If you had a chance to make a reboot of Alien

[The Old One]

No reboot. And the idea of a TV show is great, no it doesn't need to be centred around the Alien contrary to what some people believe. The universe is interesting enough on it's own.
Just title it something applicable.

"Periplous" for instance.

[Local Trouble]

An Alien TV show needs to be centred on the Aliens.

Otherwise it runs the risk of being like the Godzilla anime on Netflix.

[The1PerfectOrganism]

Spoiler

Firstly, I would kick Scott to the curb. He's out of his league and his interference is ruining the franchise.

I would ignore everything beyond the first two movies, except maybe as Ripley's and David's nightmares, like the latest Halloween sequel did. I'd pull a Force Awakens to replace the previous cast with new young actors, like a recast Newt. If Weaver, Henrickson or Biehn died prior to filming, I'd just mention that they died peacefully and that Bishop was phased out. Rebecca Jordan would still be the hero, because nostalgia is money. Maybe for fanservice I'd introduce Amanda Ripley's grandson as a love interest.

Giger biomechanics and 70s/80s retrofuturism would in full play, because those are hallmarks of the only good two movies. For continuity and, also, nostalgia is money.

To raise the stakes and ensure future movies, I'd make the aliens intelligent a la the original concepts; that is, combine them and the engineers/jockeys/whatever into the same species. The creatures we see are feral children engineered to fight a civil war, but the smart ones grow the spaceships.

As a little nod, LV426 was xenoformed by black goo leaking from the egg bomber (the goo is the basis of the alien tech, like the goo in District 9), resulting in the grotesque rock formations and those alien fossils from the never filmed scenes.

David returns as a loony robot acting on behalf of the greedy company who thinks he can control the aliens and use their tech to revolutionize civilization. He gets gutted by the smart aliens, but helpfully informs Jordan how to stop the lead alien before its juggernaut full of eggs reaches Earth.

David remains the villain for as long as Fassbender's contract lasts, because Fassbender is awesome. Jordan remains the heroine, because this series needs a strong female protagonist. Not a line of disposable f**k toys for David to play with.

Again, f**k Scott. f**k him to hell. Dear God, I pray that he dies ASAP before his next box office bomb kills this franchise for good.

Parody or immense stupidity?

[close]

"Nostalgia is money."
Is a dead giveaway of parody I think.
Alongside several hallmarks of the type of self proclaimed intelligent person that thinks they know best for the franchise but actually don't.
You see this kind of garbage everywhere on YouTube.
Go ahead, rate the Alien franchise's continued existence above the life of a real human being. lol

[Corporal Hicks]

Again, f**k Scott. f**k him to hell. Dear God, I pray that he dies ASAP before his next box office bomb kills this franchise for good.

First and only warning. No wishing death on anyone on this board. If I see it again, you'll be banned.

[Kradan]

Again, f**k Scott. f**k him to hell. Dear God, I pray that he dies ASAP before his next box office bomb kills this franchise for good.

[The Old One]

Yeesh.jpeg @all of it.

[Immortan Jonesy]

First of all, I want to say thanks to @MoonRightRomantic for inspiring me to use the ignore feature for first time.



Now back on topic, I think TC's idea for a TV series is Top Tier 

You can make a great design if you want, but the Space Jockey was just a generic extraterrestrial being and the first victim of the Alien. It's just a prelude to what is about to happen to the characters, and no relationship between the two species is required. The Derelict is found stranded in the middle of space by the Nostromo's crew, near a strange formation of asteroids.
...
After the discovery of a pyramid-shaped symbol drawn by the Space Jockey, the crew leaves the alien ship and begin to explore the asteroid field. Once there, they find the fragments of the Old Ones' home world and an ancient pyramid.
...
Inside the pyramid everything is biomechanical in design, and Big Chap is a teenage/middle state, so to speak; of an intelligent organism. At the end of the story one can appreciate the final metamorphosis and shape of the Alien. But of course, the site "Alien Explorations" explained it better:
"Expanding on this in the original conception of the Alien race, the inhabitants of the planetoid are seen as tough and primitive, and with an extremely complicated sexual cycle. Reproduction was very difficult for them and had therefore become central to their religion. And this pyramid was a temple to reproduction. The inhabitants of this world had three entirely different stages in it's life-cycle which are featured as very stylised hieroglyphs on the wall of the birthing temple."
...
I'd only replace the octopus-like monster with the beautefull Giger's beast, plus the final state or "evolution" of Big Chap with Giger vibes as well, and the interiors of the temple with the biomechanical aesthetic. The true life cycle of the creature involves eggmorphing. The Queen is an abomination created with military purpose in a research facility by Weyland Yutani. The latter fits with an Aliens reboot, though.

Hey! That's cool. 

Now I'll have a go...

Here's a reboot idea, this one for a TV series. But first, some thoughts, following on from preceding posts:

Remember The X-Files? (which I think has been mentioned in relation to this topic before). Ultimately that entire series is held together by its mytharc, the story of the impending alien colonisation of Earth, even though there were many other side stories that filled out each season. And sometimes stories that seemed to be unrelated or only tenuously connected (the black oil, the bee virus, the secret cabal of scheming industrialists), turned out to be part of the mytharc after all.

An Alien TV show could follow the same format - the overarching storyline being the discovery of the origins of the xenomorph.

So even if there are episodes that don't feature an actual xenomorph onscreen, as long as their presence is there to motivate events and characters, I think it could still work. It might even be preferable to use the xenomorphs this way, because if every episode features the xeno then you run the risk of overusing them to the point where they lose impact (there's a reason why the Daleks only show up once per season of Dr Who).

OK. So in my imaginary Alien TV series, I'm going to make one of the new protagonists a bit like Sean Connery's Federal Marshall from Outland. (Maybe he could be played by William Hope, who played the Marshall in Alien Isolation.) From his office on Thedus, he has to field all sorts of mysterious distress calls and emergencies the likes of which he's never experienced before. This is because this region of space has only recently been opened to human exploration, and unlike every other part of the galaxy humans have visited, this one shows signs of having been inhabited by an intelligent, space-faring species at some time in the past. To assist the Marshall in his work, he deputises a Colonial Administration exobiologist called Dr Elizabeth Shaw. (And there I've got my Mulder and Scully of the show.)

To further spice up the story, I'm putting a reboot of the movie events into the background. So while the Marshall is dealing with a case of Working Joes running amok on some space station, he hears a report that one of Weyland-Yutani's space-freighter refineries just blew up. And in another episode when he and Dr Shaw are investigating a hibernation-ship that suddenly appears after being lost for 50 years, he receives a call for assistance from a colony called Hadley's Hope which is experiencing a sinister case of child abductions.

Into the mix I'll throw in the corporate warfare between rival tech companies Weyland-Yutani, Seegson, Con-Am and Tyrell, as well as the social upheaval of robot and AI technology, clones, and colonial tribalism. And I guess I'll chuck in a military story or two for good measure.

So there's plenty of opportunity for conflict and drama, requiring investigation from our stalwart heroes. And by the end of the first season, once you've added all the episodes together, I'll have Dr Shaw summarise the mytharc so far: that the xenomorph is an artificially engineered organism, seeded in this corner of the galaxy at some time in the past by a technologically superior alien race, for some mysterious purpose. What is this purpose, where is the alien race now, and are they returning any time soon?

And so to season two...

TC

Yes dude that was neat! every single word. We need drama, techno thriller, psychological warfare, corporate espionage, political intrigue, conspiracy and military action (not too much, not too little). Also, there are plenty of mysteries to explore...is there intelligent life beyond Earth? If intelligent aliens exist, why haven't we seen them? Oh look! are you seeing this?...what they're...living machines? space seeders?...but where did they go?

We develop artificial intelligence, but these guys seems to be ahead of that, eons ago. There seems to be a creation of some sort. I'd say this mysterious civilization (if you can call these skeletal-looking artifacts of shapeshifting-metal in that way) has been taken over by one of their creations, long ago.

OK, that was crude but I know that you can do it better. 

But a very important point that you've made is about over exposition. The last thing an Alien TV series needs is xeno fatigue. You can also experiment with episodes of the "monster of the week" type. While that might be detrimental to the Alien, by monster of the week I don't necessarily mean a new monster in the literal sense of the word, but a non-human threat. The Neomorph was great in Covenant, though.

But overall, I think The X Files is a good role model to craft an Alien TV series. Keep it up. 

An AvP show would provide a broader scope.

I hate to admit it but yes, people want French fries & Mountain Dew. I'd say the AVP concept can play as a entertaining media version of that.

[Huggs]

Walks in

Again, f**k Scott. f**k him to hell. Dear God, I pray that he dies ASAP before his next box office bomb kills this franchise for good.

First and only warning. No wishing death on anyone on this board. If I see it again, you'll be banned.

Walks out

https://media1.tenor.com/images/6b0639a69a4e1a8ed35a906492951cab/tenor.gif?itemid=9281930

"Hey Crabman"

[Kimarhi]

I always thought that the backstory for LV1201 in the AvP2 campaign was interesting enough for a kind of tv show.


You had the scientist following the SJ telemetry on LV426 back to LV1201, you had expedition 1, you had WY establishing the POC and PODs (with the loss of POD5).  I always thought with some touchups you had several interesting ways you could go with such a story.


And essentially you could have every sort of theme encountered in the series or hinted at included.

Young workers looking to work the frontier for adventure and career fulfillment,  corporate espionage (just tweak the tomiko storyline a little bit with maybe her brother actually being a spy for another corporation) rogue AI (just have an AI shut down the fence during expedition one and then blame it on the storm) or have it influencing Eisenberg some kind of way. 

I think it sets up pretty easy for a series, especially since they were already established on llv1201 a long time before they even encountered their first alien.  It wasn't like they jumped right into the fray with the Aliens or preds.  They established a spearhead and then slowly the Aliens activated as the conditions on the planet became less extreme. 

[The Old One]

"Activated" damn, Monolith's AVP lore is top tier.

[Kimarhi]

They sent androids into the hives and couldn't find any life initially, when the storms became less extreme, the hive sent out runners (i guess to look for new hives/prey) and then praetorians. 

it was good shit, I loved the worldbuilding of that game, and wish we could get them to do one with modern tech. 

[Still Collating...]

Agreed. The full story with all the (corny) dialog was very very engaging. The gameplay is fun, but the story is what drives me in replaying it. Overhearing every bit of dialog, collecting and reading all the notes. AVP2 for the win. If that was adapted well, I could die happy.

[PsyKore]

I thought the story of Rykov would have made for a great new Predator movie with Dutch in his place, with some obvious adjustments to setting, time period, etc. I just loved how personal Rykov's story was. And it built up nicely towards the end at the final battle.

[Samhain13]

I always thought that the backstory for LV1201 in the AvP2 campaign was interesting enough for a kind of tv show.

You had the scientist following the SJ telemetry on LV426 back to LV1201, you had expedition 1, you had WY establishing the POC and PODs (with the loss of POD5).  I always thought with some touchups you had several interesting ways you could go with such a story.

And essentially you could have every sort of theme encountered in the series or hinted at included.

Young workers looking to work the frontier for adventure and career fulfillment,  corporate espionage (just tweak the tomiko storyline a little bit with maybe her brother actually being a spy for another corporation) rogue AI (just have an AI shut down the fence during expedition one and then blame it on the storm) or have it influencing Eisenberg some kind of way. 

I think it sets up pretty easy for a series, especially since they were already established on llv1201 a long time before they even encountered their first alien.  It wasn't like they jumped right into the fray with the Aliens or preds.  They established a spearhead and then slowly the Aliens activated as the conditions on the planet became less extreme.

They sent androids into the hives and couldn't find any life initially, when the storms became less extreme, the hive sent out runners (i guess to look for new hives/prey) and then praetorians. 

it was good shit, I loved the worldbuilding of that game, and wish we could get them to do one with modern tech.

Am I seeing someone that appreciates AVP2 as much as me?

[Wysps]

An Alien TV show needs to be centred on the Aliens.

Otherwise it runs the risk of being like the Godzilla anime on Netflix.

I haven't seen the Godzilla anime, but I can see how the show could easily run out of steam if it's just focused on "beating the Aliens".  How sustainable and attention-grabbing could that be in the long-run?