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Alien 5 confirmed by 20th Century Fox - Ripley's back.

TMBTM

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DominicCobb said:
Kind of hoping Alien 3 and 4 are ignored. Bringing characters back from the dead (clones or otherwise) is always pretty silly and contrived.

So... let me understand.
People now prefer having half of a reboot than a true intelligent sequel?

Come on... If you reboot things, reboot everything, don't reboot after two movies and ignore the others "because it's convenient".
This would be lazy storytelling. This would be fan service. This just would look ugly and messy.
You'd maybe get a good movie, sure, but I would always have in the back of the mind that it's a sort of fan fiction.
If they do that you may have the illusion that the fans "win" but it will be Hollywood's victory.

Plus I really do think the end of Alien 4 is a great starting point to make a good sequel.
Ripley 8 is a strong character to deal with.
 

matrixgrindhouse

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Well, there is precedent. Superman Returns nullified parts 3 and 4 of that series, while retaining continuity with the first two. Then again, that one wasn't well received either.

Regardless, there is a way to have the best of both worlds. Alien 3 and Resurrection can still be in continuity, and Hicks can still be alive without having been cloned. Remember that universally panned video game, Colonial Marines? Touted as canonical, it featured a plot twist that revealed that Hicks had been removed from his cryo tube aboard the Sulaco. A completely different person wound up inside, and was so heavily disfigured when it was ejected, that he was mistaken for Hicks. Hicks escaped the ship, attempted and failed to save Ripley, and went on to further adventures. He just needs to have been frozen at some point after that, and that's not exactly implausible in this universe.
 

Kal-El

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Q2 said:
Not sure how Hick's or Newt could survive considering their bodies were tossed in a vat of molten steel.

But now you're again referring to Alien 3, where their bodies are disposed of AFTER having died. I'm saying Blomkamp's sequel could possibly ignore Alien 3 and 4, and simply start off right after Aliens (unlikely) or have them successfully escape LV-426, be awoken from their cryosleep in time because of some built-in safeguard or whatever, manage to defeat the xenomorph, have some jolly old adventures together after which we end up in Blomkamp's sequel (if only to explain the age difference of the actors between Aliens and Blomkamp's sequel).
 

DominicCobb

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TMBTM said:
So... let me understand.
People now prefer having half of a reboot than a true intelligent sequel?

Come on... If you reboot things, reboot everything, don't reboot after two movies and ignore the others "because it's convenient".
This would be lazy storytelling. This would be fan service. This just would look ugly and messy.
You'd maybe get a good movie, sure, but I would always have in the back of the mind that it's a sort of fan fiction.
If they do that you may have the illusion that the fans "win" but it will be Hollywood's victory.

Plus I really do think the end of Alien 4 is a great starting point to make a good sequel.
Ripley 8 is a strong character to deal with.
I do not think utilizing characters such as Ripley 8 is an intelligent way to make a sequel. Sneaking around the death of a well liked character by making a clone of them is the definition of fan service to me.

They could probably make a good film in the existing continuity. But they might be able to make a better film with selective continuity (imagine how much worse Prometheus would have been if they tried to acknowledge the continuity of the AVP movies).

The fact of the matter is Blomkamp has an great idea according to Fox, and that is why the film is getting made. I've loved all of his work so far, so I'll trust him on this. Maybe he'll come up with a dumb explanation as to Hicks isn't dead. Maybe Hicks won't even be in the movie. I just think the smartest thing to do (they way that gives the film the most creative freedom) is to forget Alien 3 and 4 ever happened.
 

Gaith

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TMBTM said:
So... let me understand.
People now prefer having half of a reboot than a true intelligent sequel?
As a guy who ties to be open-minded in all things, I'm not completely against the idea of Newt and Hicks dying before Ripley even woke back up. I do say, though, that any movie that did that would have to be freaking great, as great as the first two, to earn that right, and based on what I read shortly after watching Alien and Aliens, Alien 3 didn't earn that right, and so I never saw it. And then, a Ripley clone, born pregnant with a xeno hybrid? Come on, now, that's obviously too stupid to earn my viewing time, also.

So, for me, the Alien story has never yet actually progressed past Aliens. YMMV. ;)
 

Avid4D

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Superman Returns was a lesson in failure of ignoring the complete series, so I would hate it if they do that to the Aien franchise.

I can see a way around this though... Ripley and Hicks are intercepted after Aliens and BEFORE Alien 3. My hope is they have some reason to keep Newt in her chryochamber! They then get involved in some adventure (with Hicks/Marine battles!). Do they discover Ripley has an alien inside her? Maybe Hicks has one too, and their memories are wiped and somehow put back in the shuttle. Alien 3 happens after that point.

What do you think? Only problem is the actors are considerably older now.
 

blueyoda

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Superman Returns' failure had nothing to do with ignoring Superman 3 and 4.

It was because it was a woman's movie.
 

Q2

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Superman Returns was nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be IMO.
 

Gaith

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blueyoda said:
Superman Returns' failure had nothing to do with ignoring Superman 3 and 4.

It was because it was a woman's movie.
That's not the most fortunate (apparently off-the-cuff) thing Singer's ever said, but, in his defense, SR is closer in tone to Twilight than The Expendables. I suspect, though, that if he'd been really honest, he'd have said it was a substantially autobiographical movie about growing up and loving people while being "different", i.e., gay. There's an armchair-psychiatrist's theory for y'all. Either way, the movie's main problem is its Supes is just too darn passive and bland, and its Lois equally bland if a tad less passive.

But yeah, the lack of connections to Superman 3 and 4 were absolutely not the problem with SR at even a conceptual level. That's just crazy talk. :p
 

TMBTM

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DominicCobb said:
I do not think utilizing characters such as Ripley 8 is an intelligent way to make a sequel. Sneaking around the death of a well liked character by making a clone of them is the definition of fan service to me.

Ripley 8 is quite a different character from the original Ripley. Some fans did not like it at all. It was a risky move to get the character back but not exactely being the same.
So, yes, I can give you the point that the cloning plot was "lazy" storytelling (or at least the easiest way to make that happened), but the character herself is strong and interesting, IMO.

Now, pretending Alien 3 and 4 do not exist because fans who speak the loudest don't like those movies: THAT is total fan service.
 

Uncanny Antman

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I know Singer said that his film was a loose sequel to the first two, but what from Superman 3 and 4 does Superman Returns pointedly ignore?
 

Gaith

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^ You're right, it probably didn't (unless we want to count Lois not being pregnant and having a kid in the wake of her sex with depowered Supes in II, but SR doesn't actually say that's when the conception occurred). And even Days of Future Past acknowledged that X3 happened, as did Trek XI with its Prime Timeline, of course.

So, as far as partial/splitting-off timelines go, as in de-canonizing certain entries while keeping the original(s), the T1/T2-continuing but T3/TS erasing Sarah Connor Chronicles series may be the most mainstream example to date.

But it's all about multiverses now, right? Ever since TNG's "Parallels". If the new Blomkamp sequel charted a different course than Alien3/4, that doesn't mean they didn't ever happen, per se; they just happened in an alternate, separate reality.


Obi-wan.png


"From a certain point of view."




:wink:
 

spence

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I agree that it's fan service, but I'd also prefer to see a movie that ignores Alien 3 and Resurrection (both of which I enjoy) to get a cool follow up to Aliens that features Newt and Hicks. That's just simply a movie I'd like to see, especially as directed by Neill Blomkamp. A sequel to Resurrection I couldn't care less about. My hope that this series can go to new and interesting places has been destroyed by AVP and Prometheus. Bring on the fan service, says I!
 

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spence said:
Bring on the fan service, says I!

Hollywood won.
I'm out.
(Okay, okay... you know and I know that I WILL see that movie no matter what... Hollywood got me too...!)

Edit: I just want to add that I obviously don't mind when filmakers want to please the audience. Sometime they forget the audience and try to please themselves too much or try to apply some rules that should make the movie a success. So it's cool when they think about the fans. It's just that it would not look good to me to treat Alien 3 and 4 like if they never happened.
If I was in charge of the movie and someone would bring me a story like that, I would throw it in the garbage can.
 

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A simple retcon can fix it. There's a precedence for clones already, who's to say the Ripley we saw in 3 wasnt a clone of the one we see in this new film? The circumstances at the beginning of 3 are suspicious already, i it may be a stretch but what if the events of 3 were a test to see of a clone can remember their past life, so they set it up to look like Newt and Hicks are dead so the clone would believe it, and that would make Ripley 8 a clone of a clone hence all the failed attempts. I'll stop but my point is a good writer can find a way to make it gel together. I have faith in this director too.
 

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Or as I suggested in my previous post... they could make a prequel to Alien 3 & Resurection, but a sequel to Aliens. Kind of like Fast & Furious 3 was a prequel to later films (?)
 

addiesin

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What do you mean "or"? That's what i was describing: a sequel to Aliens that doesn't remove Alien 3 or 4 from continuity; but my additional point was the age difference can be dealt with smartly and a retcon doesn't have to remove whole films from continuity of a franchise but can rather be used to add to it. Was I not very clear? Sorry.
 

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^ So you'd both disappoint those who want A3/A4 erased, and annoy many of those who don't with an awkwardly inserted new story? That, mon ami, is worst of both worlds. ;)

(Yes, F&F:3 takes place after F&F6, but pretty much no one is irritated by the fact that Justin Lin wanted to keep Han around a few movies more, whereas the casual killing of Newt and Hicks has got to be one of the most hated plot developments in all geek fandom.)
 

addiesin

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Gaith said:
^ So you'd both disappoint those who want A3/A4 erased, and annoy many of those who don't with an awkwardly inserted new story? That, mon ami, is worst of both worlds. ;)

That's a fair opinion to have. As long as you understand what I'm saying, that's all I care about. You don't have to like it or agree :)

Count me in as one who would love to see the Newt/Ripley mother/daughter dynamic revisited and expanded on.
 

TMBTM

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Let's also all remember that we only speculate of this because of a simple early production sketch showing Hicks.
And the production was not greenlighted when we saw that drawing several weeks ago.
So I don't think this drawing can be officialy called representative of the future movie.
 
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