The Alien/Predator/Aliens vs. Predator Thread

[TangledThorns]

I'm still trying to wipe my mind of the 💩 that is ALIEN: Romulus and purchased Aliens: Dark Descent since its on sale on STEAM.

I've always played FPS style ALIEN (Isolation, AVP, etc) games and wasn't sure I'd be interested in a isometric ALIEN game but so far its fun and addictive.

[sh9000]

On digital 10/15 and blu-ray 12/3.

[sh9000]

Concept art from Blomkamp's cancelled Alien movie.  I'm seeing some of these pics for the first time.

Edited October 3, 2024 by sh9000

[Mommar]

The concept art tells a more interesting story than Romulus did.

[electric indigo]

...but it seems to lean as heavy on Aliens as Romulus did on Alien.

[Axelay]

12 hours ago, electric indigo said:

...but it seems to lean as heavy on Aliens as Romulus did on Alien.

Which I greatly prefer, to be blunt. I never cared for the "black goo" in the first place, and now it seems like Ridley Scott has turned his dislike for Aliens into an anchor plot device point of the whole franchise going forward.

[CoryHolmes]

14 hours ago, electric indigo said:

...but it seems to lean as heavy on Aliens as Romulus did on Alien.

Agreed.  It looks like it's little more than capitalizing on audience love for the beloved original property.  There needs to be a compelling reason for the characters to get back together like that, and it seems like the Alien franchise is all out of compelling reasons.

 

ps: I liked Romulus!

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, electric indigo said:

...but it seems to lean as heavy on Aliens as Romulus did on Alien.

It's always been one or the other... they're the only two good movies in the franchise.

 

2 hours ago, Axelay said:

Which I greatly prefer, to be blunt. I never cared for the "black goo" in the first place, and now it seems like Ridley Scott has turned his dislike for Aliens into an anchor plot device point of the whole franchise going forward.

Nah, that was writer/director Fede Alvarez's doing. 

He's a self-confessed huge Alien fanboy who, armed with the substantial creative control that comes from being a writer-director, partly used the film as a "fix fic" to correct things that bothered him about the franchise's setting.  One of those things he, as a fan, went out of his way to fix that a more sensible writer would probably have left alone was the lack of direct connections between the main series and Ridley Scott's semi-orphaned not-actually-a-prequel Prometheus and its disastrous "The studio said I had to put xenomorphs in this one or they'll fire me" followup Alien: Covenant.  He even went out of his way to retcon out Ridley Scott's Covenant stance that David 8 created the xenomorphs, a plot hole the fans had been annoyed with for years.

A smarter writer would probably have left that out completely, since Prometheus never fit with the franchise thanks to Scott, Spaihts, and Lindelof trying to use it to soft-launch a completely unrelated storyline about rogue AI instead of actually writing an Alien prequel and only grudgingly connecting it to Alien in the sequel while still trying to make Evil AI into the greater scope villain.

[TangledThorns]

I'm still trying to wipe my mind of Romulus so I'm playing ALIENS: Dark Descent for the third time in a row! 

[tekering]

10 hours ago, CoryHolmes said:

I liked Romulus!

Reaction to the film has been surprisingly polarized, much as it was with Prometheus; some embrace the positives, while others highlight the negatives.  Tim Brayton's stellar review is one of the most thorough I've read, and one of the most critical as well:

https://www.alternateending.com/2024/08/alien-romulus-2024.html

[Seto Kaiba]

Oof... no punches pulled there.

I agree with a lot of what Brayton's saying there.  Alien: Romulus is, in a lot of ways, exactly what fans like me have been hoping for.  An Alien film that returns to its roots with Alien's iconic claustrophobic horror.  Its main stumbling block is that its writer-director's profound affection for the source material drives every aspect of the story.  That devotion to all of the little details made it visually stunning, but its devotion to formula made it too predictable to be scary.  Especially when the tension is frequently punctured in order to highlight a blatant fan-friendly reference to past films or games.

[electric indigo]

Isolation gets a sequel!

 

[Hikuro]

wouldn't hope for to much of it being related to Amanda though. Considering that Zulu's story I think is about to end with the new VR Game coming out this holiday. And according to the novel's she's in cryosleep to prolong her life due to her cancer. 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, electric indigo said:

Isolation gets a sequel!

 

I'm not going to get my hopes up. 

Isolation was a masterclass in horror game design. The dev team had a rock solid story concept and a finely honed understanding of how to create and manage tension. It was polished so close to perfection that I honestly don't think there's anything the dev team could add to the formula they created that wouldn't simply detract from the horror. I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong, but I doubt lightning is going to strike twice.

[TangledThorns]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm not going to get my hopes up. 

Isolation was a masterclass in horror game design. The dev team had a rock solid story concept and a finely honed understanding of how to create and manage tension. It was polished so close to perfection that I honestly don't think there's anything the dev team could add to the formula they created that wouldn't simply detract from the horror. I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong, but I doubt lightning is going to strike twice.

Typically game sequels do better and there are so many examples supporting this too. That being said, expectations will be high as the first game is on such a high pedestal.

To be honest I would have been cool with a Dead Space like remake too.

 

[sh9000]

I think I'll buy this book with my next purchase.

[Duke Togo]

Watched Alien Romulus tonight. Wasn't terrible, but I doubt I'll ever watch it again.

Edit: it's certainly no Prey

Edited October 17, 2024 by Duke Togo

[sh9000]

Honest Trailer.

[sh9000]

[Thom]

On 10/2/2024 at 10:36 PM, sh9000 said:

Concept art from Blomkamp's cancelled Alien movie.  I'm seeing some of these pics for the first time.

This looks like the sequel to Aliens that we should have had.

[electric indigo]

Nice FX reel from ILM:

 

[tekering]

As we await more news on Alien: Earth, I've prepared this little intellectual exercise for fans of the franchise.  Based on the following treatment, can you identify which film it describes?  I've tried to include as many details as possible, without actually giving the answer away. ☺️

   Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” and Erich von Däniken’s “Chariots of the Gods,” the film explores extraterrestrial influences on early human culture.  Set long before the Nostromo crew set foot on LV-426 and encountered the titular ALIEN, the story concerns a diverse group of scientists and technicians sent on an expedition by the rich and powerful head of the Weyland Corporation, who is dying and hopes to secure his legacy with a historic scientific discovery.

   Aboard a ship bound for a mysterious and remote destination with no hope of rescue, the crew are gathered in the cargo hold and sat on folding chairs, beside large industrial vehicles they will use for transportation in the harsh environment they are meant to explore.  Mr. Weyland himself presents their mission: investigate an alien structure thousands of years old, discovered by analyzing common design elements present in multiple ancient human civilizations scattered all over the earth.  Archaeologists have found clues among the earliest recorded human history, suggesting that people from every continent had been in contact with tall, technologically-sophisticated beings who inspired the architecture and mythology of human culture from its infancy.

   Our heroes are an even mix of American and European characters, men and women, black and white, as varied in personality as in race.  Assigned to lead them is a young woman following in her deceased father’s footsteps.  We are not given the details of his tragic death, but it strongly influences her character.  There’s a friendly, unassuming scientist who is rudely rebuked by a mercenary he tries to befriend, and the two later bond a little when they find themselves trapped together in the alien structure, before both being killed.  There’s a specialist in ancient languages who manages to read and translate many of the inscriptions they discover, and provides much of the necessary exposition in the story.  There’s also someone brandishing a gun, despite the heroine’s insistence that weapons are unnecessary.

   They enter the alien structure (described as a pyramid) using handheld flashlights for illumination, but there is often ambient light provided by an offscreen light source.  They encounter alien life within the structure, awakened after centuries in cryogenic suspension, and several of the scientists are impregnated and killed by parasitic life forms that gestate within their bodies; others are killed by the tall, humanoid alien species that built the structure, including Weyland himself.

   The young woman leading the expedition eventually realizes the existential threat these aliens pose to mankind, and does everything she can to ensure they never reach human civilization.  Our heroine is, of course, the only human character to survive the film, but she is unexpectedly assisted by a non-human character and his use of alien technology to escape.  At the conclusion of the story, we witness a massive alien spacecraft lift off and leave the planet behind.  The film ends with the birth of an entirely new species, a creature who bursts out of the chest of the large humanoid alien impregnated earlier.  The newborn opens its menacing jaws and reveals its tongue, and emits a hissing roar as we cut to credits.

Name the film. 😊

[anime52k8]

I see what you did there, but it's

Spoiler

Alien vs Predator

 

[kajnrig]

I honestly thought you were dedicating each paragraph to a separate film.

AVP

[tekering]

51 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

I see what you did there, but it's

2 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

AVP

Are you sure about that? 😉

What gives it away, guys? 🤔

Edited yesterday at 04:51 AM by tekering

[anime52k8]

36 minutes ago, tekering said:

Are you sure about that? 😉

What gives it away, guys? 🤔

for me, it was the part about the gun. Also the At the Mountains of Madness reference implies the arctic setting of AVP.  Definitely sounded a lot like Prometheus though

Edited yesterday at 05:31 AM by anime52k8

[tekering]

11 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

it was the part about the gun.

Ah, right.  It's a flamethrower in Prometheus.

[anime52k8]

I feel like I remember less of Prometheus than I thought I did. I also feel like that's not a bad thing.

[tekering]

Prometheus might've been less forgettable if it had been more original. 😛

At the same time, it's far more sophisticated than Alien vs. Predator, on every conceivable level.  The performances, the dialogue, the production design, the plot, the music, the visual effects...  It's arguably less effective than AvP, but it had so much greater ambition, and I'll take an ambitious failure over a middling success every time.

Still, did nobody at Fox ever ask "Why are we remaking AvP?" 😅

Edited yesterday at 01:04 PM by tekering

[kajnrig]

41 minutes ago, anime52k8 said:

I feel like I remember less of Prometheus than I thought I did. I also feel like that's not a bad thing.

I saw the snake clip for the first time a few weeks back, and I was blown away by how exactly as stupid it was as people said. I'm happy to have never seen it in its entirety.

[davidwhangchoi]

5 hours ago, tekering said:

Our heroes are an even mix of American and European characters,

Name the film. 😊

This is easy, this is Super Contra 

 

 

[sh9000]

Nice recreation.

 

[TangledThorns]

And to think that scene was so shocking that people walked out of the theater after seeing it the first time. But now... after a thousand viewings... lol.

[Pontus]

Has anyone had a chance to download the Alien3 4k fan edit yet?  

 

[Dynaman]

All I could think of with folding chairs is Dark Star...  But even those chairs were only beach chairs.