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[KvP]

Shit's happening.

It's set in 2085, about 30 years before Sigourney [Weaver's character Ellen Ripley]. It's fundamentally about going out to find out 'Who the hell was that Space Jockey?' The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle — there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer's chair…And our man [Tom Skerritt as Captain Dallas] climbs up and says, "There's been an explosion in his chest from the inside out—what was that?" I'm basically explaining who that Space Jockey— we call him the Space Jockey—I'm explaining who the space jockeys were… Weyland hasn't joined Yutani yet, so they go and see Weyland. [The film] is about the discussion of terraforming—taking planets and planetoids and balls of earth and trying to terraform, seed them with the possibilities of future life.”

Draft's through 4th round of retouching, Scott is aiming for a 2011 or 2012 release.

Alien is probably my favorite movie. Great horror, great sci-fi, all in one film. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. It'll be weird to have an Alien movie sans Ripley, but it could turn out well. Scott's been talking about this since Alien came out on DVD at the very latest (If you haven't heard Scott's commentary on Alien, btw, seek it out. He's one of those guys who makes commentaries actually good.)

[scarred]

cautiously skeptical

after the cinematic abortions that were Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, and AVP, i dunno if this franchise can be resurrected. but hey, if it turns out good, it's about damn time.

[Ozymandias]

Well Rodriguez's Predators looks fantastic and so it seems appropriate to also have Scott bringing back Alien to its former glory.

Cautiously optimistic.

[ackblom12]

Alien 3 was not an abortion! It was actually pretty good even!

Fuck Resurrection though, yeah.

[a pack of wolves]

I hated Resurrection and 3 the first time I saw them but I came around later. At first I was disappointed that they didn't live up to the others, but I didn't care so much about franchises after a while and they are decent films taken on their own merits. And really Alien is one of the best haunted house films ever made so it's a little unfair to hold things up against it. There's some nice touches in there, despite a few wonky parts. AVP was horrible, but this could be good despite the absence of Ripley.

Plus, anything with Dominique Pinon's face in it is by default pretty great.

[David_Dovey]

Ridley Scott is never a bad thing.

uh

[scarred]

Max Skinner: This place does not suit my life.
Fanny Chenal: No Max, it's your life that does not suit this place.

Max Skinner: Never pet a burning dog.

Max Skinner: You tried to drown me.
Fanny Chenal: And you tried to run me over in your little car.

this sounds like the best movie ever

[look out! Ninjas!]

Ridley Scott is never a bad thing.

uh

Meh let the dude have his little thing for Russell Crowe.

[Dazed]

Also, the new Robin Hood movie is fascinatingly bad given how great its cast/writer/director (Ridley Scott) are.

[look out! Ninjas!]

It looks pretty terrible in the trailer. What part of the 'legend' are they following?

[Dazed]

Not much of it. The film's a horribly edited, terribly written, incoherent mess. And William Hurt sucks like he always does.

[KvP]

I love Ridley Scott, but he's nothing if not a careerist. Right now he's got 18 titles "in development", according to IMDB. He's like Quentin Tarantino in that he talks up a lot of possible movies, but he actually works on them. So he's like an older Steven Soderbergh (even if he doesn't do quite as much stuff as Soderbergh) - two years between movies is a long time for him, and he's a pretty old dude. His record lately has been spotty, but which legendary Western director doesn't have a spotty record in recent years? Even Altman was putting out middling stuff in his twilight.

That having been said, his two swings at sci-fi are truly genre-defining. I think it's suited to him - a lot of directors apparently sour on spacebound sci-fi after their first crack at it (the only concrete example I can think of is Danny Boyle, but I'm sure there are others).

Anyway, /FILM has some extra info - one, that Scott has actually planned out two prequels, although he's only working on the first at the moment, and both movies will be in 3D. Yay?

[Lines]

This has the potential to be awesome.

[scarred]

And William Hurt sucks like he always does.

i'll have yr head for this

[JD]

I love that if you google Alien: Prequelification, this forum is the only result.

[Alex C]

Also, the new Robin Hood movie is fascinatingly bad given how great its cast/writer/director (Ridley Scott) are.

I'm not really surprised, but then again, I thought Gladiator was kind of a dull movie aside from the visuals and a solidly creepy performance by Phoenix. A flawed screenplay, imo; none of the characters are particularly sympathetic, the whole populace apparently loves bloodsports and the hero dies at the end so some senators you don't know anything about can take over the corrupt empire and make it into a corrupt republic. Woo. It was a thoroughly joyless film made by a skilled craftsman.

Anyway, I'd say Scott has some overwhelming strengths as a director that make his work consistently interesting, but he's always hit me as making his bones with iconic moments and visuals as opposed to fully realized films and characters you really identify with. Granted, there's exceptions--- Alien is basically perfect-- but even Blade Runner has some stuff that feels kind of bolted on for the sake of the plot and the performances aren't really anything to write home about. But that's where the overwhelming strengths bit kicks in-- Scott usually manages to throw multiple scenes per film that make you feel like an ingrate for criticizing the other stuff. I mean, despite everything, the Blade Runner skyline intro scene still gives me the chills every time I see it. When Scott nails a scene, he really fucking nails it. But what the hell is there to nail in a fucking Robin Hood movie? This medieval shit has been done to death.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I imagine it will be much like Gladiator in that there will be some very violent scenes and Russel Crowe will make a semi-inspiring speech or two. I'll probably see it because I'm a fool for archery and Russel Crowe, despite his obvious flaws as a human being and a musician is a pretty reasonable actor.

[Lines]

The new Robin Hood won't hold a candle to my favorite two: Prince of Thieves (Morgan Freeman and Alan Rickman yes please) and Men in Tights (Patrick Stewart is king FUCK YEAH). I liked Gladiator well enough and Russell Crowe is a good actor (though he picks hit or miss movies), but I just really don't want to see another Robin Hood movie.

And I've liked a lot of the movies Scott has directed (not counting the ones he's produced), and Alien is still one of the best sci-fi movies out there, imo, and I am hoping this one will be along the lines of Alien and Aliens (which is my favorite) rather than the latter two. I liked the third well enough, but I sometimes pretend there was never a fourth movie. And I've always wondered about the space jockey, so this is a good direction to go in!

[Alex C]

Prince of Thieves is one of the more entertaining shit terrible movies I've ever seen thanks to Rickman. It's like he realized how grim and terribly dull the movie was and said "Fuck it, I don't care if this is an attempted rape scene, I'm handling this like it's something out of the Three Stooges." Such an approach can't save a film, obviously, but it certainly kept it from being dull.

[David_Dovey]

the whole populace apparently loves bloodsports

They pretty much did?

Anyway Gladiator was cheesy as heck but I loved it because I have a serious weak spot for films with endless "thems fightin' words" moments e.g; "At my signal, unleash hell" and the whole "I will have my revenge" speech

Also am I the only person in the entire world who doesn't get what the big deal about Blade Runner was? Seriously I want someone to explain this to me because I can't help but think I am missing something considering the sheer weight of popular+critical boners for this movie.

[Tom]

Blade Runner is so good that not even studying it under duress for my HSC has ruined it for me.

[KvP]

There's not much we can definitively say about ancient Romans / Greeks who weren't upper-class. For all we know the Coliseum had a "no scabs" policy.

[Alex C]

the whole populace apparently loves bloodsports

They pretty much did?

Anyway Gladiator was cheesy as heck but I loved it because I have a serious weak spot for films with endless "thems fightin' words" moments e.g; "At my signal, unleash hell" and the whole "I will have my revenge" speech

Also am I the only person in the entire world who doesn't get what the big deal about Blade Runner was? Seriously I want someone to explain this to me because I can't help but think I am missing something considering the sheer weight of popular+critical boners for this movie.

Yeah, see, I saw Gladiator in theater and on video a couple of times before I realized where that "unleash hell" quote was even from. Such things have pretty much no positive impact on me unless we're talking about something inherently kind of fun and campy like Warhammer. Gladiator by contrast just had too big of a stick up its ass. At least 300 knew it that it was basically the movie equivalent of Gears of War. Yeah, that's right, I just compared 300 favorably to a movie that recieved 12 Oscar nominations. I'm completely fine with that.

Anyway, as for your second question, I can definitely say you're not alone. Blade Runner is one of the least popular well-regarded movies of the last few decades, and to this day it still divides movie critics. The pacing is glacial, the protagonist is kind of a creep and the performances are generally so-so. The ending confrontation hits audiences weaned on shoot outs as anti-climactic since it ends with a short monologue instead of a bang and offers little in the way of closure.

So, yeah, the movie is a mixed bag, really, and certainly not a crowd pleaser by any stretch of the imagination. It's too cold and alien for most people to get emotionally invested in. But with that said, it's a triumph of set and audio design without being a mere empty headed spectacle movie like Twister. There's an awful lot going on in that movie, and the themes and art design has inspired a lot of subsequent artists and writers. You can argue that the stuff Blade Runner has inspired is largely mediocre, I suppose, but an impact is an impact, and you simply cannot have a comprehensive discussion of recent sci-fi while leaving Blade Runner out of the conversation.

[David_Dovey]

Oh OK that actually does make a lot of sense, that people are talking about the look and feel of the film and uh, metaphors 'n' shit -which I can strongly agree on all counts are irreproachable- when they classify it among the best in sci-fi as opposed to the more standard arbiters of film quality. Thanks!

[Dazed]

I just think the final sequence between Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford is brilliant, and even if the rest of the movie were trash (which it isn't) that set of scenes would make up for it.

[Alex C]

I thought the "tears in the rain" line was a tiny bit much because I can't really process earnest, but there is a certain wry dignity and pride to the way he says "I have seen things you people wouldn't believe" that gets to me a li'l bit every time I see it.

[Jimor]

Among the myriad of projects Ridley Scott is involved with, I think I'm most curious how he's going to approach Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

[Inlander]

Prince of Thieves

There's no way I can possibly explain to any of you young 'uns just how big a deal that "arrow cam" shot was when that film first came out.

[a pack of wolves]

You mean the way you deeply hated it because you had to see the stupid thing endlessly on account of that Bryan Adams song that squatted at the top of the charts for what felt like forever?

Among the myriad of projects Ridley Scott is involved with, I think I'm most curious how he's going to approach Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

I can't see that really working, mainly because it would probably end up focussing on the fighting in space bits instead of the huge amounts of waiting coupled with being left behind by a world that's largely uninterested because it's got its own problems. It's certainly not unfilmable or anything, but it would be hideous if action scenes are treated as anything more than footnotes.

[David_Dovey]

It's entirely possible that he'll just be serving as producer or executive producer on some of those projects in development however, and as such may well have very little or nothing to do with the actual creative direction of the project.

[KvP]

At first Scott was just producing but he has since announced that he'll be directing. And it seems pretty obvious that even if he's not writing the film himself he's got final say on what his script looks like.

[David_Dovey]

Just to clarify, are you referring to the Alien prequel or The Forever War, John?

[scarred]

oh shit they're making a Forever War movie? that book is awesome

and probably impossible to translate to the screen without butchering the source material

[a pack of wolves]

I dunno. A quiet, brooding film with long periods of silence very occasionally punctuated by action scenes where you hardly see anything. There's a lot of potential for trying to find ways to elegantly communicate that sense of the world leaving you behind, becoming isolated from everyone around you and periodically experiencing visceral terror using visuals. It wouldn't even be that expensive aside from the need for quite a few sets and locations. You could keep them all pretty low key though, it would suit it.

Of course this is apparently going to be a big 3D blockbuster, so no chance of any of that.

[scarred]

it's going to be the next Starship Troopers. similar to the source material in name only.

[ViolentDove]

Among the myriad of projects Ridley Scott is involved with, I think I'm most curious how he's going to approach Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

Holy fuck, Ridley Scott is doing Forever War? Thanks for letting me know, that's one of my favourite books.

I could see it (hopefully) going down the route of something like a vietnam war movie in space, along the lines of what wolves said.

[Alex C]

it's going to be the next Starship Troopers. similar to the source material in name only.

That's going way too far even if it's meant partly in jest.

Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi baby was a special case. Scott might very well end up paring down the plot with a machete, but it's entirely possible he could meet the central themes of the book (future shock, being a cog in the machine) on their own terms even if the details are different. Maybe everyone won't be gay and fighting with medieval weapons by the end, but a spiritual successor is still fairly doable.

Plus, really, Paul Verhoeven. Dude is ballsy like whoa. He admitted straight out that he never finished the Starship Troopers novel and that what he did read made him bored and depressed. The man made Robocop. In retrospect, he could have made that movie no other way. The book promotes precisely the sort of gun-toting patriotic form of Americana that he seems to instinctively distrust.

[scarred]

did i accidentally imply that i didn't like the starship troopers movie? that was not my intent. i love that movie.

but still:

He admitted straight out that he never finished the Starship Troopers novel and that what he did read made him bored and depressed.

i'm not sure i understand your defense. if he hated the source material, then he should have picked a different project. hell, the only reason he probably kept the name "starship troopers" was because of the heinlein association (aka: the $$). he could've released his movie under a different title and nobody would've noticed. the fact remains that starship troopers (the film) is extremely different both thematically and in plot compared to starship troopers (the book).

[scarred]

Well, yeah. But it's my knee-jerk reaction to hearing the words Forever War and 3D blockbuster in the same sentence.

[Alex C]

Gimme a second to organize my thoughts here. Sorry I deleted my earlier post.

[Alex C]

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that the Starship Troopers movie was closer to being an out right rejection of the book rather than a simple "I'm going to cash in on this title and disregard the themes." Saying that a film is going to end up like a Verhoeven project just hits me as jumping the gun, because Verhoeven is a mad man and it's frankly a bit weird that he ever managed to get as mainstream as he did.

Hell, if you wanted to give the Forever War the Verhoeven treatment and scornfully reject its themes you'd probably end up with something very nearly like Starship Troopers the novel.

[scarred]

That's probably true.

If anything, this discussion has badly made me want to read The Forever War again. And watch the Starship Troopers movie.

So, mission accomplished?

[Alex C]

I guess I just feel strongly about the subject since I don't particularly like Paul Verhoeven movies. I get what he's doing but I still find it unpleasant, which I guess is the goal. I already dislike society enough as it is. You don't need to rub my nose into a hyped up version of it to get me to understand that things are a li'l weird and perverse at times.

[Kugai]

I still want Verhoven flogged in Public Square for that butchery of Heinlein's classic.

[ackblom12]

Honestly, I much prefer the movie's take.

[Ozymandias]

Ridley Scott now says these prequels will not feature any Xenomorphs.

So...that's a thing...

[KvP]

I don't know. Part of it might be all the reading I did around the Alien "universe" when Obsidian Entertainment was still making an RPG around the property, but I think there's plenty of stuff in the Alien setting if you remove the xenomorph from the picture. The first film (and the sequels to a lesser extent with each iteration) is almost in the tradition of classic horror (well, zombie apocalypse horror at least) in that the monster is almost incidental. It turns out that the real villain of the story is The Company. Alien has a really great setting, which is something that not a lot of people acknowledge. Though there were dystopic futures in a lot of sci-fi films of the 70's, like Logan's Run, but Alien was pretty significant in that it wasn't really all that futuristic. It was grimy and brutal and industrial, and its vision of an all-encompassing corporatist (non-)state was fairly compelling. Alien is a space film in which the crew of the ship aren't highly trained military officers or intrepid explorers but blue-collar mopes working in shit conditions for measly pay.

Anyway, do you have a link to that statement? What I had read was that Scott was not a fan of the (fairly significant) changes the design of the xenomorph had gone through over the years and that he wanted to revise it, possibly with HR Giger's help. This article at least indicates that facehuggers will be involved.

[scarred]

link.

i think i'm ok with this.

[J]

did i accidentally imply that i didn't like the starship troopers movie? that was not my intent. i love that movie.

but still:

He admitted straight out that he never finished the Starship Troopers novel and that what he did read made him bored and depressed.

i'm not sure i understand your defense. if he hated the source material, then he should have picked a different project. hell, the only reason he probably kept the name "starship troopers" was because of the heinlein association (aka: the $$). he could've released his movie under a different title and nobody would've noticed. the fact remains that starship troopers (the film) is extremely different both thematically and in plot compared to starship troopers (the book).

I still want Verhoven flogged in Public Square for that butchery of Heinlein's classic.

it's cute that you guys think anyone involved had much of a choice.

There are many differences between the original book and film. A report in an American Cinematographer article states that the Heinlein novel was optioned well into the pre-production period of the film, which had a working title of Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine; most of the writing team reportedly were unaware of the novel at the time. According to the DVD commentary, Paul Verhoeven never finished reading the novel, claiming he read through the first few chapters and became both "bored and depressed."[3]

anyway, look at it this way, you're already pretty deep into the making of a vampire movie and suddenly the producers drop the latest twilight book into your lap and tell you that this is the movie now. what are you going to do about it.
option1: you suck it up and do what you're told
option2: you walk away from the project and maybe get your self a reputation for unprofessionalism and unreliability
option3: you get subversive and decide to make a parody of the book where the relationships are overtly codependent and abusive, the vampires are manipulative parasites, and the humans are all under some sort of emo mindcontroll. you can take this turd and via abit of scatological judo use it to pull a big ass prank on all the little twilight fangirls of the world who are going to flock to see this no matter what.

[Orbert]

Alien was pretty significant in that it wasn't really all that futuristic. It was grimy and brutal and industrial, and its vision of an all-encompassing corporatist (non-)state was fairly compelling. Alien is a space film in which the crew of the ship aren't highly trained military officers or intrepid explorers but blue-collar mopes working in shit conditions for measly pay.

That was one of my favorite aspects of the movie.  I love the way Parker keeps trying to bring up "the bonus situation".