuity for the the Aliens and the Preditors but don’t they touch on the “space jocky” race in the Dark Horse comic books? for some reason I was thinking they did a storyline that featured that race. I could be wrong though.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:48 am
Dark Horse touched the race already with a comic. And male aliens peaceful? Worst idea ever. They behave in a hive mind mentality like ants or bees and live to serve the whole and the queen.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:53 am
What if it starts off looking a little different as we all know that aliens can takes favorable traits from it’s prey and what if this alien race created them or engineered them. What if in the begining there’s only one alien and we see this one alien escape and wreak havok and result in a becoming a huge threat?
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Looking forward to this.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
This is really cool news. I’ve always wanted to see the Aliens’ past explored. Ridley Scott being involved is awesome!
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Well, if Scott himself said on the Alien DVD that exploring the Space Jockey’s backstory would make for an interesting movie, then what the hay, I’m in.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
interesting… But as the movie develops further, I wonder when fanboys will start trying to roast Scott as an aging hack who should never have returned to the franchise?
August 3rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Can’t wait!!
Watched Alien and Aliens again recently and both are still masterpieces of sci-fi cinema!!
Too bad it won’t be with Ripley but it can be good too!
August 3rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I guess everything is getting a prequel lately, but I at least hope Scott and company don’t probe far enough into the origins of these creatures that pseudoscience replaces subtext completely. One of the things I like about the second film especially is that it rides the line between science fiction and folk fables, with a changeling child rescued from a dark fairy queen, but without becoming distant in the way that many fantasies do. A film set too much among alien species, gunner-race or not, will risk contracting the same problem that sunk AvP: plenty of picturesque happenings but without any naturalistic motivation for any of it. As for Ridley Scott, he’s not a shot-by-shot craftsman to match Cameron or (recently) Fincher, but I don’t think he’s ever made a film without solid production design and art direction. The man can outsource.
August 3rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I think the aliens should be portrayed as generally peaceable–it’s just a few bad apples give them all a bad name. On their own planet, elaborate social controls must be in place that would not exist in deep space. We’ve just been meeting the alien equivalent of our bandit gangs and pirates.
I wonder what receiving fellatio from an alien would feel like? Probably like one of those “Rapex” South African rape-prevention devices. Oh well, I’ll stick to E.T. in my fantasies.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 pm
snikt snakt: take a look at the special edition of Alien3. It works so much better, considering it adds something like 20-30 minutes of footage cut from the theatrical release. I liked so much that it is probably my second favourite of the films after Aliens.
August 4th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
“To be honest I have always wondered about that race that the “alien gunner” or “space-jockey” belongs to. The one that we see in the banner for this article.”
It would be interesting to see this, but only if it is given minimal attention. The movie would fail if they made the space jockey too pivotal. Still, I’m with you. I’d love to see where it came from and if they can incorporate it into the greater story.
August 5th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
although i like ridley scott, i think the first movie sucked and the sequels were far better. i do like the idea of the prequel though. bout time.