Sigourney Weaver talks Alien 5... again...

YES!!! THIS!

And bring back Ron Perlman and Winona Ryder, too!

 

No, that was only the second chapter of the series.

Ripley said she wanted to get back for her daughter's 8th birthday, so the cryotubes were used for keeping crews alive but the ships didn't necessarily travel at sublight; Lambert reports the Nostromo was "just short of Zeta II Reticuli", which is 39 light years from Earth. At sublight her daughter would've been much older.

It sounds like Earth's influence would be around that area as Ripley thinks "she would reach the frontier in about six weeks", and the Narcissus was a sublight shuttle only. Though on the flipside according to Burke she "drifted right through the core systems" for 57 years which at sublight would probably have covered a couple of lightyears at most.

 

Though it's never directly addressed, clearly they use FTL, but the journeys are still long enough that cryo is at least more practical if not totally necessary.

Leaving aside the issue of supplies, even on a relatively short duration flight, what would be the point in having the crew awake at all? It's not like they'd have anything to do besides eat, sleep, get into arguments and fuck. The ships' AIs can clearly fly on automatic and can awaken the crew if need be. Same goes for the marines in Aliens. Until they're in drop position, they're essentially cargo.

One thing I thought was interesting was that on one of Cameron's early drafts he had Bishop awake during the trip, watching over the ship and crew. Don't recall why they idea was dropped, maybe he wanted to wait for the knife scene to tip off that he's a synthetic? Either way, I wonder if Ridley (or the various writers) came up with the same idea for David in 'Prometheus' independently, or if it was knowingly "borrowed".

 

Although they're not canon I kind of like Dark Horse's followups to Aliens before Alien3 came out (Of course after Alien3 they changed all the names and stuff for future reprints and the novel adaptations )

 

I did not know that.

 

Basically they originally had the further adventures of Newt & Hicks who are both somewhat messed up after the events in ALIENS (Newt's in an asylum and Hicks has physical and emotional scars from the battle)...and they're joined eventually by Ripley (Who was taken out of sleep before them). Also the Aliens invaded Earth. The comics were also loosely adapted by Steve Perry (Who wrote Star Wars Shadows Of The Empire) into novels.

However, after Alien3 in further reprints ("Outbreak" "Nightmare Asylum" and "Female War") they changed Newt to "Billie" and Hicks to "Wilks" in a weird attempt to still conform to movie continuity (It's obvious who they were supposed to be though) The novel adaptations retconned Ripley into an android. The comics/novels continued using the same basic backstory, that the aliens had invaded earth, but future comics pretty much ignored the wilks/Billie characters and were more standalone, or focused on AVP stuff.

There are of course those weird Kenner comics which had Ripley as part of a marine squad along with a bald, sunglasses wearing Bishop and the strangely alive Apone & Drake. Kind of like those 80's Rambo toons.


There's supposed to be a relaunch of the Aliens comics this year at some point, and it will include prometheus stuff too reportedly.

 

Eh, Sigourney is unnecessary. For me, one of the coolest parts of going into Alien for the first time was the expectation that Tom Skerritt would be the hero. Then he gets iced and suddenly it's supporting cast steps to the fore time. Awesome. Ripley becomes a completely unlikely hero. Then she gets dragged back into the nightmare for the chance at revenge, along with another great supporting cast. Awesome.

...

Then she comes back AGAIN with a completely lame-ass supporting cast before suiciding to put her role in the grave, once and for all.

And then she comes back AGAIN from the dead, to join another, albeit entertaining supporting cast to fight some aliens and blow up South America.

Why the fuck do these aliens always have to share the screen with this woman?

Narrow-focusing on single characters, or even small groups of characters, because of actor star power in an IP so friggin cool as Aliens or Terminator makes everything feel so small. I don't want to watch an old man try to be an unstoppable killing machine. Or an old woman run around screaming at alien nightmares. There are other people who can play a cyborg (see TSCC) and there are certainly other people who can be potential alien chow.

They don't need to recast the role, or think up some new way for old lady Ripley to fight aliens. Seriously, Sigourney, give it up. After 3 and 4 you said you were done, but now we need a 5? Sigh. They need to come up with a different scenario, with different characters set in the same universe. And they need to not get the asshole who wrote Prometheus to do this.

I'm really looking forward to the side-quel Alien: Isolation survival horror game coming out later this year focused on her daughter investigating the loss of the Nostromo in the years between Alien 1 and 2. Yeah, it has an alien, but NO RIPLEY and NO PREDATORS, and the aim is sci-fi horror.

As a tangential side-note related to recasting iconic roles: STOP CASTING Jai Courtney as anything other than the dumb muscle. I've worked with slabs of modeling clay with more personality than this asshole. Sebastian Stan should have been the reboot Kyle Reese. And Michael Biehn should be given a future war cameo. End of story.

 

I'd be up for Alien 5 and generally agree with it being somewhere random in deep space. Whether that's with Ripley or not, I'm less bothered. I wasn't much of a fan of Alien 3 or 4.

 

I'm much more interested in Prometheus 2 than in any Alien sequel. I've only seen bits and pieces of 3 and 4 but none of it looked inspiring. I didn't much care for Aliens. The original was, of course, an absolute masterpiece.

 

Much as I liked Alien, I thought Aliens was far better. Strangely I feel exactly the other way about Terminator and T2...

 

Just goes to show how taste is subjective--I find Aliens OK on its own, but it is my least favourite of the four, by far (I've not seen any of the AVP movies, nor do I count Prometheus in the Aliens saga directly). Alien, though, stands far above any of the others for me (it's the one I watch the most of my box set of the four).

 

Nobody should mention AVP... this black hole of movie entertainment never ceases to tear my heart apart.
Even Prometheus had some entertaining moments... had it just been better scripted... The photography was beautiful.

 

I find Aliens to be a somewhat above average action film and nothing more. I know I'm in the minority there, but I found it to be a letdown after the original.

 

The operative difference between the two films IMO is the original had more suspense and less action.

 

Nobody mentions AvP because nobody remembers it (seriously, name ONE character from that film from memory!) Indeed, it's eminent forgettably is it's second most redeeming feature.

Apples and oranges. Cameron specifically set out to NOT make Aliens just a retread of Ridley's "haunted house in space" and instead made "a war film in space."

Whichever you like best is simply a matter of taste.

Full disclosure though: I have a soft spot for Alien 3. Fully aware of it's many and major flaws...and yet there's something in Fincher's direction that I just dig.

To my mind, the reason why Resurrection doesn't hold up so well to the others isn't because it didn't do the things the previous films did as well, it's that it did too much that the others did instead of doing something new. The only thing about that film I really liked was the new cast of characters and the self discovery arc for Ripley-8.

 

For me it was because of Daniel Heyada as General Perez. I don't know why - or for that matter - they intended for him to be comic relief but it the situation presented it rang as fake.

 

Joss Whedon didn't have Ripley in it at all. He was told to put her in. Seriously, who uses 'xenomorphs' with a straight face?

 

Not my favourite term I must say, but it's the only name we have for them. Just calling them "aliens" is a nice idea, but it can quickly get confusing as to whether a person is referring to the film(s) or the actual creature.

To be fair though, "xenomorph" is more of a description that a name (literally: alien that transforms) so at least it's apt. Would you prefer "Star Beast"?

There was a weird, inconsistent tone throughout the whole film. Personally I chalk it up to the directing style and some of the casting choices being at odds with writing style. It tried to be a quasi-comedic, cheesey action sci-fi film with a heavy horror element. It's no wonder a lot of stuff felt distinctly off.

 

It was used as a joke in the second film and so many people didn't get the joke it's funnier than the joke. Clue about what to call it: look at the name of the film. If you get confused by the lack of an initial cap, you can always put the definite article in front of it to keep yourself right.