Ridley Scott has dropped a few words on the upcoming duo of Alien prequels that he has in store for us.
"The film will be really tough, really nasty. It's the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would go in and clean up a planet?"
His reference to gods and engineers is likely addressing the strange creature colloquially known as the 'Space Jockey'. This rather titanic bipedal alien made a brief appearance in the original 1979 film, albeit its role was rather limited by the fact that it was dead and fossilized. Its introduction tickled the imagination as nearly nothing at all was ever revealed of its backstory; it was simply an extremely large alien being that had obviously succumbed to one of the face-hugging aliens. One of viscous little beasts had split out the Space Jockey's massive rib cage - the monster that had sprang forth was never revealed in the film.
Scott has previously said that these two prequels, which will both be shot in 3D, will heavily involve the story of the 'Space Jockey' and, supposedly, others of his species. "It's set in 2085, about 30 years before Sigourney. It's fundamentally about going out to find out, 'Who the hell was that Space Jockey?'. The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle - there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer's chair."
Scott has shed a little light on the large alien and its egg-filled ship in past commentaries, suggesting that it might have been some sort of "bomber" designed to drop alien face-hugger eggs on populations as a biological weapon. Perhaps the monster had fallen to its own dangerous cargo in an ironic twist. However, nothing is yet confirmed - perhaps the Space Jockey had encountered the alien eggs by sheer chance, just as the Ripley and her crew found had them, and it had suffered the obvious fate.
As the film takes place 30 years before Ripley, there will not be any return or cameo of Sigourney Weaver; however, Scott has said that the lead protagonist will be played by a woman. Just as intriguing, Scott is reportedly coordinating with H.R. Giger, who was the fundamental imagination behind the creature design in the original Alien. Scott is said to be working with Giger in adapting new and bizarre creature designs for the two upcoming prequels.
Scott's ambition is made rather evident in a recent friendly jab at James Cameron. "Jim's raised the bar [with Avatar] and I've got to jump to it. He's not going to get away with it."
The first of the prequels is hoped to be completed in 2011, though we may have to wait until 2012. We'll report as we hear more!
Source: The Independent
Comments
Sending the Nostromo in to LV-427 was a setup. They knew about those aliens the whole time which was kind of the point of the whole franchise. Not trying to be an ass, just sayin'.
Which isn't what I said. The company knew something alien was there. There was no indication that the company or anyone else had alien contact before that. Unless you count the Alien Vs Predator franchise...which if we are going to do that? We might as well give up now. The terrorists have won.
No, we need to forget the AvP movies exist.
Exactly what the Weyland-Yutani Corporation knows about the Alien species is never known. They do know enough about it to want to risk lives to obtain a living sample for their military research though. They know that it's important enough to send Ash along programmed to bring a sample back to Earth at all cost, crew expendable.
Sending the Nostromo in to LV-427 was a setup. They knew about those aliens the whole time which was kind of the point of the whole franchise. Not trying to be an ass, just sayin'.
Which isn't what I said. The company knew something alien was there. There was no indication that the company or anyone else had alien contact before that. Unless you count the Alien Vs Predator franchise...which if we are going to do that? We might as well give up now. The terrorists have won.
Sending the Nostromo in to LV-427 was a setup. They knew about those aliens the whole time which was kind of the point of the whole franchise. Not trying to be an ass, just sayin'.
If those few pages of script are the real deal it seems like it's gonna be pretty awesome to me. I think I might like the new heroine judging from what little I know of her from it.
Why are there humans in this? It seemed pretty clear that mankind had not met up with any other alien life in Alien- they didn't recognize the creature as a familiar life-form. Are the human slaves from earth?? This seems rather unnecessarily messy...
Well in the comic books Vasquez has a young sister named Carmen. I totally do not know they would want to borrow from that. But they do consider the comic books cannon to the film series well almost at least with the some exceptions. That be awesome if they would..
Don't know if this is real but here's the first 5 minutes.
http://www.bigchicosmovieblog.com/4894
Seems like a pretty awesome way to kick things off although I think it would have been kind of cool to see an opening sequence more like Alien and Aliens.
Slashfilm posted the synopsis:
"The story follows a group of terraforming aliens the script calls ‘Growers’ — these are seemingly of the race from which comes the original film’s ‘space jockey.’ There’s a strange sequence in which the Growers use a bit of mind control to instigate a homosexual encounter between Fin and Karik, two male human slave farmers. The aliens, you see, are a single-sex species and don’t understand the male-female breeding requirements of humans.
The title alien — the xenomorph — is a creature used by Growers as part of the terraforming process, and at a point in the script it develops into the creature we know and love. So we won’t see it in the form we know right off; this will be a payoff later in the script.
Into the group of Growers and human slaves comes a ship crewed by “the usual Alien misfits” complete with a female character that sounds like Vasquez from Aliens, and another woman named Truks that is reportedly the role for which Gemma Arterton was considered. Ridley Scott has also reportedly met with Lance Henricksen, though how the guy who fit into the established Alien storyline might work in this film, I can only conjecture. (I’d guess he’d appear only towards the end, as the xenomorphs are out of control, in a story thread that would point right towards the original ALIEN"
I don't think the movies are going to be about that particular alien but just his species. This is one of the most exciting things going on in film right now. Ridley and H.R. is gonna be amazing.
Goody!
Is 30 years enough to be fossilized?
I admit that crossed my mind as well. Not sure how they're going to handle that part - maybe they could argue that reverting to a stony form is how these aliens naturally decompose
This sounds really awesome, but man Ridley you do not need to use 3D to battle against James Cameron we all know he is a jerk.
Is 30 years enough to be fossilized?