It seems that the Alien mantle has well and truly been passed over to new hands.
With Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus taking cinema by storm and the highly anticipated Alien: Earth coming in August from Noah Hawley (not to mention the Alien nods in the upcoming Predator: Badlands), it really seems that the franchise is in very safe hands.
Director of the original 1979 Alien and two sequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott, has hinted that perhaps, at the age of 87, it’s time he let the franchise go and move on in the new direction it seems to be taking.
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“Where it’s going now, I think I’ve done enough, and I just hope it goes further,” the movie legend says of the horror/action series.
“I think I felt it was deadened after 4,” Scott says (the fourth movie is 1997’s Alien: Resurrection directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet), he goes on: “I think mine was pretty damn good, and I think Jim’s (Cameron’s Aliens) was good, and I have to say the rest were not very good. And I thought, ‘F#@k, that’s the end of a franchise which should be as important as bloody “Star Trek” or “Star Wars,”‘ which I think is phenomenal. At least, I think the first one by George is seminal. It was as seminal as ‘2001.’ To me, it was that important in terms of film language and where you go next.”
He goes on, talking about his return to the franchise with 2012’s Prometheus: “A number of years after, I said, ‘I’m going to resurrect this,’ [and wrote] ‘Prometheus’ from scratch – a blank sheet of paper.
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“Damon Lindelof and I sat then hammered out ‘Prometheus’. It was very present and very welcome. The audience really wanted more. I said, ‘It needs to fly.’ No one was coming for it, [and] I went once again [and made] ‘Alien: Covenant,’ and it worked too. Where it’s going now, I think I’ve done enough, and I just hope it goes further.”
While Scott is right about a lot of this (Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection did indeed fall off after he and Cameron’s entries), Prometheus and Covenant weren’t embraced by all the fans, with many not liking them, in fact, I would argue that Alien and Aliens are the only truly great entries in the whole franchise, yet it’s a franchise I fully admit to loving and Álvarez’s Romulus last year was a great return to form (well, the first two acts anyway) and Alien: Earth looks great too, so maybe the new guard is the way to go for the franchise.
I’m also very excited to see what happens with the Predator franchise and how they’re both heading towards an epic meeting down the line (to my knowledge, the two Alien V Predator movies that already exist are no longer canon to either franchise).
Meanwhile, as Scott steps down, Álvarez is saying that he in pre-production on the Romulus sequel and he plans to start shooting this October.
Do you like the direction of the Alien – and Predator – franchises? Are you amazed, as I am, that these are the two (unlikely) franchises that Disney has handled properly since taking over 20th Century Fox?
You have thoughts and I wanna hear ’em all.
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Source: Variety & Marea Nocturna podcast
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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