What was wrong with having a direct prequel

[Kev Loaf]

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.

[cossack0909]

In my opinion, Ridley is cautious about making a direct prequel to ALIEN because he feared it will not be well-received by non-ALIEN fans.  The 2 piles of human excrement called AVP and AVPR has made people bored and uninterested in any new ALIEN movies.

Ridley wanted,I think, to attract new viewers and non-ALIEN fans to watch Prometheus, thus he made something he thought as different and not a direct tie-up to ALIEN. Plus, by starting a new franchise, he could perhaps make more money. Creatively, he thought maybe he should create a new dimension and not being too stifled by the ALIEN franchise.

Just my opinion.

[Vickers Valiant]

I feel sort of cheated, to be honest (although I'll reserve my final judgment until I've seen the movie). From what all the people who've seen the movie are saying, it's nowhere near as original/different/groundbreaking/thought provoking as Ridley, Damon, and the rest of the cast have claimed it to be.

I personally attribute that to the fact that "different" usually doesn't bode well with the general audience, and at the end of the day, Ridley and co. want the movie to sell well. If he had delved a deeper into this new mythos surrounding the Engineers, their past, their intentions, etc., and made Prometheus a standalone film (with an ambiguous ending, for a potential sequel's sake), I believe that it would have been much better. It seems like they dumbed it down to cater to the "general audience."

Of course, I haven't seen the movie yet, so I might end up eating my own words once I have.

[zoidy]

As far as I know, when they started developing the film it was going to be a "proper" prequel. But in writing the script, they moved away from it.

I think it's worth remembering that they would have been restricted in what they could do. Look at the recent The Thing prequel - to tie in perfectly with the beginning of Carpenter's movie, they were hugely restricted in location, characters, story etc. And so it became a predictable and lesser film.

Ridley Scott makes the films Ridley Scott wants to make. I completely agree with him going further away from the original to find a story.

[Kev Loaf]

As far as I know, when they started developing the film it was going to be a "proper" prequel. But in writing the script, they moved away from it.

I think it's worth remembering that they would have been restricted in what they could do. Look at the recent The Thing prequel - to tie in perfectly with the beginning of Carpenter's movie, they were hugely restricted in location, characters, story etc. And so it became a predictable and lesser film.

Ridley Scott makes the films Ridley Scott wants to make. I completely agree with him going further away from the original to find a story.

I dont believe it would have been restricted. In Alien, all we had was one space jockey, a mysterious warning signal and a millions of eggs. The rest was open to interpretation.

They could have kept the "meeting the gods" theme but tied it directly to the original or at least referenced it.

I like the idea that the derelict in Alien landed thousand of years before Prometheus. I remember someone mentioned a theory that the SJ in Alien was a "sacrafise Engineer"; who after the disaster at the base, loaded up a bunch of eggs and flew them away to protect his species. He then landed on planet and released a warning signal telling other SJ not to come near. Something like this would have been cool.

[harlock]

The SJ in ALIEN probably happened due to this;

Spoiler

They left the base to terraform LV-426, but were already (possibly unknowingly) infected by the bioweapon they were creating there on LV-223. The engineer-burster hatched upon landing and there you go.

[close]

[Ruzena]

The SJ in ALIEN probably happened due to this;

Spoiler

They left the base to terraform LV-426, but were already (possibly unknowingly) infected by the bioweapon they were creating there on LV-223. The engineer-burster hatched upon landing and there you go.

[close]

You cannot deduct what happened in part 1 because lindeloff wrote random part 2. What happened in part 1 was that scared 3 people in space suits found abandoned mysterious half organic awesome designed derelict. Not a fecking engineer. It IS and it WILL remain the original space jockey.

So now in addition to predxenos we have engineers all over and they make military bases on different planets to make weapons of mass destruction. {And they are not alien at all, they actually cough} Thats some mf mystery and sends shivers down my spine. Is that engineer going to catch cold?

[Aceburster]

 This Jockey seems to have a story thats largely (if not totally) separate from humans and fairly bleak.

Maybe in a sequel once the audience has had time to let the concept of an Engineer/Living Space jockey sink in and become identifiable to audiences?

Once upon a time Predators were killer aliens, then they became space samurai that team up with humans after the public had time to absorb them into popular culture. Maybe the Engineers need some time in popular culture so that even grandma will go "oh no that poor jockey got facehugged, he was so nice!" when the time comes, rather than thinking "WTF am I watching and why should I care about this giant space tapir lumbering around groaning? Wheres the handsome lead again?"

Id love to watch a completely dark and abstract story about the last days of the Jockey but I cant think of a way to sell it to the public without softening up audiences first. These aint Avatar aliens yo lol

[cossack0909]

Guys, I just read an official review that actually was unhappy that the ending to Prometheus is linked to ALIEN. The reviewer mentioned that the movie was moving along nicely until when Ridley created scenes that tie it to ALEN.The reviewer was happy that the movie at first had an original feel to it.

Now, that's weird!

[Ruzena]

This Jockey seems to have a story thats largely (if not totally) separate from humans and fairly bleak.

Maybe in a sequel once the audience has had time to let the concept of an Engineer/Living Space jockey sink in and become identifiable to audiences?

Once upon a time Predators were killer aliens, then they became space samurai that team up with humans after the public had time to absorb them into popular culture. Maybe the Engineers need some time in popular culture so that even grandma will go "oh no that poor jockey got facehugged, he was so nice!" when the time comes, rather than thinking "WTF am I watching and why should I care about this giant space tapir lumbering around groaning? Wheres the handsome lead again?"

Id love to watch a completely dark and abstract story about the last days of the Jockey but I cant think of a way to sell it to the public without softening up audiences first. These aint Avatar aliens yo lol

YEs, I was hoping for the same, ttho lot of people disagree, I wanted a prequel about desperate weyland researchers party stranded on dark world with howling wind and weird ship close to their crash site with something slowly crawling in the ribbed tunnels and moaning, catching them one by one driving them insane, mutating, all ending in weird mass and disintegrated flesh! f**k yeah Something that would make me afraid of looking on night sky
But Prometheus is not bad at all. There is the famous

Spoiler

GIANT OCTOPUS IN THE CLOSET!!!!

[close]

[timiteh]

Well, i would have seen nothing wrong about making a direct prequel to Alien, but for that to happen and to be coherent there should be either no human in the movie but only engineers or Prometheus going back in time and its crew having an interaction with the SJ which leads to the creation of the xenomorphs taylored to human species.
Though the thing which annoys me the plus is the fact that the engineers are supposed to have seeded life on earth, thus were supposed to be there dozens of millions of years ago, yet their technology doesn't seem to be extremly advanced or they are somehow incompetent. I mean after having been life engineers for millions of year, one could believe that they would be able to have a much higher control on their bioweapons. If we were as incompetent , we would already have several accidents with our nuclear weapons.One could also believe that they would be able to built way more powerful and terrifying mass destruction weapons such as flawless biotech gray goo aimed at a specific species.

[NGR01]

MONEYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!
A new franchise born out of Ridley's mind based on bits and pieces of ALIEN will make him more money than just being the director of another ALIEN movie.
Simple as that.

[Nightmare Asylum]

To put it quite simply, we already know how it will end, and Ridley wanted to surprise us with something new instead.

[maddriver]

The mainstream popcorn-eating, visual effects-addicted, 3d-worshiping audience can't make serious connections between stories very well and since every movie studio tries to get as much money as possible from ticket sales, the movie's storylines have to be mainstreamed too.
Most of them probably haven't seen or heard about Alien before. Most of them probably find that movie too boring to watch.
One cannot simply challenge the minds of a "new age" audience, because you will lose them half-way through the movie. And they won't be back for the sequel.
So the solution is to please both the new audience and throw a bone at the older audience (see Star Trek 2009).
Sounds of "ching-ching" everywhere.

[zoidy]

As far as I know, when they started developing the film it was going to be a "proper" prequel. But in writing the script, they moved away from it.

I think it's worth remembering that they would have been restricted in what they could do. Look at the recent The Thing prequel - to tie in perfectly with the beginning of Carpenter's movie, they were hugely restricted in location, characters, story etc. And so it became a predictable and lesser film.

Ridley Scott makes the films Ridley Scott wants to make. I completely agree with him going further away from the original to find a story.

I dont believe it would have been restricted. In Alien, all we had was one space jockey, a mysterious warning signal and a millions of eggs. The rest was open to interpretation.

They could have kept the "meeting the gods" theme but tied it directly to the original or at least referenced it.

I like the idea that the derelict in Alien landed thousand of years before Prometheus. I remember someone mentioned a theory that the SJ in Alien was a "sacrafise Engineer"; who after the disaster at the base, loaded up a bunch of eggs and flew them away to protect his species. He then landed on planet and released a warning signal telling other SJ not to come near. Something like this would have been cool.

I always thought the derelict was ancient, as you suggest, thousands of years before the events of Alien. In that case, how could Ridley have made a prequel? Humans would have been at best hitting each other with swords, not flying through space 

Of course he could have had no humans in the story, but that would be tough.