I'm a fan of the first two Alien movies.  I keep hearing about a new 
Alien movie, to be released this year.  It will star Sigourney Weaver 
again.  Apart from one rather surprising piece of casting in the 
android role, I haven't heard much about it.  Has anyone heard any 
details?

Re Alien^3: an article in Entertainment Weekly has the same complaints 
about Alien^3 that I've always had: its trendy nihilism may have 
served the director in his other efforts with other audiences, but it 
fell flat in Alien^3.  The moral, they conclude, is: never, ever, mess 
with a franchise.  The next Alien movie will right things by in effect 
ignoring the plot lines of Alien^3 and starting with Ripley alive and 
well (albeit cloned), making Alien^3 a cinematic cul-de-sac.

Anyway, what do you hear about the new one?

45 responses total.

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All I've really heard is that they are either going to write off #3 as a
nightmare, or just ignore it entirely.
Does anyone know who is going to produce/direct it ?

I don't know who's producing or directing.  I heard that the 
movie won't ignore Ripley's death in Alien^3, but it will bring 
her back as a clone.  I *think* I heard somewhere that the 
alien's DNA gets mixed up with Ripley's, but I don't remember 
what effect that's supposed to have on Ripley's body or soul.  
I just hope she doesn't start laying eggs.  

The android part this time around will be played by Winona Ryder.  
"We finally got her out of corsets," commented her manager.  She 
and Sigourney Weaver were publicizing the movie together at 
Sundance, or someplace.  For all I know, it's already in post-
production.

Sounds cool.

Been there, done that. Jeez.  Two Alien movies were enough.  
Try something new.

Good point.

  Its called Alien: Resurrection (no IV after it meaning it may not
be considered a sequel)  I think they are just going to say she didnt
die at the end of the last film, but somehow survived (and that the
birth of the alien while she was falling was a hallucination)

Originally the next Star Trek movie was to be called Star Trek: 
Resurrections, but the name was appropriated for the Alien movie.

The "Aliens" movies should just move on adn leave ripley dead.  Except, what
really ticked most people off was that Newt and the soldier died senslessly.

A movie of aliens taking over a planet would be good, in fact, I have a good st
story already written.  (almost)

The problem is that Ripley *is* the draw.

I don't recall seeing any ads or pub about this movie.  Is it really going
to happen?

I saw some reference to it recently, still supposed to happen.

You're talking about me?? =^>
I also think that ripley should have been left dead. 
Of course I never wished her dead, and cried when I saw Alien 3 first
time. I guess this movie, Alien: Resurrection, will not have a good
scenario as the other three have. 

the third one had a very bad scenario.  Bad, bad, movie script.

I wonder if anybody besides me noticed that Alien 3 was based
on the Joan of Arc story, complete with a fanatical shaved-head
Ripley donning men's clothes and leading a troup of men in battle,
and of course the death by fire at the end.

Well, *I* noticed it.

Yeah, well, you're just go at spotting clever rip-offs.
Like, I just found out yesterday but you've known since
always that the movie "Forbidden Planet" is _The Tempest_
in outer space.

Well yeah, but I wasn't the first one to notice it.

I think we should just chalk Alien 3 up to a nightmare and leave it at that.
Kind of like Highlander 2, the movie that shouldn't really exists within the
storyline.

I just thought I'd give this item a kick, since the Alien movie appears
to be on the schedule for a fall (?) release.

Yea, and the premise is gonna make me sicker than three did.

Ripley is cloned adn comes back as a half human/half alien creaturefighting
the aliens and the other humans don't know which side shes on half the time.

God save us from sequels

Saw a promo on one of those Entertainment shows, and Ripley is definitely
a clone, wiht Alien DNA, though I don't know if she'll have any, um,
physical signs of that. (I hope not!) It's due out in Late November, Early
December, from what they said. 

I still will never go see Alien 3, since I will never believe those char-
acters are dead.

So has anyone seen and have comments on 4 now that it's been out for w bit
?

Geez, no one's responded?

I never saw any of the previous films, but I read _Alien_ as a novel-- very,
very creepy.

I saw _Resurrection_ and Ripley was indeed dead.  Cloning her had been a very
time-consuming, costly, and frustrating procedure.  Because the DNA had been
so intermingled, the movie presented all the other failed attempts later in
the movie.  All but one were in holding tanks-- most twisted in obvious ways
by Alien features.  The last was still alive and looked almost mangled.  She
begged the crew to slay her and her miserable existance.

What happened with the successful clone was that she gave birth (and lived)
to a Alien that had slightly more human features.  It rejected the Queen, but
bonded with Ripley.  It was killed when she opened a hole to open space and
it was sucked out.

I'm sure you knew all that-- anyway, I thought it was good.

Heh.  I never did get around to seeing it.  O well.
I still treasure my opening-weekend trip to see the first ALIEN
movie, at the 70mm Americana Theatre in suburban Detroit, as one of
the greatest movie experiences of my life.

I had hopes for "Alien 4", as it was directed by Jean-Pierre Junet. He
did the fantasy film "City of Lost Children", which I like a lot. "Alien
4" had some of the same visual flair but little of the magic that made
the earlier film so enchanting. I didn't like it much.

(One of my greatest movie experiences was seeing the first CinemaScope
movie, "The Robe", first-run at the State Lake Theater in Chicago in
1953. Kinda dates me, eh?)

Well, John, Hollywood doesn't put out many gems anymore-- besides, today's
audiences are desensitized-- I understand the first film really traumatized
people.

The first Alien movie did indeed traumatize people.  I saw it the
day it opened at a Times Square theater filled with ostentatiously
world-weary New Yorkers who kept up a babble of ironic sound- effects
and cynical commentary -- until the scene where the creature bursts
out of John Hurt's chest.  Stunned, dread-filled silence after that,
punctuated by occasional screams.  I read an interview with Ridley
Scott in which he talks about having the audience "in a state of
submission" after that scene.  When asked what effect he was trying
to achieve with Alien, Scott said, "Like somebody pounding a nail
into your head."  Over-all, despite its $8,000,000 budget and its
tiny bag of tricks, it was an astonishing achievement that's never
been equalled.

My experience was similar to md's.  A carload of friends drove from 
MSU to the Americana Theatre multiplex in Southfield, which was at the 
time the only 70mm theatre in Michigan.   At a couple of points early
in the movie, a number of people got up and left: mostly the early 
scenes involving John Hurt.   Probably the last scene where people left
was the scene where the little alien bursts out of Hurt.
 
My girlfriend told me that early in the movie she started identifying
with Sigourney Weaver's tough character, and that as the movie started 
spiralling in on Ripley she got more and more terrified.  She also told 
me that people were throwing up in the women's room at the end of the movie.
 
I'm told that I was bouncing off the walls with enthusiastic admiration
for cinematic aspects of the movie, and my friends just wanted me to 
shut up.  I've never seen an audience shaken up like that.
 
Part of what made the original presentation work, I'm sure, was the sound.
20 years later, I can still remember the sound when Ian Holm's head gets
knocked off...  and the scene when Holm is wired back up...

Interesting description. I didn't see "Alien" first run, but it did
break new ground that took audiences by surprise. It's since become old
ground, of course.

I can think of a couple of other ground-breaking films that had a
similar effect on the audience when they came out - Hitchcock's "Psycho"
and Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde". "Psycho" left me feeling helpless
and terrified. When I saw "Bonnie and Clyde" first run in Ann Arbor,
people were visibly and audibly cringing at the outbursts of violence,
which were way over the top in 1967.

There`s a scene in "Meet Joe Black" that caused an entire-audience reaction
at the 10:30 showing last night. Both the movie moment and the identical
simultaneous reactions of 100s of people were remarkable.

The first "Planet of the Apes" movie was quite a "shocker" too.

I rest my case..for example, the creators of "Planet of the Apes" didn't
intend it to be a political movie..and yet it was..there was an interesting
TV documentary on A&E about that..

I thought the most shocking scene inALI

in "Alien" was the scene where the androids head was removed and then
re-animated.  That disturbed me more than any of the blood did.

Same here.  The monster was positively cuddly compared to the
android head spitting milk.

Nah.  The spider-esqe thing on the guy's face did it for me.  "What's 
that thing going down his throat?"

Great scary film, to be sure.  And I've never seen it in a theatre...

Has this film been converted to DVD?  I'd be surprised if it hasn't been. 
Stereo Review praised the conversion of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ in their last
issue, mainly because HAL's voice, some sound effects, and color has been very
accurately reproduced.  The music isn't too impressive since it's mostly cuts
from classical recordings and the material was not rerecorded by standards
for a typical movie soundtrack.  But there's less problems with orangey hues,
and the backgrounds are truly back.

A DVD conversion for _Alien_ might be very effective, and you would be able
to recreate a near theatre experience, Scott.  Depending on the length to
width ratio, that might be pretty close.

The Michigan Theatre seems to bring ALIEN back every year or two.

Yeah, but that's in your neck of the woods.

I saw Alien II (Aliens?) before Alien.  Heavy-duty violence isn't really
my favorite genre, but I liked the Ripley character.  It's good to see
characters actually traumatized enough by the events in one film so that
they still show visible effects in the sequel.  (The quick healing of TV
characters in things like the Star Trek TV shows seems to me to
trivialize the traumatic effects of violence.  They should all be at
least in heavy consoling, if not a psycho ward, by now.  What I dislike
much more than violence is trivialized violence.)  By the time I got to
see Alien, it was too old, and I hardly remember it.

The two films that I remember as being too much for me were "A Clockwork
Orange" and "In the Realm of the Senses."

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss