What was wrong with having a direct prequel

[OpenMaw]

"Plot holes" don't bother me.  I like them actually.  It feels like real life if you leave a ton of shit unexplained.  A story should never tie everything together.  Some might call it sloppy writing, i call it realism.  The more you tie together the less realistic it gets.  As i get older [i'm 35] I have more questions then i have answers.  And 99% of them will never get answered.  Movies should be more like that.  The tighter the writer, the less real it is.  I like lots of open ended things.  I like movies to breath.

A plot hole is not something that is left unexplained. A plot hole is usually elements of the plot that contradict or do not congeal logically.

By the logic you're indicating, Ash's little jog is a plot hole. When it's not. It's just an unexplained piece of scenery that gives the audience something to question.

[Predaker]

Some plot twists open up new avenues of mystery, while others are merely dead ends.

What Openmaw said.

[Ballzanya]

What's wrong with finding out who the SJ in Alien was, why he landed on LV, what came out of him, why and how he was infected, what laid the eggs on the derelict, who sent the distress signal, etc etc

I know many of you were against it and wanted a different story and I have never understood why.

Based on the spoilers, it appears Ridley and Lindelof tried to be too clever and buggered it up. They should have kept it simple and made a direct prequel. No shame in that, they could have kept the same "meeting gods" theme but ended it nicely.

They are just not as clever as they think they are and what we have instead is a confusing mess with many plot holes, typical Lideloff.

The problem is that everything you described can be stretched out to no more than 10 or 15 minutes of screen time. lol

[ChrisPachi]

It does seem odd that the filmmakers were so specific about it being not an Alien prequel, while the reason many critics are unimpressed is because to their minds it tries too hard to be an Alien prequel (and fails). The whole "it is but it isn't a prequel" bullshit seems to have come home to roost, as was expected by many people here.

[timiteh]

It does seem odd that the filmmakers were so specific about it being not an Alien prequel, while the reason many critics are unimpressed is because to their minds it tries too hard to be an Alien prequel (and fails). The whole "it is but it isn't a prequel" bullshit seems to have come home to roost, as was expected by many people here.

What is ironic, is it would have been indeed quite easy to avoid making of this film a prequel.
For that:

Spoiler

there should not be either the giant facehugger/mouthhugger and the jockey xeno at the end.
The filmmakers just need to focus on the jockey and their relationship. I think this relationship must have been much more developped and there should have been a much more significant and sophisticated interaction between the surviving engineer and the humans. Not a jason from the jockeys. Are we sure it is not this remaining engineer who kills the others ? Btw, the prequel aspect could have been dealt with by a simple flashback about whatever happens to the engineers thousands of years ago.

[close]

[harlock]

The film doesn't answer all the questions that a direct prequel would (no, I think they could stretch a feature out of that).

Spoiler

-We find out what came out of him and he clearly sent the distress signal. Now just why he was on LV-426 is up for conjecture, some theorise he was there to collect xeno eggs, some because he landed there to quarantine himself due to his infection. He could either have been infected by black goo from ampules onboard (the Derelict is huge and the Nostromo crew didn't go everywhere) or a facehugger of some description - either from a xeno egg or a resultant child of one of the infected Engineers from the LV-223 outbreak. That so, it'd have been the Engineer-burster that laid the xeno eggs on the Derelict.

So he was infected by accident in pretty much both ways, its whether it was from a xeno egg he collected or a thing that come from a black goo infected crew-member got him.

[close]

[cossack0909]

It does seem odd that the filmmakers were so specific about it being not an Alien prequel, while the reason many critics are unimpressed is because to their minds it tries too hard to be an Alien prequel (and fails). The whole "it is but it isn't a prequel" bullshit seems to have come home to roost, as was expected by many people here.

Exactly. To be or not to be....a prequel.