What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Inception spent a similar amount of time talking to itself.

gah! lost another post Explorer SUCKS

Shell, i'm half way through the script for the scrapped Aliens sequel.

When was it written, the 90s? The parallels to Prometheus are really interesting (the fact that the alien pathogen is a genetically engineered weapon, and they come to suspect that in this).

By not respecting the alien lifecycle (egg, facehugger, chestburster, alien), they've made it less scary. Coming out of a test tube (like in Life) just isn't as scary.

Bishop is cool and I'm glad Newt got out of Dodge. I'm guessing Ripley will show up later but who knows. Hicks seems pretty consistent too.

Anyway, i'll keep going. The last few scenes were pretty intense.

I am currently at about the same spot in that script. I believe this first draft was written in 1987, which explains the Cold War tension between the two sides. This was still early enough in Gibson's writing career that he wasn't focused on his own style and was looking more to fit with the Alien franchise. He does a decent job capturing the characters of Bishop and Hicks, but I'm a little disappointed at his relative lack of interesting science stuff and the disregard for the alien life cycle. Still, better than the actual post-Aliens sequels.

oh yeah, MUCH better than those. I'm really liking Bishop in this more and more, he's a really cool character and the screenwriter is having fun with him. And it's very beilevable that Bishop's would get "cute" with his language like this.

So if it got written in 1987, isn't it remarkable that he picked up on the idea that the aliens could be an engineered weapon? Cuz all the talk of the analysis at the cellular level seems to support that. And Prometheus certainly went in this direction. It's cool how it lines up. It's also obvious that Alien: Ressurection got inspired by this script and stole some stuff.

Anyway, I'll keep reading and let's compare notes at the end. I'll be careful with spoilers in case i get further ahead.

Black Barney wrote: By not respecting the alien lifecycle (egg, facehugger, chestburster, alien), they've made it less scary. Coming out of a test tube (like in Life) just isn't as scary.

Preach! This is one of my few complaints about Aliens, actually: the introduction of the queen to the xenomorph lifecycle. Don’t get me wrong, she’s badass, she makes for a great set piece in the movie’s climax, and she supports the movie’s motherhood theme. But just like having hundreds of aliens running around reduces what had been a horrifying, unstoppable monster to (admittedly scary) cannon fodder, adding the queen weakens the run-of-the-mill drone xenos. I completely acknowledge that these decisions were necessary for creating a horror action movie sequel to what was a straight horror movie.

But man, that self-contained lifecycle in the original movie (as fleshed out in removed scenes and the novelization) is just so cool and otherworldly. Egg -> facehugger -> chestburster -> bigfucka -> egg. Love it.

Aliens is my favourite movie pretty much and I have to agree that the queen is the weakest bit. Having a horde of these things coming at you because they want to make more of them is way scarier.

A long time ago I made the decision to never watch another movie in the series after Aliens. I've stayed true to that decision. I have such a profound respect for those first two movies, I put them behind only Ghostbusters and The Enpire Strikes Back in my list of favorite movies. To continue the story of Ripley, Newt, and Hicks never sat well with me. They earned their victory. Let them have whatever life was waiting for them.

I won't be seeing Covenant, either. Just because it's Ridley Scott attempting a return to form for the franchise, it's still indulging in the inane and ultimately damaging trend in Hollywood to explore the origins of our nightmares. I don't need to know how this shit came to be. I certainly don't want to understand it. To do so works to lessen their effect. It sounds like I'm not missing anything.

Feelitmon wrote: But man, that self-contained lifecycle in the original movie (as fleshed out in removed scenes and the novelization) is just so cool and otherworldly. Egg -> facehugger -> chestburster -> bigfucka -> egg. Love it.

Most of the bughunt games that try to simulate the Alien franchise ignore the lifecycle and just focus on the iconic standard adult xenos.

Two that got it right:
Intruder (Task Force Games) skips the egg portion, but otherwise goes through the life cycle.
The Awful Green Things From Outer Space (first published in Dragon magazine #28). Game designer/artist Tom Wham claimed at the time that it was not based on Alien and it was just a big coincidence, but I suspect he was trying to cover his ass since it was published mere months after the movie came out. This game had a life cycle of egg - baby - adult, plus one additional stage of "fragements", which fell somewhere between egg and baby and was the result of attacking any alien with a weapon that broke the alien into survivable pieces.

Josh, we have reached a cultural point where the demand for television shows and movies far exceeds the creative capacity of people creating such entertainment. So we get all these damn sequels and prequels and stuff story-boarded almost directly from comic books.

Everybody wants fucking LORE. LORE LORE LORE. Backstory for everything. The ONLY time this has EVER worked in a film series' favor has been...Star Wars. Because part of the concept was to create a lived-in, storied setting that we are sort of coming in on in the middle of a serial narrative. So it made sense for there to be more explanation, and for the most part, everyone but George Lucas that has added to the official LORE of Star Wars has been respectful and thoughtful about it with some exceptions.

But not every god damned movie needs LORE. Like John Wick- do we need MORE explanation than a suggestion of a larger "world" out there? All of the detail should come out in small bits through the storytelling, instead of the storytelling service as a vehicle for LORE.

Alien had no LORE. You got a SENSE that these folks were blue collar schmoes pulling a haul, some typical The Company is Real Bad stuff in the peripheral, and then a solid and quite simple survival horror story with a beginning, middle and end.

Look at Fury Road too. All of the LORE is self-contained. That part where they see the stilt walking dudes is so weird and mysterious...and at no point did I think "man, I hope they do a whole movie where they go into their backstory and fucking LORE."

LORE ruins movies. Witness Hellraiser, which I think is the best example of this happening. Movie 1- Cenobites, holy shit! Weird, extra-dimensional S&M demons who have unknown purposes and agenda. Where did they come from, why are they here, what do they want? AWESOME! Movie 2 kept that up, good job! Hellraiser 3 started explain all of the fucking LORE, gave Pinhead a lame origin, and pretty much disarmed all of the weirdness and enigma. And the results were D-U-M-B.

But then there is The Matrix. It goofs up with having a lot of talking about stuff, but it actually doesn't overexplain itself. In fact, a lot of its LORE is really subtle. Like the part with the Merovingian and his henchmen, who are hinted at being vampires and werewolves and ghosts. There's no extended walk-and-talk where characters talk about it.

Logan handled its LORE really well, but it is also the best movie of 2017. The past films are almost unceremoniously disposed of. There's some talk about them, but nothing is explained and extrapolated on...because only the parts that are relevant to the LOGAN story are even really brought up.

Enough with it. SO tired of "shared universes" and all that crap, I just do not care about that kind of storytelling anymore. I mean, there are like ten film franchise deals and all going on...eventually this shit is going to CRASH HARD. That god awful Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie was supposed to be a multi-film deal and I am sure it is full of teasy-tease LORE shit...but it bombed completely, so who is going to care about its fucking LORE.

LORE LORE LORE. Just shit to talk about on the internet, really. Not important story material. Thanks a lot X-Files, Twin Peaks, Lost, Marvel...