Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Let's start with this: Fuck Alien3. It's a convoluted mess of conflicting subtext and a waste of its brilliant director. I'll never forgive it for killing Hicks and Newt off during the opening credits and not because I just liked those guys.
The whole point of Aliens was Ripley facing her fears and in doing so regaining the life that the monster took from her in the first place. By killing off Newt and Hicks and once again isolating Ripley you completely eradicate any development of the character in the previous film, which was something James Cameron was careful to avoid when he spearheaded his sequel.
I like dark entries into franchises. I'm the dude that unabashedly loves Temple of Doom for that very reason, but you have to earn the darkness. There has to be a reason for the darkness. The reason in ToD is it's the trial by fire that turns Indiana Jones from the Belloq-like artifact stealer into the hero we know and love by the time Raiders begins.
If Alien3 had decided to strip Ripley of the only things she cared about throughout the story, I'd be fully behind it, but doing so off-screen during the opening credits because the studio didn't want to pay Michael Biehn to come back and didn't know what to do about Carrie Hen having grown up doesn't cut it for me.
That film could have been something special. I liked the idea of going back to basics. I even like the idea of Ripley losing everything by the end, but the film was such a hodgepodge of studio interference punctuated by bright spots of Fincher's brilliance that I'm just left feeling frustrated every time I give it a go.
So, when Neill Blomkamp's proposed Alien sequel started becoming a reality I cheered on. If you want to scrap everything that happened after Alien3 and create a new canon, I'm all smiles.
Then word started coming out that his movie, which would bring back both Hicks and Newt, somehow didn't throw out Alien 3 and Resurrection and I was confused. Entertainment Weekly recently talked with Sigourney Weaver for an article about the upcoming 30th Anniversary Blu-Ray release of Aliens and her attendance for the big Comic-Con reunion and she pretty much breaks the hearts of anybody who adores 3 and 4.
“It’s just as if, you know, the path forks and one direction goes off to three and four and another direction goes off to Neill’s movie.”
So, Blomkamp's essentially JJ Trek-ing it. I doubt the movie itself explains why they're doing it this way. Like, I don't think basketball super star Clone Ripley is going to open up a black hole and alter the timeline or anything. If I were to guess, I'd say that they're just going to make the movie as a direct sequel to Aliens, ignore everything else and on the press tour talk about how it's an alternate timeline of events. That way if you love 3 and 4 and AvP and all that other horrible shit you can have that while the rest of us get to have a real sequel to Aliens.
It's possible Neill Blomkamp is going to drop the ball and make a shitty movie. It's an uphill battle and if he is too reverential of Aliens it could spell disaster. However starting from a solid character and story foundation is only a good thing. At this point the franchise is so thin and convoluted and silly that our only real options are a real deal square one reboot or this ret-con, so I'm all for the ret-con.
What about you folks?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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