Quote from: Kimarhi on Jul 25, 2021, 04:55:57 PM
And while I definately do no care for the series direction that Prometheus went in, I do appreciate that the attempt was not just Alien again told through the fifth iteration.
Basically due to the law of diminishing returns you have to try new things in the series..........otherwise it just fades into obscurity. You either have to up the stakes, change the mode of storytelling (going from horror, to action, to drama etc) move the series in another direction etc.
It's like when I play the Alien invasion of earth scenario in my head, I don't see Aliens 2.0, but kind of a way for a storyteller to tell what a future earth would be like that suddenly comes to a grinding halt with the Alien invasion, with a small group of survivors trying to reach a shelter or get off world or something. Not massive armies vs massive hordes of Aliens.
Telling an Aliens 2.0 would only benefit its release initially. If it just told the exact same story with the exact same story beats with only more aliens and more marines audiences would quickly realize this and not come back to it after a while. Gotta throw some different spice on what you are cooking.
Yes,
PROMETHEUS is a genuine attempt to do something different despite its flaws, and while
ALIEN³ is a good Alien movie, I think after
ALIENS it was time to do something really different. I know people disagree, but I think
ALIENS was the best sequel
ALIEN could have had, and after that it was time to come up with something special, instead of trying to be Alien again. In fact, Blomkamp's project seemed to be nothing but a bigger & badder
ALIENS , and that's one of the reasons why it doesn't bother me that it wasn't done.
I have mixed feelings with the Alien invasion of Earth, because on the one hand it can be a terrible idea, but on the other it can establish that the Aliens are an unstoppable threat, which will not always be stopped by a heroine in a spaceship or colony on another planet, so the Aliens could become the end of mankind, somehow.
Now, how can you achieve that in a credible way? I have no idea. But I do think there are a couple of things to keep in mind:
- It has to be in the future, since that way you do not contradict continuity and at the same time you show a futuristic planet Earth, which is more interesting than today.
- It doesn't have to be James Cameron's ALIENS again. You have to somehow do something special and genuinely different, even though there is combat between Aliens and Marines.
Ok this might not be the best example at all, but the recent movie THE WAR OF TOMORROW left me wondering about that possibility, since in the story...
Spoiler
The Earth is attacked by vicious alien monsters, with very fast reproduction. In the end, the protagonists discover that the invaders are biological weapons sent by an unknown civilization thousands of years ago (the capsule that transported the queen and the warriors was buried in a Russian glacier.
And so far, the prequels presented a different direction, trying to incorporate existential gothic horror into myths, but ultimately it is an esoteric concept and not something universally acclaimed, and it seems to have worked better with the
RAISED By WOLVES universe, which has nothing to do with Alien. Actually, I think elements of the prequels have grown in a good way thanks to Alex White. Something more or less similar happened with the
STAR WARS prequels. I mean, Scott is a better director than Lucas, but the end result went through something similar: much of that lore has been able to really shine thanks to the interquelish works of talented people like Jon Favreau & Dave Filoni.
That said, I hope Noah Hawley hires Alex White as a creative consultant, since the TV series is the next installment.