Amph The ALIEN SAGA: review & discussion: Now Disc. Prometheus sneak peak scene

Dear god let's hope it stays that way. 4 was aweful, and 3 was definitely a step down as well.

 

The Alien is currently up in The SFF: Films and TV Favorite Sci Fi Character Contest! VOTE NOW!!!

 

I mean, I like the Alien, but not that much...

 

Upped.

 

I'm just curious whether anyone's discussed before the parallels between the Alien trilogy and the story of Beowulf.

Beowulf is most frequently segmented by the beasts Beowulf faces: First he goes unarmed against Grendel and defeats him; then after Grendel's mother retaliates Beowulf takes the fight to her, armed and armoured; finally, he faces a dragon, which kills him, even as he's killing it with the help of a brave warrior.

Now, Ripley's story is nearly identical. She finds herself, alone and unarmed, facing the beast that has been killing and eating those around her. Soon she is dispatched with a military unit and ends up facing the Alien Queen (who can't, incidentally, breach her "armor," the suit. Finally she ends up facing yet another beast, this one referred to (in a Biblical allusion) as "the dragon," (have I mentioned how Beowulf takes place right as Christianity is making it into the native culture), and she sacrifices herself to defeat it, even as she leads "the wretched" to some sort of salvation as they help her do so.

Do you think there was conscious intent to mirror the Beowulf epic from any of the writers or directors of the Alien trilogy?

(Of course, if you want to look even closer, parallels could be drawn between Beowulf and Alien alone, with Grendel corresponding to to the facehugger, Grendel's mother as the chestburster, and the Dragon as the full-grown creature, but then the parallels don't hold together as neatly.)

 

Alien is a freaky, evil looking thing.


Its creepy.

 

I hadn't considered the resemblances, but now that you mention it, there are some. I wonder whether they are inadvertent, or not?

 

I doubt it since each of the films are done by completely different writers and directors.

 

If the parallels are accurate and they seem to be, then I think Ridley Scott's ALIEN did a better job of portraying the BEOWULF story than Robert Zemeckis did in the actual film of BEOWULF, which I loathed.

 

I had never considered the correlations between the Alien series and Beowulf. Thanks, Mastadge for the insight. Now I have to reread the epic poem and go through the series and see the correlations.

 

The Alien Prequel

 

I never looked at Alien as portraying the Beowulf story. I don't really see it match up all that well at all in my opinion.

Interesting interview. I will watch and see how this turns out. Can't be any worse than Resurrection.

 

Scott's been talking again:

Also, apparently Gemma Arterton will be meeting with Scott to potentially star as the female lead of the new films. Why there will be humans in a prequel story to Alien about the Space Jockey, I know not -- or maybe it'll be a CGI Arterton, à la Avatar?

 

Made my feelings pretty clear in the past but for the record;

1. Aliens; finest sci-fi action film of all time and one of the few superior sequals in history. For a long time my favourite film. 10/10

2. Alien; finest sci-fi horror film of all time, rivalled only by The Fly (remake) and The Thing. 9/10

3. Alien; Ressurection; much maligned, nice relationship between Ripley and Cal and for all you Firefly fans you can see the beginnings of Joss' idea for the series here. And it gives Ripley her happy ending, she wipes the bugs out, she get's her little girl, ship and crew/family back, finally makes it back to Earth and becomes the female Mal Reynolds. Plus Kim Flower's backside is SENSATIONAL! 7/10

4. Alien vs Predator; clever opening sequence and Lance Henriksen more than earning his cool $1million towards his retirement fund. The blonde bimbo chestburster scene is probably the best evidence yet of the famed sexual subtext, at least until the maternity ward scene in AvP;Requiem 5/10 (with the exception of Frost vs Nixon about the best film you'll ever see with 'vs' in the title)

5. AvP; Requiem- pretty darn terrible. The maternity ward scene is a bad taste classic which the producers acknowledge they're going to hell for having told the actresses to play it as though they're 'enjoying a fatal orgasm'. Wish they'd kept in the scene where the pseudo-Ripley takes on the bugs with the 50-cal 3/10

6. Alien3. Unique amongst terrible sequals in that it is not only an appalling film in itself but ruins your enjoyment of the previous 2 wonderful films. What were they THINKING?

Fan as I am of the series I think they should just let it lie UNLESS we get an AvP story set in the future, hopefully solving the mystery of the derelict OR a reboot set after Aliens where Alien3 never happened.

 

The project intrigues me with or without Gemma, but if she's on-board this suddenly becomes a must-see.

 

I love Alien 3 for the very reason that in so many ways it strives to do the opposite of Cameron's film. In Aliens Ripley and Hicks have this incredible chemistry that speaks of true love waiting to be embraced, and yet the most intimate gesture the two partake in is an exchange of first names. In Alien 3 Ripley has sex with the "love interest" soon after meeting him, and moments later that "love interest" is killed. In Aliens Ripley builds a family. In Alien 3 she attends what passes for that family's funeral in a scene that (quite brilliantly imo) foreshadows her own fate. In Aliens the good guys win. In Alien 3 no one wins. Alien 3 remains one of the bravest sequels I've seen, and even though Scott's Alien is the one I view as the technical masterpiece, Alien 3 is the film where I'm most caught up in Ripley's plight. I rank the trilogy as one of the best film series of all time, while Resurrection is flawed but still watchable in an alternate universe/darkly comedic dream type of manner.

As for the new film(s), I'm looking forward but a bit wary. I don't want to see a Ripley-like character shornhorned in just because the studio is afraid to veer from the original formula. I want to see a continuation of the universe, not a reboot of the first or second films.

 

I'm always staggered that Alien 3 has it's fans

 

Yet you like Resurrection, and AvP

 

I like Ressurection for the reasons I've put in the post and face it, it had a long way to go to recover from the debacle of Alien 3

AvP, well, it ain't great but it's ok, I only gave it a 5

 

Arterton should voice the aliens. The sound of terror.

 

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet: production's at an impasse because Scott wants $250 million for the duology (expensive, but still only half the price of The Hobbit duology), and an R rating, and the studio wants cheaper films and a kinder, gentler PG-13.

Now, I have little faith in Scott anymore. His movies still look good but they've not been so good for the past couple decades. But in this case I'm on his side for the rating, at least, if not the budget. PG-13 Alien films? We've seen how well that turned out.

Also, latest rumors have it that Noomi Rapace is now Scott's preference to star in the movies.

 

It seems that big budget R rated films are rare nowadays , whereas there used to be loads of them .

 

Yeah, anyone who doesn't like Alien 3 and enjoys those monstrosities that followed needs to go home and rethink their life as far as I'm concerned. It's vastly better than anything that followed.

I like Alien 3 for pretty much the same reasons ezekiel does. It's getting back to the foundations of the mythos; doomed humans running from a vicious monster. There's no fighting back allowed.


I even wrote a facebook note that's made it's way in here before. I'll post it down below so as to not get too off-topic.


250 mil for two films isn't that expensive; the studio needs to stop being cheap.

 

Alien 4, AvP and AvP:R aren't great films but Alien 3 is so appalling it sets new standards of abysmal. Alien 4 goes some way to recapturing the brilliance of the first 2 films but really can never recover from the awfulness of 3. AvP and AvP;R are pretty much popcorn films but don't ruin your enjoyment of the others as 3 does.

Anyone who even attempts to defend Alien 3 should seriously consider electro-convulsive therapy to change their world view

 

I know we've gone over this before, but the idea that one entertainment can ruin one's enjoyment of another entertainment is baffling to me. What I think of Alien 4 is independent of what I thought of Alien 3, which did not change what I thought of the first two one iota.

And AvP is by a fair margin the worst in the series.