Blomkamp is officially making an Alien film

Started by Gazz, Feb 19, 2015, 12:27:30 AM

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Blomkamp is officially making an Alien film (Read 293,951 times)

Born Of Cold Light

I can accept the idea that we are alone with the aliens and maybe some remnant of the Engineers.  What I really don't want to accept is that the xenomorph social organization is frozen at the level of the hive.  By making them little more than giant space bees, alot of what makes them truly alien is removed, as they are simply a larger variant of the ants that you see in your backyard everyday (and ants can be just as ruthless as how xenomorphs are portrayed).  The egg morphing idea in the first film (and which was planned in the third) is far more unique and somewhat makes the aliens scarier as there would be fewer numbers of them, forcing them to become craftier and act in a more intelligent manner.  However excellent Aliens was, the 'locust swarm' model that we saw was just not as terrifying as what the first film gave us.  Now I can accept it as one variant of xenomorphs, but Ridley Scott had a far more profound vision with his concept of the alien reproducing once in its life and each succeeding generation being more advanced than the last.  Now that is something truly alien and which could theoretically lead to a creature that could do far more than just cut the power.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want some uber-beast with ridiculous powers but if you look at some of the Giger's art, there are hints at designs of creatures that are just as alien and amoral as what we've seen in the movies but which seem to be far more sophisticated.  You don't need all of the techno hives and such that I mentioned, just a singular being that is as far removed from humanity as possible, yet in its own inconceivable manner makes Stephen Hawking look like brain dead slug.

Quote from: [CANCERBLACK] on Mar 15, 2015, 06:11:36 PM
I like the idea that we're alone (with the Alien).

The Engineers are our predecessors. That was always the case on some level (and in fact was the point of including the derelict in Alien) but is now very literal. Although placing them as being active as recently as two millennia ago isn't to my taste, I don't hate the ancient aliens thing on principle and I can handle them not just being the guys who got wiped out by the Alien before us but also our creators - I still like them best as an extinct race though, and any ones surviving in stasis should be super rare.

I can see where you're coming from, though I think that the Engineers have too much potential to simply be a legacy species.  Instead, why not make them, as I postulated earlier, the slaves of their weapons?  Have their homeworld be utterly transformed into a Giger-like mess with Shaw and David having to ensure that it never spreads (though David's loyalty is quite suspect at this point).  If Prometheus became a trilogy or longer, a central theme could be the very essence of what it means to be human vs. the very essence of what it means to be alien.  As Ridley himself has said, the series will be increasingly removed from the traditional Alien series, so the sky is the limit.  It of course has to be mainstream and action packed enough for the audience to understand and enjoy what's happening, but why not turn this into a deep space psychological epic?  In the end, the Engineers and everything else surrounding them could be destroyed (minus maybe a few remnants of them or their weapons escaping in the farthest ends of the universe), with the link to the Blomkamp's films that is being rumored being that, besides humans. the xenomorphs are the only notable legacy of the Engineers.  It would be the ultimate tragedy and morality tale; the final legacy of a once great civilization who conquered the stars and who created humanity being the unleashing of an alien species that only lives for destruction.

QuoteThe Alien, as I see it, is rogue genetic material with a "sentience" (but not sapience) handed down through generational memory (possibly in a literal sense, see A:R). It's the Lovecraftian crawling chaos that could be in any dark corner of space, just waiting. I'm very much a fan of the concept that outbreaks of the Alien as we know it burn out fairly quickly as they deplete hosts, but that through some sort of handwavium, eggs can survive indefinitely. So there's eggs, Engineer ruins containing modified strains or other applications of the Alien genetics, and who knows what else, scattered throughout space.

Which leads to us, alone in the dark with the Alien, which is just silently waiting out there amongst the stars.

I like this idea, especially the concept of generational memory (though this should be used with care).  And who says that only eggs can survive for a long period of time?  The xenomorph's bony structure could mean that they are far more efficient when it comes to taking in nutrients and can possible survive for periods of time possibly as long as the eggs (Ridley's idea ironically was the opposite; that the alien would die only a couple of days after being born, as its adulthood was not much longer than its childhood, and that it was 'perpetually dying').  And I do also like the idea of other strains being present, maybe some far more inconceivable than what we've already seen.

On the point of humans being alone with the aliens, we actually know that this is not true.  If it was, Hudson would not have flippantly referred to 'bug hunts' in the second movie.  Granted, it is heavily suggested that none of those other species come close to xenomorphs in terms of how dangerous they are.  What these things are, we may never know, and I don't want the Alien universe to become a zoo (ideally, any other aliens we find might be mundane so as to not take the spotlight from the xenomorphs).  Yet as I said before, the alien ability to mimic the physical characteristics of a host hints at the fact that aliens have been interacting with diverse segments of the universe for long periods of time, quite possibly longer than humans have been around or maybe even the Earth itself, as such an advanced ability would take a tremendous amount of time to be perfected.  Now maybe all these species are dead, who knows.  It is a compelling concept to have the universe outside of Earth be one gigantic tomb scattered with hibernating alien eggs and other related monstrosities.

One thing I would like to see is a return of the original Alien catch phrase "A word of warning..."  It's so subtle yet hints at something unbelievably dangerous:

[cancerblack]

I always took "bug hunt" to be military slang akin to snipe hunt, as in a mission with no purpose or action. As opposed to literal pest control.

Born Of Cold Light

Quote from: [CANCERBLACK] on Mar 15, 2015, 08:02:17 PM
I always took "bug hunt" to be military slang akin to snipe hunt, as in a mission with no purpose or action. As opposed to literal pest control.

He mentioned it right after Gorman said that "a xenomorph may be involved."  You may be right or I may be, who knows.

[cancerblack]

That's what made me think that. The marines were so skeptical of an alien species being involved that they joked about it being a dud mission.

Nightmare Asylum

Yeah, nothing in Aliens ever gave me the impression that humanity at large had ever had contact with alien life forms before. Even the Arcturian comment; until recently realizing that some people view them as a humanoid (alien) race, I assumed they were just people living on another colony that the marines were making crude jokes about.

NetworkATTH

Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Mar 15, 2015, 09:35:09 PM
Yeah, nothing in Aliens ever gave me the impression that humanity at large had ever had contact with alien life forms before. Even the Arcturian comment; until recently realizing that some people view them as a humanoid (alien) race, I assumed they were just people living on another colony that the marines were making crude jokes about.

See, but I'm pretty sure comments made in the production of Aliens said they have, you could assume spread from a irresponsible research facility on a life bearing world, that is composed of multiple life cycles. A "xenomorph". Something unseen on Earth. One organism, multiple expendable forms, separate larval, instar, immature, and mature forms, that are composed of separate forms. On the side of Marines' dropship, an eagle with boots is circled by the words "We endanger species". It's probably a serious rampant pest of some sort. These sorts of events aren't unknown on Earth. Plus if I remember correctly, in the crew timeline background they made in the production of Alien, the one that mentions the United Americas and the Third World Empire, it implied Kane once worked in an archaeological dig of a kind off world.

"
2112 (October 28)

Kane begins working on a UK/EU archeological dig on Konor Minor, co-supervising with Dr Elisabeth Monygham."

What you can imply from this is that perhaps after the events of Prometheus, ruins from a precursor civilization become popping up, but they're all dead. There's no real intelligent life aside from ourselves. There are other forms of life, but they're animals. There are rumors here and there about Space Urban Legends, as quoted from the actors about the production of Alien. That myths like UFOs, have parallels in that world, probably coming from whatever rumors about the ruins man has encountered like the one on Konor Minor.

[cancerblack]

Quote from: NetworkATTH on Mar 15, 2015, 09:47:58 PM

See, but I'm pretty sure comments made in the production of Aliens said they have, you could assume spread from a irresponsible research facility on a life bearing world, that is composed of multiple life cycles. A "xenomorph". Something unseen on Earth. One organism, multiple expendable forms, separate larval, instar, immature, and mature forms, that are composed of separate forms. On the side of Marines' dropship, an eagle with boots is circled by the words "We endanger species". It's probably a serious rampant pest of some sort. These sorts of events aren't unknown on Earth. Plus if I remember correctly, in the crew timeline background they made in the production of Alien, the one that mentions the United Americas and the Third World Empire, it implied Kane once worked in an archaeological dig of a kind off world.

How are you getting that from the generic term xenomorph?

NetworkATTH

NetworkATTH

#1417
Quote from: [CANCERBLACK] on Mar 15, 2015, 10:00:06 PM
Quote from: NetworkATTH on Mar 15, 2015, 09:47:58 PM

See, but I'm pretty sure comments made in the production of Aliens said they have, you could assume spread from a irresponsible research facility on a life bearing world, that is composed of multiple life cycles. A "xenomorph". Something unseen on Earth. One organism, multiple expendable forms, separate larval, instar, immature, and mature forms, that are composed of separate forms. On the side of Marines' dropship, an eagle with boots is circled by the words "We endanger species". It's probably a serious rampant pest of some sort. These sorts of events aren't unknown on Earth. Plus if I remember correctly, in the crew timeline background they made in the production of Alien, the one that mentions the United Americas and the Third World Empire, it implied Kane once worked in an archaeological dig of a kind off world.

How are you getting that from the generic term xenomorph?

Morph. Xeno. Xeno = Alien. Morph = one of a set of forms that a morpheme may take in different contexts, or commonly, just a synonym for changing. It's techno babble, and because it's technobabble, it's probably easily interpretable, and knowing James Cameron, he probably thought of how the Alien lifecycle exists within nature (because he did actually consider it and that's how he brought about the Queen) as there is nothing like it on Earth.It's an assumption, but it's in part from evidence, including, "We endanger species".

Also, according to the Weyland Industries website and a deleted scene from Prometheus, most forms of life discovered at that point are micro-organisms. Further, from the site, most are quarantined, because contaminating a life bearing world with Earth organisms has historically, been considered, and across the board, its agreed one could very possible wipe out the other if it's a small population of life. Or, it could cause serious infection in multicellular organisms. Everything has to be clean. If life was encountered, this would be taken into consideration. Nobody would go out to a world and decide to shoot Extraterrestrial life.

So, putting it altogether, it seems possible that Marines are occasionally called in to deal with a pest species of "bug" like organisms that could endanger the health and safety of colonists, but is capable of breathing our air. Gorman said "xenomorph" probably, in this context, and assumed, that's what it was. Again evidence "Bug Hunt" and the side of the dropship "We endanger species" decal.

thecaffeinatedone

thecaffeinatedone

#1418
Quote from: Nightmare Asylum on Mar 15, 2015, 09:35:09 PM
I assumed they were just people living on another colony that the marines were making crude jokes about.

That's been my impression the whole time. Arcturia was a colony/station that they and other ships docked at, that maybe had some bars with cheap grub and a somewhat-known community of prostitutes that were happy to service crewpeople on passing military ships. :p

I think any EU book that describes them otherwise is just taking their (The crew of the Sulaco's)comments a bit too literally if they describe them as being aliens. This isn't Star Trek people!

  More likely than not, they're just really skilled androgynous prostitutes.

Also this article from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakla

Yes, I did all that because of your Arcturian comment. :p I think things over way too much.

Russ

Acturian Ladyboys. That's a good name for a band, actually.

KiramidHead

Quote from: Russ on Mar 16, 2015, 04:25:15 PM
Acturian Ladyboys. That's a good name for a band, actually.

I bet their cover of The Crying Game is amazing.

OpenMaw

Quote from: thecaffeinatedone on Mar 15, 2015, 10:25:39 PM
More likely than not, they're just really skilled androgynous prostitutes.

Incidentally I remember someone wrote a fan fiction years ago entitled "Hudson's Tale" that featured Hudson having a run in with an Arcturian. Turns out their space trannys. Oh, and he's gay with Hicks. Yeaahh...


...I don't think the Arcturians should feature in Alien 5. Unless Copley is gonna play one.

Corporal Hicks

The latest books have them as alien species that significantly increased human technology. I believe they're supposed to have a more important role in the newer books coming out.

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯

Arcturian poontang was basically just another Vietnam war analogue/homage. The Thai-ladybois were a product of Thailand's burgeoning prostitution industry in the 60's and 70's. A lot of GI's got conned and it was common for soldiers to rib each other when that happened.

I think it's really silly for the new books to make them out to be something they were obviously not.


Corporal Hicks

Quote from: The Eighth Passenger on Mar 17, 2015, 02:25:51 PM
Arcturian poontang was basically just another Vietnam war analogue/homage. The Thai-ladybois were a product of Thailand's burgeoning prostitution industry in the 60's and 70's. A lot of GI's got conned and it was common for soldiers to rib each other when that happened.

I think it's really silly for the new books to make them out to be something they were obviously not.

Indeed it was. However, the new books wouldn't be the only thing to do that. IIRC the old Aliens RPG did the same? And I'm sure this has been argued to death since the old days of the email groups.

I'd prefer it to be some other species. To widen the universe.

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