FX Alien Series

[pengbuzz]

On 7/23/2023 at 3:40 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

It's hard to get invested in the fates of a bunch of characters who are seemingly doing everything possible to become a xenomorph's lunch.

Well, they could always try introducing the Aliens to fast food; look what it did for the Predator:

 

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by pengbuzz

[Thom]

On 7/24/2023 at 12:49 AM, technoblue said:

Agree to disagree on that last part, but my bias has been and will always be pro-writer.

As for the prequel films themselves, they do deserve all the constructive criticism they receive. In addition to what Seto noted already, I thought Prometheus went astray by turning David into the main monster if you will. 

Mind you, I don’t mind having ancillary villains in an Alien film. Ash was a good one. So was Burke. It’s just that David’s errant behavior wasn’t as nuanced to me. I was also bummed that Noomi Rapace was only in the first film. Almost all of her shot scenes in Covenant were cut, and those scenes ended up explaining quite a bit.

So to bring this back on topic, I hope the new series brings back some consistency because I do think that has been missing.

Having never watched Prom and Cov (basically because nothing past Aliens really exists...) apparently there was a whole dialogue scene with the Engineer at the end of Prom that explained pretty much everything - and it was cut. Probably because a scene like Theron trying to outrun a massive rolling donut was more important than the story line, I guess...

 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by Thom

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Well, they could always try introducing the Aliens to fast food; look what it did for the Predator:

Dude looks like he's going to (in clicks) ask us if we know de wae...

Still, I guess a xenomorph's definition of "fast food" is "former track and field star"... which is much less fattening.

 

3 minutes ago, Thom said:

(basically because nothing past Aliens really exists...)

Yes. 👍👍

 

3 minutes ago, Thom said:

Having never watched Prom and Cov apparently there was a whole dialogue scene with the Engineer at the end of Prom that explained pretty much everything - and it was cut. Probably because the action scenes were more important than the story line, I guess...

From what I've seen and read, a bunch of scenes and expository dialogue were cut from Prometheus that would have explained many of the final film's unclear areas.

That said, the film is absolutely 10,000% better off without it.  What we "missed" was a series of exposition dumps of Engineer history and religious philosophy that would've killed the film's pacing more comprehensively than the black goo it explained was killing the protagonists.  It was incredibly stupid in and of itself and really didn't mesh with the story as a whole narratively or thematically... especially once Engineer Jesus (figurative) and Engineer Jesus (literal) got involved in the explanation.  It didn't really explain the xenomorphs, but it did at least explain the Deacon from the end of the film.

[pengbuzz]

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Dude looks like he's going to (in clicks) ask us if we know de wae...

Still, I guess a xenomorph's definition of "fast food" is "former track and field star"... which is much less fattening.

Right?

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

From what I've seen and read, a bunch of scenes and expository dialogue were cut from Prometheus that would have explained many of the final film's unclear areas.

That said, the film is absolutely 10,000% better off without it.  What we "missed" was a series of exposition dumps of Engineer history and religious philosophy that would've killed the film's pacing more comprehensively than the black goo it explained was killing the protagonists.  It was incredibly stupid in and of itself and really didn't mesh with the story as a whole narratively or thematically... especially once Engineer Jesus (figurative) and Engineer Jesus (literal) got involved in the explanation.  It didn't really explain the xenomorphs, but it did at least explain the Deacon from the end of the film.

Maybe they should have saved all that for an animated movie/ series about the Engineer's society or something...

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Maybe they should have saved all that for an animated movie/ series about the Engineer's society or something...

Nah... it really should just never have been written.  The same could be said for both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, given that the two of them are basically a Canto Bight-style plot tumor on the flank of the Alien franchise that doesn't really have anything to do with anything.

Considering that they were an expensive failure, and that the cut material would be much more at home in a bad Star Trek licensed novel than a horror movie, it and the film it was written for will both hopefully be ignored entirely by this new series.

 

Spoiler

Would YOU really want to have your horror movie stop dead for fifteen minutes to explain that the monster has no dick?

And that's not a joke, by the way... that was actually something fundamentally important to the cut explanation of the history and motives of the Engineers.

 

[pengbuzz]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

  Hide contents

Would YOU really want to have your horror movie stop dead for fifteen minutes to explain that the monster has no dick?

And that's not a joke, by the way... that was actually something fundamentally important to the cut explanation of the history and motives of the Engineers.

 

Seto...you know better than to bring politics into this discussion!

Edited August 17, 2023 by pengbuzz

[sh9000]

Alien:  Earth teaser.

Edited Saturday at 07:08 PM by sh9000

[Big s]

On 8/17/2023 at 10:23 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Nah... it really should just never have been written.  The same could be said for both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, given that the two of them are basically a Canto Bight-style plot tumor on the flank of the Alien franchise that doesn't really have anything to do with anything.

Considering that they were an expensive failure, and that the cut material would be much more at home in a bad Star Trek licensed novel than a horror movie, it and the film it was written for will both hopefully be ignored entirely by this new series.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Would YOU really want to have your horror movie stop dead for fifteen minutes to explain that the monster has no dick?

And that's not a joke, by the way... that was actually something fundamentally important to the cut explanation of the history and motives of the Engineers.

 

Language!

Although I think it would be hilarious if they spent fifteen minutes on why the Alien had a giant one for its head. Maybe it just walks under the queen or something?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Alien:  Earth teaser.

Remember when teasers were supposed to tease the audience with the content of a show or movie?

This looks like an almost Harmony Gold Convention Tour-level effort... they hastily edited a reflection of Earth onto stock footage of the xenomorph and for three seconds and cut to a title card so basic it probably took the intern who made it longer to find the official franchise font in the Adobe AfterEffects fonts menu than it did to make it.

The real irony is this teaser uses the one thing that likely won't actually be in the show, since it's set 30 years before the Engineer ship is discovered on LV-426 in the original movie.

 

1 hour ago, Big s said:

Language!

English! 🗣️

 

1 hour ago, Big s said:

Although I think it would be hilarious if they spent fifteen minutes on why the Alien had a giant one for its head. Maybe it just walks under the queen or something?

The Engineer who designed it was dwelling perhaps a bit too much on what his species had lost. 🤣

 

[Raikkonen]

On 8/16/2023 at 5:25 PM, Thom said:

Having never watched Prom and Cov (basically because nothing past Aliens really exists...) 

10 points of respect. Not giving into such consumerism is admirable. 

On 8/16/2023 at 6:09 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

From what I've seen and read, a bunch of scenes and expository dialogue were cut from Prometheus that would have explained many of the final film's unclear areas.

This is where the film failed before they even started filming. Good movies relay on the events portrayed by the characters to tell the story and answer any questions. The moment a film needs unrealistic exposition monologues it's doomed. 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, Raikkonen said:

This is where the film failed before they even started filming. Good movies relay on the events portrayed by the characters to tell the story and answer any questions. The moment a film needs unrealistic exposition monologues it's doomed. 

Nah... there's nothing wrong with expository dialog up to a point.  If the characters can sum up relevant past events in a minute or two that's usually fine.  It can even be leveraged to build suspense or tension depending on how it's handled.  What was cut from Prometheus in the late draft stage was more like 10-15 minute expository dump, which isn't OK... but "show, don't tell" is not a universal law.

It's also not where Prometheus really failed. 

Spoiler

That failure occured much earlier with the film's conceptual development.  

The studio and the creative team couldn't settle on what the film was or how connected it would be to the Alien franchise.  It was originally billed as an Alien sequel, then the studio announced it as a reboot of Alien, then after backlash it was re-announced as a prequel.  The writing team - particularly Damon Lindelof - apparently didn't understand the meaning of the word "prequel" because they concluded (and this is Lindelof's own words) that:

Quote

"A true prequel should essentially precede the events of the original film, but be about something entirely different, feature different characters, have an entirely different theme, although it takes place in that same world."

And, of course, with such a brilliant and insightful creative at the helm the planned Alien prequel outlined by Ridley Scott and written by Jon Spaihts quickly devolved into the soft launch of a new IP that owed far more to Blade Runner and Erich von Daniken's spectacularly racist pseudoscience tract Chariots of the Gods? (which was also the main inspiration for Stargate) than it ever did to Alien.  That's the point where much of the idiocy that made its way into the final film was also introduced.

The exposition dumps were cut much later in the process, when someone finally pointed out how badly having the reawakened Engineer deliver a fifteen minute sermon in proto-Indo-European about the nature of mortality and morality would break the flow of the movie and how stupid and out of place it would be. 

 

[Thom]

Expositions done right are more than acceptable, especially if they further the story in a way that works into the mystery, in a good way. Obi-wan talking up Luke's dad as a hero while still telling his family history, from a certain point of view, was good exposition. It told one side of his father, hid the other Dark side, and worked to further the story by telling both a truth and a lie at the same time.

 

 

Edited August 19 by Thom

[sh9000]

New stills.

[hutch]

Why are all the hallways FILLED WITH PIPES?  There’s SO MANY PIPES. 

[Big s]

14 minutes ago, hutch said:

Why are all the hallways FILLED WITH PIPES?  There’s SO MANY PIPES. 

One’s for water, one’s for coke, one’s for sprite, one’s for Dr Pepper, one’s Fanta, one’s for iced tea, one’s for lemonade, one’s for cherry coke, one’s for Diet Coke, one’s for Coke Zero 

[Hikuro]

2 hours ago, hutch said:

Why are all the hallways FILLED WITH PIPES?  There’s SO MANY PIPES. 

after the first movie, you better hope those are nothing but pipes! 

[electric indigo]

They also come in handy if you need a steam peni$ to pretend to not hear your superior telling you to f*** off.

[sh9000]

 

[TangledThorns]

Another teaser... When can we get a real trailer??

That being said, the hype is building on this new series.