From cinemablend, Everyone knows that the Alien vs. Predator movies were complete trash and hardly deserve to live on the same shelf as the original Alien films. Hell, even the third and fourth Alien films weren't great and certainly weren't as widely revered as the first two. So what was the problem? Where was the disconnect?
Hopefully the maladies will be cured this time around as Ridley Scott prepares to direct an Alien prequel for Fox. Scott spoke at this week's first annual Hero Complex Film Festival and Collider caught a brief glimpse of what he has in store for us.
Everyone will recognize the space jockey, if not by name then by looks. The space jockey is the being found in the crashed alien vessel in Alien before the facehugger plants its seed inside an unsuspecting John Hurt. Summarily forgotten, the space jockey lived on in Ridley's mind and he is "always amazed that no one explored the backstory of 'The Space Jockey' in the sequels because it’s so obvious in the first movie." The director went on to say that he was a bit upset that he was never asked back to direct any of the sequels, finding out about Aliens barely before shooting began.
Essentially, the two planned prequel films will chronicle two adventures of the space jockey; one being how he encountered the aliens, and one about how he got there, both taking place "WAY before the first film". We don't know when the first film is set to shoot but a script is finished and the production is being prepped so it won't be too long.
This is exactly what the series needs now that Predators is looking to revitalize the other quintessential 80's monster villain. Perhaps a lot further down the road we'll see some real directors take a stab at the AvP series again. For now though, knowing that Ridley Scott is back at the helm of his own franchise should be enough to have you very very excited. More on this as it comes to us.
4 comments:
"Summarily forgotten, the space jockey lived on in Ridley's mind and he is 'always amazed that no one explored the backstory of 'The Space Jockey' in the sequels because it’s so obvious in the first movie.'"
Really? "Always?" That sounds like age-of-the-prequel talk to me. I've said this before, but that's not my favorite kind of talk. All these ridiculous assumptions about audiences seeing random background pieces and thinking "what's THAT about? I hope they make another movie to tell me." If that's true, I want a movie about Buckaroo Banzai's watermelon.
"the two planned prequel films will chronicle two adventures of the space jockey; one being how he encountered the aliens, and one about how he got there"
Really? That requires two movies to tell? And will there be any humans at all in these flicks?
"Predators is looking to revitalize the other quintessential 80's monster villain"
REALLY? "Quintessential?" Come on, the Predator franchise was mediocre from the get go. I've always felt that its "classic" status was mostly self-propelled.
I love Alien and much of Ridley Scott's work, but this is also the guy who made G.I. Jane thinks Deckard is a replicant. A decent Alien product is not a guarantee here.
Yeah, what he said.
Oh dang, I left out an "and." AND thinks Deckard is a replicant.
This whole concept is stupid!
The entire point of the Space Jockey was just to extend the creepy weirdness to another quantum level by showing a bizarre-as-fuck (and pretty capable looking) other alien, who's just the victim (by extension making the main alien scarier). It adds dimensionality to the story, by showing how cumulatively bizarre the universe is, and it gives a ton of structural foreshadowing (since, if they'd been a little smarter, they could have developed a theory of what happened to the space jockey).
I mean, it's fucking brilliant in Alien because it enriches the quality and force of the movie, not because it's intrinsically worth our attention. The designs are by that insane Swiss painter, and, like a lot of quasi-abstract post-Picabia stuff, serves no real narrative purpose except to be really suggestive and imaginatively creepy. It's not supposed to get an explanation; that's part of the effectiveness of the whole first half of the movie, before the egg hatches and the characters have a problem that's a bit more urgent.
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