Even though Ridley Scott’s resume has been spotty for well over a decade with plenty of hits and misses, new information on the forthcoming “Alien” prequel is still something we’re generally pretty curious about.
In a recent interview with MTV News, Scott had some more to say about the story, reiterating some things we already know —
Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley will not appear (though MTV goes on to basically beg for a cameo), and it’s set 30 years before the first “Alien” in 2085. He mentions briefly that the script, is now in its fourth draft and they’re still fine tuning. “We’re now actually trying to improve the three acts and make the characters better, build it up to something [we can shoot],” he explained. “It’s a work in progress, but we’re actually making the film. There’s no question about it, we’re going to make the film.”
Some interesting tidbits are found throughout the interview, and it seems that the film will follow the “Space Jockeys” from the first film, i.e. the dead crew members that Ripley and company stumbled upon in the first picture. “I’m basically explaining who that Space Jockey — we call him the Space Jockey — I’m explaining who the space jockeys were.” Scott also notes the main protagonist of the film will probably be female again.
And the backstory of the film? Well it sounds like a cross between the dull political trade nonsense of “Stars Wars: The Phantom Menace” and the unsubtle, we’re-killing-our-mother-nature espousing of “Avatar.”
“[The film] is about the discussion of terraforming — taking planets and planetoids and balls of earth and trying to terraform, seed them with the possibilities of future life,” Scott said and that sounds like some terrible exposition coming from a Paul Reiser/Giovanni Ribisi like business-like slime (please Ridley, resist the urge to introduce/regurgitate this unctuous and predictable character).
We’re honestly a little worried and generally tend to dislike prequel stories as they rob the original myths of mystery and intrigue. “Alien” was fantastic, specifically because there was so much ambiguity. A crew of humanoids landed on a planet to terraform and were all of a sudden attacked by a mysterious group of aliens for no good reason.
There was no environmental message and even the suggestion of one frightens us as it seems to be rather antithetical to the basic horror premise. Look, we’ve seen it with Lucas, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and several other films, but pulling back the curtain to reveal the wizard is always incredibly disappointing and underwhelming (hence the curtain metaphor, don’t you filmmakers watch movies?) so we’re not quite sure what the impetus is here.
OK, we get it, it’s generally to tell the story you don’t know, but again, this is almost always a story better left untold. That’s what makes it so special in the first place. Our little hope is Scott’s utter disdain for the nonsensical, make-a-buck, “Alien Vs. Predators” films will try and force him to do something unique because some of the film’s elements are just played out. “I know [“Alien vs. Predator” was about] commerce, but what a pity. I think, therefore, I have to design — or redesign — earlier versions of what these elements are that led to the thing you finally see in ‘Alien,’ which is the thing that catapults out of the egg, the face-hugger. I don’t want to repeat it. The alien in a sense, as a shape, is worn out.”
Other little points made are the confirmation of the precursor aliens to be designed by both Scott and original designer H.R. Giger, and the release date being a hopeful late 2011 or at best 2012. The interview makes no mention of filming in 3D, but if the craze is still on by then (good god, it probably will be), then you can basically count on it. Update: Yup, Scott has confirmed the use of 3D for this “Alien” prequel.
Meanwhile, Ridley isn’t exactly whetting our appetite for another film is this tired series when he says, “They’ve squeezed the franchise dry. The first one will always be the most frightening, because the beast we put together with Giger and all its parts — the face-hugger, the chest-burster, the egg — they were all totally original, and that’s hard to follow.” Your words, brother, your words.